friday field trip

 
i visited cafe sabarsky for apple strudel and a coffee with whipped cream before crossing the street to the met museum this morning. (i would like to return for a special exhibit of paintings by the german artist paula modersohn-becker that eva has recommended. i have until september 9th!)

i was there to view the costume exhibit with several knitting friends.

several of the garments were so delicate they were draped flat with very low light. they had a computer generated video of the above ball gown from 1887 (house of worth) in motion which i didn't film as too many people were congregated around it. the dress is silk satin with silk chiffon and gold and metal lace trim. it's embroidered with gold sequins, opalescent and gold glass beads.

a french dress from 1780 - silk taffeta hand painted with wisteria, cherry blossoms and asters.

ivory silk dress from 1878/80, madame martin decalf, hand painted and trimmed with glass beads.

i didn't take a photo of the explanation for this confection . . so i have no idea of its purpose or its materials. it's certainly very pretty.

no photo of the information, but i thought it looked like a monet painting.

the exhibit was actually very cramped and crowded. i believe its final date is drawing near and everyone was trying to see it before it closed. i was relieved to arrive at this room which had more space for everyone. 

it also included beautiful yellow dresses; the earlier ones dyed with weld (reseda luteola, sometimes joined with spurge flax, daphne gnidium) and the later ones dyed with synthetic variants. several dresses were a combination of the natural plants and synthetics.

the color graphs at the bottom show the spectrum of light that each garment absorbs and reflects and allowed the restorers to identify the dyes used for each item and track the transition from natural to synthetic (invented around the mid-nineteenth century).

they had large glass capsules with smell molecules replicated from the garments! i had to try smelling several of them and it wasn't pleasant. the odor was very chemical-like. it gave me a sore throat.

this contains the explanation of how they captured the odors along with descriptions of the smells of each hat or dress that they used as samples. it's interesting to read and i think you need to click on the photo to enlarge it so it's legible.

#7, house of dior, "vilmorin" ensemble, spring/summer 1952

house of dior, "may" ball gown, spring/summer 1953

"white net overlaid with white silk organza embroidered with light green, green, pink and purple silk thread in a pattern of red clovers and grass."

h&m, swedish, light pink polyester chiffon recycled from shoreline plastic waste (!)

on the right: biosequin dress (2023) by stella mccartney - white deadstock (fabric leftover from textile mills production process) silk tulle embroidered with iridescent cellulose sequins (manufactured by radiant matter, british). on the left: algae sequin dress (2021) by phillip lim and charlotte mccurdy (textile manufactured by pyratex, spanish).

this is very interesting to read as it explains how stella mccartney and phillip lim are working with non-plastic alternatives to sequins and trims and describes how the effects of the two above dresses were created.

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a few photos when leaving the museum:

the gift shop is now selling mariebelle chocolates from soho (nyc soho chocolate shop) . . 

very pretty!

walking to a cafe for a bite to eat . . 

my friend's autumn alpine sweater designed by caitlin hunter. the yarn is moondrake spun by spincycle, colorway fairy godmother (the lavender) and ulysse (de rerum natura), colorway fusain. i love the colors.

last day of april

this is morgana's costume from a dance she did in 2012. it's in ellen's closet of possible costumes for other students and it needed a wash and a mending before being worn by another dancer. it's all set now and i returned it to ellen today. there are two more weeks of class for the five year olds. they've been learning "twinkle" and a spring poem dance. not everyone is there for each class/rehearsal, and several of them have missed two to three weeks in a row, so it's all a bit muddled, but they are having fun.

greg and i met up in soho to walk home together.

interesting artist with a box on their head . . 

halloween decorations (and costumes) and a visit to brooklyn heights

there are two houses in the neighborhood that have this large black cat on their brownstones.

it's amazing how it moves . .

i love all the pumpkins . . though it is a lot to compost afterwards!

