mystic domestica

2012 To dos

2012-01-26T01:40:00.000-05:00

Eat breakfast
Stick to red wine & whiskey (neat)
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without
Read a new book each week
Upholster our bed
Get another tattoo
Go to museums more often
Listen to DK's music recommendations
Homebrew
Go camping at Hammonasset
Start a fire without matches
Make a quilt
Go mushroom hunting
Learn how to do something new
Learn to relax
Take more photos with film
Send thank you cards
Grow a plant from seed
Organize a clothing swap
Eat slowly
Floss daily
Give the benefit of the doubt
Say yes more often
Say no more often
Open an Etsy store
Buy local
Take my time
More tea, less coffee
Stretch
Brush the cats
Get eight hours of sleep
Attend a food swap
Say hello to my neighbors
More long walks
Today, not tomorrow
Count to 10
Dress up
???
!!!
Be grateful
Be kind
Seriously, just be grateful and be kind

Yes, it took me the last three weeks to think this up.

The Hunt: Bonne année

2011-12-31T21:03:00.002-05:00

I'm kind of in disbelief about it almost being 2012. I feel like I just got used to writing "2011" on rent checks, too. What's the deal, inexorable forward march of time?

DK and I have a date for midnight at the Red Hook piers. He has a little flask of Kings County moonshine. I gotta lotta red lipstick; not bad, but probably not as good as this:

(1) Eugenia Kim knit fox stole, $95;
(2) American Apparel black-bone chiffon button-up, $58;
(3) ASOS gold sequin mini skirt, $68.18.

Despite being flummoxed about where 2011 went, I have a really good feeling about 2012. Good things are going to happen, trust me! (As long as the world doesn't plunge into nothingness, ahem.)

Smokey salmon

2011-12-07T11:40:00.003-05:00

So, I made smoked salmon the other day. In Brooklyn, in my apartment, on my stovetop. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Okay, you do need some special equipment, and it's a hot smoke rather than a cold, but it came out really, really well. We've been eating an ungodly amount of smoked salmon with cream cheese on bagels.

That is all.

Papercuts

2011-12-06T19:19:00.002-05:00

Just after we moved into our new place two months ago, I started buying rolls of vintage wallpaper. Ostensibly, I had vague plans for, you know, wallpapering something. But it's reaaaaally hard to find enough of one print for a whole room. So what I've been doing is buying one-off rolls. Which are pretty useless. And usually crumbling. And torn.

Whatever. No regrets!

The last one is my favorite, so, somewhat perversely, I decided it should go under the knife first. I cut off some strips to border my homemade cat scratcher, which maybe was a horrible waste of amazing wallpaper? I'm not sure.

I wanted to get an action shot of Milkshake scratching at it, but all she does is sit on it and purr. Silly kitty.

Babble

2011-11-26T15:08:00.004-05:00

I have too many things to be grateful for, always, to attempt a real list, but this is what comes to mind today: love, good dish towels, steady hands, leftover turkey, the lightness of being. Yes, this list is for real.

There are crazy masses of herbs growing semi-wild by my apartment. I picked two big pocketfuls of catnip and sage yesterday. Is it gross foraging in Brooklyn? DK is pretty sure that I'm going to get lead poisoning, I'm pretty sure I'll be okay, but feel free to place bets.

Picked up a cookbook at an estate sale this morning. I'm a sucker for spiral-bound community cookbooks. Throw in some nice line drawings, and I'm really a goner.

If this pie was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, then damn it, it's good enough for me.

DK found me these numbered brass thumbtacks. I really love them. And him, too. That man is terrific.

He does, however, have a really weird tic about photos and portraits of strangers. As in, he can't deal with them hanging in our apartment because he thinks it's "creepy." I guess it would be one thing if I had my own family pictures to put up, but all of my folks think cameras are the devil's plaything. I'm rambling. What I'm trying to say is, I bought this photo of a stranger on a boat, which would normally cause household tension. Luckily, it's mostly a psychedelic swirl of water damage, so DK is okay with it.

I'm not sure where to put it. We still haven't gotten around to hanging up any art (or, you know, unpacking), so it's just hanging out by the radiator now.

We're heading out for a walk now. I will try to resist picking more sage, but that's a losing battle. Other evening plans: Bundt cake! Shelving! Bad sci-fi!

Wilder & wilder

2011-11-19T20:55:00.004-05:00

A copy of Wilder Quarterly fell into my lap recently. Or, fine, I stole it from our office pile of periodicals (yes, yes, I know, I'm really into thieving lately). It's a magazine about growing, cooking, eating--all my favorite things. I first heard about it on Design*Sponge, of course, but I was unprepared for how much I would like it. It's beautifully laid out, with glorious full-bleed photographs, but the writing is clean and mostly unfussy.

There was a recipe for pear syrup, and as it just so happens, I have a terrifying number of pears in my fridge, from a rather exuberant fruit CSA share. So I got to chopping and cooking and straining and milling and restraining and sugaring and bottling.

Which makes it all sound so much more complicated than it was. My syrup turned out a little muddier than the magazine's, which looks downright lemony. Next time, I might try juicing the pears and then mixing in simple syrup, rather than cooking everything together. But I can't complain about the taste. Or really anything.

(Rose) Hip, hip, hooray

2011-11-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while.

What have I been up to? Nothing much. We moved to a new apartment. I quit my job. I've been stealing rose hips, and I'm not sorry. A few weeks ago, I learned how to solder; I'm really terrible at it, but I love telling people that I know how because it sounds so delightfully competent.

Let's rewind to the rose hips.

There are a bewildering number of rose bushes in a park by our new apartment, and all those bushes are now crammed with rose hips, and, last week, four pounds of those rose hips were crammed into my tote bag. I don't know. Blame Euell Gibbons.

You can make rose hip jelly, rose hip jam, rose hip tea, and rose hip syrup, which are all lovely things. Because I am who I am, I milled and crushed my hips and steeped them in vodka.

And now, the waiting game. In a few weeks, I'll strain everything and see what's what. Hopefully, something delicious and boozy.

That's basically it for me. I'm taking things as slow and steady as I can keep them. Small steps, small victories.

Through a lantern dimly

2011-08-09T08:48:00.003-04:00

This is just to say that 1) we went camping, 2) DK fixed the lantern, and 3) hijinx ensued.

By "hijinx," I mean "stargazing" and "reading Harry Potter."

We found a $1 disposable camera at a Goodwill that was conveniently next door to our first gas stop, so I pit it head-to-head with my digital. Is it bad that I kind of prefer the expired plastic Kodak?

Mischief

2011-08-02T07:55:00.003-04:00

Clearly, Milkshake is up to something. Who would trust that face?

Paper menagerie

2011-07-20T22:02:00.005-04:00

After a long hiatus from the junking circuit, I've recently rummaged through not one, but two pretty spectacular estate sales. I have a whole box of goodies to clean and share with you, but I thought I'd scan these animal cards straight away:

I want to say that the fox is my favorite, but who am I kidding, that anteater takes first prize. Honorable mention to the otter, who looks quite chuffed about it.

Light my fire

2011-07-18T21:13:00.003-04:00

DK and I had so much fun camping last year, we vowed to head out as many times as we could this summer, but mea culpa, it's mid-July already, and the closest we've come to roasting s'mores over an open flame is... um, I don't know. Does buying s'more Pop-Tarts out of a vending machine and microwaving them count? No? Well, then.

We're prying ourselves away from work and the cats for four sure-to-be blissful days starting this Friday. Last year, we rented and borrowed everything; this year, we are at the proud owners of at least our own tent (formerly DK's brother's) and some still-to-arrive sleeping bags. And also, a '60s Coleman two-mantle lantern:

Which... doesn't work because of a busted gasket. Despite Oliver's close inspection and ministrations.

Listen, you win some, you lose some.

Luckily, we'll be able to fix everything up, with a little help from the handy-dandy Coleman's manual that the company has thoughtfully made available online, in all its originally illustrated glory:

Blast from the past

2011-07-15T21:56:00.000-04:00

I wish that I could say that I spent the last few months gallivanting around somewhere fun, but alas, I've been a dull girl.

I did have a spectacularly bright moment in my day today, when I stumbled across these photos from the Historic House Trust of New York City's winter 2010 newsletter. If you aren't overly familiar with historic preservation nonprofits in New York (and why aren't you?!), the Historic House Trust helps run many of the city's "houses of architectural and cultural significance," such as Gracie Mansion, the Merchant's House Museum, and the Queens County Farm Museum.

In addition to their regular business of restoration and education and all that good jazz, the Historic House Trust puts out one of the most interesting newsletters out there. Interested in the thin line between collecting and hoarding? Alice Austen's "Boston marriage"? Trust the Trust.

In any case, they produced an utterly brilliant photoshoot the winter before last, featuring lovely ladies dressed in period duds posing in historic homes, alongside matching architectural/design features:

Don't these just slay you? I mean, these shots are worthy of the glossiest of glossies, but it's somehow so much more glorious that a band of preservationists concocted this idea. Makes me want to don my '40s Sunday best and bust into Admiral's Row... although that may not be what those Historic Homies had in mind.

From Madrid

2011-04-25T21:36:00.003-04:00

One day I will get my travel photos all sorted and posted.

That will probably be the same day that I get my boots resoled, frame those last two posters, find the right backing for my loose drawer knob, strip our office desk, and patch my quilts... i.e., never.

In the meantime, this was the view from our hotel room in Madrid:

Yeah, seriously.

To be fair, the room was so tiny, we could barely fit our carry-on luggage into it, I banged my elbow every single time I showered, and--best of all--their "double bed" was actually two twin beds pushed together. But that was the view. Looking back, it was almost worth it.

Rise and shine

2011-04-18T20:59:00.005-04:00

I have what I'm calling a new morning routine, which deceptively implies that there was an old one. There wasn't, unless you count hitting snooze six times, dry shampooing because a shower would cost me too much time, and frantically rummaging for something I haven't already worn that week.

The snoozing is out. Instead, I wake up with DK, who has to be at work a full hour before me. I make a breakfast: two fried eggs with two slices of bacon when I'm ravenous (most days), one poached egg in broth or a piece of toast heaped with ricotta otherwise. I watch the local news--NY1, because I not-so-secretly love Pat Kiernan--and drink a full cup of coffee.

Today, I had enough time left over to pick up my camera, an act that hasn't been performed on a weekday since Lord knows when.

Of course, there was really nothing to take a photo of, except the cats having a face-off:

And a vintage chart that DK and I bought in Madrid a few months ago:

Sorry, I meant a super-gross vintage chart, etc., etc. Because I still want us to be friends, I thoughtfully cropped the, um, lower portion out of the picture.

But truth to be told, DK and I both love it in all its horrifying 2D specificity, and we paid a pretty astonishing amount of money to have it mounted and framed. We still have no idea where we can hang it without repulsing everyone who visits...

Next time, I promise, more kitties and less anatomy.

Oddfella

2011-04-16T11:05:00.004-04:00

Disregard the funerary flag, I'm alive and well! Or, truth be told, I'm alive and extremely congested. But I recently discovered "Fraternal Organizations" under eBay's Collectibles category, and, as you can guess, my bidding finger has been very, very itchy, especially around Oddfellows memorabilia (or, as DK calls it, "creepy old man rubbish").

Springing

2011-03-07T08:48:00.001-05:00

In the past week, everyone was been heaving a sigh of relief that February was finally over with, and hip hip hooray for March. Everyone. I've talked about it with my boss and my co-workers, my landlord and landlady, every friend in New York, the guy at my deli, my milk guy, my egg guys, my root vegetable lady, the lady who cuts my bacon (that sounds like a euphemism for something, doesn't it?), and, o, yes, even the guy who drives around Brooklyn in an awesome green truck and sharpens your knives for you while you sit in the passenger seat.

I can't help but being fond of February because I happened to have been born at the very end of it. However, this year, I celebrated my birthday by traveling nonstop for 18 hours, and then being horribly, horribly jetlagged--lucky, lucky me. So I, too, was glad to bid the month farewell and good riddance.

Marrakech, Morocco

2011-03-05T13:42:00.005-05:00

I'm still struggling to find the right words to describe Marrakech. It's, by far, the most foreign place DK and I have visited, both in the fun, exotic, the-world-is-so-big sense and in the otherworldly, where-am-I-and-how-did-I-get here sense.

