Monday, April 14, 2014

Shoe Love Lately

I have been hard at thought about what to stomp around in this Spring.


I love love love these Comeys, but the idea of twisting an ankle (much less eating shit completely) put me off.





These (also from the inimitable Rachel Comey) could be slightly better due to back strapage and OH THOSE STRIPES.  But I already have a pair from her that are strappy, brown, and clogged.  Also:  potential neck breakage due to wooden platform + cobblestone.





But then... THEN I was able to score a pair of THESE beauts from H&M's Conscious Exclusive collection, which came and went last week and if you weren't around for those few hours that it was actually in store or online you would have had no idea it ever existed because now there is nary a trace.   (CSI: Fashion Exclusives Unit?) So those of us lucky to score a snippet of it had better appreciate.

These mules are made from leather tanned with vegetal dyes from cows raised for their organic meat here in Sweden.  How beautiful is that?  Oh, and they're comfortable and cute as ever.



I also scored the heavily embellished sandals (comfy as all getout, made in Portugal thankyouverymuch) and the leather skirt.  As for the matador jacket, just FYI it took 15 days to produce ONE of them in India and sold for less than it cost (that part I won't tell you).  Pretty incredible.  I love my company.

Har Har




Kitty cleavage.




Hey, you goats!  Cut it out!  




Sunday, April 13, 2014

Foodstuffs



These little guys are called nors in Swedish.  My friendly fishmonger told me they're related to salmon, but I think they're actually a type of smelt.  (Is smelt related to salmon?  Hmm.)  We battered them in a spicy potato flour mix, then fried 'em up whole.  You eat the whole thing--heads and all.  They were a crispy fishy delight!



Not to be outdone by my fish guy, my cheese guy also hooks me up with what's fresh and local.  Check out this beautiful buffalo mozzarella from right here in Sweden!  There's a farm full of happy buffalo outside of Uppsala and this is their expensive, er... delicious cheese.  I ain't mad at the buffalo, everything's expensive here in Sweden.  But it was totally worth it.



This here's some carrot cake baked oatmeal.  What a breakfast treat!



And this is a chocolate-almond vegan pie.




I took this shot to quickly answer Byron's text of what's for dinner.  It was sauteed kale, a millet-mushroom-spinach salad, and some tofu.  Yums!

Cochino Should Be Better at Swedish

With her cat ass on the page while I'm trying to study.


Wedging herself into my online lessons.

Making Up


Yellow eyes from NARS, red lips from & Other Stories.



Minty blue eyes from NARS.



Shimmery lime eyes from & Other Stories.

Glutinous Rice

This is what a glutinous rice doughnut looks like after a 15 hours transit from Seoul to Stockholm.


It still tasted delicious.  Thanks to B for bringing one back for me!

Reflections

Wearing lately..

Blurry pic of my planetary necklace from Tatty Devine.  (Accept no imitations.)


Sweats, sequins, and kukui nuts.  



Mirrored earrings from Style Nanda store in Seoul.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Best Portrait



Indonesia--Working

I was in Indonesia to find new fabrics and learn about the capabilities of their suppliers.  I don't really talk about my job so much on here, I usually just tell you where I've gone (and what I've eaten/seen) on these work trips.  But I'll expand a bit more now.  I do fabric r&d for H&M.  This means:  I research and create the fabric trends for my division each season; I travel to our production offices to work with the teams there, meet with suppliers, and select new fabrics for the season; I go to fabric shows and shop to get inspired about materials and make sure my division is updated on the fabric trends; I am constantly analyzing our process to make sure we are developing materials in a strategic and efficient way.  I love that there are many different sides to my job so that some days I'm more in the trend zone and other days I can be more technical or process-oriented.  And to be able to do this for the second largest retailer in the world?  Well, I'm pretty lucky.

Here are a few photos from the supplier side of my visit to Indonesia.

With some of my local colleagues.




Apparently, I've been calling it all wrong... it's "Riset."



Cutie cutie calico mill kitty.




A mill butterfly confirms camouflage is still in.





which usually looks more like this.  This is what becomes your cotton yarn, folks!



So pretty.


