I Have No Idea What I am Doing

I can’t escape it, I’m a geek. So when I got my first ever tattoo, I looked up tattoo blogs, browsed groups on Flickr, and researched how, exactly, my tattoo would be classified. When I asked my tattoo artist, he said without hesitation, “this would be Geek.” C’est la vie.

Personally, I thought I was a little more art deco, or at least abstract. How beautiful are these Mucha tattoos? And my favorite random picture–this girl with a tattoo in her armpit. But no, I’m a geek.

It’s a category I seem to share with a lot of gamers, math nerds, and computer programmers. You have no idea how many people have Mario tattoos.

Show me your tattoos?

Some other geeks:

Geek Tattoos Flickr pool

Image: Flickr/ Mrs. M. Stevens Wagner, 1907

The fairly new blog Nerd Boyfriend (archives go back to January 27th) gets the  I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that award for not only showing inspirational pictures of famous nerds, but for taking the next step and tracking down similar clothes for purchase online. Want to dress your man in Frank Lloyd Wright’s glasses? More of an Alistair Hennessy girl? Personally, I’m a fan of Grandmaster Flash, pictured at right.

But what, no Rushmore…yet?

Bonus: Best of Craigslist: Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It

I have an amazing photo of my grandmother looking swanky in a swimsuit somewhere in California. She’s leaning against the hood of car, big sunglasses on, hair curled, with full lipstick. Popina Swimwear, based here in Portland, makes a suit called the Retro Halter that looks exactly like the one on grandma Mary. They’re having a super sale for March.

Online customers get 20% off with the code HOOPS, but if you can make it to their store you can get one piece suits for $25 and seperates for $15 each or two for $25. A massive discount from the usual (but still totally reasonable) $70.

I can’t decide between these three…

Thanks to Kirsten at Dress of the Month Club for sending this my way.

Custom made dresses on the cheap, oh my! Kirsten and Liz have relaunched Dress of the Month Club, where each month they design a dress and post a sample. You take your measurements and send them in, and within a few weeks you get the dress, custom fit! And all for $100. Or you can send Liz a dress idea, and she’ll make you whatever your little heart desires.

I modeled for the February dress, and Jillian modeled for January.

I had Michael pick this up for me in San Fran a few weeks back so I could avoid the shipping charge. Cute, no? It’s acryclic, by a company in the UK called Tatty Devine. This necklace is available online at Eden & Eden ($95 and no longer on sale), which has weird jewelry. I love weird jewelry.

Tatty Devine also makes this ring with acrylic jewels ($75) and this one with a canary on top and a dangling bell on bottom (9 pounds direct), and this mustache (9 pounds)!

Love it!

At the tattoo shop, they had the wildest assortment of jewelry I’ve ever seen. Plugs the size of a gas cap, sparkly and dangly bits, and even implants with jewels! My favorite was a set of hippo ear plugs about the width of a dime, with carved heads on the front and hippo butts on the back.

I barely made it through my tattoo (it’s peeling and looks like Night of the Living Dead, so you can’t see it), and I can’t imagine putting things that size in my ear. But maybe the glimpse of that collection made these silver earrings catch my eye ($28 at Uncommon Goods).

I bet you’d get lots of questions about whether that was really a screw in your ear. The site notes that the backings are regular earring backs, not in the shape of a screw. That would be too much, anyway, and lame. These get away with being plain ol’ cute.

Foundation has long been a favorite of mine for the pure zaniness of their clothing lines. It’s always been a place to find something you wouldn’t see elsewhere, or wouldn’t try elsewhere, but that looks great once you put it on.

Wearing wacky things is my M.O., but I’ve kept an eye on Foundation from a business perspective as well.

If I opened a little boutique, which I’ve always wanted to do, then I’m not sure I could actually stock it with the things I would want wear. Or I would have to be very, very good at styling and displaying items in a way people could project onto themselves.

People need guidance, and I think that’s where Foundation faltered. No models, no style guides, no photo shoots…ultimately no context. But until they shutter their doors at the end of February, let’s do some shopping (they’re on 27th and Alberta).

I want this, marked down from $180 to $90. Note how crummy it looks on Foundation’s site. Weird color, disembodied photoshopping, etc. Even this model above, who looks like she’s swallowing her gum, is better than a  ghost model. R.I.P., Foundation.

I love the way this necklace is made, from the tightrope like bottom to the loopty loops at the top.

This birds on a wire necklace even appears to bend under their feathered weight. Adorable, even if it is meant as mom jewelry. Which is pretty cute too, since it comes in 1, 2, 3, or 4 baby birds, depending on your nest.

Something about how the birds are staring at each other made me think of this Pixar short movie For the Birds, where the big dorky bird lands on the telephone wire and all the fussy little birds get scrunched in: (more…)

I highly recommend matching your environment whenever possible, especially at a bar. Thanks Brandy, for the montage and for letting me pose on you.

Psst, check out her blog Everyday Monkeys, where she posts the monkey image or reference that she randomly encounters each day. Every day! Look for monkeys around you, they’re there hiding. Camouflaged, even.

P.S. And yes, this was purely coincidence. Though I plan to wear this outfit to this bar again.

Ok so I forced you on a camel ride

Originally uploaded by carissa of the house of wode

I’m sitting in a coffee shop on Hawthorne, and just got the annual question, “do you wear Christmas glasses all the time, or just during the holidays?” The answer, annually, is yes, I wear them all the time.

Here is me wearing them in Israel, when I made Michael come on a camel ride. See the background? We were surrounded by that. He, obviously, didn’t like being out of the city.

Green and red are excellent colors together. I say screw Christmas, I’m taking this color combo back.

Do you have any good red/green objects? Or want to gripe about a color that has become associated with something it shouldn’t be?

I love Josh Jakus, a designer out of Oakland who uses the wool remnants from industrial factories. This purse, like most other things he makes, can unzip to lay flat for travel. I’m thinking purple:

He also makes a circular handbag and an adorable clutch in similar styles:

Those are all available here.

I’ve been on the prowl for a new jacket for years, stuck in the rut between girly-fur-lined-cutesyness (sorry Betty Rides, I know you’re from Portland) and bra-in-a-bro-world (sorry Bonfire, you did do your photoshoot at Ron Toms bar, one of my hangouts). Holden is what we’re talking about though, and they’re based right here in Portland, on NW 15th. I smell a little Nau on them, and wonder if some of the defunct Nau’s designers wandered under the 405 overpass and into the Holden office. The Holden Team page is just illustrations of each team member that link to Google images results for each of their names. Witty, but since I am too lazy to convert that to a Google web search all I can tell you is that they are all attractive and riders or skiers. (more…)

I’m bad at blogging. This is all new to me. But this tattoo problem is an excellent example of how I Have No Idea What I am Doing, which is more in line with the original idea for the blog than my recent posts. My plan was to pick things I don’t know or don’t understand and work them out in the blog, or at least try to.

First off, I immediately plunged down a sidetrack, and used a silly internet knuckle generator initially seen on BikeSnobNYC (in my list). (Speaking of tangents, just you wait for when I figure out how to use the html code I have for inserting footnotes with snazzy links to the bottom of the post and then links back up to where you left off.)

Get your own knuckles at the knuckle tattoo gun.

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