Paintings of steak by Vincent Kohler. Never would have found these if not for the always interesting blog over at Present & Correct. Saw some other paintings of wood by the same artist, and then promptly jumped down the rabbit hole.

Sometime soon we will probably get another car. Ugh! Our trusty Subaru is still going at 14 years of age, but the issue of dependability looms large as we enter the winter months. If we had our way, we would keep the same vehicle forever. That sentiment is far from realistic. We’d also like to get something with a lot better mileage rating. But, advances in technology and fuel usage aside, the automobile industry suffers from what I consider to be an incredible lack of ingenuity when it comes to design. The over-contoured look is so so boring. I long for the days of boxy. Ultimately, it is safety, reliability and efficiency that counts, so this rumination is just that. But still. It made me think about my husband growing up in England during the 70s. He occasionally gets nostalgic about their family car…the DAF. Mostly he just remembers its tortoise-like speed, and something about the rubber belts that needed regular tightening. But damn if it wasn’t cute. These photos are a jumble of models, all found at this massive archive from the Netherlands. Personal preference is for the DAF 44.

Few things make me happier than getting “real” mail. So, when Neal, at Present & Correct (one of my favorite blogs and shops!), told me to expect something in the post, I got very excited thinking about what it could possibly be. But then Sandy came and went, and we both assumed that the package became a minor casualty of the storm. Not so fast. I went to my mailbox the other day and found a nice big envelope with these splendid French paper rulers inside. I think the pop out French curve is what makes them so marvelous. Thanks!!

I always eat breakfast at home (far less out of virtue and more out of the desire to have coffee in my pyjamas), so I don’t usually skimp on buying decent fruit or healthy homemade bread. Although I recognize that this eating and spending habit is a luxury, the total still couldn’t possibly rival a daily latte at Starbucks. Well, not so fast. Last night, at our fancy local grocer, I knew something was amiss when I paid up for a basket full of food. I was embarrassed at the total, but instead of being responsible and backing out of the purchase, I did a quick tally, amortized out the excess cost over the number of items in the cart, and figured that I should definitely shop more judiciously in the future lest we go broke. I tend to look at price tags on everything (habit picked up from my father!) and find myself returning products to the shelves – although not often enough – if they are too expensive. But I didn’t see an amount on the fruit. I know from experience what the normal price range is, so I blithely added both containers to my array. The tags were scrunched up and hidden, and now I can see why. $11.99 for the strawberries and $7.99 for the blueberries. You read that correctly. The perils of eating fruits and vegetables out of season are legend, but yikes. I am ashamed for so many reasons. The strawberries are a little more than .38¢ a pop and those pretty little blueberries top out at .11¢ each. I had 6 strawberries and 26 blueberries. $5.14 worth of fruit. This doesn’t even begin to take into account the rest of my meal: the piece of toast with almond butter or my coffee with milk. So very very wrong.

In line with an earlier post about barbed wire and its many iterations…here are a couple of sketches of mine (of which a good number of the designs are aggregated from The Early Office Museum) representing just a tiny swath of all the paper clips out there. Did you know that the original Gem paper clip, introduced as early as 1892, and the one most commonly used, was never patented? Ouch. For a little history go here.