cluttered and beautiful spaces

In my post about the Society, Inc., I talked about how I tend to love interior design pictures of huge, sunlit, white spaces sparsely decorated with minimal furniture and a few splashes of color. I will probably never have a place like this -- I just own too much stuff. And now I'm about to move into a tiny bedroom in a teensy-tiny apartment, where I don't have a living room to dump to my extra things like bookcases and knicknacks, let alone a separate studio to put my art supplies. 

So this post is devoted to beautiful pictures of cluttered spaces, with emphasis on workspaces. 

Above: photo by Jeremy Levine Design on flickr, posted on Pitch Design Union. I found it on cmongirl's tumblr. This is still a bigger room than my bedroom, so I have no hope of this much open space (even if I had only a bed and a dresser). It's not exactly "cluttered," but not exactly sparse, either.  I love the wall shelves to keep surfaces clear, the tons of stuff under the desk areas, and the stacks of books.

Kitchen clutter! Someday I'll have a kitchen with more than one unit of counterspace (not including where a dish drainer would go) but that day is not now. 

Picture above via Hello Neëst !. 

This sewing shed belongs to Artemis of Tales of a Junkaholic. I think this picture shows pretty much the entire shed. As I'm planning my new teeny bedroom, I'm appreciating elements like the cute, compact baskets and other storage she's using.

Picture from designsponeshop flickr, discovered via please sir. It's hard to see just how cluttered this space is in terms of furniture, but I love all of the color, pattern, fabrics, and textures. 

Another one I mostly like for the clutter on the walls, via the steampunk home. I don't think I could pull this sort of thing off in my place, though. For one thing, I think having walls this cluttered, in addition to my necessarily cluttered furniture, would make everything claustrophobic. 

Another workspace cluttered with baskets, books, and wall adornments. This one is by Angie Cao, via tea for joy. 

moving! road trip snacks, and boxes, lots of boxes

I'm finally taking care of that moving-across-the-country business, by driving across the country with a truck full of my stuff. Which means: snacks! I made pumpkin molasses bars, banana barley bars (from 500 Vegan Recipes) and magical coconut bars (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar). I changed the coconut bars the teeniest bit by using slivered almonds where the recipe called for chopped walnuts. They're definitely magical! Full of graham-crackery goodness and coconut milk and flakes. The banana barley bars are fantastic as a portable breakfast -- the barley is barley cereal (I used Grape Nuts) and it ends up being like a sweet, chocolatey bowl of cereal in bar form.

I also recently bought a new lens, mostly on the recommendation of Vegan YumYum's amazing food photography for bloggers. All of these pictures are from me playing around with my new lens.

All the bars!

Magical coconut bars: yum.

Boxes piled in my studio. There were about 80 boxes total, of wildly varying sizes: everything from rolls of paper, to shoeboxes, to a huge, professionally-packed box containing my printer/scanner (which can scan up to 11"x17" pages).

My lunch the other day, an arugula salad with walnuts, sunflower seeds, chives, and sorrel.

Beatriz Martin Vidal

I've been thinking lately about the delicate, sometimes jarring art and illustration of Beatriz Martin Vidal. I just love her technique, the layering of pigment and line with the white of the page illuminating everything. Her figures are full of such exuberance and light, even in the eerier pieces. 

More on my tumblr. Originally discovered via Ullabenulla. 

Fuyuko Matsui

I can't get over these paintings by Fuyuko Matsui. Especially her work on silk, the texture and atmosphere really works for me with her eerie and supernatural subject matter.

More on my tumblr. Originally discovered on Ullabenulla.

hark! a vagrant

I seriously love the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant. After I saw the comic above, I went back and read all of the archives. It's a very successful comic, so if you're the type to read webcomics you've probably already enjoyed K. Beaton's hilarious historical (and sometimes Star-Trek-related!) comics. But I'm posting this anyway because it gives me a giggle every time I see it, there's a chance you haven't heard of her, and if you aren't the type to read webcomics, you should check her out anyway. Or at least enjoy this Star Trek cartoon. I mean, look at Kirk's and Spock's faces. Brilliant. 

fall is here

Fall is here, and my basil is wilting (above) and delicata squash (above) is in season. 

A few days ago, I made VeganYum Yum's amazing delicata squash bisque recipe. (Also check out her related post on homemade vegetable broth.) It's a wonderful and simple recipe that always gets me in the mood for fall! (I didn't have homemade vegetable broth this time, I just used the boxed kind straight of the box. It was still delicious. Also check out the kitchn's recent post on improving store-bought broth.) 

Some other favorites among recent recipe posts: Sprouted Kitchen's sauteed beluga lentils and butternut squash; Veggie Num Num's green vegetable gratin with crunchy carrot crust; Bless Her Heart's vodka infused with cardamom and and ginger; Apple a Day's pumpkin chai blondies (I haven't tried a vegan version yet, but I bet substituting margarine, cornstarch- or egg-replacer-eggs, vegan sweeteners, and vegan cream cheese would do the trick); and the kitchn's 10 ways to eat an acorn squash. 

And other things I've found on the web: Renske Solkesz has an awesome blog called The dress I made, which documents her project to sew her own clothes and only wear her homemade clothing; also, Design*Sponge has a beautiful post showing how to make one of her tote bags; I found some pretty tumblr themes you can install if you have firefox and greasmonkey, though eventually I found the pretty flowers distracting and went back to the original tumblr theme; and I found a website specializing in small lingerie, rather than just proportionally sizing down regular-size bras. 

I know posting has been irregular, but it's about to start getting regular again! There will be at least 2 posts a week from now on. And coming soon, a vegan thin mint recipe! (Pictured below.) 

Raqib Shaw

Lately I've been admiring the work of Raqib Shaw. I love the combination of detail and sparseness, and how they work to create these bizarre and complex fantasy scenes. 

More on my tumblr.