Only a matter of time

Hello everybody,

Mr. P and I have come to a tacit understanding about my recent flea market purchase, which involves him pretending he doesn't know about my mad woman's basket, and me pretending that I haven't noticed the new golf bag that has appeared in the house.  Besides, I now have my excuses at the ready.  It's a packing case, after all...  And if all else fails, I have "Oh, that old thing...  I've had it for aaaaaages," to fall back on.

Anyway, the House of NKK has moved on from all that.  We are now on Etsy.  Oh, yes.

Ta dah!  My first ever Etsy purchase.  Isn't he fabulous?

At 5"x5", he's petite.  But of course, quite leggy...

I'm thinking a box frame so that all his hairy loveliness doesn't get squashed behind glass.

He came from a very nice lady called Liza at Felted Fuzzies.

So, what was your first Etsy purchase?  Would love to see.

Before I go, please can someone buy these cups from here:

and come back and let me know.  They are absolutely adorable.  I would buy them myself, but as you all know, I have my limits...

C.x

PS - I have no affiliation with the shops.  I just like stuff.

Late to the party



I have discovered Etsy.  (I know, where have I been...).

I am in serious trouble.  Send help.

C.x

A little piece of Jersey in the City

The builders tell me that work is going well on the house by the sea - no buried treasure found, and that's a good thing...  It's raining today but all last week we had sunny days here (hurricanes and earthquakes aside), and November and our voyage home still seem like a long way off.

But we have an influx of visitors in September, so I know that suddenly we'll be waving goodbye to our old neighbourhood.  And one of the institutions that we pass all the time on the bus is this old store.

In many ways, it's nothing special.  And it's not as though there won't be pork in Suffolk.  But I'm pretty sure nowhere will have this on the wall outside.

Hilarious!  Every time I pass it I expect to see a Soprano lurking outside.  Or a rug-shaped object being hussled into the back.

I mean, seriously - doesn't it make you  want to start singing to yourself that you woke up this morning and got yourself a gun?

Now, I know I've spent way too much time in my life watching Sex and the City and Sopranos (what else is there to do for two years in the desert?)  But please, tell me it's not just me.


C.x

Hello Geronimo

 Hello everybody,

Thanks so much for all your good wishes after the wobble the other day.  It's bucketing down today and we're threatened with a tropical storm over the weekend.  All we need now is a plague to round things off...

And welcome to new followers.  Lovely to have you here.  I'm having a lovely time catching up on old blogs and finding new ones at the moment.   So much creativity out there.

Have you seen these button pictures?  Aren't they just the business?

Don't they make you want to reach for your button stash?

(I love that daisy button.  And the chandelier!)

And isn't this just lovely?

(Isn't that a fawn button for the eye?)

But my favourite one is this:

Just lovely.

These all come from Hello Geronimo (all images from their website).  My sister, niece (hello Isobel!) and I went to the South Bank while I was at home and they had this map in the window.  (I want I want I want.)

So which is your favourite?  And what picture would you make with your buttons?



C.x

I'm just saying...

As you may remember, I have been coveting the crochet throw from The White Company since I blogged about it here.

Well, The White Company is having a sale.  :)



60% off.

Sometimes it pays to wait.

C.x

Rain

Hello everybody,

It's sweltering here.  It's 6.15am and already its 24C, and will go up to a high of 34C today, and 38C tomorrow.  We have the odd thunder storm, but all it does is make things more humid.  I'm not complaining.  My Mum tells me that the UK has forgotten all about summer this year, so I get that this might not be what you want to be hearing right now.

So, I thought I'd tell you instead about Rain.  Rain Africa is a shop in the Rockefeller Center that sells exquisite handcrafts and beauty products made by small rural factories in Africa.  Ethically traded, organic and environmentally friendly, it's a refreshing change from some of the tourist tat of nearby Times Square.  It's also stupidly expensive (sigh).  They had the most amazing crochet granny square blanket the last time I went in, and I thought to myself "I can make that." (If only I'd just get on and do it. ...)

But I couldn't leave behind the wool box, which seemed to be calling my name.  I have my (very small) stash neatly arranged inside.

(Yes, as you can see, I've only progressed a little with my own granny square business.)

And I have that lovely Alpaca red and grey wool that I blogged about here, to try to make this scarf if and when I learn chevron.