We both miss it. Five days was pitifully short. Sigh. Next time.

And voila, my visual proof:

I somehow made it out of Morocco only buying two pairs of embroidered slippers, a tagine, some hand-blown drinking glasses, some fancy soap, a bag of dried hibiscus, a little bottle of argan oil, three geodes, and my glorious sequined wedding throw.

...Okay, I know that sounds like a lot, but seriously, that's not even one single airline carry-on's worth of stuff. I get a little mournful when I think about all the blankets and rugs and lanterns and ceramics and candles and spices I left behind.

Again: Sigh. Next time.

My sweet anti-Valentine

2011-02-13T19:49:00.011-05:00

Generally, I am a fan of love, and I am certainly, as you know, a starry-eyed fool for my man. But while part of me continues to get excited about goopy PDA and all the other trappings of romantic entanglement (see my last post), I also can't resist being just a little perverse about Valentine's Day.

Last night, DK and I jiggered together all his turntable and mixer with my laptop to bring you this song, off of one of his favorite records, The Best of Peggy Seeger:

Peggy Seeger - I'll Not Marry At All (click to play and download via Box.net)

Peggy sings it as "I'll Not Marry At All," but it's an old folk song with many slight variations that's also known as "The Old Maid." Her liner notes say that her version comes from Ballads and Songs of Missouri, which we are hot on the trail of, but haven't found yet.

Here are the lyrics as I hear them:

I'll not marry a man that's rich.
He'll get drunk and fall in a ditch.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man that's poor.
He'd have me begging from door to door.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man that's thin.
He ain't nothing but bones and skin.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man that's fat.
He'll just sit and kick at the cat.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man that's old.
His face gets wrinkled; his love gets cold.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man that's young.
His flattering ways, his blathering tongue.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

I'll not marry a man at all.
I'll stay at home and favor them all.
And I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all, at all,
I'll not marry at all.

My love of this song largely hinges on the word "favor" in the last verse, which is also one of the more crackly bits of this recording, so I really hope I've heard it right. While I think the rest of the song is delightful (and beautifully played and sung), the slyness of "favor" just kills it for me.

Now, to go back to the beginning and completely upset the theme of this post, I owe a shout out to my Valentine for playing me this song, helping me step-by-step to digitize it, and coaxing me to post it. Thank you!

Generate your own candy hearts here!

Tokens of affection

2011-02-13T13:13:00.008-05:00

I know it's a little too late to be Valentine's Day shopping online, but I couldn't resist sharing these Victorian love tokens from my eBay watch list. Love tokens comprise a pretty wide and delightful field of materials and intentions, but the ones I'm most smitten with are lovers' pieces made from coins of the day.

Back in the day, if you were crushing on some lucky lad or lass, you could have someone file down one face of, say, a shilling or a silver dime, then hand-engrave you or your loved one's initials or name, embellished with all kinds of lovely curlicues and arabesques. If you were feeling extra fancy, you could have the reverse smoothed and engraved as well.

You can click on any of the images below to go to their original listings, which are all active as of press time this Sunday afternoon:

I'll be honest... I'm really having a hard time resisting
this Mieze (German for "kitty") charm. I have itchy, itchy bidding fingers.

Men wore their tokens on watch fobs, as cuff links, as lapel pins, etc.; women could have theirs fashioned as necklaces, pins, and bracelets, or just keep a token in their purses as a small, shiny reminder that someone, somewhere, was sighing over them.

I solemnly swear that I have no designs on any of these, so if they match your name or that of your sweetie's, they are, at least, safe from me. But I'd still say bid fast if you want 'em!

Approaching optimism

2011-02-11T11:45:00.005-05:00

I will not talk about how I ruined my fancy manicure in 48 hours by chewing my nails to within a millimeter of their lives.

I will also not talk about how I killed DK's computer keyboard for the third time last night because I can't be trusted around homemade limoncello.

And I will not talk about how the skin of my lips are actually, for-real literally, chapping themselves off because of the wind and cold in New York, and how no amount of balm, salve, or tears can save them.

But:

Last week, I bought myself a pair of cheapo, hot pink ballet flats. They're destined to fall apart in a few months, and they are shockingly girly for me, but I'm not going to lie: I now sometimes pirouette around the apartment when I wear them, and it makes me giggle.

And two nights ago, I had a date with a really smart, wildly funny, and straight-up beautiful girl. And despite dominating the conversation with my torrential self-pity, I went home with a minor revelation: that, in fact, I can't be such a giant loser if all my girlfriends are so amazing.

I've also been buying up a storm of really kitschy jewelry on eBay, and my first package came yesterday. I know I'm kind of late on the whole "native" bandwagon, but I'm still going to wear my brassy little arrowhead quite happily.

And lastly, this is where Milkshake likes to spend all her mornings: in my underwear drawer (which, in winter, is really my leggings drawer). Please ignore the state of my dresser top and concentrate on the devious little look on her face because, come on, it's freaking funny. I'm so used to coming home and seeing all my unmentionables scattered on the floor.

Sometimes she takes naps in my stand-up wardrobes, where I keep all my vintage dresses. After a while, she takes on the smell of them. Other vintage wearers know exactly what I mean: a little musty, with traces of ancient perfume, cedar, and cardboard boxes. If I could bottle l'eau de kitty fur and vintage dresses, I would. And promptly make bajillions from discerning scenthounds the world over.

Snow, slush & sniffles

2010-12-30T21:14:00.004-05:00

DK and I spent Christmas in bed. Christmas Eve, too. Ditto the day after.

It almost sounds luxurious now, but actually, we were bedridden because after weeks of sprinting towards a sorely needed winter break, we both got really, really sick. We subsisted off of homemade egg-drop soup for a few days because it was the only thing I had the energy to make (meanwhile, the crazy-expensive ingredients of what was supposed to be our Christmas dinner wilted in the fridge); we watched a lot of soothingly narrated nature documentaries (o, Sir David Attenborough, your voice was such a salve!); we lolled and lounged and whined.

I, at least, would have been able to get better a whole lot faster if we could have somehow resisted running outside after the big blizzard that hit New York. My fevered mind and childish soul convinced me that three hours of subfreezing sledding = a good idea. Turns out... not so much.

So, I've spent most of my holiday week off under the covers with Netflix Instant View, although I did perk up pretty dramatically today. And I've even found a way to enjoy all the snow inside: snow slushies! Specifically, lemon-rosemary snow slushies:

It's just simple syrup infused with lemon peel and rosemary, dribbled over fresh snow--and I know that the idea of eating New York City snow isn't exactly palatable to everyone, but, well, I've been doing it for years, and everyone's fine with me! Except for the plague I'm recovering from, I mean.

I hope you're all having a wonderful--and healthy!--holiday. It's time for me to crawl back into bed now. There are some PBS documentaries that I need to attend to before I fall asleep at 9:30.

Start, stall

2010-12-20T19:21:00.008-05:00

I swear, I have 10 posts sitting in my queue, just waiting to be finished... but lately, I've had a really hard time finishing anything I start. (By "lately," I, of course, actually mean, "always." Story of my life.)

An illustrative example: yesterday, I left the apartment determined to find some nice string lighting. I knew exactly where I was going (Pearl River Mart) and exactly what I wanted (either this, or this). We got back home five hours later after going to a grocery, a butcher shop, three furniture stores, a restaurant, a bookstore, and an estate sale.

We now have a large jar of sesame oil, some unneeded Sriracha, some very fancy cuts of meat (I am all about homemade duck confit now), some new-to-us vinyl LPs (to swell DK's collection of roughly 10,000), and some other little sundries--but no string lighting.

However, I now have an adorable framed picture of some pencil-and-watercolor horses, in the exact style I used to render them as a child (seriously--I only drew horses with one one foreleg crossed over the other):

And (another) copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass:

In my defense, I've been making due with a terrible paperback version for the past 12 years, and I think this one set me back all of 50 cents.

I'm beginning to feel guilty again, though, because this is such a silly post. True, string lighting would have made just as silly a subject, but at least the darn thing would have been topical.

In conclusion, look out for my forthcoming stocking stuffer suggestions! Going by my track record, they should hit this blog in, um, March.

Winter warmers, take two

2010-11-24T20:13:00.003-05:00

I meant to do a summer riff on my original winter warmers post, but, yikes, the year just zipped by, didn't it? So until spring/summer 2011, a cold-weather redux must do:

Clockwise, from noon:
(1) nigori [unfiltered] sake, to drink warm or cold;
(2) crème de cassis, for a vermouth cassis
(a drink beloved by master journalist/food writer A. J. Liebling);
(3) apple eau de vie, on the rocks or replacing applejack in a Jack Rose;
(4) rye whiskey, on the racks, in a whiskey smash, or a Sazerac;
(5) Chambord [raspberry liqueur], to fancy up hot chocolate, or to splash in nigori (trust me);
(6) Cachaca, especially for punch mixes;
(7) Lambrusco, because spumante shouldn't be spring/summer-specific; and
(8) Basque cider, to drink straight and often.

Hopefully some of this might still be useful, in advance of all our collective Turkey Day indulgences! Personally, I'm looking forward to a postprandial Manhattan or two, plus some oddball digestifs. (I won't lie--as soon as I read this Tasting Table email, I made DK run out to the Dean & Deluca by his office to buy up three three-shot packages. We need all the help we can get.)

We're spending a lusciously long weekend with DK's family in Virginia, although we're heading down tomorrow at a truly appalling hour--3am! Nonetheless, I anticipate a full list of gratitudes, Ginny Branch Stelling-style, posted here by ~~the evening's end~~ ~~the weekend~~ ~~the end of November?~~ I'm awful and ungrateful, I know. Until then!

Fraternal twins

2010-11-21T16:05:00.004-05:00

Let me tell you a story about two fraternal sisters who were born in the late '50s? early '60s? and were separated soon thereafter. One was bright and flowery and ended up holding court at Maine antique mall, where a rather greedy out-of-towner took a shine to her and brought her down to New York.

The other sister was dusky and more somber and found herself at an East Village boutique. As luck would have it, the same greedy gal--traipsing about her own city now--saw her and immediately got all swoony for her familiar, yet new features.

Reunited, and it feels so good.

Just to be clear, I am talking about two purses pictured above, and not two poor 50-something ladies who I kidnapped.

Anyone out there among you, dear Readers, who can tell me more about this style of bag? My assessment of age is hardly professional, and I haven't had much luck in trying to find a match online. Neither purse has a tag, and it's very possible that the fabric bodies are homemade, but surely the handles are mass-made--maybe they were popular kit handles back in the day?

Thoughts, tips, leads? I wouldn't mind having a set of fraternal ~~triplets, or~~ quadruplets...

Update: Mystery solved in seven hours flat, thanks to Brianne Caitlin! They're knitting bags, which makes perfect sense and also makes me want to learn how to get my knit on. I never learned, which, I know, given my obsession with all things domestic, is shocking.

One more shocking/sheepish revelation to follow: I already have a third knitting bag. Seriously.

Although I had noted the, um, well, friggin' obvious similarities when I bought it, because the handles and body weren't eerily alike, well, I don't know what I thought. But there you have it.

But now I'm well on my way for a fourth bag (greedy greedy greedy!), and thanks to Brianne Caitlin, I know the exact eBay/Etsy search term to use. Bless you, you clever girl (and your grandma too!).

Final fantasy

2010-11-08T21:24:00.003-05:00

Readers, my real life has become depressingly grown-up and dull--but luckily, I have a robust fantasy life (and some dear creature comforts in my boy, my kitties, and my ever-growing quilt collection).

So even as I'm waking up late, skipping breakfast, commuting, work work working, eating lunch at my desk, peering at budgets, editing, commuting again, collapsing on the sofa, and rinsing lathering repeating, I'm also secretly fomenting some exotic daydreams.

My dream du jour begins with an ooh-la-la vintage Louis Vuitton trunk:

Then, a one-way plane ticket to Mumbai--first class, natch:

Then, a train ticket down south to Alappuzha (marked on my old-timey British map as "Aulapolay"):

And finally, an indefinite stay on a rice barge-turned-floating paradise:

Also, I suppose, I'd unpack my luggage: a silk kimono, a bathing suit, and a case of Gauloises.

