After much deliberation, we have come to the consensus decision to name this project “panelshop,” and have clarified the design perameters.   

Here is our 2011 line as it currently exists, as outlined by AZ, with some minor edits:
PANELSHOP

1. Basic Panel (blanket, tablecloth, curtain etc)
 The basic panel should be a multipurpose textile panel that can be used in many different ways – both decorative and functional.  It can come in any dimension.

2. Panel Pack  
 Panel Packs are sacks to cary anything 

GUIDELINES:  The panel pack should emphasize it’s flatness.  Top stitching  is encouraged.   The overall structure of the bag should have no dimension, and any straps or carrying device should to detach and store inside so that the basic product is a rectangle.  Cutouts, such as those to create handles, are allowed as long as they don’t interfere with the outside perimeter of the bag as a rectangle.
*(If we want to be hard core we could say no stitching along the sides (so that the product is still in essence a flat panel) and the sides would have to fasten in some other way)

3. Panel Post
 Send a message via Panel Post.  

GUIDELINES:  These should be a simple rectangle, no folds, and no envelopes.  They will need to be extremely special in some other way in order to compensate for their extreme simplicity of shape.

4. Panel Wear
 Panel Wear are garments that are cut to be worn as shirts, dresses, tunics or ponchos.  They are made out one panel folded in half or two panels sewn together.

GUIDELINES:  Again, flatness is key, so top stitching is encouraged.  Neck and armholes can not be cut out – the outside perimeter of the form must always be a rectangle.  It is permissible to have cutouts inside the area of the panel (not along the perimeter) as long as it does not alter the integrity of the rectangle. 
There can be embellishments that stay within the form of the rectangle – however they can not disguise the shape of the panel.
*(If we want to be hard core we could say no stitching along the sides (so that the product is still in essence a flat panel) and the sides would have to fasten in some other way)

5. Panel Wrap -
 The panel wrap is another classic example of panel multifunctionality.  It consists of a long panel of fabric that may be wrapped around various parts of the body for warmth and protection. 

GUIDELINES: 

6.  Panel Platter
 A tray or plate used to set things on
 
GUIDELINES:  the tray has to be absolutely flat. 
Cutouts to make handles are allowed, but there can be no other dimensions or protrusions.

7.  Panel Platform
Table or chair for utilitarian function or display.

GUIDELINES:  The table must be flat with no protrusions either above or below.
Table legs can detach and should be sold as a neatly packaged accessory to the table
Can be a tray or a wall hanging that transforms into a table by adding the legs (also flat packed!)

So, broke up with the boyfriend two weeks ago. Have been listening to One Republic’s “Apologize” song on loop while crying/laughing hysterically, as usual. Have been thinking about going to New York to get old/new booty, but no cause that’s the old crazy, besides no money for plane tix. Have been eating lots of fried food, smoking again, and have an emergency half a pill of Xanax. Egypt is now free, yay. Now watching Justin Bieber’s music video “Baby.” Wiki’ed Justin Bieber, he is 16 years old, I will definitely go to jail. So, GFKAS fans, be on a look out for our name change!!! And fuck you too Valentine’s day! xox Pegs

Follow the link below for awesome photos and funny taglines from Molly.

Swapmeet Slideshow.

Disclaimer: Sorry but I tend to switch tenses, and this was not proofread or edited all that much due to time constraints.

Update:

