The promised (and delayed) weekly post from last week still sits in a file on my computer.  Unfortunately, I am dealing with some technical problems with my web hosting company and cannot seem to add images to entries anymore.  While that gets sorted out, I am going to share some of my regular online reading.  I own a couple good photo books, but the internet is by far my biggest source of mental nutrition.  Here are some things hanging out in my Google Reader right now:

• Women in Photography is half-blog, half-gallery.  A new "solo exhibition" showcasing a female photographer opens each month.  Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis and the site is curated by Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips.  There are a lot of women doing thought-provoking photographic work, and these two have chosen some great images in the past few months the site has been in existence.
• I find that I Heart Photograph is a little hit or miss: sometimes I find a real gem, sometimes I fail to be inspired by this site that posts copious amounts of photographic finds.  However, I keep the RSS feed on my radar just for those gems it unearths from time to time, such as
• Crashed Cars of Kuwait.  This documentation of car wrecks in Kuwait is eerie, unsettling, and wholly engaging.  I think all our eyes experience a magnetic tug toward mangled vehicles like this because it's so easy to imagine ourselves in the drivers' place, and that is the spirit in which this photographer documents the wrecks.  He acknowledges there is a certain morbid insanity to it but treats the subject with enough reverence to make this a stunning body of work.  In later images he ventures into night scenes, a realm near and dear to my heart.
• Friends' blogs are always in my feed, and I'm always up for a few tales from the entertainment world via Hungry Filmmaker, which has a little bit of everything: job stories, a touching video marriage proposal, tips on working with limited resources, film theory, and some interesting thoughts on copyright/intellectual property in the digital age.  Oh, I admit it, I also read this because secretly I want to work with film but haven't been able to come up with a good enough idea quite yet.  I live (and struggle) vicariously.
  
• Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with Strobist at all because I haven't been doing much off-camera lighting.  BUT.  I feel I need to bring this blog to light because it a.) is written by a Baltimore Sun photojournalist, b.) has an excellent community of active readers and c.) does a great job of teaching professional lighting on a budget.  There is a huge wealth of tips for making highly effective lighting gear on the cheap, with a focus of lighting off-camera using groups of remotely triggered Speedlights.  If I were a photo professor, I would list this site as a required text.

What is on your reading list?  Feel free to send me your favorite online food for thought in the comments.

Crafts were the first art form I experienced growing up: my mom is a flea market and craft fair addict and I more often than not tagged along with her, then and now.  Mom also makes jewelry (beautiful earrings, mostly) and gave me a knack for piecing together little projects at the dining room table after work.  My craftiness has migrated to a job at my uncle's cabinetry shop in middle school, zines in high school, home-built stretchers and frames for my paintings in college, and a love for wintertime knitting and crochet passed down from my grandmother and great-grandmother.

Baltimore has a fun, active, and diverse indie craft scene.  One of my coworkers, Christy Zuccarini, recently landed a gig with the Baltimore Sun writing the Baltimore By Hand blog.  So far it has been extremely aesthetically pleasing in addition to being a great read.  Plus, knowing another Baltimorean who blogs about art makes me feel part of a scene -- you should check out Christy's blog at http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/crafts/.