Glimpses

A new Friday series: a few snatches of beauty from my week, and a few words.

What I did last night instead of mopping floors and ironing napkins...

Oops.

I'll be back on Monday, with tales and pictures of Mom's Birthday Feast. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Wanna read a silly story?

Then head on over here.

Rummaging

A sunny March Saturday, a friendly antiques dealer, a stack of vintage napkins, and all is well with the world. I hadn't been out rummaging in my usual haunts for awhile (the winter doldrums?). It was so refreshing to get back out and spend some time poking around for treasures.

The napkins are great, really, but the true gem is the little Princess Embroidery Kit ($3) I found, complete with little pattern-printed handkerchiefs, floss, and a miniature packet of needles. All the more charming are the snaggledy rows of cross-stitches some little hands worked on one of the hankies. So sweet!

I also found an old childrens' book, from 1934. Do you recognize the cast of characters? It's a Winnie-the-Pooh book, pre-Disneyfication, when Winnie was really just a stiff and very much inanimate teddy bear, and Christopher Robin looked something like Chucky. A dour little boy indeed.

My general relationship with antiques stores is rather fickle. Some I love, some I loathe. Too often so-called "antiques stores" are really just shelf upon shelf filled with clutter: chipped dishes, Happy Meal toys from ten years ago, the denizens of figurines dredged from the homes of a hundred little old ladies. You know the kind. I always walk out of those places thinking, I have enough of my own junk as it is, why would I want to buy someone else's?

Almost as often, antiques stores are preceded by a cultivated sophistication, an air of haughty superiority. There will be lovingly polished mahogany spindles, the soft glow of authentic Tiffany lamps. Sinatra or Martin, Fitzgerald or Holiday will tinkle from a genuine Zenith radio, circa 1938. This is what happens in the towns where fat-walleted yuppies like to take their vacations.

Fortunately, Binghamton is not such a town. On Clinton Street, so-called Antiques Row, there are the sort of sweet, dusty little shops I love. I don't mind the crackle of an AM station in the background, or the nutty banter of the shopkeep. I'm partial to old linens, curiosities, and buckets of old hardware kicking around on the floor. I've found some great old buttons in the bottoms of dusty boxes. It's the thrill of the hunt, and I'm happy as long as there's something worth hunting for.

That's my thrifting/antiquing manifesto. What's yours?

Three years ago today...

We've only been together three years, and already that picture seems like so long ago. My parents took it, on the day Patrick met them for the first time. (Can you tell by his nervous little smile?) We'd been dating two months, and I was pretty sure I was going to marry him. I'm happy to say, I was right.

It all started with Myspace. Out of the blue, he up and introduced himself. Now, I guess I had a cute Myspace picture or something, because I'd received a fair number of messages from guys on Myspace, usually heeeey baby, your hot, wanna chat? Patrick's was totally friendly, respectful, confident, and smart. I was impressed. Impressed enough to check his profile, where I beheld:

Interests: playing guitar, writing music, fixing up houses.

This is the point at which I had to go lay down. I confess: I am a woman who loses all reason when she sees a man with a guitar. I've wanted to knock boots with almost every single guitarist I've ever met. I took a few deep breaths, and did what any normal girl would do: I called my mom.

I read Mom his email, and immediately she knew what to do. She told me to marry him.

(I should point out here that my mom had never encouraged me to even go out with any other guy, ever.)

So. Eight days and three more emails later, we had our first date. That was today, three years ago. I enacted every stereotypical nervous female behavior there was: the long shower, the preening, the endless procession of skirts, dresses, jeans, and sweaters I stretched into and out of, in front of the mirror, frowning, before finally deciding what to wear.

Now, the thing about Myspace is, you're able to learn so much about a person before you even meet them. I already knew his favorite bands and favorite movies, and that he liked good wine. It's convenient, in a way. You have plenty of ready-made conversation starters. However, it can also make the stakes incredibly high. I am queen of preconceived notions. In my mind, here was the situation: tonight, I am going on a date with my ideal future husband. He is not only a vegetarian, a dog owner, and house fixer-upper, he's a musician, too. And, I thought, I have to try my best not to blow it, because if I blow it, there he'll be, my ideal future husband, scared off, never to come again.

The funny thing is, for once in my life, the only time in my life, my preconceived notion worked out. Our first date led to another and another and another, until I lost count. In addition to the stuff I read on his Myspace page, (which is all pretty trivial, when you think about it), he is the kindest, most dependable, smartest, specialest, goofiest guy I've ever known, and every day I know I'm lucky to have him.

So. That's our story. Thanks for reading. :)

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Valentine's Day

Pete, will you be mine?

