52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity -- Available NOW!
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Brought My Lunch is a photo group to showcase the lunch you brought to work. The goal is to create an incentive to 1) bring lunch to work (instead of buying expensive, less healthy meals around the office) and 2) to bring better lunches to work, lunches that are worthy of not just eating, but photographing. So pack that lunch, break out your camera, and submit your photos to the group pool.
Jeffrey Yamaguchi: 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity
52 Projects is an exploration of your creativity -- from the culinary to the literary to the artistic. A way of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, and finding a flash of inspiration in our everyday lives. Whether you write, paint, draw, sculpt, carve, dance, sing, play music, take photographs, cook (or even if you don't know what your medium is) -- use 52 Projects as a tool to discover the art of your life and inspire your next creative endeavor.
Chuck Thompson: Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
SmithMag.net: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
Kelly Love Johnson: Skirt! Rules for the Workplace: An Irreverent Guide to Advancing Your Career
Amy Karol: Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew
« January 6, 2008 - January 12, 2008 | Main | January 20, 2008 - January 26, 2008 »
This video showcases the use of plastic sushi grass and fabric leaves to make a small quilt -- the "Autumn Leaves" project from The Uncommon Quilter by Jeanne Williamson.
More on the book The Uncommon Quilter here, and be sure to check out Williamson's "Inspiration Project" piece here.
What was your inspiration for writing your book Skirt! Rules for the Workplace?
Kelly Love Johnson: The idea for Skirt! Rules for the Workplace came from an essay I wrote for Skirt!'s March 2006 issue the month after Betty Friedan died. It was called "Being Betty" and tried to answer the question "who will step up to fill her shoes?" Meaning, who will be our next Betty? Who will fight for our workplace rights? Who will help us close the wage gap? Break the glass ceiling? Change the fact that there are only seven female CEOs on the Fortune 500 list? My answer was that we should ALL step up -- at the very least, work to close our own personal wage gap. After the essay ran in Skirt!, the director of The Center for Women in Charleston, Jennet Robinson Alterman, asked me if I would put a workshop together for young women to help prepare them for the working world, focusing on things like negotiating salary, picking your battles, not baking for the office (because we don't have to act like men to get ahead at work, we just have to stop acting like their mothers), etc. I loved doing the workshops and my boss Nikki Hardin (Skirt!'s founder and publisher) encouraged me to use the energy and passion I was getting from being on my soapbox and channel it into a book proposal.
I just posted the original essay from March of 2006 here. And that's how it all started!
Kelly Love Johnson
Johnson's Blog -- Microfamous
WNYC's Soundcheck wants to see your rehearsal space, "no matter how lavish, messy, or weird it might be." Probably the more lavish, messy and weird, the better, because on Feb. 1, Soundcheck will award prizes to the best photos submitted. So take a break from the music, take some photos of your rehearsal space, and submit them to the Flickr group WNYC has set up for this project. More details here.
I've been following Improv Everywhere's missions for a while now, and they are always so clever and hilarious. The group's annual No Pants Subway Subway Ride was this past Saturday -- this involved about 900 people getting on the NYC subways and dropping their pants and keeping straight faces. And the No Pants fervor has gone beyond New York into several other cities. You can see agent reports at the Improv Everywhere site, and also, search Flickr for the tag "nopants2k8" to see additional documentation of this most hilarious happening.
Jami Attenberg's new book -- The Kept Man -- is now out, and she's on a pretty extensive tour. Do check out the schedule to see if she's coming to a town near you. You can read more about the book here, check out the book's flickr group, and watch the short film inspired by the book below.
Best egg creams and high-class donuts in NYC, according to Gridskipper. Two things I am always on the look out for, though the donuts need not be "high-class." Not at all. The greasier the better. In fact, the best donuts I've had in NYC are at Spitzer's Corner -- and those come in a brown paper bag.
Great resource -- 100 Favorite Blogs of 2007, as compiled by the staff of PC Magazine. See also the magazine's 2007 lists for Top 100 Classic Web Sites and Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites.
