Karen Karn

This is what I've been working on this morning - working on creating them.  I will now work on applying them.

I started writing a blog post about my dressmaking experience. The Kafka Dress, I have named it, due to its metamorphic realisation.  The post has been written, but all posts are a little flat without images that are both relevant and appealing.   A relevant and appealing image. The above image is relevant because for the past eight days or so, I've had a migraine. I first started getting migraines around the age of 13, so I know how to handle them (head stands, dark sunglasses and coffee work best for me). But they have got in the way of finishing my blog post. I want to try on the dresses, model them, to give a proper report on the outcome of my project. Part of the report, though was the fabric shopping trip my sister and I took while in London. I've decided to write about that now, using images borrowed from the net.   Coffee.   After the decision had been made to shop for fabric, Mandy made a preliminary search, and found a...

Reading this article from The Art of Manliness was a joy. It states clearly many of the points I’ve thought of addressing myself, and many I have addressed already. But I had a nagging concern which prompted me to write this post. The one aspect of minimalism not addressed in the piece, is for me the most relevant. That is the spiritual aspect of it. Now, I don’t like the word spiritual because of what it conjures up. I like to hold to practical, solid notions that have tangible effects. By spiritual, I mean the Zen aspect of minimalism, the act of respecting space and objects.  Yes, modern minimalism can be nothing more than a show of wealth, ironically. I think the minimalism in the McKay’s article is the consumerist minimalism, which conjures up lots of white plastic and smooth concrete, glass and untreated wood, which, yes, requires a great deal of wealth. The character depicted in the piece who travels with nothing but a wallet, buying whatever they need as...