(I'm joking about the smokes--I go through maybe three cigarettes a year, just to make sure I still don't enjoy it.)

Alas, I won't be waking up on the backwaters of Kerala tomorrow and swilling down a measure of palm toddy for breakfast. Nor am I really in any sort of shape to be prancing about in nothing but a kimono and a bikini.

But this is, after all, my fantasy life, and I should live it up fantastically.

From top, left to right:
(1) Vintage Louis Vuitton trunk, price upon request;
(2) Vintage United Airline ticket packaging via genesis duncan;
(3) Mumbai train ticket via MF & G;
(4) Crop of 1831 map of India I and Ceylon by the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, via the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection;
(5-7) Discovery Boat in Alapuzzha, $745/night;
(8) Agent Provocateur Kiki silk kimono, $900;
(9) Bonnie bikini top and bottom in beach leopard sunkist, $295.

The Hunt: The Gilded Bat

2010-10-21T22:12:00.002-04:00

If I were 1) taller, 2) leggier, and 3) paler, there would be absolutely no contest for my Halloween costume: I'd be going as Mirella Splatova (née Maudie Splaytoe), aka Edward Gorey's tragic ballerina, the Gilded Bat.

(1) Vampire cape, $11.04; (2) Swim cap, $3.99; (3) Brulee Boudoir bodysuit, $200;
(4) Forever 21 drop earrings, $3.80; (5) Sephora gold glitter shimmer pot, $5;
(6) Sephora by OPI Only Gold For Me nailpolish, $9; (7) American Apparel black/gold sparkle pantyhose, $17.

But alas, because I'm rather 1) short, 2) stubby, and 3) tawny, I'm going to have to think of something else.

Tyger! Tyger!

2010-10-18T21:50:00.007-04:00

I'm more than a little embarrassed to come slinking back into blogland after such a long silence with nothing more than a "gosh, how time flies," but the feeble truth is--it does. I've been keeping busy (and stressed out) (and incrementally fattened) (too much lunch take-out) by my still-feels-new job, with nary but an eBay bid here and there to keep me sane.

Speaking of which, let's just dive right into my last adventure in online bidding, shall we?

Exhibit A: a Matt Leines silkscreen I picked up at Brooklyn's Desert Island two years ago; also, one of my favorite bits of printed matter.

Exhibit B: a holy-moly uncanny/awesome papier-mâché tiger mask I won on eBay a few weeks ago; also, my current reigning favorite possession.

Pure aesthetic serendipity, right?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to display them together, but I honestly think I need a third tiger item to complete the visual theme. I've been pining after a Himalayan woven tiger rug (see here, here, or here) for ages, but I haven't quite saved enough pennies...

Quilty Sundays

2010-09-19T12:20:00.000-04:00

I've spent way, way, way too much time hunched over my bathtub in the last two weeks, breathing in OxiClean and vinegar fumes. It's rather horrifying what kinds of colors and smells will seep out of your lovely, but bedraggled vintage textiles.

But after much soaking and scrubbing and spot cleaning (and some rending of hair), they're finally Milkshake-tested, anxious-kitty-mama-approved.

Office goods

2010-09-06T12:43:00.005-04:00

Is there anything more awesome than vintage office supplies? I respectfully tender the opinion of hell no.

Not only is the packaging amazing, of course, but the whole vocabulary of old-timey advertising is so charming. For instance, doesn't "indelible" sound so much more delightful than "permanent"? I'd use indelible ink over permanent marker any day.

Or the use of the word "outfit" to denote "a set of tools or equipment especially for the practice of a trade," rather than, you know, a dressy getup. A stencil outfit is so much cooler than a stencil kit, am I right or am I right?

Okay, back to the packaging: Carter's Black and White Indelible Stencil Outfit comes in a metal case, which you screw off to reveal two tiny ink pots and their respective brushes, stuck upright in two pieces of cork.

Maybe I'm just a giant weirdo (ha, you think?), but I'm a little swoony over that whole arrangement. Everything is so thoughtfully arranged, and everything fits together perfectly.

Cue 1) standard grumbling over crappy modern packaging and generic design, 2) imagined nostalgia for ye olde days long before my birth, and 3) affirmation of junking as a noble pursuit.

Scenes from Connecticut

2010-09-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

Have I publicly admitted that I am, in fact, from Connecticut? I grew up on the shoreline, east of New Haven and west of New London. Despite eight years of solid New York residency, I've retained many New England traits: an obsession with colonial saltbox homes, an ordinate fondness for L.L. Bean-monogrammed backpacks, and a persistent snobbery regarding bisque (the soup, not the porcelain).

In any case, last weekend, I dragged DK on a very last-minute camping trip to the Constitution State. Just a few hours from Brooklyn and 10 miles from where I grew up, we made our first substantive stop for some dockside eats. You know how I do:

We spent Saturday inland, amid the pleasures of one of my childhood favorite places, Devil's Hopyard State Park--so named for purported hoofprints of fiendish origin ground into the rock there (actually just geological potholes, but "Erosion Hopyard State Park" doesn't quite have the same ring).

Did you know that approximately one bajillion more stars are visible outside of the city?

Devil's Hopyard has a beautiful series of stepped waterfalls by the main entrance. DK and I were up by 6am on Sunday to enjoy it all by ourselves, and we couldn't resist dunking our heads through one of the smaller falls. It was better than any cup of coffee ever.

After we packed up, we stopped at a wildlife preserve for a morning nature walk and stumbled across the stone on the right, below, off trail. I'm not sure if it's actually a gravestone, but I can't imagine a more lovely place to be buried than this hushed little wilderness. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Latin translates to "as long as I live and beyond.")

I'm happy to believe that a lobster a day keeps the doctor away. Ditto fried clam strips and onion rings.

We camped out at the inimitable Hammonasset Beach State Park on Sunday. I can't really even start on Hammonasset, which is where I tried and failed to learn how to drive, where I snuck into after-hours with my friends, where I got drunk after prom... you get the idea, Hammonasset looms large in the mythology of my teenage self.

For now, the rather generic beach shot below must suffice.

After that, I spent most of the daylight hours in the ocean, where it's inadvisable to tote a camera. And DK and I more or less fell asleep by sunset because we were just too tuckered out by all that sand, surf, and seafood.

Good times, which we hope to repeat at least once more before fall proper.

Barbershop solo

2010-08-22T15:55:00.004-04:00

Not quite hot of the presses, but rather freshly wrung from the sink, I present to you Another Beautiful, Utilitarian, but Nonetheless Useless to Me Item I Compulsively Bought on eBay--or, abbreviated, ABUBNUTMIICBOE. (Do I sense a recurring m. domestica blog topic, à la The Hunt? I think so.)

Ta da: an old handmade haircutting vest. You know, like what they put on you at salons/barbershops to make sure errant locks of hair don't fall down the back of your shirt--but infinitely lovelier.

As you might imagine, it was the monogram that got me. I assume the double Hs stand for "hair" and "hair," but who knows. Maybe one Helena Herskovitz or Harriet Huygens used to drape her customers with it before commencing the snipping and patient listening.

The irony, of course, is that DK and I comprise a pretty much no-cut household. DK gets trimmed once every couple of months, when his shoulder-length hair threatens to reach his shoulder blades, while I'll get rid of split ends at home, say, once a year? The last time I had a real haircut was in college, when I tried something pixie-ish. It was sufficiently traumatic for me to swear never to cut my hair ever again.

But should you ever need dainty little damasked haircutting vest, just let me know, and you can borrow mine, okay?

Fomenting ferment

2010-08-15T13:54:00.000-04:00

Did you know that the two most beautiful words in the English language are, no, not cellar door, but fridge pickles?

Of course you did--and that is why we're friends.

Did you also know that contrary to all probability, this is only the second post I've ever done about homemade pickles? (The first was way back in my first month of blogging... and wow, do I miss my old kitchen. So light-filled! So charmingly enameled! Let's keep my memory rosy by not dwelling on the effects of three male roommates and a cockroach infestation.) Considering how much time I spend thinking about pickles and how much I want to be eating them at every opportunity, those are some pretty staggering odds.

My "recipe" for fridge pickles is less a recipe than a list of suggested guidelines. To wit:

VEGGIE PREP
I almost always pickle my veggies raw. I've heard that you can improve the texture of some pickles vegetables, like carrots or green beans, by blanching them first... but I'm lazy and perfectly satisfied with my current level of pickle crisp. The snap of those cukes and okra, above, is audible at 10 paces.

Obviously, I wash and stem everything. I prefer cucumber spears, so I quarter those lengthwise; if I have small cucumbers, I pickle them whole, like supersize cornichons. I also leave okra whole, though I do make one small incision to better let the brine in.

BRINE
I generally eyeball how much liquid is needed to submerge whatever I'm pickling and use half distilled white vinegar, half water. If I'm short, I make up the rest with water. I add about two heavy teaspoons of kosher salt per pint of pickles.

FLAVORING
Fresh dill, garlic, and cracked black pepper is mandatory for cucumbers. I'm sorry, but there's just no other way. I like to have one garlic clove per whole cucumber/four spears, but I'm also an unrepentant aliumphile. I also like a good tablespoon of black pepper per pint and as much dill as I can stuff under, over, and around.

For okra, I also add whole cumin seeds and crushed red pepper, around 1 teaspoon each per pint batch.

THE WAITING GAME
I try to wait 48 hours before I begin to chomp down, but really, I start nibbling the next day.

STORAGE
I've heard that fridge pickles will keep in the fridge for up to three months, but that is utterly ridiculous: you will eat a pint of pickles, by yourself, in under three days. I don't think a single batch I've made has lasted longer than a week.

REUSING
I reuse my brine up to three times, adding judicious amounts of salt and spices to refresh it. After a while, though, it's best to start with a fresh mixture.

RELATED "RECIPES"
Besides the usual applications, there is really nothing like a Bloody Mary with a splash of pickle brine and a cucumber spear or whole okra pod. Chopped pickles and a few spoonfuls of brine in cold potato salad is another winner.

I'm about to start a batch of pickled radishes and another of pickled fennel. I'll let you know how they turn out!

Dreamy house

2010-08-13T20:22:00.004-04:00

Readers, you are the very bestest--thank you for your sweet comments and emails. Should we ever meet in the real world, remind me that I owe you a drink. Your choice, although I hope you go for a dirty martini because then I'll have an excuse to drink one too.

I'm just going to jump right back into things with some photos of my long weekend upstate with friends, which was only two weeks ago, but is already a hazy, wondrous memory of some fabled Summer Past.

A note on the house itself: well, what can I say? It was distractingly beautiful. It had ancient brick and weathered wood, gables and ivy, a bluestone patio and a crumbling stone walkway wending down to an algal pond... in short, a heart-clenching dream house.

I know, the water looks kind of funky here (more so because it had been an overcast, rainy day), but it was pretty terrific once you got in, and all of us did.

Because I am classiness incarnate, I insisted that we take all our dinners by candlelight and that we decant all the wine.

See these cat photos, placed ever so casually towards the end of this montage? Don't be fooled. 80% of my photos are of this cat, Savannah, who came with the house and was one of the best things about it. I had to make a conscious decision not to stuff her into my overnight bag and sneak her back to Brooklyn.

This game of Apples to Apples looks so innocent in the sunlight, but believe me, at night, with a couple of glasses of wine, it turns into a (hilarious) contest of (drunken) wills. Highly recommended.

Most importantly, DK got to fulfill his one goal of going fishing and catching (and then releasing) something. He hooked about half a dozen bass and bluegills from the pound and was just pleased as punch.

Of course, I snuck in some vintage shopping and came home with three frocks, including this gloriously patterned sundress:

It was very, very difficult to leave, and I'll admit, I've done more than my fair share of imaginary house hunting in the last two weeks. Which, ahem, I'll be sharing with you in the weeks ahead.

No, I haven't given up the dream yet.

BRB

2010-08-01T16:33:00.002-04:00

Dear Reader,

It's been a rough week at mystic domestica HQ. I'm neither ready nor able to talk about it--something happened in DK's family--but I will say that even under these circumstances, I so admire the K. clan, both immediate and extended. Relatives are swooping into New York from Virginia and Georgia and Maine, and even though I'm just an observer in these events, I'm comforted and touched.

