sarah in nyc

 Yesterday I looked out of my window and  Brian Stokes Mitchell sang "The Impossible Dream" from the Juliette balcony on the right most nights during the 7:00pm cheer saw this scaffolding going up. All of you who live in New York know exactly what this is.  In 1979 a Columbia student was killed by a piece of  loose masonry hat fell from a building in the neighborhood. Since then, every five years every residential building in the city is inspected and every bit of masonry that might be a danger in the future is repaired. This law has had a couple of consequences. The first is that it has kept all of us safer. Another is that the law has been a boondoggle for  scaffolding companies, construction engineers and contractors. The scaffolding keeps the workers safe and also keeps pedestrians safe from falling rubble. As an additional safety measure after the scaffolding goes up a layer of screening covers the outside of the scaffolding. Being inside the the scaffoldin...

 OK the following are items that amused me. They sell lots of shot glasses with terrific Russian graphics. I am enough of a grownup to be satisfied with a photo. I find the idea of Uncle Vanya canned foods to be really amusing. We call this brand of chocolate, "ugly baby chocolate".  On further thought the baby isn't that ugly but does look terrified. The chocolate is actually not very good but my kids are always happy to get some because the packaging is so great. Cookies with a different child on the package. Russian sodas with excellent labels. This cow graphic is even better than Elsie the Cow. I purchased none of the above. they just gave me joy and I hope that they give you some joy as well.

The other day my husband and I saw something beautiful.  We were waiting for a bus in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. On the corner of 181st Street and Broadway there was a man who had built a castle for himself out of garbage next to an overflowing garbage can.  Then I noticed two men wearing red George Washington Bridge Business Improvement District (BID) shirts interacting with the man in the garbage encampment.  They spoke to him gently and one of the men shoveled the garbage mountain into a large trash bin on wheels. They bantered with him and checked to see which part of the garbage mountain could be bagged up and taken away. At one point one of the workers handed the man a folded bill. A few minutes later, the man selected two small bags from the mountain of garbage and walked away.  I was struck at how the BID workers exactly struck the balance between respecting the humanity of the garbage-castle-man and the right of the people in the n...

Normally I associate the smell of a wood fire with delightful things. I have fond memories of walking home from the Quincy Center Station on cold wintery evenings when I was in High School and smelling the lovely  homey smell of fireplaces warming homes along my cold walk home. I also associate that wonderful scent of woodfires from the special bonfires at camp. Today though, we woke up to the scent of wood smoke but it wasn't something homey or celebratory but it was the sickly smoke that has been blanketing us from the forest fires in Ontario. The air feels heavy and sickly.  The light is a heavy ochre color.   It isn't quite as bad as the it was a few years ago when the sky was orange from the smoke and it felt like the end of  days. I hope that these fires are soon quenched. I have managed to get a few more miles of ribbon embroidered. I leave you with a shot of shadow from a friend's house.

 I haven't been posting much lately. I was sick with a bad cold which lost me a week in the land of the living. So let me atone for myself by posting some pretty things. I was reorganizing some of my stash of vintage linens and pulled out a couple of pieces to share. I can't figure out the date for the pretty centerpiece below. The pale yellow is a little unusual. The combined pulled thread and wrapped embroidery  is awfully attractive. The piece is bordered with chain stitched botanical motifs. If any of you have a sense of where this piece lives historically or it's possible geographic origin I would love to hear from you. Continuing on the theme of geometric pulled thread work, I own three of these lovely linen batiste placemats. They will probably live on one of our glass fronted cabinets in the future. The lace trimmed hankie below needs a tiny bit of mending. This looks like Italian lace to me. Clearly this isn't a nose honking sort of a hankie but the sort one tu...