So, Molly, Danielle, and Catherine, were mainly in charge of this event, which is great because they are super responsible and organized. They went early on Friday to set up and get all the rectangles prepared, multiple group emails regarding where to buy tags and string had been exchanged all week between them, Tiprin and Karen, the other super responsible and organized members of GFKAS. They had done a really good job getting it all together and setting it up at the actual swap meet. I had decided to drive to Josh Tree early Saturday morning because I was super tired from the day job and also camping in the desert was going to be really cold. Ashira was supposed to leave on Friday, but her car wouldn’t start and so, she, me, and Kenturah had to drive ourselves separately at 6am-ish on Saturday morning to hopefully be at the Swap Meet on time at 8am, which didn’t work out for any of us. We did try to possibly carpool together but that didn’t work. AAA was late, so Ashira finally got to JT Swap Meet around 9:30am when I called her from the 62 Hwy passing the scary dinosaur windmills. I was late for multiple lame reasons especially getting lost on Old Woman Springs Road. Kenturah, had completely missed the 62 Hwy and had taken the 10 East almost to Arizona, she was past Coachella when she called me at around 10 am. So, basically we three were super tired and at least I was a little pissed off at the desert for having tiny unmarked indistinct roads that go on for miles where I can’t turn around in my giant truck without getting stuck in the sand, which would really piss off Andrea cause as she tells everyone, I hold the record for getting my vehicle stuck in the sand. There’s this guy in the desert who Andrea says hates me because I got my truck in the sand and didn’t help, which isn’t totally true, yes I didn’t help get my truck out, but he didn’t seem upset about it that all, I think he was only mad at me for not calling him like I had said I would in order to get a “Thai massage” from him, he had happily given me his masseuse card the last time I got stuck in the sand.

So I found the Skyline Swap Meet because I saw the giant Skyline Drive In Movie Theatre sign that I had passed 20 minutes ago driving down Old Lady Road. And its a real Swap Meet, not just an Artsy Ironic “Swap Meet”, a real Swap Meet. Which was great because I had originally planned on staying for a little bit because I was buying props to do set decoration for my friend’s independent short film. This is a very common and super douchey LA thing to say by the way. “I’m working for free on this no-budget terrible film for my friend who I just met at a coffee shop and… blah blah blah…I’m a douche…blah blah…” So, walking around in the Swap Meet I already see furniture and other crap I can buy with my $100 set budget. Molly would later help me to find furniture for my movie set theme, 70’s orange vintage old lady living room, and while she was carrying a small green foot stool on top of her head, which is something she learned to do in Ghana, she was like “You need some chotskies like a big candy bowl” which is another very LA thing to use Yiddish words cause they’re super cute sounding, I actually have no idea if this is actually Yiddish, but when I Binged chotskies in the Urban Dictionary it said Weird Al popularized the phrase and he often uses Yiddish slang, so whatever I’m done with researching this. Also there are a lot of non-picked through thrift stores in Josh Tree that I decided to go to after the GFKAS sale. I should have written this on my BlackBerry cause then I would have gotten to the point a lot faster cause I would have been annoyed typing with one finger.

The actual sale was slow. Danielle, Molly, and Catherine were manning the booth and some brave hipsters would come by, look at the rectangles, possibly touch them, and then walk away quietly. I got hustled into watching the booth because the ladies heard me explaining some of the rectangles to our possible clientele and Molly tells me I’m a good salesman and I need to stay for 10 minutes at the booth as she and Danielle walkaway to buy more pickled okra from one of the stands. Seriously, GFKAS members, we need to have a meeting where we go over how to talk to people and sell our stuff, and unfortunately, I would have to recommend that Tiprin instruct this class cause she actually is really good at talking about our project and thereby selling our products and because she would be really into leading the meeting. I could co-lead the meeting and would have a build your own ice cream sundae bar with different toppings. We would also have to fly Karen in for the meeting too, cause she’s also really good at explaining triangles and she wants to meet all of you too. Also, Karen is having a show in February in Portland Maine that we should all try to go to, she said she might have the show to also include ice fishing somehow. Amazing.

