willie smits

Kitchen day is over. The rendang was a bit different,
since I used another brand of seasoning mix than usual,
but my belly is full ;) Now I'm sipping my green chai
tea and just finished watching this video - TED talk
with Willie Smits, the man, who has done amazing work
for the people and for the nature in my homeland
Indonesia. I got goosebumps!



Here is the link to his project to save the orang utan.

first day of march II

On to the 2nd post, before I forget
anything :) Two things I want to
share with you today: a tip and a
link.

I'm adding more and more links
to my RSS reader (think, I should
stop now before it's too much). I use
Google Reader. While adding those
feeds I noticed one thing. If you
don't know the address of the feed,
you can let the reader search it for
you. Click on the button "add a
subscription", which is placed
directly under the logo upper left.
Type the keyword in the box and
press the button "Add". The reader
will show you then some suggestions,
which include the keyword you're
searching for.


I've even subscribed my own feed for
some tests *lol*

The nice side effect in doing this
search as a blogger and an Etsy
seller is, that you can let it search
for your own blog and shop. You can
then see, how many people are
really subscribing the feed of your
blog (not only the amount of your
public followers) or shop (boohoo..
no one is subscribing my shop
feed ;)). Can you tell, I'm a VERY
curious person? ^_^

While I was adding pikaland to
my reader, I read about the sketch-
book project. It's over now, but
art house has some interesting
open projects on going. Maybe
there is something for you?

My boy is calling again.. 39,4°C
at the moment. I'll try to post
the last thing about carnival
later..

search and found

I was browsing Ebay and Etsy for 60s and 70s
style objects the whole day yesterday (yep,
instead of going to the carnival procession ^_^).
So my soul was wandering back through the
houses in my past life last (short) night - the
first house of my parents, my grandparent's
house, my parents' newer house. My heart is
still stuck to those houses.

So it was hard to stand up instead of catching
memories. But I remember, treasury was going
to open on about 10 a.m. CET so I did - just to
find out, Etsy is down for maintenance. Aww..
totally forgot that!! But then, I have time to
post some links I've found last week :)

I always wonder, how 'strangers' found their way
to my blog. Cause sometimes it got a lot of views
from all around the world - from places I haven't
heard before also. So I scanned Blogger, if there
is a place, where you can see new posts, but I
could only found the ticker, if I logged out! Weird,
isn't it?

I didn't give up and somehow I've found Blogger
Play. How fun! These blogs have made me book-
marked them to share them with you:
- Thot Kinji - an amazing blog of a gastronom,
who seems to spezialized in mukimono. I don't
understand a word in his blog (ok, a few, if I really,
really concentrate and guess ;)), but the photos
alone look so tempting.
- Slam Blogsma - the blog of the illustrator Sam
Bosma
- Antoño - a fresh blog of an illustrator. I couldn't
find out, who he really is though.
- Dust. Before The rain. - the fresh blog of
the Romania's dust artist Nicolae Comanescu.
Here's an interview with the artist on CafeBabel.

I want to show you another link, which I didn't
find through BloggerPlay, but through Apartment
Therapy: Yulia Brodskaya, a very talented paper
artist and designer. Her quilling work is stunning!!
I first met quilling as art in a book, which my
father has bought long time ago. It has amazed
me ever since. But the work of Yulia Brodskaya
amazed me even more, since she combine
typographie with quilling. Just go to her site.
I'm sure, you'll be amazed too :)

do your job

I used to use iGoogle a lot the last half of the
year. I loved it, because I had my mail, the RSS
reader, calendar, the tweets through Twitter-
Gadget, YouTube, unit converter and many,
many more at one place. I only needed to click
at one window to see what's important. The last
weeks though I didn't use it. Just like that I felt
back to click from window to window (maybe
that has something to do with 'not wanting to
be trapped in small boxes' feeling? ;)).

Anyway, just now I opened up iGoogle again. I
wanted to use the unit converter. Above it is
the YouTube gadget. They (YouTube?) changed
it a while back. As I used it for the first time, it has
saved my search, so that I could replay my fave
videos. Now I can still search, but in the box I
can only see the featured video. BUT I sometimes
thankful for that, like today! The (cropped shown)
title has caught my eyes - Elizabeth Gilbert:
A new way to think about creativity (I saw only
'... crea', but I know only that one word starting
with it, so.. ^_^). All I can say: watch this video!
Elizabeth Gilbert is amazing! I found it a joy to
listen to her.



I didn't know her before. So I went to her website
and read a bit. I love the way she write and also
what she has written about writing and her FAQ
(could be I feel connected with her, as she wrote
about Bali ^_^). I will look for her books (hope
one of the libraries in town has them).

A bit about the video. It was uploaded by TED,
a site worth to dig! This video, Milton Graser's
talking, has also caught my attention. So guess
what.. my RSS reader got two more feeds -
TEDTalks and TEDblog.