I'll be back soon, and in better spirits, I promise. In the meantime, I will be cliché and transparent in suggesting that you tell the people you love how much you do.

Yours, as ever, Jay

Up(state), up(state) & away

2010-07-22T21:22:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow morning, I'm heading up to the Hudson Valley for a long weekend with DK and five of our favorite people (the same group as last fall's apple-orchard excursion). We're staying in a house so lovely, it makes me sigh just looking at the photos:

I know I'll feel right at home (what with having the same comforter set and all).

I don't care what the weather report says: there will be swimming, there will be sunning, there will be hammocking. (Plan B: there will be way too much rosé drinking, there will be competitive Balderdash playing.)

My full wishlist of activities also includes blueberry picking, hiking, classic-diner eating, and, of course, thrifting. But I accede to my pals' momentum, or lack thereof--after all, there's nothing wrong with some good ol' R&R.

And I'm perfectly content to just pretend that I live in a gorgeous Georgian Colonial, if only for 72 hours.

The beginning of the end

2010-07-19T22:15:00.004-04:00

So, this is the score: I have two cats, I'm hopelessly nearsighted, and I will cancel just about any social engagement to sit at home and watch a new Masterpiece Theatre.

And, um, now? I've started collecting quilts.

Well, maybe collecting is too strong a word to use just yet. I mean, I only have one quilt and one quilt pillow.

And, I guess, I have my eye on a couple more on eBay. Well--ahem--a couple dozen.

I see my future. It has a lot of cast-iron doorstops in the shapes of cats, a whole bunch of potpourri satchels, and quite possibly a tatting hobby.

Peru: Days 3 & 4 in Aguas Calientes & Machu Picchu

2010-07-12T20:41:00.003-04:00

While I know you haven't been frantically reloading this blog looking for the next set of Peru photos, I must apologize nonetheless for their nonappearance. Now, shall we?

Some notes:

Hiking up 2,000 feet of vertigo-inducing switchbacks when you're out of shape and 10,000 feet higher than sea level is not a good idea, per se, but does yield some damn fine views.
That dog is amazing.
I know, I'm a freak for Photoshopping my face out.
We spent 11 hours at Machu Picchu, followed by 12 hours of sleep. Seriously.

We real cool

2010-07-11T18:43:00.005-04:00

This month, I opened our electric bill and had an old-fashioned conniption. Denial and then despair soon followed. You see, despite our apartment's rather tiny square footage, it came equipped with not one, but two built-in air conditioners, and DK and I are both people who tend not so much to perspire, but pour. With the record heat in New York lately, we've had a few too many days of cranking both ACs while we lounge about, happily shivering.

My solution-that-isn't-really-a-solution was to get one of these:

To turn this:

Into this:

For the less-pictorially-oriented, that's ice cream maker + fresh basil = basil sorbet. (Or, to be more precise: boil 2 1/2 cups of water and 1 cup sugar, and cool the resulting syrup; pour into blender, add 2 cups of loosely packed basil leaves, juice from one lime, and blend, baby, blend; strain to remove the basil-leaf gunk, or not; stir in some lime zest; chill mixture in the fridge, 20 minutes or more; process in your ice cream maker; and eat.)

I'm happy to say that right now, we have two bowls of basil sorbet out and zero ACs on. And that's real progress, people.

Red, white & blue

2010-07-04T18:16:00.004-04:00

You better believe that I have a chunky '60s plastic ring for every occasion, including the anniversary of our fair nation's birth:

I'm wearing that, denim cut-offs, DK's undershirt, and Benefit Wild Card today. We had a brunchy meal in the garden, with four of our favorite people and a full five pitchers of different cocktails (I'm going to regret that last El Diablo, though).

Now: naps, X-Files, fireworks. Happy birthday, America!

Potent potables

2010-07-03T14:13:00.004-04:00

Last weekend, before I started my new job, I went into a frenzy of infusing so that I could lay up a good stock of cocktail ingredients with which to toast surviving my first week. (It was also part of my resolution no. 8 for 2010, anyway.) Yes, like so many others in the world, in times of stress and trouble, I turn to home-infused booze:

On the far left, we have homemade maraschino cherries. Funny story: when I was at the liquor store, another woman was standing by me in front of the liqueurs section. We were both anxiously scanning the shelves when she said, "You'd think they'd have a smaller bottle of maraschino, right?" Yup--it turns out that we were both planning on making maraschino cherries and didn't want, like, a half-gallon of Luxardo. Now I have to figure out what to do with the remaining 4/5ths of the bottle. Aviations, anyone?

Next, we have something I'm really, really excited about: oat-and-honey vodka, a concoction conceived by the geniuses at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I'll be ready to strain in tomorrow or early next week, and I'm already regretting not making a much larger batch. It smells heavenly, and the milky gold color is just gorgeous. (For the insanely perceptive, yes, I used steel-cut oats instead of rolled. That's all I had in my cupboard! I hope my fancy creamed honey--made by, ahem, Spanish nuns--redeems it.)

Next, we have the beginnings of some sunshine bitters, made with vodka, cardamom pods, and soon-to-be-added saffron threads, which will turn the whole thing a deep orange-red. Eventually, I'll transfer it into some amber glass bottles with dropper tops. I'm not quite sure how we'll use it, but fear not, we'll find a way.

And lastly, some classic pepper vodka, with which I know exactly what we'll do: Bloody Marys for a July 4th brunch. (Hopefully my fridge pickles will be ready by tomorrow, too--yum!) I only hope that there will be enough to go around, as one pint of vodka seems woefully short for six.

And lest you think my fridge and pantry are only stocked at 40-proof and above, we also have enough cold-brewed ice coffee, iced hibiscus tea, and iced chamomile (with fistfuls of lemon thyme) to set up shop on our stoop.

Which isn't a bad idea, actually. Wouldn't you buy from my lemonade/oat-and-honey vodka stand?

Peru: Days 1 & 2 in Cusco

2010-06-29T22:07:00.001-04:00

Because there's nothing more fun than looking at someone else's vacation photos, I present to you, dear Readers, a small selection of images from our first 48 hours on Peruvian soil--Cusco, to be precise.

I wish I could tell you that we stuffed ourselves silly on all that gorgeous food pictured above, but in the end, DK cruelly vetoed my wild plans to eat any and all street food. Four of our friends came back from Peru last month with a few parasites apiece, which kinda sorta really ruined their whole trip. Hence our remarkable solicitude.

I did however drink pisco sours all over town, which are made with ice and (presumably raw) egg whites with no ill effects, other than the fact that I was flat on my back after two drinks--the altitude makes everyone a cheap date.

Next up, Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu!

PS: Last Friday was my last day of work at my old office. I made it through the whole day without bursting into tears... which sounds, I realize, very Stockholm syndrome-y. In my defense, I worked there for four years with two of my very best friends. How will I survive only seeing them on an afterwork and weekend basis?!

PPS: On the plus side, today was my first day of my work at my new office, and no one called me out as a fraud. Also, DK took me out to a celebratory dinner at Colicchio & Sons. Win win!

Placeholder

2010-06-24T15:05:00.003-04:00

There's so much I want to say about Peru, but first I need 1) a cold shower and/or a hot bath; 2) a limoncello and soda; and 3) some quality cuddletime with Oliver and Milkshake.

As cheesy and touristy as it sounds, the highlight of our trip really was visiting Machu Picchu. I feel like the whole experience has girded me against some as-yet unknown regret. Because no matter what, I saw the sun rise over Machu Picchu. On the last day of winter, even (ah, that tricky southern hemisphere).

More very, very soon. But now: ablutions, drinks, and kitties.

A dispatch from the Imperial City

2010-06-17T22:29:00.008-04:00

It's a little embarrassing to be blogging from one's vacation, but DK and I are way, way too tired to do anything else but chillax to the max. For him, that means watching the World Cup en castellano, and for me, that means checking in with you.

Folks, I'm so head over heels in love with Peru that I'm already getting heartsick over the prospect of leaving next Wednesday night. We had an amazingly smooth flight over to Lima on LAN Airlines (where even in economy they serve free wine with dinner in actual wine glasses!), and our flight to Cusco on TACA was just as nice, though DK and I mostly just gawped at the Andes below. They are mountains like I've never seen before--epic, majestic, mindblowing, out-of-Tolkien peaks that made DK's beloved Rockies seem humble.

My Poladroided photos don't do them any justice, of course. I wish I could have gotten a photo of one mountain pool I saw, which was the most intense agal green I've ever seen.

Despite the prophylactic altitude-sickness medication we've been taking, we both feel the 11,300 feet up that we are. Our friendly hotel clerk immediately brought us mate de coca, or coca-leaf tea, which is easing the headaches and nausea. I actually have quite a taste for it, albeit heavily sweetened.

We're staying in San Blas, the art district in the city center. Our hotel has a public roof terrace with the most incredible views of the city and all its clay-shingled roofs.

I'm actually headed up to the roof now. No matter how tired I am, I can't resist my first view of Southern Hemisphere stars.

But after that, it's lights out and good night from your loyal correspondent.

BRB

2010-06-16T22:51:00.002-04:00

BRB, loves. My flight to Lima, Peru, boards in 15 minutes. As soon as we touch down, we'll be sprinting to make our connection to Cusco. If the altitude doesn't lay us flat, we'll be roaming around Machu Picchu this weekend, which has been a dream of mine since I was, like, 8.

I'll try to take it easy with the pisco sours, but no promises.

My amazing technicolored dreamcoat

2010-06-06T17:00:00.004-04:00

I really want to tell you all about last week's trip to Pennsylvania, or yesterday's excursion to Governors Island (I snuck into one of the yellow houses in Nolan Park, and I may or may not be seriously considering going back to squat there), or, I don't know, forgoing my Internet semi-anonymity to tell you every last (read: boring) detail of my new job... but first, I really need to talk about what I just found two blocks away on the street, free for the taking.

Yes. Yes. Some kind, thoughtful, and possibly deluded soul put out a vintage Hudson's Bay wool coat. I saw the classic stripes from a block away and ran to snatch it up before someone else decided they, too, wanted a wool coat on an 88° F day.

I tried to explain to DK what the big deal was, but at that point, I was just kind of babbling really fast and in a really high-pitched voice. Suffice to say that I've been on the lookout for a cheap Hudson's Bay blanket for ages, but that my search really peaked into obsession when I met the coolest 70-year-old lady ever, who was wearing a fringed cape made out of a four-point Hudson's Bay blanket. It was sort of a revelatory moment, realizing that there was a whole world of outerwear that I hadn't even begun to tread.

Ah, serendipity.

Now if it were only 40 degrees colder, so I could actually wear it out without drowning in my own sweat.

Ravishingly riveting

2010-06-02T12:43:00.003-04:00

(All photos from the Library of Congress Rosie the Riveter Flickr pool)

Also, in little ol' me news, I got the job! I start at the end of the month, so I have lots of time to bid my current office adieu.

I'm excited and terrified and elated.

Mostly terrified.

Pennsylvania jaunt

2010-05-27T23:59:00.002-04:00

Where we depart... (via Ephemeral New York)

...and kinda sorta not really where we're going. (via Wikimedia)

DK and I booked a very, very last-minute trip to visit his mother in western Pennsylvania for a long Memorial Day weekend. To accommodate both my loathing of flying and his loathing of seven-hour driving, we're taking the train. I'm only packing short-shorts and rather filmy shirts, given the sweltering temperatures we're supposed to see.

Our route takes us along the famous Horseshoe Curve by Altoona, PA--I say "famous" even though I'd never heard of it before, but DK (who is, rather adorably, a train-travel nerd) is all giddy about it.

Once we get there tomorrow night, I'm anticipating: plentiful small-town thrifting! expansive country antique malls! and delicious Pennsylvania beer! (Who knew there was such an active brewery scene there?)

Have a lovely (and hopefully similarly long) weekend, folks! I'll see you on the other side!

Repairwear

2010-05-25T09:09:00.004-04:00

Remember when I was bemoaning my lack of sewing skillz, despite my stellar pedigree? Well, I'm hit upon a foolproof solution--that also coincidentally allowed me to, um, acquire some necessary frocks in the name of self-improvement.

