Weekends in Detroit #2

This weekend was a good balance of fun and work for Dennis and I. On Friday, we stopped for dinner at Traffic Jam & Snug. (Thanks to Becks Davis of Detroit Moxie for the excellent suggestion.) We have a strange newfound obsession with fried pickles. I took a picture of them, but I don’t know, I just think food pictures are gross unless you’re a really good photographer. Do you agree, or is that just me?

On to the grand opening of City Bird. That place blew us away. And it was packed! We want to go back there when it’s not so crowded. Not only did they have a ton of cute things, but their displays were genius.

Tags made from old signs

Beardy ornaments displayed on old soda bottles

Bracelets wrapped around tags

Illustrations of Eastern Market, nicely framed

My favorite display: cozy knits inside of a steamer trunk

A small tribute to The Gloved One

Click the cut to see what I bought, plus pics from our Saturday spent working in the studio.

I kept walking back to this collection of lace necklaces by White Owl. Do you see the white one in the lower right with the bead in the flower’s center? It’s mine now!

Saturday was productive for Dennis but a bit frustrating for me. He spent the day distressing sheet music and stenciling some old bingo cards that we found a few weeks ago at the Fort Wayne flea market.

The first 2 colors of a 3 color stencil

Old sheet music, made to look older still

I spent the day setting type for the cover of our first zine. It did not go well. I just won a new typeface on Ebay that was packaged so thoughtfully, but I didn’t have anywhere to put it yet! So I was plucking letters out of this pile of little plastic bags.

Once I got all of the letters I needed, I realized that spaces are sold separately, and I didn’t have any in this size yet. On top of that, the piece of granite that I was using set the type on broke clean in half. You need a perfectly flat surface and this worked great, except now it’s too small to work comfortably on.

See the open space between where the type ends and the metal chase? That’s where I needed to have spaces. They’re just like metal pieces of type, except they’re lower so they don’t get inked. You can see where I tried to improvise by shoving some wood in there, but it didn’t work. The idea is to fill the chase with type, spaces, leading (in between the lines) and wooden blocks called furniture. Then those metal bars you see on the top and right are screwed in so that they push against the whole thing. If you do it right, nothing will move when you pick it up, and it becomes one big “stamp”. That’s called a lock up.

After hours, and I mean hours, of trying to lock up this type, I managed to BREAK THE CHASE. The pressure inside must have been all uneven, and was just too much for it to bear in the top right corner. What a disappointment. I definitely drowned my sorrows in beer after this.

This weekend’s meal was nothing fancy. We just baked a spaghetti squash and topped it with some of my grandma’s spaghetti sauce. What did you guys do this weekend?

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One Comment on “Weekends in Detroit #2”

• Andrew Davis
  

  Aw man I was at the City Bird opening too! I wish I could’ve met you.

  11-25-09 » 12:47 PM »

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