新东西- New Stuff - sneak preview

It's all coming together - new items are almost finished for the shop, just as I'm on my last few Cricket and Ancient Compass moleskines. I'm being a little hush-hush about what this is all for, but fear not - I'll be coming out with the whole story on Saturday! For now, here's a little preview:

a new 2-color printed moleskine, here's the look of color one:


The second is a new Year of the Rat design, seen here on some gift tags. These will be great for 2008 gifts, not only for new Rat Year babies, but also for all of your friends bearing the rat as their Chinese zodiac sign.

Rat year dates:

• 31 January 1900 - 18 February 1901
• 18 February 1912 - 5 February 1913
• 5 February 1924 - 24 January 1925
• 24 January 1936 - 10 February 1937
• 10 February 1948 - 28 January 1949
• 28 January 1960 - 14 February 1961
• 15 February 1972 - 2 February 1973
• 2 February 1984 - 19 February 1985
• 19 February 1996 - 6 February 1997
• 7 February 2008 - 25 January 2009

Here's our 2008 masot:


Finally, inspired by Lupin, I'm trying for a little daily craft by joining Crafting 365. I certainly accomplished the goal today! ^_^

ps: Did you see Laurie's new design? gah, it melts mah heart every time I see it!!

新年好 - Happy New Year Prep

As all the holiday revelers attend Christmas parties and wrap their presents, the gals in this house are in full preparation mode for 2008. As such, in the weeks to come, you'll be seeing some ideas being kicked around and new products emerge from my harried mind, which hopefully will be the cause of some good hubbub! Just to make things extra fun, Chinese New Year falls on February 7th this year, which means that basically I have to launch all my Valentine's Day -and- Chinese New Year stuff simultaneously. Fun for Celeste, I tell you!

新闻- News

Laurie wrote about this last night, but I had some excitement yesterday when I was contacted by the wonderful Linda Woods, telling me that she'd featured Bamboo Village Press on her blog! Sisters Linda and Karen write the Rev It Up list, a blog that introduces art and ideas to fuel your life and imagination. It's a fantastic new space, and I was so thrilled that one of our products was spotlit by these very talented and accomplished women. Thanks, ladies! Squee!

In other news, it's been quite a whirlwind these past 2 weeks. Last week I negotiated my very first contract work and began doing some consulting in the area of my "professional" expertise: marketing. I should clarify, since now running BVEF and BVP are both online, that I am not an Internet marketing professional... oh, no... I'm having to learn all of that as I go. Rather, I've been working for an ad agency, specializing in print marketing, art direction, and planning. I'm sure you can imagine how thrilling it is to be in the process of building my career in this new direction - it's awesome!

买卖- Business

It's been such an intense 6 weeks! Seriously, I have been astounded by the number of sales that have come through the shop. I sold out of my Happiness Fish floursack cotton towels, which was amazing after thinking that design wasn't going to move. The two new gocco designs: the cricket moleskine and the ancient compass moleskine, are actually close to being sold out, which was also a wonderful surprise.

The thing about this apparent success is that it's very encouraging to me as a designer. Being a technical crafter is very different from actually having some reliable sense for design work, and I'm keenly aware of my status as a novice in this arena. I know some will argue with that assessment, but really, it's different to create something and give it as a gift and create something, make as many of them as I can afford, and offer them for sale.

研究 - Research

Finally, I've been doing a bit of information gathering of late. In thinking about products for Bamboo Village Press for 2008, I've realized that I'm going to need a constant influx of ideas from the Asian realm. I've kind of painted myself into a corner by tying all of the Bamboo Villages together in the sense that for branding purposes, my work for Bamboo Village Press is going to have to be predominantly of Asian flair. You do all know that I'm not actually Chinese, right? So, the task might be a little challenging.

Today I received the latest addition to my library: Symbols and Rebuses in Chinese Art. If you're like me, you have no idea what rebuses means, so here you go:

rebus: n., pl. -bus·es.
A representation of words in the form of pictures or symbols,
often presented as a puzzle.

Pretty spiffy, eh?

I've also been reading quite a lot about Chinese New Year, so that I can write you a wonderful post about this most beloved Asian festival. I'm particularly excited about 2008, since it's the Year of the Rat, which is my animal. I have major plans for the year, so watch out world!

***

Well, there you have it! Another day, another blogger! Until next time, here's a happy dragon stack to make your day a little cheerier:

新东西- New Stuff - Crickets & Compasses

Here I am in my second week of self employment, and only now do I have a chance to check in! It's been a real process of adjustment, getting used to the new flow of time and trying to reorganize my space without spending a ton of money. Things are finally settling down, and I've got some new introductions to make!

Emblem of Courage

I've been working on this new design for a while - I had the idea a few weeks ago to pair a screened image of a hand-written letter in Chinese with some sort of symbol. I took the letter of introduction we received about Zhang Lin during the process of coming to sponsor her education and made it ready for burning a Gocco screen. Then I spend quite some time toying with which symbol to overlay. Too busy and it would fight with the Chinese characters. Too simple, I could end up with something meaningless. Finally I settled on the cricket, a beloved little beast in Chinese culture and a symbol of courage. Courage seemed like a perfect match for Zhang Lin, who has been through so much in her young life.