Andrea was running around taking photos and talking to people who I think were famous foreign artists. This one artist Lior is super intense and is a performance artist originally from Israel and now living in New York. I meet him and Andrea at the Skyline Cafe as I wait for my breakfast and Danielle’s coffee. They have been waiting for their breakfasts too, they’re super slow at the Cafe, but its pretty good. Andrea tells Lior how I have the car stuck in the sand record and how we would like each other’s work, as Andrea put it “Peggy gets completely naked and you (Lior) like to show your butt”, Lior and I are now BFF, thanks Andrea. Lior tells me he’s from Israel and I instantly use every NPR word I’ve learned in the form of questions: “So, do you like…Palestine, Gaza Strip, etc.?” I was like “so Israel is cool” and he was like “Why?” and I was like “Jesus?” It could have gone really bad, but thankfully he mostly laughed at my uneducated attempt at small talk. There was another girl who was helping, Erin, one of Andrea’s USC grad school students, or something like that. Erin is really nice and starts telling me about her studies, she’s really into deconstruction and art theory and all that, but she’s really sincere about it all and is really trying to figure something out from it all to one day save all of us in the artworld, she’s not into it just so she can look cool and get laid which is often the case. I thank you in advance Erin and believe in you.

I sold one of Danielle’s eye pillows to my friend Julie Moon, shout out whattup Julie! Also, we sold another eye pillow to Sarah from the band Lucky Dragons. I had met a girl who was a friend of Sarah’s and she had told me that Sarah had gotten really puffy and allergic after she had been attacked by killer bee’s during her music video shoot by Doug Aitken at Andrea’s House as referenced in the previous GFKAS blogs. I told Sarah that she had looked fine and alright after she had gotten back from the emergency room that day, but Sarah said she thought she was fine too, so she stopped taking the meds and then blew up like a balloon and got super sick. She said she still needs to get that syringe full of adrenaline that people allergic to bees and peanuts etc. carry around with them in case of an allergic reaction. Then we all came up with different scenarios where she would be able to use the adrenaline shot for fun and Sarah enacted stabbing the syringe in her thigh and getting super strong and pumped up. Like if someone said “Sarah my baby is stuck under that car” then Sarah would stab the syringe into her leg and lift the car off the baby etc.

Oh yeah, I was also demonstrating my rectangle, performing in it on the table for hipsters to ignore and locals to get turned on by. Molly found something for me to stand on and I was told I looked like the Statue of Liberty when my rectangle was on dress mode.

(Oh my God, just finish your blog.)

Ok, so walked around Swap Meet, saw Ashira and Molly making cyanotropes or whatever they’re called. Molly was trying to find bugs to make hers but didn’t want to kill the bugs, so no bugs that were flying. Then Molly went around the Swap Meet with me to find furniture and chotskies. I then left the Swap Meet to hit up the JT Thrift Shops.

Went back to go to the chili and beer sunset party to meet up with my friends Lani and Kahn who had told me to meet them there because they had left their cell phone at home. Had to stop at Pappies and Harriet’s because I thought I was lost, was scared a little because there was a Harley Davidson club inside, no hipsters at all. But the waitress was nice and told me I was going the right way, even though it felt like I was just driving for miles into the desert to my certain death. Was bumping Maxwell’s “Pretty Wings” song down the dirt road for the horsies at the ranches. Then finally found Gamma Gulch Rd. and stopped when I saw cars and hipsters. Saw Erin and waved her down, she pointed to where the event was and said she wanted to leave because she was starving, she’s a 14 year vegetarian and to both of our surprise and only my delight, the chili was meatastic. But Erin wanted to be a trooper so she decided to go to Pappies and Harriets later after the sunset to eat. So she trekked back with me to the chili spot, we passed a couple art pieces: one was a water stand that had 3 water cooler jugs full of water from different locations, countries, etc. And they actually worked, but I didn’t drink from it, but Erin and I did sit on its benches, another art piece was a giant cube covered in mirrors, thank god the sun was going down, because if it had blinded me I would have been pissed, and then we finally made it to the chili pot. Not much left, and it was a huge pot, but I scoop out a good serving for myself, I don’t care whatever. Its delicious, I bet its not from the can, I bet someone made it, there are chopped tomatoes in it. I see Lior and tell him I’m going to take his photo for the blog and I do, I realize that I need photos so I start taking photos of everyone I know on my Blackberry, except Andrea, she doesn’t like her photo taken, but I took a blurry picture of her son Emmett on a far away boulder so, that kind of counts.

