sarah in nyc

 I don't know what it is like to raise children outside of New York City.   When my kids were little, I spent huge swaths of my time in the playground with my kids .During that time I developed intense friendships with the other mother's and sitters in the park.  We knew intimate details about one another's' lives. We would share struggles with infertility or health or behavioral issues our children were struggling with. We might know about issues that one or another was going through in our marriages. We didn't always remember last names. Often I would run into one of these friends as we were pushing strollers up and down Broadway or walking our kids to and from school or their various afterschool activities. Those moments on Broadway were a chance to catch up on our lives to share and solve problems together. As we and our kids grew older we might talk about struggles getting into the right middle school or a kid having issues with drugs or mental health issues or...

 My feet are, as or dear friend Father Blute, used to say, "My cross to bear".  Unless they are perfectly shod, they get cranky and let me know what is wrong in no uncertain terms. I have owned the boots pictured below for many years.  I bought them , a vintage pair of Larry Mahan boots at an online auction. They are really comfortable. Unfortunately the delicate snakeskin on the foot part of the boot has begun to break. I had repaired two other pairs of boots a couple of years ago by covering broken leather with leather patches put in place with barge glue. I did the same operation again last night, but instead of using the thin and flexible metallic leather that I had used for the patches above, I pulled out a heavy olive green skin that I had purchased somewhere a really long time ago. Last time I draped newspaper over my boot tops to create a pattern. This time I was more clever and taped strips of painters tape over the boot parts that needed to be patched. I careful...

 I love old sewing books. I know that there are lots of women who love to buy shoes,  or clothes or jewelry or fancy kitchen equipment. I love to buy old sewing books.  I will often go through the sewing book auctions on eBay to see if there is something that I want to add to my collection. A week or so back I bid on this book published in 1975. I liked that it had diagrams and sizing charts for children's clothing. There is currently a crop of young relatives that I have been sewing for.it is useful to have such a book for when I make the next batch of gift-garments. I won the auction. The book arrived yesterday. I opened the package. The book was well wrapped in cardboard. Inside the cardboard there was  this excellent booklet from 1941 with directions for lots of different crochet, knitting and embroidery stitches as well as directions for at least a dozen projects. Tucked into the 1941 booklet was this instructional booklet for making crochet toys. I was already ...