Oh, something totally different - it's an update
to the Victorian bushfire I've talked about in my
last post. Etsy sellers are donating items to the
OzBushfireAppeal shop, which donate the
money to the Australian Red Cross (thanks,
Gry, for letting us know!). Etsy seller or not,
WE can do something to help the victims!
As I've been non creative lately, I will donate
the bead I had in my other shop a while ago for
now.

Update: you can find the bead here. Thanks
for looking :)

zukunftmusik?

English text below - just for this time ;)

Von einer Freundin habe ich öfters Info-eMails
bekommen. Dieser Link von ihr ist interesant
für alle als Denkanstoss, doch vor allem für alle
in Deutschland, weil es eine Petition zum
Mitzeichnen gibt. Das Stichwort heisst: Grund-
einkommen.

I often got information mails from a friend. This
link from her is interresting for everyone as food
for thought, but primarily for those in Germany,
as there is a petition to sign. The keyword: basic
income (this link is written in German, but they
provide some links in Spanish, Italian, French,
Russian and English).

similarities

This week, I haven't been much on my laptop,
since I was feeling very weak and tired the whole
week (think, I have to let my doc doing a check
up - it's not normal anymore). But I managed to
dig into some links, which has brought me to some
new finds, that I love to share with you.
Since it would be an extra long post, if I show and
tell all my finds in this one post (as I will write
background stories that go along with them), I
will do it one by one instead. So, this is the first
one.

I don't always read thoroughly the interview of
featured seller on Etsy. Normally I first read
the short description to see, either I'm interested
to know more, then I jumped into the interview
to click on the first photo. I always do that, since
the one showed is a cropped one - one can
(sometimes) see a lot more, which is so interesting.
I found it out, as I was accidentally clicking on
alyssaettinger's first photo, as she was a featured
seller last year, and found this. A hidden treasure!
After clicking the first photo, I scroll down, so
that my eyes can catch some words, without
reading the text thoroughly (I don't remember
the name of this technique to read that I've
learned in my study).

While I was scrolling down this time, my eyes
caught the word printpattern. So I hopped there
and browse for a while. A lovely site *drool* I
scroll and scroll and scroll. While drooling over
the featured designs, I suddenly stopped. I was
somewhat shocked. In their first post of 20th
January they introduced s.e.i with some examples
of their paper designs. This one has took my
breath away for a moment. The leaves are so
similar to those of my own geranium pattern.
This fact has brought me back to the past.


Silent morning, using my Geranium pattern as
a template on COLOURlovers

It's somehow amazing, how two different people
could have similar ideas without knowing each
other, but it has also scary me. I always wanted
to make something genuine and unique - which
is nearly impossible, I think. Somewhere, someone
has done similar things already or is making them
(I sometimes imagine muses, which are fairy-
like, must have meetings somewhere, drinking
coffee or tea, eating cookies and sharing ideas
with each other and then they go back to their
'masters' ^_^).

I used to have the habit to sketch my idea and
then browse in the WWW to look, either there
are already similar things created by others out
there before turning my idea into something real.
I can tell you, how frustrated I was many times,
as I was not able to accomplish my idea.

Before I opened up my shop, I've been through
this many times. I was surrounded by people
(glassbeadmakers), who was permanently
accusing each other about being copycats. I was
getting nearly crazy! My own perfectionism of
wanting to be unique in the world has almost
totally killing my creativity (as I of course already
saw similarities in every little something, even if
it was only the same color we've used for different
designs!!) and that pestering atmosphere was
simply too much.

To save myself I finally cut my connection to that
community, put my blinker on and just started
to make my own thing without looking for what
others do or could have done before and after I
accomplish my own idea. Of course my love to
surf the WWW and my addiction making treasuries
on Etsy still let me stumble upon similarities like
this time, but I can handle it better and am not
getting crazy anymore (even if it still always
took my breath away for a moment ;)). I know,
there must be real copycats out there, but I
don't think, it's our duty to judge those sad people.
Karma will do.

Stay tuned for the next surfing find! You can
check all my surfing findings here.

for art lovers

If you are also an art lover, you should watch the
Tiny Showcase site. Every Tuesday evening (EST)
they will upload a limited amount of new print.
I just found them last week and I'll keep an eye
for the letterpressed prints ;)

surfing II

As I've feeded my RSS reader with some new
links last night, I've found another cool site
this morning mentioned in kulturbanause:
keyboardr. It's very clean, simple and effective
- I love it!

surfing

I should have gone to bed last night, but I didn't
even if I was dead tired. First I just couldn't stop
to surf the WWW. I don't even know anymore,
where I've really started, but here are some cool
sites I wanna share with you:

• I first found Kristofer Ström at You Tube
  as I saw the day's suggestion through
  iGoogle, when I thought "WOW!" and start
  to digg and found even more great videos.

• Following links after links I've found an
  unusual fashion presentation of Alyson Fox.

• And finally I landed on a site I've bookmarked
  a long time ago: COLOURlovers. But this time
  I've registered myself and made a couple of
  palettes and patterns. This site is so funny.
  Look - I was cooler than a cucumber *lol*