 

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 i drove out to brooklyn today, to visit with a dear friend whom i haven't seen in quite a number of years . . 

a view of manhattan and the brooklyn bridge from the esplanade . . the day began very rainy, but by noon it had stopped and the light over the city was a silvery grey.

we went to a local pizza restaurant in her new neighborhood. she moved with her husband about three or four months ago to a new (very small) apartment around the corner from the place pictured above, and to a new job that happens to be housed in the first unitarian universalist church of brooklyn (the church whose service we've zoomed with throughout covid, and where we've all attended sunday and christmas eve service in the past). for the past few years she's been studying to get her master's degree in childhood education and recently found a job at the imagine early learning center there. it sounds like a wonderful position and she says that the children and their families are all very nice.

we had delicious pizza (very thin crust - always a mark of a good pizza according to my dad) and i had an espresso and panna cotta for dessert (she treated, and i hope to reciprocate very soon).

 

we met in 1998 at a waldorf coop pre-school in which we had enrolled our two year olds, in park slope, brooklyn . . we don't know how we got on this other side of parenting . . it warms my heart to be in touch again.

 

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chanda and emily dressed up for a halloween party they were invited to this evening. i really love their costumes. somehow i've managed to keep the little black cat hat with its pink ears all these years (you can see chanda as a child in this hat in one of this blog's side photos on the left).

she said she wasn't smiling in the old photograph; i said she was . . and she does have a little smile . . i made her smile for another photo that i took, but it didn't come out as well, so this wistful one is here instead . .

show preparations

last minute costume mending before the tech rehearsal in the morning.

father's day

 it has been quite awhile since i've sat at my friend janet's table and helped her sew costumes.

 maybe it's been a year? she always has lovely things lying around . . homemade pottery, celery plants sprouting in bowls, avocados and apples waiting to be eaten, and an old bottle of wine waiting to be boiled down . . i never found out for what.

 she was desperate today for some sewing help, so when i called asking for advice in regard to my airbnb woes and she had to quickly hang up for a costume emergency, i decided to just go over and discuss my problems while i helped her with her's.

here she is madly searching for a missing dress . . happily, it was found!

 hot! it's been hot again after a respite of three days.

 beautiful flowers along the path home . . 

 since it was father's day, chanda and i made greg one of his favorite meals: sautéed broccoli rabe with faicco's chicken sausages. chanda went with me to faicco's and i guess it's been awhile since we went together. our faicco's worker looked at her and asked if she was my daughter. he was surprised by how much she had grown. he's been at the pork store since 2004, which is a year or two after we first began shopping there. we talked a bit about how the time goes and that all the children he knew when he first started working are all grown up now.

 since it was father's day, greg got to choose the game: dix-mille, from a box of die that he bought about a year ago (just to have extra die on hand).

 hermione melted while we played . . 

 the cats' fur floats around the apartment these days . . and when i pet them or pick them up, their hair sticks to my eyes and nose and mouth.

 you score with ones (worth 100 points) and fives (worth 50 points) and rolls of three: 2's being 200, 3's 300, etc. a roll of 4 of a kind equals 1000, a straight equals 1500.

 chanda rolled a straight!

 and i managed to get four of a kind . . 

 greg was happy because he pulled ahead of chanda's lead and won the game.

 pics of our hallway renovation which has been going on for three months now (too long!) and which i sent to morgana. 

 they've had trouble with the new stair treads that were ordered and had to try a new type. we have not heard when they will finally be installed.

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morgana is traveling once again . . back to munich to catch a plane to nice to see our neighbor victoria. she really enjoyed her audition in innsbruck. she worked privately in a workshop with a voice teacher and an acting teacher. the school had changed the audition date to a different weekend, but she already had her train ticket and insisted on going.  it was nice they still worked with her.

 on the train . . 

 she had a few hours in munich before meeting her austrian family for lunch. they were on their way home from greece where they had spent four days. the children were happy to return to papa (he had remained home to work). it had been their first time on a plane. the pic above is from a cafe she found in a technical school in munich. she had heard about this cafe, but didn't have any information on it except that in was in the school. she wandered around the building until finally running into several people with coffee cups in their hands. i think they directed her through the last few turns.

 she had heard about the beautiful view the cafe had overlooking münchen . . 

it did not disappoint . .