Internshipments

An announcement, of sorts: We are seeking interns for the upcoming Summer season! The position would be part time 15-20 hours a week unpaid, with possibility of becoming a permanent employee in August. Our interns gain lots of hands-on experience helping us in day to day operations related to the making of our products. In the past, interns have worked on making patterns, website maintenance, product development research, and design. Some sewing experience may be gained, depending on the availability of our machines. You can expect to be busy, but to have fun! We are now working out of our own little studio across the street from R.E.Load and we really like it.

Interns should be hardworking, highly motivated, self-starters with an interest in working for a small design company. We expect to be able to assign a task or project, with minimal oversight and have it carried out by the intern independently. This frequently includes cutting our pattern pieces out, but the internship is very flexible to include your own goals and objectives. Also, this job is not necessarily targeted at a fibers or fashion major. In fact, we are excited to have people from backgrounds different from our own get involved here at FH. Therefore, your time will be split helping to do what we're already doing and in working on new projects which can be guided by your own interests and ideas.

Because this company is only two people, there is lots of flexibility in interning here. It also means we expect a lot from the people we welcome into our space. I started as an intern with FH nearly 2 years ago and have been here ever since. Unfortunately we cannot pay our interns, but there are fun perks and we are more than happy to help you get school credit for your time. Again, we hope to find someone potentially available to stay on in the fall as a permanent employee. If this sounds like it might fit your bill, send us some images of other design you've done (ideally a portfolio) and an email about yourself. We really hope to hear from you! And as soon as possible! Send all materials to info@fabrichorse.com

Carrie in the CityPaper!

If you haven't already, go check out Carrie as the CityPaper's covergirl. That's right, you can find her peeking out from inside all those yellow newspaper boxes all over this town. She's featured as part of their spring style issue alongside with several other local Philadelphia style mavens. Thanks to City Paper for the compliment & Michael T. Regan for the sweet photos!

Good Luck Obama!

Kids, it is time! As if you could possibly have forgotten...its Primary Day! Here in PA anyway. And that means you should wear all your patriotica and head over to your local polling place. You are almost guaranteed to witness some adorable old lady from your neighborhood there who is just so excited to vote for Obama. I certainly did.


And in case you hadn't heard, we're looking at a dangerously close race today. Yesterday on my ride back home, I passed through a groan-inducing Clinton to-do at 34th and Walnut. Apparently the Clinton camp thought they'd overwhelm the overwhelmingly Obama West Philadelphia with a last ditch attempt at a rally at the gates of the West-Philadelphia-loving UPenn Campus. I spent the next four blocks uphill getting it out about that one.

And dudes, if we win PA, the Clinton camp has admitted they will likely back down. Which means a break from all this craziness. Dreams really can come true. But only if you vote. So vote!

Spool

There are a lot of things for which I am left wanting here in Philadelphia. The list, in fact, is too long to possibly even hint at its contents. However! One thing that recently got off the lacker list is One Hip Cutey Fabric Store. Because friends, now we have one.


And its delightful title? Spool, of course. It is a bit of a cousin store to the equally pleasant Loop, which sells fancy yarns and knitting bits. Spool, on the other skein, is for quilters and sewers. Aesthetically they are both bright and white and clean and organized, quite the contrast to any of those knotted nooks on fourth street. Spool offers a color organized front room that features infinitely inspired prints, making it incredibly difficult to choose which ones are going home with you. Great Amy Butler and locally made Betsy Ross patterns hang in a neat little wall organizer for convenient perusal. And when I was there, a friendly man named Michael sat quilting behind the counter. This simultaneously inspired me to take up the quilt I started a year ago and also put me at ease in this very neat and tidy little shop. A nice touch, to be sure.

Back a few paces from there and you can catch a little glimpse of their instore classroom, where they have set up six home machines at little white tables ready for hands on instruction. They offer several classes so far, most at the beginner level and all at an affordable rate. And if you prefer to fly solo and you already know basically how to sew, you can rent their machines for five dollars an hour to work on your own projects. I've always thought that a craft store without space for hanging out and actually, er, doing the craft right there, amidst the notions and the bolts, wasn't really a craft store afterall. Half of the craft is the community of it, and the commerce figures in somewhere behind that. Now I understand a store is a store is a store, but I like it when shops give a nod to the comraderie too.


