I've been thinking about how to post this and I haven't come to a conclusion, so I'll just go for it.
You might have seen I've change my website quite a lot. This change answers a need to reflect my current work better. And here's the thing: the new site is less visual, less image-based.

I've been extraordinarily lucky to find a part time collaboration in Madrid (the current economic climate in Spain has 40% of recent graduates unemployed, so I am lucky). What I do combines very, very well most of my areas of expertise: I am an innovation and design manager/consultant (we haven't quite agreed on the name yet :) ). This needs me to be creative, but also requires trendhunting, research and analytical skills, intuition and I even throw in my more theoretical side. I'm seeing amazing people and customers, and I'm doing design thinking workshops, which I love doing.

This means that, as I threatened to do before summer, I feel that my priorities have shifted and the current up-keeping of the shop just doesn't pay off. You've seen the pics of the post office these days: it's hours and hours of waiting for a very, very small profit margin. It get to a point were the balance between joy and inconvenience just doesn't work out.

So my thoughts are that after the Christmas campaign I will choose to close the shop in order to focus on my local life. So get your Nosideup whilst you can!

All the best,

Yay! I got a scholarship to learn (or rather, re-learn) French for three weeks (that's why the shop's closed). Alors, je suis à Paris!
Paris is ridiculously cute. It's beautiful even in the rain, and totally ideal: music live in the streets, loads of art, very cheap second hand books stores everywhere... goodness! If I only managed to improve my French dramatically.

Dear everyone (if there is still someone out there!)
How is 2011 treating you?
I hope your year is being as delightful as mine is being.
I am back for a reason.
I have had a lot of time to think and to re-think and then think a bit more.
The shop has been closed for about three months although I've been able to keep up with messages left here and there.
I am here to announce that the shop will be open again from the 15th of March. But. There is always a but. Unless I change my mind, I'll re-open the shop only to close it perpetually before summer. I would expect a similar course of events for this blog as well.
I am so, so thankful for everything Nosideup has brought to my life, for all the people I've met in the way, and for all the things I've learnt. It's been nothing but positive and extraordinary.
Nonetheless, I feel thet it is time for me to move on to new things, which would not flourish under the Nosideup brand, neither would it allow me enough time to make them progress, like Les Ulldes.
I'll sell the Ladies prints, but there will be no new models, I'll re-stock the postcards and I'll possibly print a few more totes for those that did not manage to get one the first time.
I am hoping this last go at Nosideup will be as fantastic as it trajectory. And i'll be delighted if you decide to join me in this adventure one last time!

Dear all,
I've been cheating on this blog, badly and openly.
Ever since Pinterest came to my life (a life where I am an intern, a MA student and an Etsian), I've been flirting with it heavily.
To me its immediacy is absolutely brilliant. I always thought there should be a visual twitter and this is even better. It saves me from keeping tabs and tabs open in order to remember to post about something, so I really just pin it.
I am not saying this is it, but my blogging is definitely on the rocks.
Nonetheless, please do feel free to pass by and join in:
Hair in Art


Stuff I'm pinning for



Patterns and
textiles

This has been the motto for today's promenade around town (it's a festive day).
We've seen a shop dedicated only to woven cushions with pics of pets on it.
A show on the old militars in the Sahara, where all the exhibits were made with a big foam board, home-printed pictures (some stolen from the net), a list of references made with word and push pins.
A lady buying art in the street asking for advice to the seller because she was buying "for a very surrealist person, you know".
And a lady coimng out of the movie by Banksy (in the pic above) saying "He had such a lovely voice" (his voice is distorted to preserve his identity).
Madrid, definitely a funny place.

Hey everyone,
I am alive and well, very alive. I am now 24, since yesterday. And Mr M is now 24 too, since the day before yesterday (I love having our birthdays together).
We had a Wes Anderson themed party at out micro flat and it was amazing to see out friends with fake mustaches, bathroom robes and scuba goggles (we don't have pics yet).
Besides that, the internship work and the MA at the Reina Sofia Museum are slowly increasing the pressure. That's without counting life, which keeps on happening. What I'm trying to say is: I am well but busy beyond myself. I guess I will eventually be able to balance virtual and real life, but so far I just had to let the virtual one go a little.
Needless to say, I miss the blogosphere a lot.

(if you type cup or mug in the search box I suspect you'll find several attempts at spoting "the one").
Find these ones here.
Via Bliss.

Thanks, Mr M. Via.

