Astral Boutique's blog

Bringing In The May

What better way to bring in the May than with beautiful friends, music, and food?

 

The sacred ritual of women- getting dressed

 

A Victorian ghost floats down the stairs

 

Leonna Sapphire prepares beautiful food in the kitchen

A Hungarian skirt, and roses for head wreaths

 

Girls grab instruments and walk to the May Pole site, preparing to call the men forth with the pole

The pole is placed firmly in the ground, and the dance that weaves the ribbons begins: 

 

Contests to choose the May Queen and May King- the ladies jump over a broom, while the men, with backs to us, play music. When they stop, the last person over the broom is out.

 

The ladies play music for the men in the same fashion, as they do an egg toss:

 

Our beautiful Queen and handsome King!

 

Hanging with sweet friends:

 

Me and the Sugatroll

 

Getting a head massage from the Queen herself:

At night we dance between the double bonfires, for protection

 

Many-armed goddess:

Happy May to everyone!

From The Studio

You might have noticed the Mount Whateverest tshirts flitting through my Etsy shop lately. I am having so much fun exploring the world of iron ons..... transforming cool shirts into Band Shirts with a nip, a tuck, and applied heat.

I am starting my third month at the studio, and I've really settled in... it's my home away from home. It's soooo nice to be able to spread everything out and leave it there, if need be. Space truly allows opportunites for creation. I am so grateful!

 

Ladies of the Tulips

My mom came up for an Easter visit, and of course I had to take her to see the tulip display at the Crystal Hermatige Gardens in North San Juan:

There are 13,000 Dutch tulips in this garden, artfully arranged to make the eyes happy and the heart sing.

 

We brought Kirsten from Arabesque Aromas with us, because her middle name is Tulip... and because she smells really good. 

 

I literally get chills looking at this part of the garden. This year, the white Dogwood and purple irises were in bloom at the same time as the tulips, which usually does not happen, and the effect was like a painting come to life. Kirsten helped to complete the look:

 

Here we are, feeling the Italian vibes of the gardens, and pretending we are in one of our favorite feel-good movies, Enchanted April:

 

Me and mom!

 

If you are in this area in the Spring, I really recommend that you go out to the Crystal Hermatige... these photos turned out well, but it's nothing like seeing the flowers in person!

New Video and EP From Mount Whateverest!

My band, Mount Whateverest, has been hard at work to bring you some rather psychedelic new material- we just released a new EP for "Flaming Eye" on our Bandcamp, downloadable for free, and a new music video made by our own Steve Melendez. Huge thanks to my friend Jessica Henry at Brightest Star on Etsy, who was the source of the amazing gold dress that I'm wearing in the video. I hope you enjoy! 

EP artwork by Chris Streng

Friday Frippery

Springtime is my favorite season to get dressed- it's not too cold,and not too warm, and that means you can go sleeveless or with sleeves, long or short, any fabric, any shoes, and it's still okay to wear any hat, even a wool or faux fur one-- it's the greatest number of wardrobe choice of the entire year. 

It also is the season when you can stop thinking about the layers of tights and undershirts and overshirts and jackets and just wake up in the morning and throw on a dress. This is a new favorite, with a Balinese batik style print, in flowing rayon. It is so comfortable that sometimes I wear it for several days in a row. 

 

The ferns on the hillside behind the houst just unfurled and went shooting for this sky this week:

 One of the best parts of Spring is that I let myself get new sunglasses. Last year's beloved neon orange glasses started to get a few scratches, so I had a good excuse when I saw these in the Nordstrom teen department:

I have never gotten more compliments on a pair of sunglasses, ever! I am thinking I might craft some of my own, playing on this theme of three dimensional floral additions.

 

Here is to the unfurling:

 

From The Studio

It's Springtime and all the windows in the studio have been flung open, and there are so many projects bubbling! It feels like a lot of the work of the past few months has been laying the foundations, in the physical and conceptual planes, for what is unfolding now.

 

Chia, celebrating the beautiful 60s maxidress (gifted from Shawna- thank you!) that decorates our central communal work space

 

for Cosmic Dancers- upcycled silver moccasins (size 10) 

 

Drawstring dresses with appliques handmade from 1960s psychedelic fabric

 

 

My studio fundraiser last week went off like gangbusters- I actually exceeded my goal! I became a textile collage card factory for a while:

There is so much beautiful light in this studio!

 

The coming of the warm weather has heralded the return of funk and soul music into my life. I am obsessed with this album right now, a comp that documents the short-lived and amazing 60s/70s  juncture of soul and hippie psychedelic music:

 

psychedelic dress available here

 

...and I don't think I spend a day in the studio without playing the Wanda Jackson album, The Party Ain't Over. 

This incredible dress is available here.

 

 

 

The Return of the Sylvanaut

 I did manage to make a solo album this winter, but I had no plans on playing live until my friend Sara Zahn asked me to be on a bill with the amazing Future Twin from San Francisco. I thought they were so cool that I said yes before my logic could intervene (aka "you're a busy girl!" "you have enough going on!"). I definitely experience some stress leading up to the show, because since I don't usually play under the Sasha Sylvanaut moniker, I didn't initially know exactly what I was going to do. 