So, I take a look at the new HDTS art piece and its this really cute sculpture of a turtle with a wicker basket sail boat on its back and he’s standing on a boulder. I like it, I want to say its like he’s getting ready for the flood like Noah’s ark, but I’m surrounded by hipsters who are strangers and Erin who’s all into deconstruction, so I keep my cute and simplistic Jesus loving ideas to myself. Although, logistically the turtle was too big for the wicker boat but the turtle weaved it together himself so that’s a credit to his skill.

I ran into “PJ” Patrick Jackson and razzed him about his moose pattern knitted sweater and camo jacket, cause its like he’s going hunting for moose but he has a cute sweater of mooses meeses on underneath the camo, its funny to me at least. He was also wearing sunglasses at the time and it was basically nighttime, I love PJ he’s kind of a badass. Anyway, his show in New York was closing that night. Patrick said that we just missed the closing by a couple hours, damn. Then we all watched the full moon rise and it was so surreal, it looked like a giant UFO was rising out of the desert sand. Everyone took photos, but the photos could not capture the crazy beauty of it. Then Ashira showed up when we were all packing up to leave taking moon pictures, she had taken a nap in Emmett’s bed before hand and had finally got to the location. Ashira and Lior were hitting it off nicely, talking about New York, Israel, being sexy Jews, etc. I mentioned that it was Ashira’s birthday a couple of days ago cause I always find you can get away with more stuff when you tell people its your birthday. I consider telling people all the time that its my birthday, but that can be dangerous when you have a boyfriend. Ashira, I hope you worked it that night, (wink) xoxo.

So, we all piled into our cars when the moon came up half way into the sky, after all the hugs and good byes, and I tell Andrea I’ll be calling her in a little while when I get stuck in the sand.

(This is an email from September’s GFKAS Maine Sale that needed to be edited a bit first to avoid any criminal investigation, and now here it is, finally posted.  Enjoy!)