Indonesia

We were sitting at a coffee shop in Seoul, checking our emails and getting the web-dates on that Sunday the plane went missing.  And it took everything I had not to freak out about the flight to Jakarta I was due to get on the next day.  Might I remind you of the whacked out thoughts I have every time the plane goes bu-bum-bump, and now you're telling me a plane is missing?  As in GONE?  And it's gone missing in a country just over from the one I'm headed to?  What is going on?!  Is this part of something bigger??  Are more planes just gonna go missing?!?  I feel like I could freak out now just writing about it.  So, back to the coffee shop in Seoul... I managed to talk myself down by considering that the odds of another plane crashing or being hijacked or going missing in any way the very next day were slim-to-none, so MY flight was probably gonna be just fine.  (Thanks for sacrificing yourselves, passengers who were part of this tragedy, so that I may live.)  But that didn't make me feel less terrible about the fact that something had gone down on another flight, even if it wasn't mine.

That said, witness what a trooper I was to adult-up and get on the damn flight to Jakarta the next day. Yay, me.  While we're heaping praise on the nutcase that is me, I can also tell you that I kept it together pretty well *most* of the time I was in Indonesia, too.  I know that there is a big sect of people in that country that doesn't like me as an American, and I know that this same group is pretty skilled with bombs and known for surrepticious attacks in popular places to maximize casualties.  And when the driver quickly assured me that it was thunder making the bombing, er... booming noise on my first morning's drive to the office, it really didn't calm me at all.  And when the craziest storm woke me up at 2 am one night with thunder and lightning such that only happens over islands in remote parts of the ocean/world, I took cover in the bathroom (I am from tornado country in the US) because surely this was gonna kill us all (now it was the heavens bombing us), I didn't feel calm either.  And when I realized that the flight my local colleague had booked me on to fly within Java island was with a carrier not allowed to fly into EU airspace and whose pilots had had issues with meth use, I was pretty calm but I did call the travel department in Stockholm right away to rebook on a less-shady carrier.  But when the flight on the less-shady carrier was swaying and bouncing and bumping over who-knows-what-part of Java, I was white-knuckling the armrests (germs be damned) and talking to myself out loud a little bit because of course the shitty meth pilots were gonna have the fluffiest marshmallow landing while my re-booked flight was the one that would crash because I totally saw that made-for-tv movie and I know how fate/karma/irony/etc works.  But I would be lying if I told you that I didn't lose it (and I mean crying lose it) when I got to the hotel the same local colleague booked for me in a lovely city called Bandung in central Java and I had to walk by a public restroom to get to my 1st floor room, which did not contain a window nor an extra lock and which also had brown pillowcases.  I went downstairs to pay the approximate equivalent of 30 dollars to move to a "deluxe" room, which had a window but now had YELLOW pillowcases.  And that's when I finally lost my shit.

I did like Indonesia and am glad I visited some other parts of Java besides Jakarta, despite the getting there and the accommodations in these places.  Now that I'm through it, I can praise my adventurous spirit and survival instincts.  (Heh.)  Though I'm not ready to be dropped in the jungle or something anytime soon...

And now, the photos!

Nom nom nasi bali, which I ate 2 out of the 5 nights I was in Indonesia.  How about that palm cone?



This is snake fruit, which is totally chic but also totally delicious.  Check the link and you'll see that it is filled with what looks to be large garlic cloves.  It is not too sweet and, come to think of it, might be exactly what I am craving right now.  Yum.






Some random shots outside of Bandung.



Bad iphone shot of brown pillowcases.  I promise you they were way more skeevy in person.



A fancy lady in Bandung showing off her colored Pomeranian puppy.  Colored dogs are totally trending, I know because I saw some in Seoul, too.



Snacks at the rest stop along the route to Bandung.



Speaking of food, the Indonesians have a thing for donuts... but with CHEESE?




Yep. With cheese.




And I spotted these interesting pastries in flavors like "salami brown sauce" and "lady finger beer." Hmmm....




I sneaky shot this guy at the airport in Bandung.  All the dudes were rocking some batik prints there, but this guy really brought the style.  I mean, look at that scarf!  



Gender bending.