granny squares, the avenue of trees, and hurricane irene

i've been working on a granny square for fiber artist robyn love's project the avenue of trees which will be part of the cheongju biennale in cheongju, korea. i've never made a granny square before and taught myself via "teresa" on youtube. last night chanda decided that she would also like to contribute, so she had her turn sitting in front of the youtube video listening to teresa, learning to strand three double crochets with one single crochet around and around and around again.

well, of course we both ran out of yarn. luckily, the yarn we were using was vanna's choice from lionbrand. extra skeins were just blocks away . .

. . on 15th street to be precise.

here's chanda working on her square while waiting for me to snap the two fiber pictures above . .

dinner tonight was a vegetable soup with a fresh chicken broth. it took awhile to be made as i was on the phone with friends trying to decide what to do. you see, while chanda and i have been working on our granny squares, new yorkers have been battening down the hatches and evacuating. we're just half a block from an evacuation zone, so i feel a little nervous. "should i stay or should i go now . . "

a cloudy day

it was a cloudy and grey and rainy day. our friends came over to have lunch in the afternoon, and we took a walk to the park afterwards. we didn't stay long as it started to rain rather heavily! but it was nice to get a little air and breathe in the wide vista of the river.

for dinner we had my friend marisa's delicious basil with tomatoes and mozzerella and olive oil and a baguette. i also finished the granny square i've been working on. more about that tomorrow.

a luna cat

we visited our friends today on 25th street. they have two very sweet kitties. this lovely is called luna, and she used to be incredibly shy. she's a little more social now, and i was able to pet her and take her picture. however, she did still seem a bit leery of us all!

soul people (and the ground dances under our feet)

after m and c spent part of the afternoon reviewing math problems for the assessment tests they'll take next week , we walked to the bus stop for the m 11 up 10th avenue to manhattan plaza. on the way i passed a cute windowbox of little peppers!

and these little fellas . . ok. i don't know what these are called. someone please fill me in!

there were a lot of sighs and words of chastisement when my camera came out for the flower pictures since my companions were very worried we would miss the bus . . ahh, but no worries . . we had to run, but we made it.

it's funny. we keep thinking the fare is $2.50 . . preparing ourselves for the inevitable? (it's still $2.25.)

i look at this picture and i don't know who this child is!!! she looks so tall and grown up to me! no longer like this little one peeking out of a window . . !

finally, out on the dance floor, first partaking of our picnic victuals . .

(oh! by the by! while everyone is eating and listening to bobby, i'll mention about the 5.9 earthquake that happened just south of richmond, virginia today! m and c felt everything shake in the apartment; janet and i felt it on the bench by the river where we were sitting and talking; greg felt it on the 20th floor of his work building; and korrina felt it in her friend's bay ridge apartment into which she was helping him move . . they thought it was a ghost . . hmmm!) (it was just a little shaking in anticipation of the dancing later that evening . . )

(now, back to bobby!)

yes, bobby harden was out on the basketball court this evening! he regaled us all with soul and love and sent us home feeling like the world was truly a special place just for having danced the night away with him. the little movie i took shows us all just warming up . . by the end everyone was out of their apartments, and out of their chairs, and dancing. (when you looked up, you could see people bopping about on their balconies.)

after the lovefest it was a time for neighbors to get caught up on each others' news and for the children to run around before heading upstairs or over to the bus stop . .

mr. watt waited patiently for us all to finish chatting and jumping around before heading home.

aahhh . . it was really a fun and special evening.

do you remember the 21st night of september?
love was changing the mind of pretenders
while chasing the clouds away

our hearts were ringing
in the key that our souls were singing.
as we danced in the night,
remember - how the stars stole the night away, yeah yeah yeah.

hey hey hey,
ba de ya - say do you remember
ba de ya - dancing in September
ba de ya - never was a cloudy day . . .

morgana's back in town

chanda did not fall asleep and morgana rolled in after midnight.

she arrived wrapped in the aroma of vermont and bearing gifts for her little sister and vegetables for us all . . postcards and colored pencils, cucumbers, cabbage, basil (lemon thai . . oh yum), mint and . . coriander! (which is now drying out on the fire escape).

she had taken her guitar with her to practice as this morning she woke to . . a guitar lesson! her teacher has been traipsing around uruguay, studying with a special teacher, and he was home in nyc for only two days before flying off again to israel. ahhhhh!

jack always enjoys these home music lessons . . (sigh) . . for the first thirty minutes i have to babysit him to keep him out of the way. he likes to get in on the action and keeps knocking down the music stand.

chanda has been in a coloring pictures mode. she likes to listen to the narnia series on cd as she works.

the postcards make really nice thank you notes to friends and family . .

. . and we were all home for dinner . .

dinner with clyde, veniero's and waiting for morgana

our friend clyde leaves the city tomorrow afternoon. he'll meet up with his family at camp in the adirondacks, and then hit the road for california (such a magical word for me . . . . my aunt and uncle and cousin moved there when i was four, and there was no other place i wanted to be). we played our last games of poker (he brought over some poker chips for us) and korrina and her friend joined us. we had pasta carbonara for dinner and then headed over to . .
clyde's apartment? yes! i hadn't seen it and he's been there each summer for years so we stopped by. it's on bleecker street and morgana, chanda and i used to pass it every tuesday (unbeknownst to us) when we attended a craft class on second street between third and second avenues.

he has a nice little washer/dryer machine over there on the right which i've daydreamed about having in the apartment. he says it doesn't really work effectively! 

ahhhh! pignoli and tre colori cookies! we must be at . . veniero's!

yes, not just one of our favorite places, but clyde's also. clyde and i and clyde's friend renee ordered the iced mochaccino which comes with a scoop of gelato. absolutely delicious!




after saying our good-byes we hailed a cab for our cross town ride home since it was very wet and rainy. we played our last round of may i (after all was tallied, chanda won the game), and we're now waiting for morgana to come home from her vermont visit. korrina and i are still up . . (greg has fallen asleep and chanda may have also, though she was working hard to stay awake!) the amtrak train is moving along slowly because of all the rain . . oh! i just got a text message . . they're passing through yonkers now . . finally!

saturday clothing drop and coop shop

i've been hauling down bags from the loft bed, sorting old clothes and doing laundry. today we finally dropped off three bags at the salavation army on 8th avenue. they were busy with donations; many people were bringing in bags and boxes of clothes and books, dishes and pots. the clothes get sorted by color, which i enjoy browsing through.

chanda and i went to park cafe on seventh avenue in park slope to put the list together for a coop shop while greg began a work shift. park cafe was quiet in terms of customers, but busy with magilla gorilla on the tv, and classic rock on the radio. when the girls were little we lived on prospect place and they would dance in the living room to the b52's love shack . .

at 6:30 we were finally on our way home . .

friday at the park, and dinner at home with good friends

we went to the water park for a little while in the early afternoon. chanda had a friend from ballet sleep over, and they wanted to cool off under the sprinkler.

and have a picnic and play cards: 7 up.

after chanda's guest went home, we had tea before beginning to make our spaghetti and meatballs dinner.

in the midst of drinking our tea we heard meowing from the bedroom. xena had captured a pen, and wanted some praise . . i suppose.
we have some special friends back in town. cindi and tessa had been in canada, traveling with the lion king as tessa's dad has several parts in the show. tonight we invited them for dinner and they arrived bringing delicious biscotti. we caught up with each other's news until late at night.
chanda and tessa read a book we found at the tompkins square library branch. it's called a girl, a boy and three robbers, and was written by a friend of my sister's (gail gauthier).