sarah in nyc

  This wonderful coffee-drinking, newspaper-reading skeleton has been installed in front of a local Georgian coffee shop around the corner from my house. The people who own the coffee shop have been enjoying setting up the skeleton in various amusing poses. I am between commissions right now (two are beginning any minute) and my draggy cold seems to be thinking about leaving my body (finally!). So, I have been tackling some tasks that have been on my "tuit" list for a while. "Tuit" is a term I have learned from some of my sewing buddies---the things that eventually one will get to it. Dyeing my sad grey boots red was one of those tasks. The other was tending to my purple cotton sweater. Years ago, I found a lovely heavy cotton sweater with pretty covered and embroidered buttons in a local thrift store and I thought that it would be perfect for my mother. It was perfect for her and she wore it for a few years until she died.  The sweater was made by Evie. a mid-rang...

 I have terrible feet. I discovered several years ago, that my feet are happiest in men's cowboy boots. I buy most of my boots at online auctions. Several months ago I purchased an almost new pair of boots. They are incredibly comfortable. My feet feel good every time I put them on. Unfortunately, I really hate the color. The grey/white leather reminds me of the pretend boots that my neighborhood friends used to wear over their shoes on Halloween when they were dressing up as drum majorettes. Majorette costume .  I lived in a Catholic neighborhood and my friends were  generally the fifth or eight or eleventh child in their family so the white plastic spats that covered their shoes when they showed up on Halloween were grey, dirty and cracked. My boots felt good  but every time I wore them I thought about Meggie or Beth Ann or Ann Marie or Mary in their sad majorette spats. A while back I discovered the wonders of  Tarrago self shine shoe polish  which also ...

 My oldest sister had a birthday in August and I gave her a gift certificate to King Arthur baking products. One of the things my sister bought with the gift certificate was a bottle of apple cider concentrate. A cou8ple of weeks ago she made chicken with it and she said that it was delicious.  I bought a gallon of apple cider the other day and this morning I reduced a quart of it to about a cup. This is one of the truly great things about a microwave oven. The sharp eyed among you may notice a cinnamon stick in the reduced cider. I mixed up the reduced cider with some mustard and cooked the chicken in the yummy concentrated cider. What you are missing is how heavenly the apartment smelled while I was working out and the chicken was cooking. I did stop to admire the shadows cast by the scaffolding on the building across the street. I like the contrast between the scaffolding and their shadow. I am nearly done with restoring Jerry's atara. The straight and pick stitching on the...