If you're as big an eBay fiend as I am, you'll have seen your share of repair and pattern lots in the Vintage category. If not, a primer: repair and pattern lots = vintage clothing that have condition issues, anything from a split seam or a missing zipper to gaping moth holes and serious rust stains (the worst!). You can either try to fix 'em, or take them completely apart to use as patterns.

Well, I've been bidding up a storm on some injured lovelies, and my first box came last week! Out of eight dresses, only one is completely beyond recall; the others just need some timely intervention, although probably from more skilled hands than mine. Still, I feel much more comfortable operating on these dresses than any of my own... I've already ruined my share of pristine shirtwaist dresses, so it's best for me to learn on pieces that are already unwearable.

These are my two favorites--fingers crossed that I can revive them! The first, a '40s or '50s faille gown (moth holes, broken zipper, burst seams, stains, needs new hem, etc.). Given some of the awful stitchwork, it looks like someone sewed on the peach and baby-blue panels afterward, or possibly botched a repair job themselves.

But lord, she's a beauty, no? Just looking at her, as shabby as she is, makes me think about rustling across a dance floor, fanning myself with my gloves, and waiting for my date to return with some much-needed champagne punch.

I'm in similar raptures over this '40s floral number (moth holes, stains, burst darting, small tears, etc.). The ribbon-and-bow shoulder strap just slays me, and o, that pattern! Tell me you're not suddenly thinking about drinking tea from willowed china in an ivied garden, or perhaps wandering through some botanical grounds, straw-hatted and smelling the roses on the arm of your beau.

Or, you know, just hanging out in your apartment in Brooklyn because you're too embarrassed to leave dressed to the nines in fancy duds from days past.

TGI(F)F

2010-05-21T14:54:00.004-04:00

This is my Thank God It's (F!@#$%^) Friday:

What else does a girl ever need besides sunshine, a flannel throw, some Murakami, and a pisco sour?

Before you hate me, please know that I spent yesterday (i.e., our anniversary) by going on a six-hour job interview--yes, you read that right, SIX HOURS, as in 360 minutes, 21,600 seconds... you get the drift--from the morning to late afternoon, then camping out in DK's office's conference room telecommuting to my actual job. I'd taken the day off, but you know, if you don't cut the email apron strings, you're liable to get garroted. In a purely metaphorical sense, of course. I hope.

DK was similarly slammed, and in consequence, we spent our anniversary dinner at Boqueria SoHo in a near-comatose state, mumbling at each other as we ate delicious chickpea-floured, fried sardines and heavenly grilled baby squid and sea urchin-smeared flatbread with baked quail eggs and cauliflower.... Sorry, what I was talking about?

O yes. So, I feel like I've really earned my so-far useless Friday.

Nonetheless, I beseech you: keep your fingers crossed for me! I'm one of the final candidates for two jobs right now, and I'll hopefully hear back from another job next week. It's rough out there, folks! I'm so grateful that 1) I have a job in the first place and that 2) anyone else could even be interested in little ol' me.

But at the moment, I'm even more grateful for an extra day of laziness this week. It's important, you know, to stop once in a while and smell your landlord's roses.

Four more years

2010-05-21T10:02:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, it had been four years to the day since my first date with DK. One day, if you'll indulge me, I'll tell you the full dopey tale of our wooing, which involves: a two-person "book club," Tolkien's grave, and vinyl soundtracks of '70s movies.

Now look at us. We sign rent checks together, parent two cats together, own a fancy seltzer maker together. Coupledom, y'all. It sneaks up on you, and all of a sudden you find yourself saying things to each other like, "The electric bill just hit our joint checking," and "Should we renew our Costco membership?"

Still--and forgive the soppiness--our relationship is pretty golden. Things just can't be all that bad if fours year on, someone still makes your heart go pitter-patter when they walk through the door, right?

Green living

2010-05-17T09:12:00.002-04:00

This is how we've spent every single sunny weekend for the last six weeks: nestled between canopy and lawn in Prospect Park, furtive mixed drink close by.

This weekend's cocktail was limoncello and fresh seltzer, with frozen mixed berries to serve as ice. Along with a paperback, a fat link of spicy coppa, fresh Italian bread, and the greenmarket's first strawberries, it was beyond heavenly.

But now it's Monday, and time to go back to work, but instead of getting ready, I'm staring at the computer bleary-eyed and suddenly unwilling to put on pants. O cruel world, why do you mock me with a sunny, 73° weekday?

Bake me

2010-05-15T11:00:00.003-04:00

Thank you for your kind thoughts, all! For once in my life, I wasn't clammy and trembling and trying to remember what my current job title is. I'm usually awful meeting with new groups of people, so Tuesday's interview panel of three should have scared the bejesus out of me... but somehow, I just felt smart and beamingly confident--surely it was your psychic goodwill!

All this job hunting is pretty much exhausting, and this weekend, I plan on taking it easy easy easy. Lately, I've been doing a lot of baking, which is unusual for me. I've been making galettes galore because they're so easy, but instead of looking sloppy (my usual baking presentation), they just look rustic. Win-win.

Now I'm onto cupcakes... and o, am I onto them.

This past week, I've done two big batches of sunken chocolate-orange flourless cupcakes from Bon Appétit. They're so ridiculously easy to make, with a few tweaks to the original recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup almond flour
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 stick unsalted butter, chopped into tablespoons
4 large eggs, separated
1 cup sugar, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/4 cup
zest from one orange

Per the original recipe, you can make your own almond flour by blanching 1 cup of almonds and food-processing the hell out of them, but many of the Bon Appétit reviews mention that they had a hard time getting the almonds fine enough so as not to be gritty in the final cupcake. I had no trouble finding almond flour at my grocery store, and the fine grind and convenience were more than enough to justify the additional cost.

If you're using a big hunk of chocolate, nothing chops it better or more evenly than a big bread knife. Cut across the chocolate in 1/4"-1/2" increments, and the chocolate should just flake off.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F, and line 12-cup cupcake pan with paper liners.

Microwave chocolate and butter in small bowl in increments of 15 seconds, stirring after each set to combine. After 60-75 seconds total, the chocolate mixture should be sufficiently warm that continued stirring will melt any leftover chocolate chunks; your final mixture should be fully integrated and glossy.

While you let the chocolate mixture cool, whisk egg yolks and 3/4 cup of sugar in a large bowl until blended. Now--and this is important--put aside the whisk and get out a silicone spatula. Mix in your orange zest, almond flour, and chocolate mixture. There--see how crazy dense it is? Trying to integrate this with a whisk is torture (believe me, I know); a firm spatula is exactly what you need for the job.

Beat the egg whites and remaining 1/4 cup sugar in another large bowl until the mixture is thick and glossy and peaks form. The original recipe doesn't specify, but I think you're looking for soft peaks. I'm such an infrequent baker, I don't actually own an electric mixer, so I just pulse the egg whites and sugar in a mini-food processor until it turns completely opaque and doubles in size. Fold the egg-white mixture into the chocolate-almond mixture in three batches (in other words, don't dump all the egg whites in at once).

Use an ice-cream scooper to evenly divide the batter among the liners, and bake until the edges are firm and the tops are cracked. While the original recipe says that 16 minutes will suffice for a "very soft cake," it doesn't mention that after 16 minutes, you won't even be able to get the cupcake out of the pan because it's so soft. I bake mine for about 25 minutes, and they come out perfect: a crunch exterior with a soft interior and a heart of chocolate goo. Serve warm, or microwave cold cupcakes for 30 seconds to soften.

Enjoy!

The Hunt: Working girl

2010-05-11T00:32:00.001-04:00

I have a favor to ask all of you, and please hear me out. Tomorrow--well, technically, later today--hell, let's just specify Tuesday, May 11, around 11:30am EST, please send some good thoughts my way. I'd be grateful for general good feelings, but if you want to focus on some "hire me" vibes, that would be extra terrific.

Yes, I have a job interview tomorrow. It's my second with this organization, and I'm frantic to get it. Although, if you don't see this in time, your good karma won't go to waste: I actually have three interviews this week, so I'll be in a tizzy for the foreseeable future.

I've been at my current job for four years, which seems like an eon in my twenty-something, nano-attention span life, so I'm kind of out of the loop when it comes to job hunting. I'm especially befuddled by interviewing. What do I say? What do I bring? And most importantly, what do I wear?

I've always worked in the arts (except for a hilarious nine-month stint at a law firm... o, what a mistake), so I'm used to very generous interpretations of what "office wear" is. Although, interviews seem to be the one place where it's better to err on the side of convention...

Still, wouldn't it be awesome if I could show up tomorrow wearing one of these?

(1) 3.1 Philip Lim pencil dress with gold studs, $625; Botkier Taylor bag, $370.30; TenOverSix Katy peep-toe pumps, $230. (2) Bodkin Cyclone shirt, $253; Zac Posen paneled jacquard pencil skirt, $970; Kimchi Blue suede t-straps, $58. (3) Calypso sailor shirt, $135; Tsumori Chisato jodhur trousers, $271.50; Marni wooden platform sandals, $825.

All paired with a sensible jacket, of course.

Anyway, don't worry, I'll be dressed perfectly normally: a cropped black jacket over a long-sleeve cream blouse tucked into a black silk pencil skirt. Sheer nylons, mid-height heels, and minimal makeup. And five extra copies of my résumé.

Wish me luck!

Recently

2010-05-04T21:43:00.004-04:00

In the last week, I:

got my second-ever pedicure;
bought those Madewell Sunset sandals I've been dying over forever;
and the Penguin seltzer maker, ditto dying etc.;
made my first galette (rhubarb, inspired by Melina's recent forays);
reread nearly every Murakami novel I own;
applied to... 10? 12? new jobs (I'm hunting, cross your fingers for me!);
drank my first margarita of the season;
washed and line-dried 16 yards of vintage blue ticking;
ate probably too much fresh bread with Taleggio and white anchovies;
and didn't do laundry, yet again.

Well, there was this, too, but I'm kind of waiting to hear Amy's take on it first (that's right, passing the buck!):

In my case, the "I" definitely doesn't stand for anything but "immature."

PS: I promise you, I am not secretly a 12-year-old girl, but I was once upon a time in 1997.

A dilemma

2010-04-28T14:43:00.005-04:00

I swear to you, I would never ever buy a fake Louis Vuitton handbag, or Burberry scarf, or Gucci wallet, or whatever. I've never even shopped at Forever 21, cross my heart, hope to die. I'm consistently astounded by independent designers, and I wholeheartedly support copyright protection for fashion.

But.

But.

This:

The adorable and adored cat print from Miu Miu, S/S 2010 (photos via Style.com). Absolutely killer, and completely beyond my means. I think the cheapest item may be the shoes, at $585.

And this:

The knockoff ~~romper~~ dress from Zara (photo via the Zara May 2010 Lookbook). I'm not sure how much it is, but I'm sure I won't have to empty out my savings account to afford it.

I know it makes me an awful hypocrite, but I feel all my high-falutin' fashion ethics evaporating, disintegrating, slipping away when I look at the Zara piece.

My only hope is that when I try it on, it'll look terrible on me. Otherwise, I may crack. Gleefully.

Update: I bought the dress! But I have to say, despite the print, the cut and fabric make it really unlike any of the Miu Miu pieces. The lookbook styling--especially that standalone collar--definitely plays up the similarities, but believe me, no one is ever going to mistake it for anything but a cute mass-market piece. So, all in all, I feel remarkably guiltless. Sorry, Miuccia.

Oliver Grey; or, The Parish Cat's Progress

2010-04-19T22:37:00.005-04:00

I know this blog has been rather cat-heavy lately, and I apologize. But indulge my crazy cat mama-ness just a little more, okay?

One year ago, DK and I brought home Oliver from an East Village shelter. He was already at least a year old, but he ran proverbial circles around fresher young things (to begin with, the six darling kittens in the front window), and the rather salty man who ran the place introduced him to us as "the Best Cat," the hands-down favorite of every volunteer.

When we took him home, he was very sick, very tired, and very very skinny. Our first photos of him are too sad to post: sunken cheeks, wilted whiskers, and chapped paws. All he could do was sleep, eat, and (feebly) purr. Good lord, those were the days. This set is from when we had already fattened him up, a couple months into our love affair.

