Wooden Winnie.

I posted about Japanese design firm Nendo just nine days ago, but when I saw this line of furniture inspired by Winnie-the-Pooh, I couldn't bear (no pun intended) to file it away for later. Created for Walt Disney Japan, the little wooden tables resemble characters from the story in simple, subtle ways. For instance, the Eeyore table wilts to the ground, and the Tigger piece has a little orange tail. 

Below, from top to bottom, is Rabbit, Tigger, Kanga and Roo, and Eeyore. See more, here.

Visit Nendo's website, here. 

Related: chocolate pencils (with a sharpener for shaving shreds of chocolate over a little round cake), and a chocolate paint set in flavors like melon, honey lemon, and green tea.

All Their Weird Stuff.

At the risk of sounding like a creep, I've always been fascinated by people and their "weird stuff" (which may be part of the reason I love interviewing people in their homes). Apparently, the same is true of artist James Gulliver Hancock, the creator of the drawings below. Each illustration features the possessions and pastimes of cultural icons like Frida Kahlo and Martin Luther King (who, it appears, was a Trekkie).

There are fifty prints total and they can be found in the new book Artists, Writers, Thinkers, Dreamers: Portraits of 50 Famous Folks & All Their Weird Stuff. Ordering now.

Artists, Writers, Thinkers, Dreamers: Portraits of 50 Famous Folks & All Their Weird Stuff is available for purchase here. See more at James Gulliver Hancock's website. Thanks, Fast Company.

Wishing you a wonderful Tuesday from sunny LA - feels like summer!

Losing Familiarity.

A quote to start the week, from James Hillman via Modern Hepburn: Anytime you're gonna grow, you're gonna lose something. You're losing what you're hanging onto to keep safe. You're losing habits that you're comfortable with, you're losing familiarity.

As I've written many times, one of the biggest challenges of my twenties has been learning to embrace discomfort. To my surprise, though, I've found that some of my lowest moments have been precursors to great discoveries: stronger friendships, more inspiring work, new adventures at every turn. (Related reading: triumphs, magic, staying upright.)

Have a happy Monday. Photos by Max Wanger.

Work Dates/Play Dates.

Below, three shots in black and white of morning work sessions with these inspiring, creative girls (whom I wrote about here), and a few more in color of us and others, soaking in the first days of spring.

Have a wonderful weekend! On Monday, I head to LA for a week to visit family and attend the wedding of two of our closest friends - the next you hear from me, I'll be writing from there!

For kicks, five links:
-"Notes to myself on beginning a painting."
-Curtains made of scarves.
-DIY crowns for prom kings and queens.
-Great art in ugly rooms.
-Why aren't more restaurant critics female?

All photos by Jacquelyne Pierson, except for the second one down, by Emily Johnston.

Where I See Fashion.

"I see fashion everywhere," writes blogger and aspiring fashion editor Bianca Luini. She shares her vision on her excellent site, Where I See Fashion, which matches high fashion photography with art, design, and nature. While I've always found these sorts of couture images stiff and inaccessible, I love seeing them paired with smoke, trees, crystals, ice. Below is Oluchi Onweagba next to a storm at sea, and it's nothing short of spectacular.

Visit Where I See Fashion for more.

Comfort Foods.

In Brooklyn artist Monica Ramos's Comfort Food paintings, tiny gluttons float in bowls of Cheerios, burrow into orange caves of macaroni, slumber on toast.

Comfort Food prints are available for purchase at Monica's Etsy shop, here. Of her Cheerios Milk Bath, she writes, "Excellent for lazy cooks and carbohydrate addicts. Milk hydrates the skin and is delicious." Equally lovable: I hate selfies, which features a colorful cast of characters with arms outstretched, phones in hand. ("I do it too. Sigh," the artist confesses.)

Visit Monica's website, here.

Humans of the World.

French designer Adrien Colombie plans to travel the world this summer to conduct what he calls "an artistic survey of Earth's inhabitants." For each day of his yearlong trip, he'll interview a stranger, collecting stories, signatures, and fingerprints - when he's done, he'll share fifty of his favorites in a book titled Humans of the World. Love this idea, and can't wait to see the final result. 

