While I'd prefer not to channel the 14-year-old girl in me, I think I might be best off with string lights. You can find them in the weird Chinese import shops around Canal, you can find them at Oriental Trading and, apparently, while stringlights.com is not registered, partylights.com IS.
While I don't want jalepenos or rubber ducks or something like that, I'm not quite willing to succumb to Christmas lights. I DO work at a design mag. I COULD possibly think of something more creative than the lighting that you put around a pine tree.
So, easy first stop: momastore.org.
It's the no-duh of design shopping, and I query string lights, and BAM, they got 'em. Of course, they happen to be the string lights from the previous post, which are certainly not worth the $100 dollar price tag and aren't exactly mood creating.
String Ten Light
And while they look awesome in a set of three, one lonely one in my room would be pathetic.
Then I head over to one of my favorite blogs, Design Boom, which does a nice job of covering the conceptual and the practical. I search "string lights" because I don't know a better term, and the only hit are the damn Brilliant Lights installation I saw at the Seoul Design Olympiad. Seriously.
And I definitely think I would creep myself out with those above my bed.
So I head over to the old trustworthy Ikea page. And Ikea has some affordable lighting options that an adult might use - not all hearts, butterflies, weird lanterns and stars. Like the (bear with me)
Kallt
Or the kind of awesome spidery Minnen.
But no, look at the lighting page found here: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/lighting/14971?pageNumber=0
Not one, not one of those lighting options are available for shipping. And if you think I'm going to waste a Saturday trekking to Red Hook for some string lights...you don't work as hard as I do.
In desperation, I hit up Target, hoping to find SOMETHING, maybe some Jonathan Saunders designed lighting, or at least Isaac Mizrahi...But have you ever shopped at Target online? It's like shopping the store - rows and rows of hits come up with decreasing relevancy. Wrong size, weird color, you think you saw it cheaper in another department. And the tags are labeled:
But what's the difference between novelty, string and string and hanging? I cannot possibly cope, even though I found a semi tolerable mesh-bronze string lights, which I am not purchasing because I'm not spending $50 on something that could, upon further review, look like a bug zapper.
The moral is: who needs shopping savvy and design blogs when you have good ole DIY-ingenuity. So I'm going to do what any good Brooklyn-dweller would do...I'm going to march down to a hardware store, get some sturdy wire and christmas lights, and mold and shape my own damn lamp, thankyouverymuch.
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