Now he reigns over the apartment, lord of all he surveys: two humans, one little kitty sister, a very fancy litterbox, and more scratchable surfaces than he knows what to do with. Not too bad for a former street urchin--I think his namesake would be proud.

Arts, darts & bar larks

2010-04-17T18:23:00.002-04:00

Lest you think I spend all my money on clothing I don't wear and fleeting edible delicacies--for the record, I regret nothing about spending all my discretionary cash this past week on sushi and wine--I present some new household acquisitions:

I have a new thing for amateur still lifes--and I don't mean "amateur" in any pejorative sense, just that I'm getting excited about stuff that isn't very BFA thesis-y, if you know what I mean. Anyhoo, I think these are divine.

I've always always wanted a dartboard in the house, but they tend to be kind of... pubby? fratty? Not this little darling, though.

And I have a new collecting ~~obsession~~, um, focus! It actually crept up on me without my realizing it, but I've been picking up old jiggers, cocktail shakers, and corkscrews for a while. Yes, for once, I'm actually accumulating something useful: vintage barware.

The San Francisco doubles as a cork pull (the kind with the double prongs, the use of which I've never mastered), while the owl is just your everyday anthropomorphic bottle opener. But that little plastic vial in the back? That's where it gets interesting...

They're "cocktail mix-o-meters," and I'm honestly not sure how they work. Do you just use them as reference guides, or do you actually put them in the drink, like the pH paper from high-school chemistry? Regardless, I had to have them for their design alone, much less their practical applications.

Do you fancy a Harvard, or a Yale? Or can I interest you in a Clover Club?

Ah, Apple Dream. Excellent choice.

I also got a couple of light fixtures (I'm hoarding old gas station pendants for my next apartment/eventual farmhouse), some measuring spoons, some fabric, a funny wooden sign, a vintage fishing rod, and an old fabric stool--all from a single estate sale. DK is ever so pleased whenever I come home covered in basement grime and with boxes of old-timey loot.

Actually, this time he really was. Because of the fishing rod, which I cunningly bought as a distraction, so he wouldn't notice all the other crap. And yes, it totally worked.

Illusions

2010-04-14T12:56:00.001-04:00

The funny (absurd? tragic?) thing about being a lover of ye olde stuff is that, sometimes, you can only look and love. No touching, no using, no wearing--just adoring from afar.

It's no fun living in a museum, so I try to keep that aspect of my collecting down. But one corner of my closet is reserved for those dresses I can never wear, but will never tire of looking at. It includes my precious--and rapidly disintegrating--1938 Girl Scouts dress; my beaded flapper gown, which loses another handful of silver beads every single time we move; and a few other treasures.

And now this: the perfect little black dress, which no woman should be without, even if she doesn't dare wear it for fear of it tearing apart.

It's a classic party frock: late '40s model, silk illusion over a silk sheath, full skirt.

Pleats, please.

While the sheath and skirt are holding up okay, the bodice lining is very, very fragile, a constellation of splitting thread. I only tried this on once, when I bought it last weekend. As I stepped out of it, I heard a bad zzzzip and found out that I managed to tear some of the illusion in the back.

So, onto a hanger and into the closet it goes, to be safely worshiped from a distance--to maintain the illusion, as it were.

Stitches in time

2010-04-12T13:59:00.004-04:00

I come from a family of very accomplished seamstresses. Besides being a dressmaker, my grandmother on my mother's side was renowned for her remarkable embroidery. She must have made and adorned dresses for almost every single bride in her county during her tenure.

My grandmother on my father's side made most of my childhood rompers, while also lecturing in law at university (not, of course, at the same time). For one visit when I was 11, she set down her suitcases, hauled out the sewing machine from some obscure closet, and basically set up shop in the guest bedroom. When she left a week later, we had a whole new set of curtains and pillowcases, and I had a pile of new dresses to wear and to grow into.

My mother isn't wild about sewing, but she can and does occasionally on a sewing machine she's had before I was born. But one day, looking at an overstuffed sofa in the bedroom, she decided she couldn't live another hour with that pattern. So--obviously--she took the whole thing apart, peeling off the upholstery and retracing the patterns onto fresh fabric, and after some cutting, sewing, stapling, and nailing, voila! A newly upholstered sofa!

And then there's me, the collector and the clotheshorse. And I, well, I have trouble keeping my needles strung; I butcher buttonholes; I overenthusiastically hem; and my embroidery would make my grandma laugh (and then cry).

But all that shall, will, must change. I'm going to slowly, carefully hem some dresses, measuring all along the way. Then, after I accumulate enough vintage ticking, I'll try my hand at making a sort of patchwork duvet cover. Then, I might graduate to actual sewing patterns. O glory, glory.

Who knows if I'll ever propagate the family name, but surely someone has to carry on the family skills?

PS: Keep introducing yourselves, please! You can't know how much I love hearing what books you're reading and knowing your actual names, so don't be shy!

Meet & greet

2010-04-06T09:55:00.003-04:00

I think that we all know by now that there is no fourth wall in blogging, so, please consider this (very humble) request: dear Readers--and especially you strong and silent types--would you consider, just maybe, if you haven't already, saying hello?

I've finally figured out this whole "Followers" thing, which says there are 32 of you who are keeping up with me semiregularly--but where did you come from?! And if Google Analytics is to be trusted, there are even more of you out there.

Please please please introduce yourselves! I would love to know your names, if you don't mind, so that I don't have to address you by your Blogger handles. I would also love to know where you're dialing in from, what the last great book you read was, and what kind of food or drink you're currently craving.

Don't do it for me--do it for little Milkshake, who is ever so curious about you all...

(Yes, I'm totally not above using defenseless little kitties to gain my devious ends.)

It takes two

2010-04-05T09:47:00.003-04:00

DK and I are fairly aligned in our food tastes, but once in a while, something rears up and proves how very, very different we are. For instance, DK does not care for crab, something which I find, frankly, inexplicable.

(I guess I should add that just as often, we find ourselves in unexpected, but perfect agreement, like when DK discovered that he loves salted duck's eggs over rice porridge--my idea of a perfect breakfast.)

One such disharmony: mint jelly, to be served with our Easter lamb. I insisted on making my own, a jalapeno-flecked version made with fresh mint, whereas DK went down to the street to buy a rather lurid-looking jar of the stuff that looked like it was more food coloring than actual foodstuff.

When it came down to the taste test, I thought the store-bought tasted like chewing gum and/or toothpaste, while DK thought my homemade tasted like... well, he was very diplomatic and just said that spicy mint jelly just wasn't his thing.

But we both happily spooned our respective jellies over our lamb, we both cleared our plates, and we both decided that we should spend the rest of the night watching period murder mysteries. So all in all, I think our mutual sympathies reign.

Going, going, gone!

2010-03-31T17:51:00.001-04:00

Regrets, regrets, I'm full of regrets--though fortunately, not very many big ones. Mostly, I regret silly little things, like all the items that got away from me on eBay. I know, it's awful and materialistic, but let's share the pain together, shall we?

O, gold, double-headed fox ring, how you made my heart race with your incredible detailing and perfect enamel eyes! Alas, even your starting price was beyond me, but I'm still holding out hope that a cheaper doppelganger will pop up one day...

At least when you get outbid on something, you suffer an honorable defeat. Not so when you just forget to bid in the first place--as I did on this vintage Russian sailor shirt. Note to self: why, why, why?!

It's really difficult for me to talk about this 1920s beaded silk wedding dress without bursting into tears. I mean, it's basically the most perfect dress I've ever seen, ever, and it came with the original veil and train. I swear, I don't have wedding plans, but I bid a ridiculous amount for it... and still lost. Sob.

ETA: One more photo of the dress, in case y'all aren't clicking through to see the full gallery. It's really insanely beautiful, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I'm really a sucker for punishment, and my eBay watch list continues to swell with each passing day. And it's not always a sad ending--I have nabbed my fair share of online lovelies. But let's save that post for another and happier day.

Spring cleanse

2010-03-25T11:58:00.004-04:00

Spring has kinda sorta maybe sprung in Brooklyn? It was absolutely glorious last weekend, and during my leisurely stroll back from the farmer's market, I stopped to smell the, ahem, flowering branches.

Even though the weather has drawn back toward winter this week, I'm hurtling forward. It's time for my annual spring cleaning and wardrobe swap--a very happy occasion, I assure you. I've been rolling up sweaters, packing winter coats, and putting away all my wools, furs, and random cold-weather fripperies and swapping in my roughly one bajillion cotton frocks and skirts.

I'm also going through my jewelry box (by "box," I actually mean "pile on my dresser") and trying to winnow down what's become an absurd amount of unused ornamentation. Specifically, I'm trying to focus my pin collection down to just animal pins--a goldtone and bakelite menagerie, as it were.

I've also already bought my first bottle of vinho verde of the season. Soon: picnics! non-kale produce at the farmer's market! very tentative bike rides! permanently bare legs!

Brings all the boys to the yard

2010-03-14T12:54:00.004-04:00

There is either too much going on in my life, or else too little. Famine or drought, penury or excess; or rather, when it rains, it pours.

An apt little saying, considering the weather in New York right now. It was sheeting down rain yesterday, with the wind whipping it sideways. DK and I should have been inside, warm and cozy, possibly drinking some doctored apple cider, but instead we were running to and fro south Brooklyn. Why? For our new kitty, Milkshake.

So named by the shelter (the wonderful folks at Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Windsor Terrace) for the wee little milk mustache that decorates her upper lip. I'm kind of crazy for mustachioed cats--so dapper!--and our heretofore only-child Oliver really needed a furry friend. When I saw Milkshake's profile on Petfinder, I hustled over to the shelter the next day and was instantly smitten.

She's so small and, well, I don't want to hurt her feline feelings, but she's funny looking. Her milk mustache and tuxedo coloring make her look like a tiny maître d'. Plus, she's kind of cross-eyed. O, and she's missing like a 1/3 of all her fur because she was just fixed (shaved belly), microchipped (shaved scruff), and stitched up (shaved leg, from a big gash--poor baby).

So far, she hasn't done much except hide, sleep, and eat. If we drag her out from under the bed/wardrobe/dresser/desk/TV stand/sofa/etc., she'll submit to being held and will even cuddle up on our chests, purring madly. But she's mostly interested in keeping undercover.

The cat-to-cat introductions haven't been too bad, although it's hard to tell who's more freaked out. There's been no hissing or spitting or raising of hairs, just lots of tentative sniffing, rapid retreats, and plaintive meows. Oliver is plainly flummoxed, but I think not unpleased.

But the greatest question is: should we keep the name "Milkshake"? I admit, it's very charming, and it provides an excuse to play Kelis regularly. But I'm also a big fan of human names for pets, and she looks an an E-something, so we're also mulling over "Elsie," "Eliza," "Edie," "Eloise," and so on.

What do you think? Does she look like a Milkshake, or an Emmylou?

Alarums & birthday excursions

2010-03-03T13:11:00.004-05:00

Alas, I didn't buy myself anything more extravagant than groceries this past weekend because my barely two-year-old MacBook seems to have given up the ghost. I'm holding onto all my fancy-shoe and seltzer-maker pennies until I get a proper diagnostic and know whether I need to replace it. Technology--humbug.

Thankfully, most of my files are on DK's desktop, including the photos from our trip to Dead Horse Bay last Saturday. It's one of our favorite spots in the city, and we make it out every few months or so. DK once found the most incredible yellow vase, which Oliver promptly broke.

For those who don't keep up with the exciting world of New York City scavenging, the beach at Dead Horse Bay is littered with trash from the '30s and earlier--it's an old landfill whose cap popped in the '50s, releasing the most interesting flotsam and jetsam imaginable: glass bottles of every variety, tea cups, cold-cream jars, tea pots, shoe soles, statuary, wallpaper, light fixtures, and yes, I've even seen a kitchen sink.

DK's friend M came with us and filled his bag with old doll heads and limbs. It was pretty grisly.

There were readymade potted plants galore...

