Dreaming Of Socks

This is going to sound strange, but pay attention. There are lessons here.

A few days back I discovered a new web site. Well whoop-de-do, you say. Who hasn’t? At least one a day. Or more. True. One point to you, but who’s keeping score? That wasn’t the main idea anyway, just the intro.

Here’s the deal. This site has a lot going for it, a lot of things everyone can learn from, and it’s worth investigating, especially so if you are a woman or know one. (How universal is that?) So if you want to stop reading here and do your own looking and thinking, go right now to Sock Dreams. Whether or not you come back is your decision, as they all are.

Here’s what I see that makes an impression on me.

First, the site is distinct, unusual. In a good way. You won’t accidentally mistake this site for another, although its basic structure is pretty average. There is a big banner at the top with a navigation bar just under it. Main content is placed vertically along the left side. On the right is access to the shopping cart, to a search option, and a menu listing more specific product categories.

There is nothing unusual about this, but the graphic designer made it look special. The colors on the navigation bar don’t quite “match” in a way we’ve all gotten used to. They aren’t all the same, or shades of one color marching in a steady procession from one end to the other but they work together to make a person curious about where they lead.

The type flows. The home page is full of curves, inviting. There is white space. No crowding. What you see first is “Welcome Sock Lovers & Dreamers!”, and then some clues about what kind of place you have found: “Female owned & operated in Portland Oregon since 2000. We’re not your usual sock shoppe, nor do we intend to be.”

There is a large logo under the introductory text. For me this is a little too big and a little too flashy, but it is distinct, and helps establish the site as a non-corporate sort of place.

Overall the site works, and well. It is quirky, unusual, unique even. And that is good. The site is colorful and well organized. There is a good use of Flash, normally the bane of web sites. Usually Flash is applied with a shovel by inexperienced designers gone amok, eager to show cleverness and ignorant of business needs, but here, in one small pane on the home page, it works, simply and unobtrusively. This one little view displays a few rotating product shots without either locking up the whole site or driving visitors away, screaming.

So right up front this site establishes what it is about and what you can expect. It looks simple but isn’t. There nooks and hidey-holes, surprise turns, several ways of getting to products and information about the products. Come in through the main menu and peruse general products. Then click on an image somewhere and pop up inside a whole line of similar products, or a line of products from one manufacturer, or somewhere else again. It’s all good.

Exploring here is like being in a funhouse, a friendly one. You don’t care about getting lost or being abandoned at some dead end, and you aren’t. This is rare.

Images, images everywhere. Though I can’t find it now, I believe I saw a statement that the owner, Niqkita, does most of the photography. Whoever does it, it is stunning. These are not standard catalog shots. They are not socks pinned to the wall. Each image is unique. Each one is interesting. The models and sets vary. Many are outdoors. Each color of a sock has its own image, with the model in a fresh pose. Nothing stale here at all.

I know exactly how a guy sees the product shots, and I can understand why the name of this business was once “Fetishize Me”. I can almost guess how women see them. Almost. It must be fun. But not kinky. This isn’t a sex shop, but more like a playground. Or a party.

There is a lot for young spicy women, but also for every other woman, and for every girl you can imagine. That is made clear. The owners and staff are obsessed with socks and things (anklets, arm warmers, foot care products, footie socks, garter belts, gloves, half socks, knee highs, leg warmers, leggings, midcalves, over the knee, petticoats, scarves, sock garters, t-shirts, thigh highs, toe socks, washing supplies, wrist bands...and more).

The “About” page is personable and interesting. It is clear. It is easy to read. It was not written by a software program, a lawyer, or a corporate drone. The story begins with “Years ago there was a girl whose feet were always cold”, and goes on from there to tell the story of the business and the sock faeries who work there. You end up dead certain that you will be dealing with real people.

Want to know about shipping and payment policies? Just go to the pages that deal with them. There is no need to enter into a transaction just to get to the buried shipping options page, only to find that they can’t deliver to you anyway. Many, many other sites get this wrong. Many of those sites belong to large businesses, and they all deserve to close.

Not Sock Dreams, which also has a simple and interesting FAQ page, with photos, and easy links to more information. Again, it’s all up front, well written, sprightly, and easy to get to.

