My Catalonia

Sneaking in a quick post before all the shops reopen at 4pm...

DK at the door of our rental:

Scissors in the window of Ganiveteria Roca, which is about to celebrate its 99th anniversary:

And laundry drying in Barri Gòtic:

Transatlanticking

(Barcelona cigarette card, via NYPL; Exposicion Internacional Barcelona 1929, via Yale/Beinecke Library)

I hope you've all had a very happy holiday, gentle Readers! Mine was quite satisfactory: sleeping in, seeing friends, drinking cider, and taking long, cold walks around Brooklyn (the last is much more pleasant than I'm making it sound).

However, I'm getting ready for a rather grand adventure. DK and I are flying to Barcelona, Spain, tonight. Neither of us has ever been to Europe before, and we'll be abroad for a week, through January 4th--which means I'll be celebrating the New Year on a totally different side of the globe.

We're staying in Ciutat Vella, Barri Gòtic (the Old City, Gothic Quarter), but I imagine we'll ramble around as much of the city as possible. I'm especially excited for the architecture:

(Passatge de la Pau, via càu; springtime in Barcelona, via marc do)

Seeing what the kids are wearing in Europe:

(A/W '09 runway looks from El Delgado Buil)

And, most crucially, eating everything in sight:

(Barcelona tapas bars, via omblod and Samuel Shelley)

Neither DK nor I speak a word of Catalan or Spanish, but we're cramming now and will continue to do so at the airport. And hopefully the locals will take pity on a pair of unworldly Americans.

I may be blogging from afar, lest I forget anything, but until then, adéu, friends!

PS: Please cross your fingers that, miraculously, the dollar will gain against the euro tomorrow. The exchange rate is already making me nervous!

Life imitating art

Cross-stitched grey kitty #1, which DK gallantly bought for me at a junk store, fall 2007.

Cross-stitched grey kitty #2, which I found at a flea market, summer 2008.


Honest-to-goodness grey kitty, who we adopted from an East Village shelter, spring 2009.


Pretty good resemblance, I'd say.


I'm tempted to haul out my embroidery hoops and floss and try to make a real Oliver portrait... but then again, I'm kind of already walking the wire between "doting kitty mama" and "crazy cat lady."

Le weekend

Friday:

Finish my little trinkets for some sweet friends in the nick of time: vintage gumball rings from Erica Weiner strung onto layered antique brass chain. Stay up drinking red wine and mulled cider and gossiping and laughing into the wee hours.


Saturday:

Make soup dumplings from semi-scratch, slaving over the aspic, but buying the wrappers readymade. Boil reduce chill peel chop slice mince measure mix spoon and fold, until starving. Jam too many dumplings at once into the steamer, so as they cook, they expand and smoosh into one another. O well--they're freaking delicious.


Sunday:

Wake up early and head out with DK into the snow, glorious snow--my favorite kind of precipitation--in leaky wellies. Run down to the hardware store as fast as the icy sidewalks will allow and buy two sleds; run back up to the park and fly down (and trudge back up) the hills over and over again, for four hours. Head back home with apple cheeks, a frozen derriere, and an already-battered sled.


Now:

Pommeau de Normandie, The Return of the King, and dumplings redux.

I'm a lucky girl, and I should never forget it.

Militaria hysteria

This is a story about obsession, collection, and... no, not redemption, just more obsessing and collecting.

Last summer, DK and I were at the Hell's Kitchen flea market. Ostensibly, we were just there to browse, but I was already fondling old cast-iron cookware, and he was sighing over some delightfully shabby banjos. And then I spied something beneath a table, something woolen and faded, with script writing: a 1944/WWII United States Army medical blanket, vanilla with maroon stripes.

I'm already a military-surplus nut as it is, so surprise, surprise, I fell absurdly, wildly, utterly in love with it... but somehow left without it. It might have had something to do with the 90° weather, which, as you might imagine, isn't really conducive to buying heavy wool blankets.

But late one night this past fall, I logged onto eBay. One month and a flurry of bids later, I owned not one, but (and here's the obsessive collection part) five old military medical blankets: two Amy, two Navy, and one plain.


One of them even has an old nametag (the nurse, perhaps?) sewed into a corner:


We use them everyday--there's nothing like multiple layers of wool to keep you warm at night. Even when it's freezing out and the thermostat is turned way down, they're so cozy. I love them. They make me very, very happy. And I kinda sorta maybe really want more old military woolen goods.

Like, say, a vintage army nurse's cape. I kept seeing them when I was researching the blankets, and then they made my heart beat faster, and when I saw one at Goodwill, well, you know how this story ends.


Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure if it's military or civilian, but for the sake of this theme, just go along with me, okay?