Yesterday, I went to watch the latest Woody Allen movie with Mr M and Mr E (BF and BFF respectively). I hadn't enjoyed a movie by Mr Allen in a long while (since Match Point) and this was rather fab. (I'm still wondering about the cliches. They basically sustained the movie, even though they were very well cut. The one character that was quite unbelievable was Dia, I think. But tell me what you felt if you watched it.)
Then we all three strolled around Madrid and the ending summer and ended up sitting in front of the reina Sofia Museum, with Mr E reading our hands (very adequate after the movie). Mr E lived in India when he was a UWC student and he learnt then how to do it. The most striking thing he said to us was about the lines changing. He suggested we scan our hands and compare the lines in six months. He assured us they would be different. If there really is something to be read in our palms, it's something that is also written and edited, slowly. Doesn't that make you think?

PS:I was looking for the English speaking poster to illustrate this post and surprise! It looks terribly different to the Spanish speaking one. I deffinitely prefer the later .

This is pretty much what my back looks like after a sun stroke and two sun burns.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Mr M passed this article to me about the relationship between spending and happiness. Well, we all know that money does not make you happy, but I honestly thought that what you can do with money can. This is a recurring thing I find again and again, especially being a designer. I am meant to make stuff for people to want more stuff. But do i really want it to be like this? Of course I always try to make things that matter at another level (that's why rituals in living are so important to me), but at the end of the day you are producing more material bodies that will lay somewhere at somebody's place.

I showed you this two small apartments a while ago because I just moved into a small flat myself (39 square meters to share with Mr M). Whilst this has been an economic decision (in Europe you just cannot afford to live any bigger in a city without a very serious income or getting into loans and debt), it's interesting to see people taking a conscious step in this direction. Again a contradictory position to me, I like the idea but at the same time I'm pretty sure I'd go too big before too small if money wasn't the issue. That said, the tiny flat has definitely improved the way we live in some ways (even though we've never lived in massive spaces before): we need to be tidier and cleaner, more aware of what surrounds us, smarter, more essentialist. Everything has at least one function and a spot. I could say it's more flexible, in a way, because it needs to be.

This video appeared in RowdyKittens, a blog of a lady who did make the choice of living as small as possible.

What do you think about this? Could you downsize? Have you ever needed to?

I was going to write about something else, but Mr M and I just got the news of the passign away of one of our best, most special, most intelligent, most wild teachers we've ever had. She had one of the most complicated and adventurous lives I've ever heard of, and was a really strong woman. Julia, from here, we'll miss you a hell of a lot. You were a wonderful person.

I am PROUD, PROUD in capital letters, PROUD that we said PROU -enough, in Catalan- (Ok this was easy).
No more bullfighting in Catalonia, by law.
No more unnecessary death.
No more cruel tradtition.
No more hiding behind "Art".
Thanks to everybody who has made this possible.
And let's take it to the rest of the country.

(*I happen to have internet in Astudillo this time!)

Oh well, oh well.
I was just getting the taste of blogging again after the internet move, and now the summer family-visiting responsibilites will make it hard again!
Mr. M and me are going to see his family in his village (I told you about it here).
Be good.

I leave you with the extraordinary work of Debra Baxter, who I already posted in the A to Z of makers, but her work is so fascinating that I'd like to show you guys too. The materiality, the subtlety and the humour of her pieces are unique.






PS: If you love it, she's got a jewellery shop!

Today has been a bizarre day.
I woke up nervous like hell because today I would know most of the results of my applications to MA programs in Madrid.
I turned on the computer hopeful that the people in charge to upload the lists would have been as excited as me and would have done it early. Instead, I found out a friend from my secondary school in Swaziland had died unexpectedly. When a young person dies, besides the world turning upside down, everyone says how joyful and fantastic the kid was. But in this case, he really, really was such a beautiful soul, so much fun, so terribly clever, so fantastic. He just was a fabulous character.
I can understand the sentece telling me that he is gone, but I can't fully grasp what that implies.
Mr M. and I tried to continue packing the flat (we are moving on Saturday early morning, so there was no option to take the day off), completely in shock.
In the afternoon, the lists were up and it so happens I've been accepted in the MA I wanted the most, despite the difficulty to get in.
I'm so sad I'll have to remember today forever.
I guess sometimes life simply takes over.
Sometimes you have a taste of two sides at once.
Sometimes you realize that you can really hurt for somebody you did not know that well.

Mr M and I are in Madrid. We've now found a tiny lovely flat in the center and we are arranging the move.

No, and I won't. I do not mean to preach, but this post is for those who wonder about veganism.