One feature I stumbled on, one that isn’t openly linked to, is a weblog (the “Sock Journal”). This illustrates two more good aspects of this site. First, it is focused. The blog does not have long rambling stories about vacations, or recipes, or politics, or relatives. It’s about socks, and illustrated. Every post leads back to the store somehow, but with a soft sell. It is all lighthearted and full of photos. Once again, the quality of the photos is fantastic and they help breathe more life into the products.

Second, there is an ongoing dialog between the owner and her customers. They share their experiences and their exuberance for socks. Sounds silly, but the customers go nuts for it. They love socks and the shop. The owner loves socks and loves helping her customers. And it keeps the store thriving.

The overall approach of this site is humble and playful. It represents a business but one with heart. Each part of the site is focused. The owner makes it clear that she does not and will not carry every product, and gives her reasons. You understand. It’s about socks and she wants to keep it that way. And you end up agreeing.

References:

Sock Dreams
Sock Journal

Playing With The Dead

I have finally succeeded in finding someone weirder than I am.

I am not weird. I am unique. I am special. I am fun, and inquisitive, though I have secrets. Very special secrets that I will not tell you about because that would make me just like you. And maybe I don't want to either like you or to be like you, and maybe not have you like me either. Also, being honest here, just why would you be interested in any of my secrets anyway?

Are they really secrets or am I just being private? Is that allowed anymore?

Maybe that's enough, the just wanting privacy thing. People think that if you like being anonymous and quiet and sort of staying over there at the edge where things are calm and no one asks you to do things you don't want to, that you have a disability, a "secret", and then they want to "know" it, and bug you about it. Which ruins all the fun of either being private or having secrets, or of both having secrets and keeping your own thoughts in a carefully tended garden where they can play without being loudly hooted at by boors with bad breath and sticky fingers.

Maybe it was my friend Arnie who first clued me in to this. It is my first memory of the difference between me and normal people. I was still in grade school, the lower grades, and hence very young in today's terms, since today is several decades farther on. Arnie was over at my place one day. Come to think of it now, we moved out of that place around the time I was 10, and I don't recall my sister, who was born when I was eight, so we're looking back through a long time tunnel.

Arnie and I were playing Chinese checkers and eating candy. I think I noticed that some of the marbles were sticky. Arnie did it.

Right there, that was it. He had sticky fingers. This is something that I have strenuously avoided my whole life, even then. I could not believe that he would let his fingers get sticky, or put up with it once it happened. He said it didn't bother him, so I tried it. I got so sticky that I could hardly spread my fingers. You could almost hear the velcro rip as I pulled the fingers apart, then allowed them to magnetically back together again, and then repeated the cycle.

I think that Arnie did wash his hands before he went home, but I did it almost immediately, after 15 minutes or so of trying on stickiness for size. It didn't work for me then and doesn't now.

I don't like getting stuck in things, especially the thoughts of others. Don't like ceremony or routine. My most hated word is "should", most hated phrase is "supposed to". I like taking a clean look at things and coming to my own conclusions, which is one reason I didn't do any research papers in college.

Luckily I was able to get by. No one really demanded any, but it was an option. I preferred to go the other way, to do my own reading directly from original sources, do my own thinking, and then write down my thoughts. Good thing that I was in literature instead of sociology or history. Not like today, when teachers demand research, and students then pay others halfway around the world to whip up something, or cut and paste from Wikipedia. There was cheating way back when, but I never saw the point. I was paying for the pain, might as well attain the gain. No one ever came close to pretending that I ever, ever could have stolen words elsewhere. Because they were original. That was obvious.

Because they were weird.

That's another word I hate. Weird. My sister gets a pass. She can say it. She has paid her dues, and I owe her apologies for many things, so she gets in free. If you say it you might go home with a bloody mouth and swollen lips. Just because. Just because you're an idiot. At least say something that requires a few seconds of thought. Please. It will be easier all around. And I won't have to go to jail to get my point across succinctly.

So there I am, being original in my own sort of way, a legend in my own mind, which is not too bad considering that people will get all freaky if you tell them you have enough clothes to do laundry once a month. How stupid are they?

And this one wasn't my idea, it came from a friend who once confided that he'd bought enough socks and underwear to go two weeks. A month is a whole lot better, so I customized his method. Sometimes I can stretch to five or six weeks with a bit of judicious hand laundering. Once you've stopped spending two hours every week doing laundry you gain a new perspective. One month's laundry takes maybe two and a half hours. Compare that to about nine hours the old way.