Last night I did the printing, both on moleskines, cards, and tags. They came out so well! I'm excited about posting them in my shop as well as using these cards in my Bamboo Village correspondence. Whether or not this story means anything to you, I hope the design will stand on its own as a beautiful print.


Ancient Compass

During the process of developing the cricket design, I was suddenly inspired with another design idea which ended up being a quick and successful print. I launched the Ancient Compass Moleskine last week and have met with great success and attention. Every time I list one, they generate more traffic than any other item in my shop. These are a great gift for guys - evidenced by the fact that every one that's sold has been purchased by men! Very exciting!

The design is a modified photograph of a fengshui luopan (风水罗盘） - a compass used in hard core feng shui consultations for determining energy flow in physical space.


More Cozy for the Coffee

Finally, I whipped up a couple more french press coffee cozies (one and two). These pretties have been warmly received in the shop since I made up the pattern last month, so I've got one on the needles just about all the time now.

December is turning out to be my best month ever, for more reasons than just Bamboo Village Press. I'm so excited to be fully engaged in this new endeavor, and can't wait to get more work done on the Educational Fund! Coming soon, we've got a new guest artist, and I will finally be able to do some writing about life in rural Sichuan, China.

this is what happens...

When one posts only once a week, what happens is either you end up leaving out significant pieces, or you end up with a post that is rather more like a word smörgåsbord. Hopefully this will not be the trend here at Bamboo Village, because we are soon getting wireless internet and will not have to be computer-sharing as much. Hooray for our household!

Here is our week in review, working backwards:

Cozies a go-go.

I love knitting while watching tv, and these cozies are super-easy! Strangely enough, my own French press is still without its own cozy, but I think I'm going to fix that today. It's getting cold enough that the coffee is cold before I get to my second cup. I've always wrapped a towel around the cylinder, but I want my own cozy! Here's the new one, just added to Bamboo Village Press:

Saturdays are for Delicious Food

measuring out the rice

anise cloves

Yesterday I went to spend the day with Knittah, her husband and close friend Amy. It was a lovely, crisp fall day, perfect for slow-cooking meat. Don't worry, dear veggie friends, there will be no photos of the pork. This is one of my all-time favorite recipes, and it's always a hit with guests. It's very easy, and ridiculously scrumptious. It's the "Shanghai Ham" recipe from the Joyce Chen Cookbook, and is just one of many crowd-pleasing meals from this great collection of Chinese recipes.



红烧猪肉
Shanghai Ham

4lb fresh pork ham, butt or shoulder [we always use shoulder, bone-in is best, but buy more than 4lbs if you're getting one with the bone]
1 cup dark soy sauce [if you can, buy your soy sauce from an Asian market. it will give much better flavor than the kikkoman you usually get at the regular grocery]
1/2 cup sugar [honey is also ok!]
1TBS dry sherry [i skip this and use a splash of white or rice vinegar]
2 [generous] slices of fresh ginger - or 2 whole cloves garlic
few cloves star anise
1/2 - 1 cup water

Sear and scald the pork by soaking it in boiling water for a few minutes. Rinse with cold water.
Place the pork with all the ingredients in a large sauce pan or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer. Turn the pork over occasionally until tender - about 2 hours or more. Remove cover and increase heat. Baste the pork until about 1 cup of liquid remains (about 15-20 minutes). Skim fat and serve it hot or cold.

Gifties!

Unexpectedly, the gathering of friends yesterday also opened the birthday lead-up, complete with gifts and talk of cheesecake.

I received these two awesome books, appropriately, from Knittah. I think we have an unspoken pact to support each other's knitting obsessions on our birthdays. The first book, Last Minute Knitted Gifts, has been a long-time favorite. The photographs are stunning, and I like almost all of the projects. It was among my last batch of overdue library books, and was destined to be so again, so this is super-awesome!

The second, Knitting Nature, is as artistic as the previous is practical. The patterns are simply mind-blowing, so this will be a book of patterns to aspire to making.

I've also included here a gift from Knittah's aunt, Mother Earth and her Children, which was signed by the author. If you don't know the story behind this book, take the time to look it up. It's completely worth it.

Autumnal

On Friday, my sister and I were fortunate enough to take a 2-hour hike at the Wissahickon, one of my favorite places for outdoor bliss in this area. I say fortunate because it was our last chance to see the foliage before it all dropped to the wintery ground. Here are some of the photos... you can see more on Laurie's blog, linked above.

covered bridge along the "forbidden trail"

japanese maple, in full autumn glory

And, although that is not a *week* in review, it's all I've got in me! Stay tuned next week for a new moleskine design honoring Bamboo Village's China roots and Zhang Lin, our sponsored student.

Li Wu - Gifts

Recently, one of my closest friends spent a couple of weeks in China, and he graciously brought back for our shop some amazing Chinese silk brocade fabric. I waited a whole month to see it - he drove up to see me in Portland last weekend and brought the silk with him.

This is a pretty cool thing about Bamboo Village - all kinds of friends and strangers are becoming involved in supporting the Fund. It's a very cool thing to be here in the middle of it all.

This weekend, I'll be listing the silk in the Fabric section in Bamboo Village Press.

You can check them out there or on Flickr!