Everything got a good scouring at home. Between the bleach, the Bar Keeper's Friend, and the dishwasher, our finds cleaned up pretty well. Some selection from the haul:

This little cup is so dreamy; all the bleeding and crazing makes it look like an ancient Chinese watercolor. I could stare into it all day.

Really, I'm a simple girl. A trip to the landfill for my birthday proved to be exactly what I wanted.

The Hunt: Self-gifting

2010-02-24T12:38:00.000-05:00

I can hardly believe it, but I'll be turning 25 on Sunday, February 28. A whole two and a half decades--sheesh, where did it all go?!

...But rather than dwelling on the inexorable passage of time (and all the things I thought I'd accomplish by 25), I'm going to think about the silly things I could buy myself, as a quarter-century treat:

(1) DwellStudio Draper Stripe Chinois Blue duvet set, $320.
(2) SodaStream Penguin seltzer maker & starter kit, $199.95.
(3) Selima Optique Hubert eyeglass frames, $300.
(4) Madewell Sunset sandals, $148.
(5) A clothing steamer, various.

I'm really, really, really determined to buy one of these things, but I'm having such a hard time deciding! Probably not the duvet set, or the frames (even though I'm obsessed with them!), both of which I'm still holding out hope for cheaper and possibly vintage options. But who knows what my trigger finger will settle on this weekend.

Smallish indulgences

2010-02-22T13:27:00.000-05:00

I've been so boring and domestic lately that it's hardly worth writing home--I mean, blogging about. I do have a few adventures up my sleeve in the next couple of weeks, but until then, let's have a look-see at what I've been bringing home lately.

No surprise, DK and I are addicted to our local farmer's market. We used to go just for produce, but slowly, it's taken over our entire grocery list. And I love the ritual of it: waking on on Saturday mornings, walking the length of the park with my basket bag and some actual paper money (I'm otherwise such a cashless, o-I'll-just-swipe-my-card kind of person), talking to the sellers (how do you cook farro? when will you have duck eggs?), petting people's dogs, etc., etc.

My two favorite things to buy are milk and eggs--both, primarily, because they're so absurdly delicious, but also for aesthetic reasons: I love having the big glass milk bottle, which we exchange every week, and my God, farm-fresh eggs are just about the prettiest things you could ever imagine.

Seriously, they're so lovely, I almost feel guilty when I crack them open. But then I get to see their beautiful golden yolks... and then I get to eat them... so, really, no need for tears.

This is my new-old market bag. As you can see, it needs a serious cleaning, but ah, those big bold stripes and leather straps! It fits a boatload of groceries, too.

I'd been searching for a proper market bag for weeks and almost gave in to this classic woven number at Brook Farm General Store, at $40, but after saying a little prayer to the junk-store gods, I dug this one up at a thrift-by-the-pound joint. It probably sent me back all of a $1.50--hence my willingness to overlook some of its dinginess.

Believe it or not, I'd also been pining for a leather satchel, and lo and behold, I found one in that very same pile o' bags. It's perfection; it didn't even need the vigorous saddle soaping I gave it, but I kind of love the smell of the stuff, so why not.

They can be terribly fickle, those junk-store gods, but when they come through, they're terribly kind.

Hearts vs. tigers

2010-02-14T20:17:00.005-05:00

DK's brother's family is visiting with us for the long weekend--I've snuck away from a screening of The Neverending Story to type this up--so I've been embroiled in all kinds of adventures, mostly of the edible variety. His niece deserves an award for being the absolutely most adult nine-year-old eater on earth. How many other kids do you know who would ask for seconds on crispy pig's head croquettes?

Anyway, I know that everyone knows that today is Valentine's Day, but it's also Chinese New Year. Year of the tiger, people! I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I was happy to stand around on the streets of Chinatown, eating (too many) preserved plums and frantically trying to take pictures of all the confetti with my busted camera lens. I'm still picking tinsel out of my hair...

I won't lie: I had been kinda sorta really hoping that DK would suddenly flourish a bouquet of hellebores or pitch a Whitman's Sampler at me. No such luck--instead, he whisked me away to a fancy restaurant with lots of cocktails and a big plate of oysters and some pork belly. I know, some people are just unlucky in love.

Button Parade

2010-02-09T13:59:00.002-05:00

Button, button, who's got the button?

When I got home last night, DK presented me with this book:

"You can blog about it," he suggested. "I think your readers will like it."

Which says two things: 1) my boyfriend is the cutest, nicest, most thoughtful man (he smells good, too); and 2) he secretly reads my blog, even though he's not supposed to. Not cool, buddy. We had a gentleman's agreement.

In any case, the book is amazing, and I think you, dear, discriminating Readers, will like it. It's filled with the most incredibly charming and detailed illustrations of different button designs, organized by motif.

There are inlaid buttons:

Anchor buttons:

Even acorn buttons (my favorite!):

To name but a few.

In conclusion, DK, you did good. Now stop reading my blog. Please.

Blanketed

2010-02-08T13:31:00.003-05:00

So, I'm hunting for a bajillion wool blankets, flannel throws, and quilts because we need to be able to cover our entire living room floor for a party (long story), and a serendipitous Google Images search led me to Marie Watt, an installation artist based in Portland, Oregon, who does incredible work with textiles.

From her Blanket Stories series (all photos from Marie Watt Studio):

Blanket Stories: Three Sisters, Cousin Rose, Four Pelts, and Sky Woman, 2005.
(Installation view, Hoffman Gallery, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon)

Works from
Blanket Stories: Three Sisters, Cousin Rose, Four Pelts, Sky Woman and All My Relations, 2006;
Almanac: Glacier Park, Granny Beebe and Satin Ledger, 2005;
Canopy (Odd One), 2005; and Canopy (Omphalos), 2005.
(Installation view, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Totem: Blue Four-point, Lavadour and First-born, 2004.
(Part of the Jeri L. Waxenberg Collection)

Aside from all the artsy-fartsy reasons I love her work (the utilitarian made monumental! the object made ritual vestment! the tactile senses of history and memory!) , I may just be jealous of Watt's amazing collection of wool blankets. If I could just borrow one tower for my party, I'd be set. And I promise promise promise I'd return it. Reassembled, even.

Hibernating

2010-02-02T14:16:00.001-05:00

I'm laying low, keeping warm, and only indulging in a teensy little bit of seasonally inappropriate shopping.

This is my newly acquired squirt gun. I didn't buy it because I love vintage toys (of course, I do) but because a girl needs protection, even in her own house. Especially if her cat is fond of throwing tantrums that leave her ankles unfit to be seen by civilized eyes.

PS: I almost forgot! I'm supposed to get a walloping tax refund this year, so I've decided to buy a new digital SLR as a birthday present to myself. My poor 20D is over five years old, which is like a million in digital-camera years.

I'm deciding between the Canon XSi, T1i, and 50D. If you would like to lodge a strong opinion, please do!

Good eats & first meets

2010-01-25T23:59:00.005-05:00

I have a weird reluctance to write a post without some kind of illustration. I mean, it doesn't even have to directly relate to what I'm prattling on about--but my little blog seems awfully bare without something visual to gussy it up.

Hence the random shot of a pot full of steamers (or soft-shell or Ipswich clams, as they're variously known) above. I ate them on Saturday night, with a ton of drawn butter and a big ol' batch of boiled blue crabs with Old Bay. We had to lock Oliver the cat in the bedroom because he was going crazy over all the seafood smells. Poor fella. Sometimes we must seem very cruel to his feline mind.*

And with the world's worst segue, I turn to Ms. Amy Merrick of An Apple a Day. We had a real-life, in-person date on Thursday (I know, I've met so many people from online at this point that DK is no longer fazed when I tell him, "I'm going to meet an Internet person! I'm pretty sure she's real, so don't wait up!"). I'm so full of effusive praise for this girl, I don't really know what to say, but she is exactly as you would imagine from her blog--sweet, funny, and smart smart smart. We literally closed up not one, but two Brooklyn restauraunts talking about outdated encyclopedias and dashing chocolatiers and cat mischief. You know, the usual girl talk.

*Don't worry, Oliver got his revenge. While I was typing this up, he knocked over and broke two glass frames and then bit me on the knee. I generally try to resist the usual online acronyms, but: WTF, cat, WTF.

Best laid plans

2010-01-21T10:20:00.002-05:00

The plan:

Saturday: Wake up early, pick up paint and metal shelving, paint our wooden bookcases, give away/repurpose our (hideous "birch" veneer) Ikea bookcases, rearrange our office alcove, move our couch, and reorganize our books.

Sunday: Reward ourselves for a job well done with an excursion to Williamsburg, with pizza at Motorino and suds at Brooklyn Brewery.

Monday: Go through records-to-be-sold (DK), iron clothes-to-be-sold (me), and end the long weekend with some leisurely, nice-to-meet-you! drinks with Julia of Color Me Green.

The actual:

Saturday: Wake up late, bolt to our Zipcar, argue with DK over sundry other domestic to-dos (should we spackle? should we strip?), fuss over the new placement of bookcases and shelves for hours, stupidly paint our wooden bookcases without primer over and over again, give up after five coats, and retire to bed with the apartment in utter disarray.

Sunday: Return an extra shelving unit, arrange and rearrange the living room/office six or so times, put up pictures, take down pictures, paint over nail holes, repaint over nail holes with the correct wall color, put up pictures, and trip over books.

Monday: Give up and watch two seasons of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett is, by far, the most superior Sherlock there ever was), half-heartedly put away books, and gratefully run out for two beers with Julia. Thank you for a very happy hour, Julia! I hope I wasn't too curmudgeonly!

The apartment is still pretty much a mess. And I have to say, our recent subscription to Netflix isn't helping any. It's so tempting just to have something "playing in the background," but the next thing you know, DK and I are glued to the TV. It's especially bad because Netflix has Cosmos without commercials, which means I can get my Carl Sagan fix without interruptions.

In other news, I've set up a Daytum account to keep track of my reading in 2010. If you haven't heard of the site before, you must check it out. It lets you enter and organize personal data and then generates the most beautiful graphs (although, my page isn't quite as lovely as it could be, since I've just started). People use it to track where they've been, how many coffees they've had, what concerts they've been to... it's like keeping a statistical diary.

O, and it lets me feel just a tiny bit organized. Which really, really helps.

Magic beans

2010-01-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

No, not this kind...

(via SurLaLune)

...mine are the other kind. They might not grow giant beanstalks, but at the same time, there's no messy business with giants, either.

My magic beans are grown by my mother in South Carolina. She's very proud of her beans, and she should be--besides being utterly gorgeous, they're organic, hand-picked, hand-shelled, and hand-dried. I think most of them are heirloom limas, like the burgundy-splashed Christmas limas and the chocolate-whorled Jackson Wonder limas, but there are some black-eyed peas hiding in the mix as well.

Every time I come home from South Carolina, I unpack my suitcase to find that my mother has snuck another pound of beans into my luggage. Besides being very proud of her harvest, she's also convinced that I'm on the verge of a complete nutritional breakdown, from which I can only be saved by food from her garden.

I won't disabuse her of the idea. Besides the fact that my mother's beans really are magical (or at least magically delicious), she really is a very, very cute lady, with very, very cute notions.

Rock steady

2010-01-15T23:41:00.004-05:00

When I was a little girl, I always wanted a rock collection. Mind you, I never wanted to collect rocks, one by one. That would be silly, and boring, and involve ever so much work on my part. No, what I wanted was a nice, readymade collection of rocks, preferably already mounted and labeled.

Flash forward to now. I'm still an avowed collector of collections (as well as just a plain old collector), but I'm willing to put in just a teensy bit of sweat equity. Like, o, say, taking the trouble of typing in "old rock collection" into an eBay search.

Enter a decrepit tray of rocks, half of them already crumbled beneath the sticky plastic film that kept them in place, and nearly all of them scrambled against the also-crumbling labels.

But with the help of DK's trusty Golden Guide Rocks and Minerals, I'm slowly sorting through the chaos. And it's seriously so much fun, I can't even tell you. Folks, you can't know the joy of ID-ing a chunk of smoky quartz until you just do it.

I swear, this is almost as good as if I'd actually collected it myself.

PS: That's actually a shot of the bottom half of the tray, which is the as-yet unorganized portion. Don't worry, I know that's not talc! Um, I think.