Unfortunately as a primarily quilter-oriented shop, Spool carries only cotton fabric so if you're looking for one-stop JoAnn style shop, you'll have to keep looking. I didn't say that One Solid Comprehensive Craft Store could get crossed off that aforementioned list. But as long as you're looking for that rockstar print to really swing your project from the passable into the standout, Spool could be your ticket.

Extremities

This past weekend was pretty crazy around here, owing largely to the April Fool's Ride and Cadence Fast Friday. We had lots of friends in town, events to run, prizes to make, checkpoints to rock, you know, the whole nine yards. Friday night, we all left after work and rode our bikes way way down south to this spot under I-95 where technically cars could park but none did. On one side of the lot you could watch the southbound lane of traffic zooming along beyond a grassy median and on the other was Front St. and Target. And it was a little romantic, if you can believe it. Tons of bikes and tons of kids all hanging out at the end of the week in a toasty little hurrah. And it was a beautte of a day, as my dad might say, 60 degrees or so and it stayed light out til almost 9.

I went into this whole thing with a tiny bit of skepticism as to its fun-factor. That is to say, sometimes I have trouble having fun at super crazy track bike social events because I take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt. That doesn't mean that I'm not capable of drooling over a really nice setup, but it does mean that I'd rather have a really nice vintage road frame than a bareknuckle. That's just me. I ride a cruiser most days and I will just say that I don't even come near the category of being a bike snob. And so friday night I was psyched about the commraderie-adled, spring-time, beer-drinking, entertaining qualities but nervous about the potential for bike-culture-overwhelm(BCO).

Let me tell you, I was really pleasantly proven wrong about that last bit. Friday night was every ounce of the former inclinations towards fun stuff and then some. And when I said romantic earlier, I meant it. Romantic like hanging out at the skate park back in junior high when you're crushing on skater boys. Romantic like bonfires in the summertime. Romantic like watching kids do fancy things on track bikes in just a parking lot, using a fence and a palette as a ramp and racing around a track marked just by the columns that were already there.



All this, and I actually had to leave early to catch my friend Steve's first show with a new little band back in West Philly at Fiume. It was a little show at our friendly neighborhood bar, packed full to bursting, and they opened for a little fiddle-banjo outfit also from the neighborhood. And as I watched this scrawny but lovable West Philly boy play the banjo from near the front row, I at once saw my evening in such a precisely insightful light. The banjo players and even Tim and Steve's set were so West Philly. Which is to say, emotional and bearded and crusty and pretty and acoustic and nice and twangy, alt-country indie music with a real ear for idealistic musings on alternative worlds where love conquers all. And this sort of thing, of which I am fairly skeptical and can be critically distant, I also happen to really love. And sitting at Fiume on Friday night, having been earlier engrossed in the different but equally extreme and therefore open-to-mockery little cultural niche that is track bikes, I realized that it is possible to be aware and thoughtful about life generally, to see the shortcomings of some things, but also to appreciate experiential qualities for what they are. You can be realistic and idealistic in the same time-space. It is both okay and necessary to allow yourself to be absorbed into these extremes sometimes. It is okay to find yourself at a West Philly show and realize you're having a really great time of it. And it is also okay to find yourself under I-95 at Cadence Fast Friday and realize that watching people do crazy things on beautiful bikes is pretty cool and insanely fun to watch. Sometimes you just have to get extreme, stop seeing the big picture for a second and zoom in. Leave your grains of salt at the door and get in there.

So maybe you realized this many years ago, and for that, accept my belated congratulations. Because this stitcher too rarely allows herself to wallow in the moment, to get extreme and for that, probably misses a significant degree of record breaking fun. I hereby stand corrected. If you catch me being a moderate in the future I give you permission to extend to me a swift kick in the pants. Even if we've never met. It can be hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but not impossible. And I'd sure like to try.

Birthday Cake

These pictures are a few days old by now, but I baked our friend Gerik an exceptional birthday cake for his birthday last week, inspired by the ever belly-busting Indian buffet here we both know and love. Normally I wouldn't bother you with my little birthday trifles for the office, but this time was sort of a big deal:


Chocolate Garam Masala cake with a Mango Whipped Cream (Lassi) filling, covered in a Coconut Cardamom buttercream and decorated with fennel seed candies. It was a show stopper, if i do say so myself.

And drums!

It is a very particular and indescribable feeling, the first time you get to see a friend of yours really slay on the drums.

And no offense to said friend, but this proficiency he demonstrated was very much unanticipated. Which, of course, made me smile even harder.