But an idiot will say, of course, "That's weird". Which is equivalent to saying, "I'm a total idiot and I've never had a thought or emotion unique to me. All I know is what I see on TV, so I'll go ahead and bray now", or of just standing there and drooling while staring at the wall, waiting for instructions.

So if you (yes even you) go off half cocked, fully cocked or otherwise and do something not even remotely original but only uncommon or even unexpected, then you will see the whole flock pivot to face you and quack and gabble in unison, "That's weird", and then stand there, waiting for you to burst into flame and quit annoying them by being not what they all are.

Which is a good reason to keep to yourself. Which will inspire more unique thinking. Which will trigger more idiots to gabble and drool.

Which is tolerable in a way, but they can be dangerous in groups, if challenged, or if simply startled too suddenly by originality.

This is the story of my life. But now we have the internet, so now it's possible to run across things that force you to admit that there are people out there more original and more creative, harder working, odder, stranger, more wonderful and scary than you could ever be. And they even provide (1) photos, and (2) stepwise instructions.

Right now, I can honestly say that I have no idea how I found the mouse mouse. Maybe it was a couple of weeks ago when I was searching for video clips of how to make and use lightweight backpacking stoves for my other blog. Somehow I can't quite remember the connection, but bing! there was a picture of a mouse with a mouse inside it.

This was the interface of electronics and taxidermy, of computing and biology, of irony and butchery. Someone stuffed a dead mouse with a computer mouse, and posted the results for the world to see.

I wouldn't have done that, probably, but I sent it to my sister. She needed to see it.

Hey lookee, kid, I didn't do this, but someone did, and they're weirder than I am. I'm not weird if you'll recall but in case you need proof again, here it is, kid.

I haven't heard from her. I'm sure she liked it in her own way. I didn't dig through the details but only looked at the photos and she probably never visited the Instructables web site, but she had proof. One or two photos included with the email would have been enough. Remember now, I'm not weird, right? I know I'm your brother and I spook you every now and then, but lookee here, this is really weird, right? I mean. Look, eegh.

For good measure, and in the interests of providing balanced coverage, and also to prove that compared to the rest of the world, even to little girls, I'm pretty harmless after all, I sent another URL and another photo or two on mouse taxidermy (amateur, home-style, kitchen table hacking) showing a young girl holding up two dead and dried mice in costume.

She seems pretty happy about it. The girl in the pictures, not my sister, who still hasn't responded. She seems to think it's normal and fun, the girl.

This could be true where she comes from. Who can say?

I myself, having thought it through have decided not to call it weird. (What in hell is that word even supposed to mean anyway?) But to think of it as possibly gruesome and perverse (which can be a fun way to label other people), or maybe only as unnecessarily strange. I say "strange" as in unfathomable.

I like little things. I especially like rodents, and kept hamsters for years. But live, playful, healthy and happy hamsters, and respectfully buried them when they wore out. Given that keeping a pet often involves imprisonment, especially for small animals, I always regarded keeping a pet as involving a sacred contract. In turn for imprisoning a hamster, who would gladly have run off to be suddenly eaten if given the chance, it was my responsibility to give it the best and most solicitous care that I could, first to make up for the evil that I did by keeping it in a cage and then because it deserved the most interesting life I could imagine for it in payment for depriving it of its natural entertainment by running free and dying young.

None of this, in my book, involves killing an animal, hacking it up, and stitching it back together around a miniature computer mouse. Or stuffing if full of LEDs and batteries. Or dressing its tiny dead body in tiny crude costumes and playing house.

So OK, there they are, playing with their dead things. I hope my sister is happy now.

References:

Mouse mouse.

Mousy dressup.

Tumbling For The Tiny, I

I don't know about you, but I'm small. Relatively speaking. Not that I care, or compare myself to others all day, but just in case you were wondering.

Not that I care, or compare myself to others, but I've always been a tad smug about this. Totally without reason. We are what we are and that's it. No reason to feel good or bad about it, but I like being this way all the same. I guess that works for me.

I first had this feeling in a really strong way while in the rafters of a garage. My family was renting a house from someone, and the owner had a bunch of stuff in the garage, up top, on plywood sheets in the rafters. I went up there a few times. Pretty rickety but fun. I felt good to be small enough to wiggle around and snoop in the boxes, and light enough not to bring it all down.