Catch of the day

2010-01-11T21:28:00.005-05:00

One of my foremost pleasures in Barcelona was the seafood. I'm no stranger to a good catch (did you know that ultra-fresh salmon smells exactly--and I mean exactly--like watermelon?), but what we ate there was sublimely, depressingly good. Sublimely because how else could you describe fish just pulled out of the Mediterranean; depressingly because I just can't get such magnificently fresh octopus in New York.

Luckily, my incipient culinary funk has been cut short by some lovely little ladies from the north--the Gulf of Maine to be precise. Readers, meet the Maine shrimp. Like so many comely lasses, they're pink and delicate and sweet. Ahem, and pictured here in a rather tantalizing state of undress...

Maine shrimp are small--some would say tiny--cold-water shrimp that are harvested in winter. They're a local treat in Maine, where apparently you can buy them for $1/pound from out of the back of a fisherman's pickup on the side of the road (Maine winters dispense with the need for refrigeration). But a good quantity of them do make it down to New York fresh, not frozen, and still cheap enough to buy in pounds and pounds.

It's really best to get them with the heads still on, which, besides preserving their freshness, also provide the perfect excuse for whipping up some tempura batter (egg yolk + water + flour + potato starch) and getting your fry on. Yes, I'm advocating frying battered shrimp heads. I know it sounds a little dodgy, but trust me--or rather, trust sushi chefs, who do it all the time.

There are still plenty of options for headless shrimp. The simplest is to just eat them raw (again, trust sushi chefs, who do it all the time)--they're delicious, and they don't need any kind of chaser, except maybe another shrimp. You could also gussy them up in a ceviche; their sweetness is really complemented by tart lime and rich avocado.

If you're steaming, sautéing, grilling, or otherwise cooking them with heat, just be sure you don't overdo them. They're so small, they'll cook in 30 seconds to a minute flat. For last weekend's risotto, I just stirred them into the hot rice at the very end, and they were perfectly done by the time I plated.

Tonight's dish was simplicity itself, with a recipe adapted from Nigella: after a quick plunge in boiling water, the shrimp were tossed with cold vermicelli, snow peas, and cilantro and dressed with a soy-sesame vinaigrette, with a splash of fish sauce and a dash of crushed red pepper.

I'm almost at the end of my latest five-pound purchase, but the season has only begun. And even if the Atlantic is no Mediterranean, it still does me right... or, at least, it'll hold me over until I get back there.

Resolved

2010-01-11T15:44:00.001-05:00

I had such a whirlwind week since we got back that I still haven't had a chance to formalize my New Year's resolutions! Although I usually pooh-pah the whole idea and consign my list to inevitable failure, you'll have to excuse my unfashionable sincerity this year.

One preliminary item before we proceed: I don't want to be such an amorphous stranger to you, dear Readers. To that end, I can now reveal that the "J" in "JC" stands for (drum roll)... Jay. Yes, what a thrilling, Homer Simpson-esque revelation! Actually, the "J" stands for Jennifer, but Jay is my preferred nickname, gender confusion be damned. So--now you know.

You can also see what I look like in my new Blogger profile photo... or at least what I would look like if strange, variously sized circles suddenly and mysteriously obscured 90% of my actual face. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

Okay, the actual resolutions:

Brush up on my French, so I'm not such a silly monolingual American. And learn a little Spanish so I won't be helpless in Peru.
Open an Etsy shop. I have an entire wardrobe crammed full of clothing I want to get rid of. No, really: there's an actual armoire in the corner of our bedroom that's devoted to clothes I can't wear, for various seasons. It's too sad to look at them; they must be sold, swapped, and given away this year.
Redecorate the apartment. I'm going to sound like a tyrant, but: I no longer believe in democracy in decorating--at least when it comes to DK and me. After half a year of depressing aesthetic compromises, I'm staging a coup and taking control. First big step, replacing our hideous bookcases...
Start running again. And maybe restart spinning too. And maybe maybe see what happens at a yoga class. Back in the day, I was a bit of a gym junkie, and then (fulfilling every lovebird cliché), I met DK and fell off the treadmill.
Learn how to sew serviceably. I'll never be a couturier, but I'd like to be able to hem and take things in without ruining them!
Take a letterpress workshop at The Arm. I've only done letterpress printing once in my life, but I loved it, and I want to learn more. I find setting type so relaxing.
Save up & buy good things once, rather than cheaping out and buying crappy things multiple times. Like my electric kettle--why, why, why did I buy a cheapo plastic model that's already falling apart instead of a more expensive, but infinitely more durable stainless steel one?! From now on, I'd rather make do without than compromising on quality.
Make my own cheese & infuse my own liquor. The cheese, I hope, is self-explanatory (cheese is delicious, I love cheese, making cheese is like magic, etc.). And while I may not be able to afford drinks at EN Shochu Bar every night, I'll be damned if that means I can't sip on some fig-infused shochu of my own. Pepper vodka, bacon bourbon, homemade limoncello... hmmm, what else?
Pay off my student loans. I'm lucky only to have one small loan from my scrapped graduate degree, but I want it gone, gone, gone this year.
Get out more! I'm definitely a homebody. This year, I want to make a concerted effort to go out to see pals and places.

I could definitely go way past ten, but in the interest of keepin' it realistic, I'll stop here. Not a bad mix of the definitely doable and the seriously aspirational, I think... For now, my fingers are merely crossed.

O, and very belatedly: happy New Year, dear Readers! Cheers to all your 2010s! And if you have advice on anything--say, a fail-safe cheese recipe (hint hint)--please share.

Free tree!

2010-01-11T09:03:00.001-05:00

Despite giddily planning to get a Christmas tree this year, we didn't go through with it (our kamikaze cat, who regularly bulldozes through our tiny apartment, had a lot to do with the final decision). But after weeks of enviously looking into people's apartments and inhaling as much pine smell as possible when walking by all the pop-up tree stands, DK and I finally have our very own tree.

True, the tree is entirely in a burlap bag. And it's entirely mulched. But it's entirely ours! And I can smell it as much as I want to!

Free mulched Christmas tree courtesy of Prospect Park's MulchFest (which is apparently sponsored by a real estate firm, hence all that lettering). Thank you Prospect Park. Even in winter, you never disappoint.

Barcelona III

2010-01-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

Phew! Okay, that's my little sampling from the roughly 1,000 photos we took whilst abroad, which really just consisted of walking and gawking, like good little tourists. Barcelona is very, very beautiful and very, very old. DK and I rambled pretty aimlessly, but it seems like on every corner, there was another beautiful plaza, another courtyard veiled with flowers (blooms in January--what lucky latitudes!), another gargoyle leering over the ramparts. Inescapable historical loveliness, people.

...Gosh, I'm really at a loss as to what to say without sounding like I'm giving a class report on "My First-Ever Trip to Europe During Winter Break." So, um, if you have any specific questions, dear Readers, I'd love to answer them. Otherwise, suffice to say that I had an amazing time.

And that I ate suckling pig. And enormous grilled langoustines. And octopus so tender I didn't have to chew. And fried sardines. And enormous swathes of fresh-picked wild mushrooms. And the best (and most expensive) pata negra (Iberico ham, which is kind of like prosciutto) I could have imagined. And chickpeas that changed my life. Seriously, these chickpeas... okay, I have to stop because I might start crying because I'm not eating them right now and every day for the rest of my life.

Barcelona II

2010-01-07T20:23:00.000-05:00

Yikes, still going through Barcelona photos! I think I have more one batch after this...

Barcelona I

2010-01-05T07:37:00.003-05:00

Barcelona: warren of Old City streets, ancient dust, green balconies, uneven cobblestone, sweet off-leash pups, narrow doors, and the smell of the sea everywhere.

Brooklyn: no matter where I go and how beautiful it is, I'm grateful to come home home home.

My Catalonia

2009-12-31T09:45:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-28T08:48:00.003-05:00

(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

2009-12-23T12:22:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-20T16:42:00.006-05:00

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

2009-12-18T12:16:00.007-05:00

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

2009-12-16T23:41:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-14T15:41:00.001-05:00

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

2009-12-08T09:45:00.008-05:00

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

2009-12-07T09:57:00.007-05:00

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.

Harvests

2009-11-26T19:26:00.006-05:00

One of the first things I did in South Carolina was run into my mother's garden and eat every ripe fig I could find. Dear lord, is there anything more glorious? (And, by the way, am I naive for thinking that D.H. Lawrence's "Figs" is actually about, well, figs?)

It's been good here. A different kind of abundance here than before--not the riot of the just-bloomed, but the heaps of the to-be-dried, to-be-stored, to-be-eaten, and to-be-planted again.

This year's little sweet potatoes will hopefully be next year's big sweet potatoes.

Turnips, my strange new love. (Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rutabaga.)

Poor sunflowers. Your day will come again!

Wild persimmons. They're tiny and lumpy and can be so astringent that your entire face puckers up, but when they're ripe, they're luscious little jewels.

Still life with shoes, squash husk, and mystery seeds.

Still life with dried corn cobs and errant shirt.

Don't let his peeved expression fool you--this black kitty is a lover, not a fighter. He's kept me so warm all these nights! If he didn't delight so much in tearing around the field and stalking lizards and climbing up trees, he would have come to New York with me long, long ago.

Figs and kitties notwithstanding, I'm surprisingly homesick for New York and can't wait to get back.

Cranky for Carolina

2009-11-25T13:45:00.005-05:00

White House turkey, 1920.
(Library of Congress)

I'm heading back to South Carolina tomorrow morning, and though I have to be up at an ungodly hour, and I hate flying, I'm terribly excited. With luck and no delays, I should be at the parental state by noon, and then I can spend a whole five days in countrified bliss: gathering wood for the stove, kissing my sweet witchy kitties, and sneaking late-night chocolate. Neither of my parents eats chocolate, but somehow, there's always a bar or two in the freezer when I'm there...

I also plan on driving my indulgent mama crazy with a detailed and ranked list of thrift stores and antique malls I'd like to hit, pretty pretty please. She has to drive and accompany me, you know, because 1) I don't drive, like, at all and 2) she's my mama, and she kind of has to. (That's the only child in me coming out.) As always, maximum frockage is expected.

In any case, happy soon-to-be Thanksgiving, dear American readers! (And happy plain old soon-to-be November 26, dear international readers!)

Dream house

2009-11-23T13:39:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-18T17:23:00.009-05:00

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

2009-11-16T00:19:00.007-05:00

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

2009-11-12T12:10:00.007-05:00

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:

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.
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.
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.
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...
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).
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

2009-11-08T10:30:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-02T14:31:00.005-05:00

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?

2009-10-27T22:04:00.006-04:00

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... I 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!

To have & to hold & to mend

2009-10-20T23:10:00.004-04:00

I'm awfully hard on my clothes. I rip seams, tear cuffs, break zippers, and generally stain anything and everything. I like to believe it's because I'm such an active person, with a full and glorious range of motion, but it's really because I'm very, very clumsy.

My biggest offense by far is popping buttons. I don't even know how I do it (ahem--please refrain from mentioning all the apple pie I eat), but my buttons fairly fly off, never to be seen again. And therein lies my dilemma--I'm happy to sew in an odd button on a shirt or dress, but I just don't believe in mismatched buttons on coats. So, when I lose a coat button, I have to set the whole thing aside until I find just the right set.

Meanwhile, time marches forward, the seasons change, I pack away my cold-weather clothes and run around all spring and summer without a jacket.

But uh oh--now the temperature's dropping, I'm unpacking all my coats again, and o dear, I've already found three in need of new fastenings. Including my most-favorite-ever black opera coat, which made me feel like I was on my way to Lincoln Center whenever I wore it. It's number one my mending list.

This double-breasted blue coat is actually missing two out of its four functional buttons and one of its decorative ones. I told you, I'm awful.

Believe it or not, this red peacoat is looking at its third rebuttoning. I've had it since I was 12 and haven't been able to give it up, even though the sleeves are now 3/4 length.

I found these purple buttons last weekend and thought they might be a good match for the opera coat, but alas, they're not quite right together.

I have about a dozen other coats (...I know, I have a problem), so it's not like I'm utterly bereft and exposed to the elements. But it'd be nice to get these ones back into circulation, so to speak.