 

I considered trying to recreate songs off of my latest album, but sitting on stage working a bunch of pedals just didn't seem visceral enough for this rising Spring energy that's all around and in the air and in my blood. Eventually I decided that stripping it down to the absolute basics felt like the strongest performance option. I write songs on the acoustic guitar, but it is very rare that I get up in front of anyone and play it. I've done it around the late night campfire at the Northern California Women's Herbal Symposium, which is pretty much the most supportive and nurturing environment on earth, but I just never really considered doing it on a stage.

 

The guitar you see here is my old and trusted friend, known as The Mardou. She is named after the girlfriend in the Jack Kerouac book The Subterraneans, so I guess you could say she respresents the (often-unsung) women's perspective on the world. 

 

My dress is also an old favorite- 1960s Hawaiian psychedelic. The head piece is a vintage devil mask with added fringe.

My friend Mike Meals filmed this number, which is a somewhat Americana-flavored piece called "Oh! Marianna": 

For more of my work, both solo and with backing musicians, you can visit the Sasha Sylvanaut Bandcamp site.

Good Craic

We do like to have a good time on St. Patty's Day, aka Irish Appreciation Day:

A drop may have been taken. Maybe two.

"Whiskey in the Jar" was definitely sung.

Fashion lovers: there happened to be three antique clothing experts at this particular party, and so I got an in-depth consulation about my green dress. It was decided after some debate that it is an Edwardian nightgown made of silk crepe. I knew I loved it, but I had no idea it was so old!

Tropicalia

Springtime has arrived in Northern California with a profusion of blossoms- cherry, plum, forsythia, redbud, and a million little wildflowers peeking up from between the brand new blades of green grass. This season is the last chance for us to have any real rain until late Autumn, so we are loving the cloudy skies that are visiting us this week (with rolling thunder! hooray!).

It's natural for me to resonate with everything bright and florid and exuberant in fabric this time of year, especially the tropical prints from Hawaii that have been a huge influence Californian fashion for decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, especially, there seemed to be an ongoing style conversation between island prints and hippie prints... and honestly I think the lush, colors-and-life-exploding-everywhere motifs and colors of Hawaii had more to do with the crazy outfits of the hippies than the lysergic acid!

My latest creation from The Factory (my new studio space!) is a marriage between a modern piece of wildly sequined fabric, and a 1960s Hawaiian fabric:

 

*Tropicalia Hoodie, hitting the shop tomorrow*

I was experimenting with digital collages on the computer in the mid-winter, but now that I have space to spread out different fabrics (they are pinned to the large white wall in wild profusion) my metier has become fabric collages. It is an incredibly satisfying process, though it can take a while for me to find the fabrics that go together perfectly... I was waiting a while for this combination to appear.

Pieces in process

 

A hoodie is a staple during transitional seasons (and a year-round necessity in foggy places on the coast). This one is a lightweight hoodie, so it's just the right layer for a little extra warmth during the hot weather (aka in the mornings and evenings). 

 

It's been such a joy making these fabric collages... and there are many more to come!

 

A Room Of My Own

As someone who lives in a 750 square foot house that is also a band practice space and home to a husband and two cats, I had been feeling a little cramped lately. When I started to work on my upcycled "fabric collage" pieces for the shop, I grew out of my little space beneath the eaves upstairs in a single sewing session. Still, I never thought that I would have a studio space of my own, since keeping our overhead low is not a preference, but a requirement.

It seems that I have an angel watching over me, however-- my Zumba dance teacher, Mary. She owns and operates our local Zumba studio, and seems to help out every person and cause that she comes into contact with. (One of the coolest things is that she started a local chapter of Good Women International, an organization which addresses the modern sex trafficking epidemic.) Mary spied an long-unrented industrial space and figured out how to get a bunch of us sewing/textile loving gals in there for a humane price.

myself and Chia from Out of The Mystic

My friend Chia laughed at me the day I moved in, because the first thing I did was pin a hundred things to the wall. Well hey, it's MY OWN WALL! "You've never had your own space before, have you?" she said.

There are several private rooms surrounding the communal central space, where one of our studio mates had her very kind husband build a gigantic cutting table:

Having this room is such a total game changer... as I told Mary, "I can finally think clearly." I had no idea what a difference having designated, ample space would be for my mental state. I don't think I ever let myself dream of it before!

 

I have space to work- space to put up inspiring images and experiement with fabric combinations- I even have space for my notebook. It can just sit in the middle of a table, undisturbed, waiting for me to jot something down. Can you imagine???

There is no internet in the building, which is actually a huge blessing. Like so many of us, I tend to turn to the internet for some kind of distraction/boost when I get stuck in a creative process or I am trying to procrastinate something. In my studio, it's just me, my work, and the other gals.

 

Chia at work in her studio

Another great blessing is that I am now able to seriously focus on collaborations with Chia, who runs a vintage store on Etsy called Out of the Mystic, and is working on a line of couture 1970s-inspired denim this year. She's a great seamstress, which I am not, so she can professionally finish pieces like this kimono jacket, which I designed from vintage scarves which I collected over the years and had put aside, dreaming of creating this:

Here are some of the other creations I've brewed up at the studio in the past two weeks:

Nepalese cotton hoodie with geometric details

the "Disco Hoodie"

I am so excited for what is on the creative horizon for me... stay tuned!