At the moment the box of sheep is shoved on top of a wardrobe so that I'm not reminded on a daily basis how slack I'm being in the craft department.  Somehow the thought of making a wooly scarf in 30C heat isn't doing it for me.  And my head is FULL of house and building work and decorating and travel plans and stories that I want to write.

I guess this is all a long winded way of saying that I'm feeling a bit of a fraud at the moment even having a crafty blog when I'm not doing any crafting.  I haven't written as much here lately as a result.  And that's a bit crap.

Sorry.

C.x

Quilting for a cause

Hello everybody.

A lovely long and lazy weekend here - 4th July which means a day off.  Hurray!  We were also given early release from work on Friday.  (Lots of prison-like associations with that phrasing, I know.)  Anyway, I walked home, which gave me a chance to take in the windows of Saks and Anthropologie at a dawdling pace instead of whizzing past them on the bus.  In the bizarre world of fashion, it is winter, which means that the mannequins in Saks are all bundled up in woollen coats and cashmere jumpers.  Lovely, but a bit mad in 80 degree heat.  Apparently, there are women in the world who shop like this.  Personally, I need to feel the early morning chill of Autumn before i can think of the need for fingerless long wool gloves.  (The Saks mannequins tell me they will be big next season - you heard it here first.)

Saks had also devoted a whole line of windows to The Names Project.

I had a vague impression of this that I'd picked up from somewhere, but it's a powerful thing to see these displayed in a line together.  There's so much love and emotion packed into each one.

And they so vividly bring to life the people they commemorate.

So much life and loss and heartache behind each panel.

(I have sat for awhile wondering whether it's too insensitive a transition to go on from here to chatter on about Anthropologie.  But the truth is that it made me so happy to study their window too.  So much creativity and humour was just the kind of life affirming injection I needed.  Apologies to anyone who finds the remainder of the post in bad taste...)

So, to Anthropologie.  I find their window displays endlessly fascinating.

Who would think to clutter up a window with bubbles?  And yet it works.  And I just love the use of these old slides as the backdrop to a single outfit in the corner of this window.   How fab is that?!

Each slide offering its own tiny slice of life....

There's so much care and attention to detail that goes into these window displays.  But it's not often that I get to see it happen as I did on Friday.

Simple yet effective.

More creative food inside.  There isn't a single plate here that I'm not coveting...

And owls are definitely the bird of the moment.  They were everywhere.

I managed not to buy anything.  But lots of food for mind and soul.  All on the way home from work.

C.x

When only a pork pie will do

We love living in Manhattan.  Five minutes from our door there's a row of restaurants selling pretty much every cuisine under the sun.  We are utterly spoilt for choice when it comes to eating out, and the only taxing part is the choosing, and having the discipline to stay in once in awhile... 

But every now and again, maybe on a cold or rainy day, or maybe when one of us is feeling a bit homesick, or maybe just for the hell of it as we did last Sunday, we will find ourselves by 'accident' in the West Village at a shop on Hudson Street that's done out like a 1950s English grocers.

Forever England...

To give you an idea of the kind of territory we're in, the West Village is not just any old run of the mill neighbourhood; the grocery shop is a couple of streets away from this:

We're talking seriously chi-chi.  But Myers of Keswick is resolutely, self-consciously, old world.

I could tell you we go there for the tea...

... or the sweets we used to eat as children...



 ...or the rather fab brown betty teapots...

... or the inevitable tins of beans...

... or the syrup and treacle....


...but none of that is quite it really.  We have our own private dance in this shop, Mr. P and I, where I will tell him that I'm there for the Fairy Liquid (I find the washing up liquid here a bit cloying) and he will tell me that he's there for the marmite.  But we both know why he's really there.  And that's just fine.

Me?  I'm there for the custard....

(And just in case you're curious, we have no affiliation with the store, but I really feel we should have.  For the amount we spend in there, we must be entitled to some shares by now...)

C.x

Busy bee

My weekends are normally sloth-filled affairs.  Speaking frankly, Mr. P and I are idle creatures.  But this weekend has been a shining exception.

On Friday, we went to a cocktail party on HMS Gloucester, docked in Manhattan for a few days and due to be decommissioned shortly.  This sounds more salubrious that it was, and involved me trapping myself in the ship at one point when I went to the loo instead of sipping cocktails on deck.