My husband and I have a boycott on Valentine's Day. I know that's sort of bah-humbug of us, but let me list our reasons:

1. We have a sincere aversion to all things pink. (Sorry Sarah!)
2. Once you get past the undeniable sweetness of Valentine's Day in elementary school, what is the day about? Consumerism, and high expectations. How many of us have gotten into fights/been really disappointed with our sweeties on this day?
3. How many of us have sat at home in our single days and stuffed our faces and cried?
4. Patrick's and my anniversary is February 18th. Why celebrate hokey, contrived Valentine's Day, when our own anniversary is only four days away? Stay tuned for a sweet, lovey post on Wednesday.

And for all you who do celebrate Valentine's, have a great one! I hope there is chocolate involved.

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Happiness

These ginger cookies.

The curled edges and fountain pen script in the archives at the local history center.

Little heart-shaped purses.

Little red berries in January sunshine.


Our neighbors' new kitten, whom I can't wait to meet.

Valentines.

The sushi-fish.

The kind, thoughtful, amusing words of blog comments.

Hope everyone's having a lovely Saturday.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches upon the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
~Emily Dickinson

Happy Inauguration Day, everyone.

Field Trip

We're not fussy people. Our needs are simple. We like to go for neighborhood walks, or hike in state parks. We go for little drives: we have our favorite farms, our favorite horse pastures, our favorite fallen-down barns. Most of the time, we content ourselves with our place, and the things that can be seen or done in it. Binghamton is, after all, an okay place to live. We like it.

But, now and then, we need to escape. Sometimes, and for no reason, a snowy Saturday will find us embarking on a field trip. We tell no one our plans. We take nothing. We have no expectations, excepting maybe the thrills of unfamiliar street corners and discovering cool old buildings.

On days like this, only the most exotic of upstate New York locations will suffice. Today, we went to Syracuse.

What? That's right, folks. It's exotic. There are cool buildings and unfamiliar corners, and also a slick, big-city feel that Binghamton definitely lacks. There are museums we've never explored, regional microbrews we've never sampled, restaurants whose menus we don't have memorized. There's a first-rate cooperative craft store, and maybe the finest indepedent music store I've ever seen.

The Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) is housed in the old armory building, which makes it cool even before you set foot inside. Why did they build armories that look like castles? There's something so mysterious and old-world about them.

We liked the butterflies.

I'll pause here to give a little of the back story. As usual, there's a dorky, under-lying reason we find Syracuse enchanting. (Deep breath.) Well, back in 2006, when Patrick and I had been dating a mere three months, (imagine!) he drove me to Syracuse to take my GRE's. When he came to pick me up after the test, he had a dozen roses in the back seat. I spent the rest of the day in a daze: it was May, all the trees were blooming and the birds were singing. An afternoon rain shower had cleared the air, and my boyfriend of three months had just given me a dozen roses! We ate dinner at a charming little place, drinking wine and talking about the future. Since then, Syracuse always brings me back to that day, not even so very long ago, when our life together was something we were just starting to think about. It was a nice time. So is this one.

Dinner was at the Empire Brewing Company. Microbrews for Patrick, Chilean red wine for me.

And lots of playing with my camera.

Strawberry bread pudding with banana ice cream. Oh my.

And the price we paid for taking a road trip despite the Winter Storm Warning. Yee haw!

Out with a bang

Chocolate ganache birthday cake, Moosewood Celebrates. Alexis' 26th birthday, Maxie's Supper Club, Ithaca, NY.

It was a convenient holiday get-together for the three of us. After spending long, merry days with family, it was refreshing to get out of the holiday rubble and have some spirited girl time.

I have to confess, I may not have been much of a conversation partner. I was too busy experimenting with my new camera. New camera! When I cruise my favorite blogs, I spend a lot of time drooling at the beautiful photography (you know who you are, Alicia and Amanda). I marvel at my blog heroes and their supernatural abilities to take decent photos in low-light settings, to overcome the nauseating effects of artificial light, to make exquisite photographs: still-lifes and action shots and close-ups. And now, I can be one of them. So excited!

I had an excellent holiday. There was lots of joy, and hugs. Patrick's Grandma's peanut-butter balls, and his mother's excellent roast cauliflower. There were Christmas eve Manhattans with my family, and tipsy conversation, and exclamations. Alexis loved the mobile, the Airedales were well-received. Watching my mom holding her new bag and smiling, I felt proud and loved. I hope your holidays had good food and laughter, shiny, pretty things, and candlelight.

Have a happy New Year!

Craftivism: support handmade toys

Because the time, skill, and joy of making things by hand is something we all appreciate, I wanted to pass this on to you.

Due to the recent concerns about lead levels in imported toys, a bill has been passed which requires all toys, imported and domestic, to be tested for lead before reaching the market. When you think about all the kids who've been exposed to unsafe lead levels from made-in-China toys, this is a good thing.

