Dream house

My personal hero of the week: Wendy Harn, who saved a 1913 Craftsman from demolition by moving it--yes, actually putting the entire structure on a flatbed and driving it away--from a development site to an empty lot. And then restoring it, bit by bit, over 20 years. The LA Times has the full deets, but here are some of my favorite shots.

Before:


After:


My puny little mind can barely comprehend this kind of loveliness. The grey-blue with white trim is just perfect, especially with the natural wood of the door. And that variegated stone patio! I die.

Wendy and her partner worked on the house themselves, with help from her family. Here's her father stripping away the plywood above the fireplace to reveal...


...the original stained-glass windows. On the one hand, they probably wouldn't have survived the intervening years if they hadn't been boarded up, but... who in their right mind would ever ever ever board up art-nouveau stained-glass windows?!?


I nurture fairly impractical (if not impossible) dreams about finding an abandoned or otherwise derelict house to fix up and live in, happily ever after--a garden-variety fantasy for New Yorkers, I'm sure!

Life in stereo

What's more delightful, these stereographs, or the fact that the Library of Congress actually has an "Erotica 1920-1930" format heading? Really, it's a draw.






The last is my personal favorite. O, lady on the moon, how I wish we could exchange lives--it must be so much fun to be tall and milk-complected and always reclining on celestial objects.

Weekend update

Breaking news: this weekend, your faithful correspondent discovered a seemingly undisturbed new source of old shoes. The shelves of this thrift store overfloweth with barely worn vintage heels, though I somehow managed to leave with just three pairs. But peep my new pumps! Oliver, bless him, takes after his momma and is super into the gold lamé.


Because of, um, journalistic confidentiality and such, I can't name names. You have to suffer through an actual shopping trip with me before I give that up. (To date, DK and my mother are the only two people who have had the patience to go thrifting with me more than once. I'm truly that persnickety.)

I've made little to no progress on my get-rid-of-clothing effort. Well, actually, I've made negative progress because I kinda maybe sorta picked up two skirts, a blouse, and a coat from the aforementioned (afore-unmentioned?) store. DK, on the other hand, is plowing through his records. This is the current batch being sorted, which amounts to, o, say, 1/50th of his total collection?


Predictably, though I found no time to go through clothes, clean the apartment, or catch up on my correspondence, I somehow had plenty of time to bake. Yes, my brownie portions are very untidy.


For such a carnivorous person, I've eaten a shocking amount of tofu this weekend. My baked tofu was very good (this photo is pre-baking, since I'm not very organized)...


...but this Gourmet recipe for warm tofu with spicy garlic sauce was amazing. I was so skeptical because it was so freaking easy (it takes all of five minutes, no exaggeration, to make), but DK and I inhaled it so fast, there wasn't even time for a brief photo-op. Owing to the vagaries of my pantry, I used shallots instead of scallions and added some cilantro, but it was truly delectable.

And now, I must away to a mug of hot brandied cider and an episode of Cosmos.

Yipes

Il Cuscho, citta principale della provincia del Peru.
(Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)

I've been a crummy, crummy blogger of late, and an even worse commenter. My corner of the Interwebs is a wee one, I know, but I feel a (very pleasant!) responsibility to you, dear Readers, and even more so because we're such a small society.

What have I been doing, instead of rambling on and on here? A half dozen excuses:

1. I'm playing nursemaid to DK, who had a bit of a medical scare last week. He's fine now, but needs to take it easy for a while. In the meantime, I've been serving a lot of cake and hot cider.
   
2. My job has sort of engulfed my life. I've resisted anything resembling a proper career for years, but one seems to have finally caught up to me.
3. I work with two of my best friends, which is great for my mental health, but perhaps less so for my productivity. We also tend to lure each other out for drinks after work, which means I get home too late and too tired to do anything besides cuddle up to my man and watch online videos in bed.
4. O, those online videos! Always tempting honest bloggers from our paths of virtue! I've been obsessed with Cosmos, a 13-part documentary series on astronomy and astrophysics. I won't even start on the insane crush I have on Carl Sagan...
   
5. DK and I have both been winnowing down our respective collections of 45rpm records (his) and frocks and fripperies (mine). It's difficult to party with so many lovelies, but I must, before my clothes take over the whole apartment (they've already conquered two closets and the bedroom).
6. I'm busy planning a trip to Peru because, um, yesterday, I kind of booked tickets for DK and myself in June 2010. (Hence the map of Cuzco up top). The fares were too cheap to pass up--$275/each, roundtrip and nonstop!--and visiting Machu Picchu has been one of my dreams since, well, forever. But now I really need to learn some elementary Spanish, especially since DK and I will also be going to Spain for New Year's. Aren't we just the jet-setters...
   

Serving size

Thursday:


Sunday:


Lemon-rosemary olive oil cake. I recommend: bumping the milk up to 1% or 2%, from skim; tripling the chopped rosemary and grated lemon peel; and keep the flour to 2 1/2 cups, if you don't have a food scale to measure the 13.5 oz. exactly. Although, with all that said and done, my cake was still rather dry--but that didn't stop us from devouring most of it over the course of the weekend.

Belated blood & Gorey

Um, so, I know I kinda missed my chance with all the topical spookiness of Halloween, but I really can't wait another year to post these Edward Gorey illustrations. They're all from Monster Festival, an anthology of scary stories edited by Eric Protter and published in 1965. I know, I know--these aren't public domain, but I just had to scan and share them.

For Eric Frank Russell's "Impulse," about zombifying extraterrestrials:


For Lord Dunsany's "Thirteen at Table," about a fox hunt gone awry and a lonely country manor:


And for Edgar Allen Poe's ever-classic "The Tell-Tale Heart":


I've loved Gorey since I was a little girl and first saw his animated intro for Mystery! (Let's please not talk about how PBS recently reedited it. It's too awful for words.) Since then, I've amassed a tidy little collection of his work, and I especially love finding bits and pieces of his commercial work for publishers. Monster Festival is my favorite, so far--there's a hand-lettered header and full-page, two-color print for all 18 stories. Too dreamy!

Who killed Colonel Mustard in the study?

Just as I suspected--it was the ceramic poodle, with the world globe.


Egads, what a dastardly fellow!

...Okay, that was a really flimsy setup for these recent finds, but don't they somehow remind you of the weird little objects that always pop up in a good old-fashioned murder mystery? Just a little?

The poodle comes from eBay, where he was purchased in a lot along with two of his dachshund relations. A very useful pup, he holds pens and pencils in his, ahem, derrière and letters between the coils of his back. The magnifying glass comes from a recent estate sale (I'm officially hooked); every household should have a magnifying glass, to read fine print and start fires and such. And the globe come from a stoop sale, and it's also a very pragmatic purchase because... um... I... um... often need to... look up... which continent I'm on?

Yes, I can pretty much justify everything I buy. Which is why I own a machine just for peeling apples, dozens of dresses that aren't my size, and a lamp I can't turn on.

Anyway, I just couldn't pass up the globe. I saw it from across the street and raced across traffic to snatch it up before some other atlas-crazy gal saw it and claimed it first. And while it may not be very useful as a reference tool, surely it's a very attractive night light.


O, yes, did I mention? It's a light-up globe! I mean, it would have been silly for me to buy a plain, old, outdated, non-lighting-up globe. Because I already have one of those.

PS: Eeep! I ran out of appropriately sized envelopes, so I'm way behind on sending out hankies. Anyone who's emailed me in the last week, your hanky is now en route. I hope no one's poor sniffly nose or empty breast pocket has suffered unduly because of this delay!