On Saturday, I went to my first sewing class at Purl Soho.  I can't tell you enough good things about this shop.  Like being dropped into a rainbow.

There's so much inspiration wherever you turn, whether it's baby bibs...

...or felted figurines...

... or cashmere scarves...

... or these exquisite Liberty Tana Lawn samplers...

(such a simple idea, but such a lovely display just inside the front door).

They have a blog (Purl Bee) with regular project ideas (the quilts next to the cashmere scarves in the photo are some recent examples).  And the staff are friendly and helpful (but I think I've mentioned that before).

And best of all, there's a woman who's going to teach me how to sew.  Those of you who have read this blog before will know that my New Year's Resolution includes the Merry Christmas project  (to sew letters and stuff them).  But I actually want to get a bit beyond that.  So I signed up for sewing classes.  I haven't quite decided yet if I want to make clothes, but I definitely want to learn how to use a sewing machine, and maybe make cushion covers or simple curtains.  After that we'll see.  Mostly, I just want to conquer my fear of sewing machines.  Yes indeed.  Now, I am afraid of spiders and dark alleys and the usual list of panic-inducing bogie- men, but I must also confess to a fear of sewing machines.  Now, admittedly, I haven't used one since I was thirteen, and it's not like I lost a digit, or sewed my hair to the apron I was trying to make.  I have no traumatic memories to justify this fear.  But I think  it's to do with the noise and the feeling that it and not I am in control of the process.  As though it will literally run away with itself if I don't sit rigidly paying attention to what's happening.

I haven't told this to my teacher yet.  And I was relieved to see that yesterday, she took her time and explained everything six times, and gave lots of snippets of interesting information.  And although she took a sewing machine out towards the end of the lesson, she didn't actually let us loose on them.  Instead, she talked soothingly of feet and soles and ankles and arms as though the machine was a friend of hers who could be our friend too.

We are going to make bags.  I knew this before the class, and I had a vision of a simple rectangle of fabric sewn on three sides with the extravagance of a handle to finish.  A bit like a pillow case with a string attached.  I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about this as a project, but had put it down to wanting to run marathons before I could crawl.  But the bag we are to make is a bit more presentable than that.  I will let you know how I get on, but in theory it will be reversible, and have pockets inside and out with a magnetic clasp.  This is the fabric I've chosen:

As you can see, I have even acquired the tools of the trade.  Of course, I have no clue what to do with them...  Anyway, we spent most of the class cutting our cloth.  This involved a self-healing mat (I LOVE this concept and want to apply it to all sorts of things...).  And a rotary cutter.  Hmmm.  Not at all sure about this contraption.  I'm sure I will come to love it, but for now, I can't seem to be able to cut through four layers of fabric at a time.  And I am left-handed so I kept having to flip everything around.  I am used to this.  But my right hand is weak and kept allowing the rule against which I was cutting to slip around.  Not great if you're trying to cut a straight line.  But I am determined to master it all and will be back for more next week.  Stay tuned.

Having been out and about so much yesterday, I wanted to hunker down today.  Mr. P demanded scones.  So I obliged.  (They are fast becoming a staple in the house of no knitted knickers.)

I have mislaid the scone cutter that's the right size, but have discovered that a wine glass is just as good.  My ulterior motive for making these is this beauty...

... purchased on holiday and carted back across the world by hand in the manner of ancient traders.  So, I decided to do it right and have afternoon tea.

And then, because I was on a roll, I made stewed rhubarb.  I LOVE rhubarb.  I think it might be one of my desert island foods.  But I digress....

I use a thumb of finely-grated fresh ginger and the juice of half an orange as well as the sugar.  It gives it depth (and besides, I love ginger, so any excuse...)

And to cap it all, while rooting around in the freezer for some worthy fish, Mr. P unearthed some bangers that he'd TOTALLY forgotten about....  So, we had bangers and mash for dinner.  Which was really just a base for Nigel Slater's onion gravy with marsala.  Heaven on a plate.

Oh, and I made two more granny squares.

(And if you hadn't already guessed it, the abundance of foodie photos in this post is down to the fact that I am learning to use my tripod.  The one I've had for 10 years and never learned how to use.  It's amazing what blogging drives you to...)

So, you see really, I am glad the weekend is over and I can return to work for a rest.

Have a good week.

C.x