The best part is the hand-embroidered name inside the collar, which makes me want to pick up my embroidery hoops and stitch my fingers bloody. A close second: the label, which reads, "Altro Work Shops, New York, NY." That's right, it's locally made!


Altro Work Shops was actually a sanatorium--well, "a rehabilitation and training center"--in the Bronx for people with tuberculosis and the mentally ill. It opened in 1915, and patients made garments for the military during the wars and otherwise turned out a lot of uniforms for hospitals and the like (hence my uncertainty about this cape's exact original purpose). I do love clothing with a story, even if it's a little sad, like this one.

Anyway, I don't expect this current obsession to wane any time soon. But maybe in the spring I'll finally leave military wools behind. Military canvas, though, that'd be something new...

The Hunt: Stocking Stuffers

Once again, I'm behind on all my Christmas errands. I haven't bought one gift, or written a single card. My people are, sadly, used to my terrible manners and general holiday flusteredness. I'm sorry, friends. I hope you enjoy your "Merry 2010!" gifts (which I will probably finally get to you in March).

But let's pretend I have it together, or at least enough to manage some stocking stuffers like these:

(1) Ox-horn comb, $7.50-$9.50. (2) Ceramic pie birds, $9.99. (3) Rose chafer beetle in lucite, $11.00. (4) Grape-print tote bag, $12.00. (5) Airplaner of fancy liquor. (6) Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: Poems About Food and Drink, $11.48. (7) Pill coasters, $3.95.

PS: If you're reading this in a feed, my blog has a new look, so please come see! For some reason, my fonts settings are refusing to obey me, but o well, small steps, small steps.

Winter warmers

We've had such uneven weather in New York, but the mercury seems to have dropped for good now--which means big changes in our liquor cabinet. Yes, I'm lushy enough that my drinking is seasonal: it's a little sad saying goodbye to rosé, pisco, Lillet Blanc, and St. Germain, but hello, rum, whiskey, port, and apple brandy!

These are my winter essentials, as needful and necessary as a heavy coat and mittens:

Clockwise, from noon:
(1) rum, for rummy apple cider and coquitos
(2) Tuthilltown Spirits Baby Bourbon, $40, for Old Fashioneds and drinking neat
(3) Plymouth Gin, $24, as the alcoholic base for innumerable punches
(4) peppermint schnapps, to dress up hot chocolate
(5) Christian Drouin Coeur de Lion Calvados, $25, for Normandies and brandied apple cider
(6) port, for after dinner and fortifying mulled wines
(7) prosecco, to top off punches
(8) Young's Double Chocolate Stout, $5, for chocolate-stout ice-cream floats

There's also lots of red wine in my winter diet, but that's a given. I also drink straight apple cider by the gallon, ridiculously oversweetened brown rice genmaicha tea, and spicy hot chocolate whenever I can get it.

How do you keep warm in this weather, duckies?

The myco files

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.
--Sylvia Plath, "Mushrooms"

As obsessed with mushrooms as I am--and with as many old field guides as I have--I've never gone hunting for mushrooms outside of the supermarket. My forager parents, who spent whole days going after wild chestnuts and greens and mulberries, were always wary of misidentifying some wild shroom and having it violently disagree with them.

But I think my appetite is finally overtaking all other sensibilities: I'm finally signing DK and myself up for membership with the New York Mycological Society, which leads mushroom walks and hunts with ardent and experienced mycologists. Now, we just have to wait until spring and the next morel season...

In my shoes

I've been having the craziest luck with shoes lately. Everywhere I look, I've been finding the loveliest vintage heels in (approximately) my size. Most of my South Carolina finds were in shoe-form, although I did pick up a few other things as well: a ceramic glove mold, a funny little headband with velvet stars, a pair of aprons...


I've been trying to swear off synthetics for a while, but the pattern and sleeves on this polyester dress somehow reminded me of Lyell (or, fine, Fletcher by Lyell). The vintage fur collar is a separate find, and I'm toying with the idea of sewing it into a cape.


A carpet bag for my granny moods, a pile o' buttons for my sewing box, and a nautical scarf for, um, the next regatta?


And four pairs of shoes! I'm especially excited about the patent-leather pair with three straps each--a little '60s, a little '20s, and wholly cute. Although those Ferragamo t-straps aren't too shabby, either.


My winning streak continued with five more pairs of shoes at a random estate sale, all mind-bogglingly my size.


I think my favorite pair is the brown suede with the tiny little cutouts. Hello, sweetness!


But the folded, goldtone-tipped bows make these square-toed pumps a close second.


Unfortunately, I think I've reached critical mass for shoes. No more for now, before DK rebels.