So what the hey. That's just who I am, and as I said, I can't help it.

But somehow, for some reason, I've always been attracted to small things. I don't feel small unless I compare myself to someone else. Usually it's not feeling small but a form of amazement at how big the other people all are. Giant shoes. Basket-sized hats. How do they do it?

OK, 'nuff of that. It ain't the other people that are fascinating, it's the small stuff around me. Hamsters have been on my list for a long time. Cats are smaller than dogs, and maybe that's one reason I've always preferred them too. And when you see a dog smaller than your cat, it's still bigger in another way, the way some people are bigger than their physical size. Dogs are loud and jumpy and intrusive, and cats aren't. Smallness can manifest as silence and sleekness and efficiency and not only as tininess

Tiny-perfect is a phrase I've heard. Maybe it's a bit to precious, but there is a sort of perfection in many small things. Babies are special in a way not only because they're part of you (part of all of us) but because they're so physically tiny and helpless (another form of smallitude) but yet they have a kind of perfection about them that could not be replicated at a greater size.

Find stillness and calm, a quiet moment, and you find smallness and perfection. It all goes together.

So a day or two back I stumbled on a new web site. Now ain't that a revelation. For several years I've been pursuing ultralight backpacking, as in rolling around in the ideal and getting myself covered with its scent, and then backing off a notch or two to find the right blend of practicality and ecstasy. I even built a web site around the idea, and took to making my own backpacks, stoves, and shelters. Some clothing too.

One of my favorite places has been BackpackingLight. Following up on one of the forum threads by a guy who made his own ounce and a half backpack and seven ounce backpacking hammock, I saw a reference to UltraLight Living: "Ultralight: backpacking, clothing, homes, innovation, lifestyles, technology, transportation. Everything ultralight."

The idea is to take backpacking ideas and apply them to the rest of life.

This is right in line with the Green movement, the conservation ethic, and our new fear of the evil Dr. Carbon von Dioxide, Menace to the World.

The most interesting thing to me right off was the "UltraLight Homes" page. I like this stuff. Several years I stumbled on Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, and then a little over a year ago I found a piece in the New York Times on small houses. Some of these things are barely over a hundred square feet. Time to bang your head against the wall and howl, friends.

The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is the one I'm most familiar with. You can get a feel from this quote: "My name is Jay Shafer and since 1997 I have been living in a house smaller than some people's closets. I call the first of my little hand built houses Tumbleweed. My decision to inhabit just 100 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. My houses have met all of my domestic needs without demanding much in return. The simple, slower lifestyle my homes have afforded is a luxury for which I am continually grateful."

The idea: a small house can be thought out thoroughly and built well with good materials, be sturdy enough to stand up to delivery across public roads, and have wiring, plumbing, and appliances built in. Then it can be slid off the trailer, connected, and moved into.

"Most of our houses on wheels include a two-burner stove, an under-counter refrigerator, a bar sink, an RV on demand hot water heater, and a propane boat heater. We can certainly work with you if you have specific needs for built-in appliances."

Sounds good. I've always wanted a sleeping loft. Every kid has. Some lovers too. A place of many fascinations.

These pre-built houses are relatively expensive, relatively speaking, but they are built with good materials, and if you'd rather you can purchase plans and do the building yourself.

There are other outfits too, like Global Portable Buildings, Inc., which makes things from cargo containers (in either 8'x 20' or 8' x 40' sizes). They have 10 year structural warranties and can be delivered by container ship, plane, helicopter, truck or rail. Yow.

There is a lot more at UltraLight Living, and other places too, like the stray reference I bumped into at Nicaragua Living, about converting cargo containers in more of a do-it-yourself sort of way. I'm getting all tingly here.

The expats in Nicaragua tend to think of things in eccentric terms (compared to the rest of us). A lot of them are trying to get by with less, or with smaller things, or with simpler but sometimes more sophisticated things, so this general topic appeals to them too.

Make your life small and it's easier to handle. Check out the "UltraLight Homes" page at Ultralight Living sometime.

References:

Alchemy Architects and the WeeHouse

BackpackingLight

Global Portable Buildings, Inc.

Nicaragua Living

Cargo container house

Think Small: New York Times on small houses

Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

UltraLight Living

Ultralight Living's UltraLight Homes page