The problem is, these lead tests are expensive. Up to $400 per toy. And this bill, as it's written, applies to all toy makers, in fact, anyone who manufactures products for children under 12. That includes all the committed, conscientious cottage crafters, all the talented handmakers on Etsy. If even includes me, for a few months ago I made a baby blanket and sold it in my shop. Under this new law, I'm a criminal!

So. What needs to happen is, amendments must be made to the bill before it's put into action. Send this sample letter to your Congress person and Senators.

Maurice Hinchey
Hillary Clinton
Charles Schumer

If you need to look up your own representative, you can do that here.
If you need to look up your senators, do that here.

If you'd like, you can read more about the issue, and do even more good things here. Such as signing petitions, downloading widgets, and joining the Save Handmade Toys facebook page.

Thanks, everyone, for your support of making things by hand!

Gratitude

1. Watching Patrick sleep
2. Post Road Pumpkin Ale
3. Poppies
4. Bread machines
5. Laying in bed when it's snowing outside
6. Echinacea tea with honey
7. Kites
8. Old aprons
9. Pumpkin seeds
10. My great-grandmother's embroidery floss
11. Blog comments
12. Tomatoes
13. Rubber stamps
14. Alice's Restaurant
15. Wild rice
16. Pushpins
17. Pete's velvety gray fur
18. Lilacs
19. Stevie Wonder
20. Dancing in the kitchen
21. Dates (the fruit)
22. Good neighbors
23. Crisp apples
24. Rotary cutters
25. Indoor plumbing
26. The continued health and wellbeing of those I love
27. Gillian Welch
28. Fiddle tunes
29. Crate and Barrel
30. Corduroy
31. Stockings
32. Honey pots
33. Old china plates
34. Dried hydrangeas
35. Greece
36. Friends far and near
37. Cafes with live music and good beer
38. Turquoise
39. Teapots
40. Tulips
41. Hot pepper jelly
42. Raffia
43. Pinecones
44. Lucky stones
45. Obama
46. Keen shoes
47. Old buttons
48. Baked tofu
49. Anti-lock brakes
50. The kindness of husbands (mine)
51. This American Life podcasts
52. Seam rippers
53. Facial scrub
54. Plaid
55. Miniature clothespins
56. Sateen sheets
57. Pistachios
58. Thrift stores
59. Farmers markets
60. Mason jars
61. Bicycles
62. Mung bean sprouts
63. Tempeh
64. Aloe vera
65. Wedding pictures
66. Good news
67. Anne Michaels' poetry
68. Kate Wolf
69. Clogging
70. Wild strawberries
71. Dragonflies
72. Burt's Bees lip balm
73. Acorns
74. Toadstools
75. Photo albums
76. Broccoli
77. Woods
78. Farmers
79. Stone walls
80. Tissue paper
81. Dark chocolate
82. Brie
82. Marques de Caceres Rioja
83. Cable knit sweaters
84. Down-filled anything
85. Birds' nests
86. Compost
87. The ocean
88. Barn swallows
89. Desk lamps
90. Patches
91. The blog-o-sphere
92. Family
93. Golden retrievers
94. Uncle earl
95. Goats
96. Bobbins
97. Bluegrass
98. Greeting cards
99. Owls
100. Paisley

A perfect pear

Do all first-time holiday hostesses go beserk, or just me?

These are the place markers for my Thanksgiving table, pattern and tutorial here. I love little projects that use little bits of things I have lying around: ribbon, fabric, craft leaves. It was fun to dive into my scrap box, pulling out pieces of this or than and remembering every project I've ever sewn. The embroidered scrap is a piece of the bag my new Crate & Barrel table runner came in. I adore, adore the runner, and the fact that it came in its own embroidered bag was pretty sweet. And the fact that I was able to use part of the bag? Well, that was even better.

Yes we did.

"And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright -tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

This morning, my dad said on the phone, "I'm not one for trusting politicians. Really. But if Barack Obama was running for the office of Dictator for Life, I'd vote for him." I feel the same way.

It feels really good to be proud of my country again.

Craftivism

There's a place inside me where my simple love of making pretty things rubs shoulders with my compassion for the world. Sometimes, my crafting is just self-serving creative expression. More often, though, it's a conscious act: this is one less thing I have to buy, one less thing sewn in a sweatshop, one less piece of junk that gets shipped to a landfill. My slipcovers are a good example, (not done yet, close, though) but they aren't what inspired me to post today.

This is what inspired me to post today. Mama to Mama.

It's one thing to be keeping stuff out of landfills. It's entirely another to be crafting to save a life. Please check it out. I might have to take a break from slipcovering to work on these.

