internet favorites for january: molly young's critical shopper column

This month, I wanted to highlight Molly Young's amazing column for the New York Times. She goes to a variety of stores (from upscale to goofy) and reviews the experience--the ambience, the clientele, the employees, the products. And she's hilarious and super smart and this is exactly the kind of fashion/style writing that brings meaning to my life.

 Some favorites:

1. Flying Tiger Copenhagen--the post where I first sat up and said, "Who is this genius writer?" (Here's my haul.)

"As retail experiences go, it is like walking into a junk drawer that was blown up to theme-park scale. If your reaction to that sentence is to physically swerve away from your reading device, you may cruise along to the next article. If your reaction is “Tell me more,” here we go."

2. Totokaelo--my love for this sort of thing runs deep.

"If you’re in the mood to hit the playground or just to obscure your secondary sex characteristics, any of these will do the job."

PS Another astonishingly accomplished (and gorgeous, Molly Young too, I said it) writer hero--Alice Gregory. Here's a piece of hers I never forgot, the real experience of working at Sotheby's.

PPS All of the Internet Favorites!

four to remember

a painting of eve, and eve.

apple picking ii

here's part i.

(stone ridge orchard, new york!)

DIY: Birds on a Branch

Here's a fun little project that's infinitely adaptable--making your own tiny painted animals. I made a pigeon, sparrow, blue jay and robin, to sit on a branch I found in a Bed-Stuy gutter. (Why would you want to do this? I don't know, why wouldn't you??)

I've never been good at sculpting clay, but fortunately, you only need a roughly-correct shape for your little animals to come out gorgeously.

Things you need: Sculpey (I bought the "hazelnut" color because I liked the idea of little bits of brown poking through, but white might be easier to paint), armature wire (just for their little claws, if you want them to be able to grip the branch), and some acrylic paint (I bought four colors--white, red, yellow, blue). And a paintbrush. And an oven.

The process is very simple.

1. Form the shape of whatever animal you're sculpting--look up reference photos! Different birds have surprisingly different body shapes.

2. Bake them according to whatever type of Sculpey you bought (with my Sculpey III, I did 275 degrees F, 45 minutes).

3. And then the fun part--paint them. I painted mine in stages, with basic colors first and then little feather details on top. They really came to life with the paint. It was a very exciting experience.

as you can see, I didn't spend a ton of time perfecting the little clay bodies. which was fine!

the first layers of paint were rather loose and general.

all together! <3 <3 

i couldn't resist making a little clay suki as well...

I think she's into it!

PS Here's how to make a rubber stamp business card. And other DIY posts are here!