I live in Chocolate City, Work for NPR, am currently working on an MA in Interior Design, Love my roommate, friends and Kitteh, "Bits." Day to day I find more and more beauty lurking in the oddest spots. Rouge My Knees is an accumulation of notes on what I find whets my curiosity for all things toxic and pretty.
I love sharing my view of the world through the photos and links posted here. 
Dark Nostalgia
I love the NYT article today on what they’ve dubbed new vintage. Taxidermy, curiosities, trinkets, skeletons…The Ever so Enchanting Hollister Sisters are featured, as well as soon to be shop owner and silversmith Ryan Matthew. I am obsessed with all of their apartments…I hope to meet more folks in DC that share my obsession! If you know where I can find an Albino Peacock, please let me know!
{A Taxidermied Fox
or a Dinosaur Skeleton
would also be welcome}
Check it out———–{nyt:newantiquarians}
Here are some photographs of the bespoke suiting Mr. Matthew will carry in his new shop {Against Nature} from Doyle Mueser:
And here’s a peek at Freemans NYC – restaurant and sporting club, which also carried custom tailoring (must get there on my next NYC adventure!)
Filed under: cupcakes, flowers and unicorns
Sometimes I can’t stand how fun it is to be a girl. We get to wear soft, sparkly, intricate, silky, flowy pretty things. We get to surround ourselves with pink, Scarlett, flowers, scents, soaps, feathers, gemstones and lace. It’s also completely acceptable to have an obsession with UNICORNS.
Last night I went back in time by coloring a MLP (my little pony!!!!) color book, glitter crayons included, and it was simply the best way to waste time while waiting for dinner to be done.
Cheers to MLP and the color pink.
Currently I’m obsessing over this collage chandelier from David Wiseman. He’s pretty cute too and his inclusion of the little spider just pulls on my goth girl heart strings.
from his site:
David Wiseman’s work communicates an original vision for art, function, and form.
His unique aesthetic is informed by his deep appreciation for subtleties in nature, such as the texture of bark or a pattern of moss growing on a rock. In his practice, David highlights these details, and brings his distinct perception of the wilderness to his objects.
His work has been acquired by notable collections, has appeared in numerous publications, and most recently, has been selected for the Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
In the August 2009 Vanity Fair, AIN’T WE GOT STYLE? features a bevy of this summer’s stars decked out in designer threads and paying homage to 1930’s staples like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The website goes a step further and interjects the photo collage with stills of the inspiration for each.
I’m loving James Marsden and Rose Byrne in It Happened One Night.
I also just added 42nd Street to the top of my queue. Yippee!!!
You can see the rest——————->here.
The Oblique Strategies
Thanks be to the cutest girls designing today, I discovered The Oblique Strategies deck of cards. Upon further investigation, I discovered that while I’m waiting to receive my actual deck of cards from the UK, I can upload it onto my iPhone for .99cents – yet another reason I’ll be forever tied to an apple gadget. I’m hoping this deck is going to inspire me through grad school, as well as just everyday musings, like this blog! Perhaps even in the kitchen…I’m already quite fond of Honour the error as a hidden intention.
More from the official website: (note the website’s design aesthetic is brilliant)
The Oblique Strategies are a deck of cards. Up until 1996, they were quite easy to describe. They measured about 2-3/4″ x 3-3/4″. They came in a small black box which said “OBLIQUE STRATEGIES” on one of the top’s long sides and “BRIAN ENO/PETER SCHMIDT” on the other side. The cards were solid black on one side, and had the aphorisms printed in a 10-point sans serif face on the other.
The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of “Evening Star” and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno’s “Before and After Science” and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure – either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you’re running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking – to jog the mind.
Many creative minds boast use of the cards which results in new way of thinking and a renewed creative flow. Each card shows a phrase or question which can be they key to breakthrough in a dead end or trouble situation.
Examples:
- State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
- Only one element of each kind.
- What would your closest friend do?
- What to increase? What to reduce?
- Are there sections? Consider transitions.
- Try faking it!
- Honour the error as a hidden intention
 |
|||
Hear Michael and Michael discuss their pomposity, arrogance and ego mania on NPR’s Fresh Air, along with the disagreements that fuel their new show Michael and Michael Have Issues.
I’m so relieved to have them back (and I’m hoping we’ll see some cameos from David Wain and the rest of the crew) on Comedy Central. Stella will always be one of my favorites. The new show is promising. And I am in the process of getting The State on DVD. And well, The Baxter pretty much launched my romance with Sho. Elliot is my perfect mate.
Filed under: natural wonders
No new cloud type has been officially classified since 1951 but Gavin Pretor-Pinney who runs the Cloud Appreciation Society believes that there is a new cloud that deserves international recognition. He calls it asperatus, which means rough in Latin, and he is working with the Royal Meteorological Society to have it officially classified by the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva.
source: the guardian uk
ASPERATUS: The name asperatus comes from the Latin for to roughen or agitate. Virgil used the word in a poem to describe the surface of the sea whipped up by the north wind. The last new cloud type to be classified was cirrus intortus in 1951. The last time the classification system was changed at all was in 1953. The Royal Meteorological Society would need more information about weather patterns that form so-called aspertus cloud to define it as distinct from undulatus clouds, which means wavelike in Latin.
They are frighteningly lovely.
I’m having some fun watching Vanessa Paradis videos. Here’s some to help you start your week.
she has the sweetest voice.
I love her loose braid in this one – must try it out!
npr rocks and lynch thinks so. he follows npr on twitter. and his latest work is linked to npr.
Rouge My Knees 