Over the weekend 2 amazingly creative and lovely people tied the knot. I wanted to show a few images of guest books I made for their ceremony. The bride and groom were amazing to work with and their creativity shows in this series of books. The fabric I used for the books were from the bridesmaids dresses and the patterns, from vintage wall paper, were also used as the table identifiers. I hope you had a great day Ted and Amy!
Ok maybe not famous, but handmade spark likes our books, so we just wanted to say thank you to them and Tania for her kind kind words! Happy Back to School everybody! Read and buy books, they are good for you!
Yesterday two friends got married in Vermont. Here’s hoping they had a great day. And here is the custom book I made for the ceremony. I like this one. I hope it feels like where they are.
I don’t have many days left with my ladies, in fact this is where i will leave them..
addendum: for those that are interested though, i left the hotel on thursday and by then the women had already cleared this patch of green and moved on to one closer to my window.
another self-portrait..me waiting for something or other.
At first when I woke up this morning, they weren’t there. I got a little sad but realized hey maybe they are done…Then I fell asleep again and a half hour later, there they were, and today they have help. They have started on another field of green and they are moving fast. I am trying to think of each day as just a section of field that needs to be sown. Try to solve each day’s problems and then leave them behind. Every problem seems a little easier if you just take it bit by bit.
Thanks for fixing the type on the blog jia! It’s so much easier to read now. Maybe you can use this video for your project (minus the audio of course)..
Saturday night KL and I went across the river for two celebrations: a world-wide festival and to celebrate SL + KL’s belated birthdays. It started off with an impromptu visit to the Pagoda to leave our bikes in a safe place since the streets were “walk only” that night.
We ended up having tea with the nuns-in-training and doing a sort of half charade conversation with a little part Vietnamese part English thrown in. Somehow we understood each other and then we laughed and played with our sweet 5 year old Hien (http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-446175.html) . After tea, we headed down to the riverside, while we suspect the nuns prayed over our bikes and kept them safe for us.
At 8 PM, as we sat and had a little fresh beer & mojitos, the city slowly went dark to celebrate Earth Hour. Slowly you could see the skyline turn black, and all that was left were lanterns and candles beginning to appear. This is a day of worldwide participation that happens every year. It was perfect. The lanterns were lit, torches were put up in trees and little by little the river was filled with flower shaped paper lanterns being floated down by the children. Then all of a sudden on both sides of the river at the same time, streams and stream of children lined up two by two, started singing as they walked alongside the river with their lanterns in hand. And of course the quiet of hum of their sweet songs quickly morphed into laughing and skipping and all round fun. What was striking was the quiet though. The atmosphere was dreamy and the light streaked through the darkness until all you could see were hundreds of glowing faces as they marched closer and closer. It’s cool here with a breeze, and with the lights off it just felt calm. No motorbikes, no bicycles, no lights, only walking and laughing and candlelight.
Just one hour a year. That’s not too much to ask. Check out the videos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9891000@N02/4484457620/in/set-72157623630715879/. I love the quiet hum of the crowd. You’d never believe there were thousands and thousands of people there.
I usually am not a big fan of taking pictures of people. Usually my old travel partner, cw would take care of that part as I would always be more interested in the plant life or landscapes. We made a good team because by the end of our trip together we would have had everything documented, lol. But this time I had to make sure I had a picture of a few cast of characters that share our little piece of Viettown. First and foremost is the coffee lady who is not pictured here. She keeps everyone laced in caffeine and icy goodness on hot hot Hoi An days. The coffee lady is always on hand for a jolt. And then there is the Banh Bao man who comes round in the afternoons each day with his cart. He is serious. I have never seen him smile and yet from his loud speaker comes the best, horrifying early 90s music. Yesterday it was the theme from Evita from Madonna, the day before Puffy and Faith Evans singing Missing You. I don’t even like Banh Bao, it is one of the few foods I tried that I didn’t like, but every day I wait for him to come by to see what is next on the playlist. Then there is the fruit lady, who I give much business to. On this day I bought her last pineapple..She has those yummy rambutans, oranges, bananas and mangoes left though for later.
