December seems to be a good month for weddings in SL… and luckily, we have such nice weather. I had the pleasure of being invited to Reece and Shawntel’s wedding by my friend, Pav, who I’ve known since we were both t-shirt wearing newbs. He took some fabulous photos of the whole event…

A few of my photos are up on Flickr now here…

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been busy setting up a second location for Namiko Surf Co. at the Laguna Beach Club. It’s crazy busy around here with a sim full of nude beach residents and me trying to put up shop posters… but it’s all coming together!

The exciting news is that I’m working on developing a dozen or so new surfboard designs with Sebastian Saramago that will be available for sale at the Laguna shop in a few days or so… For a preview, head on over to the shop and see the sample boards… (Laguna/183/87/22)

There is a new collection of boardshorts (for guys or girls) called ‘Slash’ and bikinis called ‘Cocoa Beach’. Each collection features five new colours derived from a variety of natural dyes including madder (reds), osage (yellow golds), logwood (deep purples), indigo (blues), cochineal (pinks and purples), and cutch (warm caramel) and iron (grey). And as always, the boardshorts look just as sweet on girls as they do on guys…

Does all work and no play make Keala a boring girl? I hope not. Here’s proof that I’m still making time to surf…

Last night, I surfed a new-to-me spot called the North Shore at imagiLEARNING (65, 215, 21)… a small but nicely designed sim with at several sets of waves installed — a couple that will take you back into shore… and another set that allows you to surf down about half the length of the sim.

I’m keeping a list of surf spots in Second Life, so if you see one you like let me know and we can post it on the list here… Or if you’d like to shoot some pics and write a review of a spot here, IM me and we’ll get you published!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year full of beautiful waves,
Keala

I’ve been looking forward to this event for a while now… Sebastian Saramago is SL’s top surfboard maker/shaper and he built me my beloved surfboards a couple weeks ago. Seb and his fiancee, Pixie, were married last night in a beautiful ceremony at Isola di Amore (a private sim) and I was really quite thrilled to be there as a guest.

Weddings, in general, make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside… that healthy glow of optimism… of bright futures… of shared happiness. And a Second Life wedding is no less inspiring… In fact, it seemed to cement for me that we aren’t wasting our time or energy in SL and that the investment of passion and emotion that we put into SL can be rewarded with honest, genuine connections and relationships… A chance encounter within SL might lead you to real, unimaginable joy. Here’s proof:

More photos of the wedding are here…. Congratulations to the beautiful and happy newlyweds!

Yesterday, December 16th, was my one-month birthday! And what better way to celebrate than to be a part of your very first fashion show…

Through a friend, I met Aki Clutterbuck, the owner and founder of a new sim called Silva Mura. As a part of the grand opening for Silva Mura, she arranged for a fashion show, DJ, arts and crafts fair and afterparty. I was really fortunate to be one of the designers featured in the fashion show. Namiko Surf Co was the first up in the show.

My uber-talented friend, Joe, came to take photos of the event:

Thanks to Aki and her organizers for putting together such a fabulous and well-run event! Thanks to my hard-working models, Princess Paisley, Calisto Kyomoon and Inara Tokyo for doing a fantastic job on the runway. And thanks to my friend, Surferjoe, who took all these wonderful photos of the event… Even in SL, perfect dream world that it is, you can’t be in more than one place at one time… so I’d never be able to do this without friends.