Halloween

The squirrels in our neighborhood like to snack on pumpkins. That's the story with that picture.

Halloween in Binghamton was a sunny, sixty-degree day. In late October in upstate NY, that's pretty good. I was happy because I was able to finish washing my windows (yay). The kids were happy because they didn't have to wear a parka over their costumes. When I was a kid, every year my mom would suggest "Eskimo!" when I asked her what I should be for Halloween. Eskimo. A costume that needs no modification to be weather appropriate in this climate.

I was never an eskimo. This year, inspiration struck in my favorite of thrift stores, when I came across a blouse with the label Miss Rodeo America. It was blue and white, with lace and a leather lanyard. Perfect! I had boots, I scored a denim skirt and a hat at Salvation Army for about five bucks. It felt good to buy everything second hand-- it feels more authentic, somehow, than just going to a costume store and walking out with a bag of new stuff. And thrifting is always more fun than costume stores the day before Halloween.

Anyway. My original intent was Country Singer, but since my costume fell just a little far on the western side, I amended my image. Cowgirl. Yee haw, partner. Round 'em up. Howdy there, Buckaroo. Here are a couple shots from my husband's gig later that night. A couple very blurry shots, sorry about that.

Pirate babe, Cowgirl.

Genie, Chiquita, Cowgirl.

It was a fun time.

The other notable experience of the night was running out of candy for trick-or-treaters. I was a little hot under the collar for a minute, until I remembered my basement. I knew those sixty-five pounds of apples would come in handy! I hauled up a box of Galas and started passing them out, thinking oh, my house is getting egged for sure. But, no. Unbelieveably, most kids were excited. "Apples! Cool! I want to eat mine now!" These are American kids, greedy little sugar demons on Halloween? For awhile I had both apples and candy in the basket, and some kids took an apple even when faced with Three Musketeers. Mars Incorporated, take that. It was downright heartwarming.

I hope everyone had a sweet, safe Halloween.

Puking pumpkins

Last night the venerable Kat hosted a self-titled Puking Pumpkin Party.

You get the idea.

I can't explain how nice it was to be in Ithaca for a night. Don't get me wrong, I love the Southern Tier, but Ithaca is just an exceptionally creative, exceptionally green sort of place. A place where no one blinks when you announce that you just learned to make cheese. A place where after the pumpkins are carved and the beer is drunk, people sit around in a circle enthusiastically troubleshooting solar showers, home beermaking, and vermicomposting. When I feel like all I'm seeing, over and over, is the same Walmart-shopping, label-wearing, SUV-driving people, I can go to Ithaca and be reminded that wonderful, intelligent, unabashedly independent and wacky folks like myself do exist. It's just nice to feel sometimes that I'm not alone.

A splash of color

Because I spent the day in a wholly uncreative fashion (washing windows), I have no pictures to show for my efforts. So I will send you to Alicia's blog, for pictures of the absolute most exquisite garden I've ever seen.

If Patrick and I had it all to do again, this is where we would do it.

Grounded.

I'd love to post pictures of the grape pie I made yesterday, but I left my camera at my in laws' house. D'oh! What's a blogger without her camera? Grounded, that's what.

Tomorrow, there will be pie pictures, rest assured.

Pantoum for Autumn Evenings

The wind articulates: offers tree sounds
to our ears, leaves to the ground,
tosses handfuls along the sidewalk.
Pinwheeling colors twirl down

to our ears, leaves to the ground.
Man in a flannel shirt gathers leaves,
pinwheeling colors twirl down.
We know a turn is coming.

Man in a flannel shirt gathers leaves,
rakes a bushy pile, kids flop in bunches.
We know a turn is coming,
we yield to a new season. Our neighbor

rakes a bushy pile, kids flop in bunches,
shouting. Geese hurtle south overhead.
Yielding to a new season, our neighbor
brings us apples in a paper sack.

Shouting, geese hurtle southward.
Purple fox grapes make us pucker. Each year, fall
brings us apples in a paper sack,
tawny and russet, that blush a kiss of frost.

Purple fox grapes make us pucker. Each year, fall
comes colder, darker and we hurry inside,
tawny and russet, that blush a kiss of frost.
The rusty gate swings open, leaves flutter, and fall

comes colder, darker. We hurry inside.
The wind articulates, offers tree sounds.
The rusty gate swings open, leaves flutter, and fall
tosses handfuls along the sidewalk.

Here's to a long day spent roasting peppers, shutting storm windows, and canning the last of the season's tomatillos before they freeze. It's time to get out of denial. Fall is here to stay.

Girl time

We're three and a half years out of college, and we know that all of us being together for an evening warrants celebration:



A round of margaritas, a shocking pink Ithaca sunset, and blowing bubbles on our way home.