Treats for a calm Sunday moment
The Looby List: Including skirts with pockets, une francaise très chic, Ed Emberley's beautiful 17th century house, an awesome board game, and a fun TV show to binge.
Hello Sunday friends,
I have been feeling some stress these last few weeks. Work is piling up, and my free time is getting squeezed. I am trying to schedule, time-block, Pomodoro, micro and macro manage my work projects, but it’s getting a little frantic. I really don’t like frantic. My stomach doesn’t like frantic. My dreams don’t like frantic.
So what do you do to relieve stress? I have multiple hot water bottles and wheat bags, I have comfort tv, I have chocolate, I have walks with friends, I have my sketchbook, and I have my fantasies about what I am going to do when I “have more time.” Soon.
I also have this newsletter which provides a sweet break and a reason to find interesting treats. Thank you for hitting that little heart icon last week. It was so nice to feel the digital love.
Here’s this week’s list:
Skirts with pockets:
Summer is coming (I have been told, but I am still yet to believe it). If and when I get a moment, I will sew some skirts. But the skirts have to have pockets. These patterns look possible. The first pattern is the one I would go with.
Sign up for Peppermint’s free newsletter to access this pocket skirt pattern.
This is a simple summer skirt with pockets made with no pattern and a straightforward DIY tutorial.
Patti pocket skirt combines pleated + flared skirt with popped-out, deep front pockets. The pdf is $13.50.
The Assembly Line’s Elastic Waist Maxi Skirt is a beginner’s pattern and comes in two sizes and comes packaged in an envelope with sewing instructions.
Podcasting:
This episode of Unpublished is worth a listen; Creatives do not have to be visible. The big takeaway from this conversation is that our social media, online presence and audience growth should always be considered a supplement to the creative work, not the primary focus (unless your creative focus is creating online content). It seems obvious, perhaps, but it can get forgotten in this world of a thousand-million influencers telling us we need to be constantly putting ourselves out there to benefit from all that exposure. This is a nice reminder with some valuable ideas.
Comic Stuff
Speaking of focusing on creative work, I have been trying to get more done on my graphic novel despite all the busyness. I just discovered Molly Knox Ostertag’s Substack, In the Telling. Molly is a webcomic and comic book creator (the Witch Boy series, the Girl From the Sea) who has been sharing her work online for the last ten years. Her Substack serializes her latest work, Darkest Night, but she also created a series of graphic novel classes over 10 posts which are extremely helpful and generous.
These posts, on top of posts on Kids Comics Unite website and YouTube has meant that I have discovered a goldmine of educational stuff as I continue to develop the script for my book.
Watching:
Extraordinary - Disney+. What if every single person on earth discovers that they have a superpower when they turn 18, and you are the only one who doesn’t? We totally enjoyed this delightfully silly show. Part Derry Girls, part Sex Education, part Deadpool (I guess?), the first season of Extraordinary rollicks along, with great characters and strong casting, an imaginative premise and plenty of low-brow laughs. Twice I laughed so hard it hurt. I am looking forward to season two.
Une francaise très chic:
Ok French-speaking wannabes, to celebrate my 300-day Duolingo streak, we are heading to Paris to visit Une Fille Un Style. Style icon Mae Lapres shows us around her store and her apartment. But here’s the catch; no subtitles! Can you understand it? I figured out “boutique” and “bought it at Target,” and I think her parrots are called Ceasar and Kiki?
Shameless Housey:
You know I love a home that was once lived in by an illustrator. I mentioned Arthur Rackham‘s house on AD Open Door a few weeks ago, now occupied by mega pop star Rita Ora. This week Austin Kleon linked to the former home of Ed Emberley in his newsletter. The beautiful home in Massachusetts dates back to as early as 1640, and despite the low ceilings, it looks like a dream (for us short people). The studio in particular is inspiring. In this post by his son, he says of the house, “it’s more like a character in a story than simply a dwelling.”
Love it.
Board game Kickstarting:
If you receive my Wednesday newsletters, you will have read that I went over to my friend Mike and Aidan’s place this week and was excited to check out Weirdwood Manor, the game Mike has been creating for the last three years. It launched on Kickstarter on Thursday, and it’s safe to say that it’s hot, hot, hot.
“Enter the world of Weirdwood Manor, where the magical and dangerous realm of the Fae intersects with the everyday world of the Real. The Manor is a mysterious and deceptive place where rooms and the pathways between them can shift as time progresses. The game features a unique temporal mechanic where actions can move time forward, and the connections between the rooms will shift via rotating corridor rings on the game board.
Fighting against time, you’ll use dice drafting, card play, resource management, and location actions as you and your companions move through the ever-shifting Manor in pursuit of ultimate victory over the Fae Monster!”
Weirdwood Manor: A cooperative game of adventure and strategy for 1 to 5 players, ages 14+ is on Kickstarter until May 11th.
Listening:
Here’s a sweet tune for a quiet Sunday morning. It’s been stuck in my head all week.
The whole album is so good. I probably already mentioned it here at some point.
Crone Cooking: Guacamole
In an effort to cook 52 essential recipes by the time I turn 52 (March 2024), I have started a little list, and this week should have been dish number six: Guacamole!
Damn. My avocados got too soft and brown. I’ll try again next week!
Thanks for reading again this week, friends.
xo,
Claire
What’s coming up on Loobylu (aka The Subscriber Pitch):
The next paid-subscriber-only edition is about illustrated cross-sections and cutaways. I love the whimsical ones but admire the highly detailed ones. I am making my own for my comic book and am seeking inspiration.
What came before:
In the last paid-subscriber-only issue, I shared some sketchbook journal pages from my week and a bunch of working drawings from my comic. Before that, I wrote about getting things done for the creative and the distracted in Micro-ambition and the art of creative focus. And before that, I drew a lot of pink pants.
Loobylu is a reader-supported publication free of affiliates, partners and sponsors. For access to past and future subscriber-only posts, support Loobylu with a paid subscription.
I love the Fiore skirt pattern by Closet Core. https://tinyurl.com/msmd3866 It's got one super deep asymmetrical surprise pocket. Here's me modeling my version with an amazing fabric printed with chairs that I got on a trip to Stockholm Sweden. https://tinyurl.com/3ynvrkj4 Definitely adding Extraordinary to my list. Thank you!
About the stress thing! My kids have a VR headset, and I’ve discovered that ten minutes or so playing a game calle beat sabre (fruit ninja works too) resets the buzzy stress brain for me (the kind where I feel like a wind up woodpecker going in circles). It’s apparently a hand eye coordination thing plus pattern recognition. I think they’ve used Tetris (not VR) in research which would defo be worth a try. It’s really weird but it lets me think normal busy thoughts instead of the ZOMG busy thoughts, if you know what I mean. It’s kinda neat actually.