Happy me!

I´m leaving the dungeon that my home-studio became and going on holidays.

This the "happy-me":


I´ll be back in September with lots of news. See you then!


*


Deixo a masmorra até Setembro. Até lá!

Hair - not the musical!

These are some of the illustrations I did for Erin at Mankind Mag. The theme was her "Autohairography", a very witty text about some hair-fashion landmarks through the eighties and the nineties, and how she went through hair-stilying phenomena like the peacock bang and other very impacting hairdos. (See some more images at flickr.)

In the middle of the process there were constraints that forced us to change the illustration´s style, into what you can now see at her autohairography and had this as a starting point:


Working with Erin was a good experience and great fun, as her text was so good and I was given lots of freedom. Big thank you to you, Erin!

On my desk

I´ve been neglecting this poor blog the last few weeks but still you keep coming back and visit. Thank you so much for that! Well, the obvious reason is that I´ve been very, very busy doing design related work, meeting clients and finishing files to go for pre-press. The pre-vacation stress is taking its toll and I just can´t wait until saturday, the day we actually start our three-week vacation.

It will sound like a paradox but the summer semester in Goethe-Institut started this week and today was my first class. I´ll be missing the next three classes, but will try to keep reading in german, so that I don´t disconnect totally. I promise no homework, but I´ll fondly think of my classmates when I sit at the beach soaking up the sun and staring and the sea. If the weather helps, that is!

Today I was pleased to receive my german language exam results and actually very glad I decided to take it: studying for it made me learn and memorize a lot more than if I had decided not to. So the good results were the cherry on top of the cake. Next year, same time, same place, next level´s exam!

On my desk there´s tea, of course, my faithful and reliable computer (has been working very hard these past few weeks... hmmm, actually, "these past few months" would be more accurate, but never mind) and my pocket moleskine where all doodles and ideas land. I´ve got to-do lists, books, my agenda and sheets of A4 paper scattered everywhere, but there´s nothing like good cropping to make it look organised.

See other desks at kootoyoo´s.

Weekend, finally | Por fim, descanso

** (em Português, visitem o meu outro blog, sim? Obrigada!) **

These last weeks have been totally overloaded with work, which means that I can´t update my blog as much as I would want. But today is Saturday and I already violated my "rule" of no internet during the weekends and so I´m now officially allowed to blog about the things I´ve been doing apart from working.

I know this is a work blog but it´s always the same: when you´re completing something you can´t blog about it because it´s secret/unpublished/whatever reason, so things can only be mentioned later. Well, we all know that´s the way things go, so...

Although it´s winter holidays here, I´ve been having a lot more work than any other time of the year. That´s something new for me: July and August are always slow months in Portugal, and since most of my current clients are in the northern hemisphere, I was expecting it to happen this year. Well, it didn´t. I don´t mind: I´m a freelancer and every new project is a good project. I love having work to do and dread those months where I finish projects and there´s no new commissions on sight.

So, getting back to what I´ve been doing - that isn´t work or a secret or a mystery:



Purl Soho´s Child Placket Sweater em verde. Tenho ali ainda um rosa velho e um amarelo, para mais duas camisolas iguais.

The green baby sweater above? Finished and blocking as we speak. The pattern is Purl Soho´s Child Placket Sweater and I already have enough wool to make another two. Well, because I bought two skeins for each sweater, I actually have five sweaters´ worth of yarn. But stashing is good, right? I don´t ever want to be caught without yarn to knit baby sweaters, oh no!

More images here.




Bookbinding without adhesives - great fun and general sense of happiness when finishing the books. And I love the tutti-frutti colours!

Those yummy coloured books are a product of the workshop I´ve visited during July at Papelera Palermo´s Casa de Oficios. We learnt four bookbinding models. The most challenging was the third one (blue yarn, yellow pages), but the fact that it was challening also made it the one I loved the most.

More images here: all books, books one, two, three and four (sounds like Feist, doesn´t it?)