September 2010

Friday arrival was painful. I got off plane and realized I am the only minority in whole state of Maine, feel special and hoped no one will be too blatently racist. Tiprin yelled my name out of car window and it begun. Karen walked up, she reminded me of michelle brunswick so I immediately liked her, both very reassuring, positive, nice, and funny blonde women, I’ve almost called her michelle a couple of times, also kate because it’s close to the name karen and I’m super tired. Karen and tiprin are bff, both very happy to finally find each other. I had planned on sleeping, until tiprin said “sorry we have to start working right after lunch, :( … ” So then I told them I had rectangles from molly and kate which starts the tiprin rectangle drama emails, but it turns out ok in the end, just tough love through fear. Then Karen had to pick up postcards for the fkas products that had photo instructions (came out really nice and proved to be very helpful at sale), me and tiprin made price tags and put them on products, tony had too many damn wallets and tiprin and I took a break before tagging them, tiprin inventoried and took photos of late rectangles, wrought angry emails etc., then we went to giant shipping container, set up lighting, banners, tables etc., the museum guy disappeared for most of day but came back to finish hanging lights and banner, then wanting a break, karen took us on tour of south portland we looked at houses, tippy (unofficial never spoken secret nickname) took photos of them (she likes houses), go to shoreline, pretty, took pictures in front of lighthouses, we saw karen’s house and we ate tomatoes and apples from her garden, her house is nice used to be a dentist’s office, cool, looked at her studio is very organized, really nice art work, hungry we ate yummy little chickens, I thought were cornish game hens, tippy (secret nickname again) said they weren’t, went to quimby apartment tippy and kanga (karen’s real nickname) finish inventory, I stamp (tired of correcting to past tense sorry) fkas bags, eat a cookie, fall asleep eventually with lights on afraid of possible ghosts. Saturday: we got up at 7 am yesterday, breakfast 7:30 am, finished set up in storage bin, damn wind moving banners and tiprin’s quilts despite super strong magnets, from 9:45 am till about 5 pm old people kept coming in asking us about some tour bus, I wanted to tell them they needed to buy rectangular item for bus entry, instead we point them to giant tour bus sign. The museum assistant curator Sage, really nice woman, bought kanga’s panel, Sage’s dad bought Ashira’s scarf says it reminds him of a jewish tallis, he was wearing a blue tyedyed shirt with palm trees the colors matched ashira’s scarf, molly you would have loved it, then two old ladies come in I thought they wanted to know about the tour bus, they ask to come in shipping container, I say of course and tell them the spiel we’ve been using for 8 hours, and show them all the products, turns out she’s the mother in law of museum director and buys one of andrea’s panels that kanga was going to buy, Bananas! She didn’t know anything about project or andrea zittel but liked the $650 clothing piece anyway, Bananas again! Don’t worry cause later kanga gets the panel back because museum director’s wife wants a different andrea panel with the sleaves. Stuff starts to pick up and we eat lobster rolls, fbomb delicious, seriously tony (chicago fkas shoutout), karen tells me to put on my rectangle because the director of the portland museum is there, so I start my performance. I sit on table changing from performance bondage bag to post gallery party dress for next 4 hours (thanks tippy and kanga for being super supportive and handling business transactions while I was doing my performance), success, director laughs and talks to me, so do other Mainers (people from Maine call themselves this, ask kanga its true), and children come up and touch me and tell there parents I’m the ghost they were telling them about. Then a tall full figured red head lady comes in and tells me she loves my bag and wants me to make her a larger one so that she “can play around in it” she wants to wear it when she goes to Egypt, BANANAS! So potential rectangle sale for me, never thought anyone would want to buy it, will work on this rectangle, post it on website soon to sell to her. Rest of night we rock out really hard, we are LA Rockstar Cityslickers, (actual conversation) Mainers: “Where u guys from?”, T&P: “LA”, M: “Wow! Who do u know in Maine?”, LA: “Karen Gelardi”, M: “I know her or her work.”, seriously happened a lot. Took a break and walked with kanga to see her banners along the street and checked out space gallery and met her man who was going to drive a steam roller over print carvings to make prints, badass, and every person on the street knew kanga, most popular girl in high school headcheerleader class president, she introduced me properly to everyone, thank u K. Sad we missed performances but went to space gallery talked with director Nat and Ian and thanked them for sponsorship, thanked Sage too for her sponsorship, drank beer and talked to sexy people with Kanga, went to apartment to sleep. Sunday: super fucking tired, tippy knocks to wake me up for breakfast, too tired, miss breakfast, then we take 15 minutes to pack up everything, and load in kanga’s car. Tippy and kanga go touring maine together while I meet up with some old friends, I didn’t know my friend leslie had moved to maine until she came to our fkas sale that sophie had told her about, tippy was a little upset that leslie was wearing an unofficial sophie smock, but was all good when found out it was made after smock archival, whew! Came back to delicious dinner that resident chef James made, was good, but tippy said not as good as last time, I believe her. James, tippy, and kanga, talk about really deep emotions, I keep thinking he looks like Dexter from that show Dexter. Tippy and I get home, we talk about Maine and feel sad about leaving and how amazing it was, her and I write emails to u about what we thought, tippy takes shower, tells me to finish my email so she can read it, we go to sleep. Good night FKAS we are all ROCKSTARS!
Sent from my BlackBerry® by Boost Mobile

Gothamist ran a story a few weeks ago about New York City fashion in 1949 with several photos of cutting-edge designs of that year.  I can’t help but share this amazing panel piece designed by Pauline Trigère.  Panels can be glamorous!

The caption reads: “Model wearing checkered, deep-cuffed fleece coat which is almost all sleeve as it stretches 52-inches fr. wrist to wrist in one continuous piece, designed by Pauline Trigère.”