Track Adrien's journey on Facebook, here. Learn more at Indiegogo.

Further travel-related reading:

-Pink moss.

-Cliff divers.

-A beloved Sri Lankan kitchen souvenir.

Chocolate Pencils.

I'm behind on the times, obviously, because these chocolate pencils by Nendo are over five years old - but as an impassioned sugar fiend and writer (albeit one who rarely writes by hand), I just couldn't let these images fester any longer in my bookmarks folder. Choose a pencil, then "sharpen" over a glossy chocolate cake. Brilliant.

I wrote about Nendo's equally magnificent chocolate paint set last year - check it out, here.

See more at Nendo's website. Found via Arq4Design.

POV: Seen.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories. 

One afternoon two or three springs ago, I missed my stop on the East River Ferry. The mistake cost me forty-five minutes and landed me in midtown Manhattan, navigating the tunnels under 42nd Street in a daze. 

As I made my way toward the subway platform, I bumped into a man heading in the opposite direction. Our arms brushed, or maybe it was our shoulders. I thought it was a gentle collision. My instinct was to keep walking - it was rush hour and the station was crowded; it was best, I thought, to get wherever I needed to be as quickly and in as uncomplicated a manner as possible. 

I didn’t stop. The man, however, did. “Excuse me, ma’am!” he yelled after me. “You run into me and you don’t say anything?”

His voice carried as I continued down the tunnel. But because I was flustered and in a rush, and because he was still shouting and I found him just the tiniest bit scary, I didn’t stop. I didn’t turn. Not even a glance over my shoulder to look.

Backyard Bungalow.

This house, featured today in The New York Times, is 84 square feet. It belongs to a woman named Dee Williams and it's located in a friend's backyard in Olympia. It's solar-powered but lacks a shower, and provides just enough space for its inhabitant's 300-odd belongings. But with so little to store - and a history of health problems - it's all she needs. Dee says, "Living in a little house made sense for me, it clicked. It gave me a chance to live close to my friends and be happy with the time that I have." (Read the full article by Steven Kurutz, here.) 

Photos by Stuart Isett for The New York Times. Happy Thursday!

Rainbow Cake.

Initially, I had no plans to post about this cake, which I made two nights ago for my roommate Jamie's birthday, but it was such an improvement over last year's cake (seen here), that I ultimately decided to share. (As my friend Julie wrote in a text message yesterday, "I hope you are blogging the $#!@ out of that cake!") So here it is. Though it was time-consuming, it was actually relatively simple, and while the final result wasn't quite as perfect as creator Kaitlin Flannery's, it still may just be the best thing I've ever made.

Find the recipe by Kaitlin Flannery on Whisk Kid, here. (Also, for kicks, here's a video of Kaitlin recreating the cake with Martha Stewart in 2010.) Happy birthday, Jamie!

Finding Vivian Maier.

"Finding Vivian Maier" is a documentary about a nanny and now-legendary photographer whose 100,000 snapshots from the streets of Chicago and New York went undiscovered for decades. Seven years ago, they were unearthed in an auction - and the process of piecing together the artist's story began. I'm seeing the film today, and I can't wait. Find showtimes in your city, here. (Below, a few of Maier's self portraits.)

Said Maier, "I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It's a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end. And then somebody has the same opportunity to go to the end and so on."

Learn more about "Finding Vivian Maier" (and watch the trailer), here. Find more photos on the Vivian Maier website.

East/West.

I can't stop staring at Nic Annette Miller's woodcut sculptures of birds. Part of two sets called "I Can Never Return the Way I Left (East)" and "I Can Never Return the Way I Left (West)", each individual bird is printed, painted, sawed, and sanded by hand. Beautiful.

Visit Nic Annette Miller's website, here, and shop, here (she's also the creator of this amazing grizzly and this insanely awesome Chewbacca).

More on flight, travel, and departures:

-I was thrilled to share five of my favorite snacks from my trip to Sri Lanka with Conde Nast Traveler. You can find the post (which went up this weekend), here.

-Photographs taken using cameras and kites.

-On taking flight.