1. it by daytrips.  2. she never understood by esti.

I’m excited to announce that on June 26, The American Book Center (ABC) here in Amsterdam will be hosting The Urban Arts Festival: where design meets crafts! This will be a unique festival where design and crafts mingle, right in the centre of the city. On the day, the Spui square will be transformed into a huge outdoor atelier with designers, artisans, and crafters all making, creating, displaying & selling their work. There will also be lessons and workshops in the ABC Treehouse (Voetboogstraat 11, across the square) and right now, the ABC are inviting submissions from designers & artisans interested in participating.

It’s going to be a super fun day and I will to be there too, with a little something special to share! I will give you a clue: it has something to do with my upcoming book , Amsterdam: Made by Hand – but it’s not what you think. Hmm, intrigued?

If you would like more information or are interested in participating, please email the urban arts festival right here.  Be sure to include a short description of your work and an image. I will write more about the festival in the time to come, but for now I just wanted to let you know this much.

June In Amsterdam – it’s going to be FULL of the good stuff!

xx

PS do you like this poster above I just made? I got a bit carried away – I only meant to create a little image to go with this post, but then I got funky with fonts. oops.

I had no idea how noisy geese really were until they came down to visit our canal on saturday morning. They made a huge racket and demanded attention from all the canal houses and houseboats. To see them up close and personal – right at eye level – was quite something…

I have not, but dear Amy has. Check out her awesome post about it, which includes beautiful images like the ones you see above. She also has a flickr set with more photographs from her visit. This place looks insane, it is now on my list of must-visit museums around the world (in case you’re wondering, it’s in Pennsylvania).

Just to give you an idea of what this place is all about, here is a blurb from the website which, if you are anything like me, will have your little handmade heart jumping out of it’s hidey hole. It reads:

“By 1897 handmade objects were being discarded in favor of new machine-made goods. Historian and archaeologist Henry Mercer (1856-1930) recognized the need to collect and preserve the outmoded material of daily life in America before it was swept away by the Industrial Revolution. Mercer gathered almost 30,000 items ranging from hand tools to horse-drawn vehicles and assembled this encyclopedic collection in a system of his own devising. To enhance the collection’s educational value, and to share it with the public, Mercer decided to design and build a museum to display the artifacts.”

Are you with me? Are you with me? I am flipping. out.