We’ve seemed to have entered the rather miserable part of the summer so I am taking off for a very short week to check out Berlin and Prague (in the 80s! so nice!). Website backorders will be shipped as we receive product but new orders will have to wait until I return. Just a reminder. Enjoy the week!

And a few places to visit while this blog is quiet – http://www.buildanest.com and http://www.whipup.net and http://www.craftysynergy.blogspot.com and http://superherodesigns.com/journal too

Last thing – if you have a good eye you will spot some Kikatsu cocktail glasses in the August ish of Food & Wine Magazine. It’s cocktail time!

I have very sweet ceramic piggy banks from Pamela Barsky. They are a soft white or a avocado/pea green, have a little loop handle on the top and a hole on the bottom (with rubber stopper) so you can actually get your money back out. The most fun part though is that she has popped a little envelope of money into each pig belly. Most are a loose change, a lucky few will have up to $100 inside (!). And no, you can’t open the boxes to find out.

I am restocked on the mi Spa, and also some very reasonably priced handbags, and I am sitting here in the A/C making jewelry. It looks like it’s going to rain any second now.

Bklyn news: our friends are DJ’ing at the new giant and wood-paneled bar Union Hall on Saturday night, downstairs where it is less hectic, and they just might play the Boo Radleys for you if you ask nice.

Kate has updated her site/project/brand Obsessive Consumption and you should go check it out. She has been hand-drawing things she purchases, for a long long time now. And those pesky credit card statements. Art and craft and life all smooshed together.

I have more goodies in the store for your consuming pleasure as well. New screenprinted tees and totes by Maryink, once from Brooklyn and now on some tropical island or some such, I believe. A few new stripey dresses by Talla so you can make the most of the summer weather.

I have gaffers tape wallets by dbclay coming up, they are also screenprinted or they have undergone some magical processing and have photos reproduced on the surface. They are supposed to be tough as nails too! Also due in this week are more mi-Spa roll-on dry perfume vials which the ladies can’t get enough of this summer, and more handbags. Always.

Almost the last thing – a lovely lady named Alexis popped in the shop, she is a perfumer and sells her hand-blended scents (Scent by Alexis) down the street at Neda, among other places. They come in lush and hand-gilded containers and with names like Queen Bitch, how can they be bad?

VACATION ALERT: I am going on vacation! The Rare Picks site will be up but orders taken during the week of August 1-8 will not be fulfilled until my return. Ariyele will be handling shop duties and shipping out backorders, however. (And if you know of anywhere in Prague or Berlin I should hit, drop me a note.)

The ceramics by Andrew DeWitt of San Francisco are here, they are just fabulous. Lots of texture with subtle hints of color. See below. We also have a few new printed products from Tenth and Grant, a new offshoot business of a commercial printer in Oregon. They are printing artists’ work on cards, coasters, and notebooks are on the way too.

I just read that Don Caballero is playing the Knitting Factory on Friday. Who will go with me? Yes I only listen to 10-year-old music but they have amazing drumming going on and I love that, second only to the late departed drummer of Silkworm and maybe tied with Unwound or Shellac. None of these bands exist anymore, sigh.

Lately at the shop: Thom Yorke or just silence, the heat somehow makes music difficult.

Elsewhere – my friend Maggie is finishing her first book about how to (and what to) blog and it seems I will have a lil art piece in there I did for 20things.org, long long ago. It makes me want to have some art projects for the fall. I am thinking of a mobile library cart to have a lending library at the shop, but not just for books…why not put out music, or maybe some of those extra scarves you made last winter, or art supplies you don’t use anymore?