london update

morgan has been busy working on lighting for a show . . i'm not sure if this is for the show that will be in the edinburgh fringe, or if it's something that is performing now. (morgan is directing a play for edinburgh in august).

on their way home after a rehearsal for the fringe play . . (merlin, oakly and lazlo)

and morgan and harley having breakfast at gail's a day or so ago . . (i miss gail's!)

delicious gail treats . . 

a cat in a store window . . 

----

so the big news is that harley bought an apartment on the ground floor of a house that they moved into just today! finalizing everything has taken weeks . . actually, i think it's been two or three months . . and just this afternoon they picked up the keys and moved half of their things in.

the old place . . 

the new place . . with boxes along the window as there are no curtains . . 

they'll do another trip tomorrow or sunday (they rented a van for three days).

the prior owner was supposed to clear out debris from the closets along with removing the huge kitchen table and the refrigerator . . but nothing had been discarded . . !

they were very excited and very tired when i spoke with them both this evening (11:30 london time).

wednesday meet up

 
chanda and i had our annual summer ice cream get together with ellen this afternoon . . 

morgenstern's ice cream is incredibly creamy and delicious. i had honey burnt vanilla and coffee crisp. ellen had coffee crisp and bourbon vanilla . . and chanda had brown sugar mocha (a vegan ice cream made with coconut) and strawberry rhubarb sorbet. ellen has been busy doing exercises to help her balance, working on her computer with last minute class updates, and attending chamber music concerts twice a week. it was nice to see her.

afterwards, i walked to ottendorfer library for a louise erdrich book they had: the sentence. i'm not sure which category this fits into for my wnyc summer reading challenge . . "book recommended by a friend?" (though it wasn't . . ). 

i passed this cookbook shop which i've never been in . . it would be nice to peruse one day . . 

remember this house? i snapped a photo a few weeks ago of the interior . . now they have completed the landscaping, complete with window boxes, and i think it looks beautiful. i love the black wrought iron work!

and here are my nephews working hard on the house. they replaced a patch of deteriorated wood along the gutter.

evening walk

 
greg and i went for a walk along the river this evening . . 

and ate in a new place across from the whitney museum . . 

it's actually not a "new" place . . it's been here since before covid, we just had never visited.

the pizza was amazing . . deliciously tomato-y with a thin crust.

sunday field trip

with the membership korrina, morgan and chanda gave me for my birthday, greg and i visited the tenement museum with korrina and josh. we attended a tour titled "one hundred years apart," to hear the stories of two women living a century apart and how they raised their families in similar ways within new york city's lower east side garment industry.

we began in a room set up as a 1980's chinatown garment shop. the guide introduced the wong family via background narrative, slide photographs, and video interviews with mrs. wong describing what it was like to come through immigration, settle in chinatown with her husband and work locally sewing clothes in a small factory shop. the room above was wired with interactive audio and visual elements. for example: when you tapped any of the sewing machines and placed a receiver to your ear, you could listen to a description of how the clothing was processed, or how the women protested for a union or how they balanced working and family care. a table at the back with a slow cooker and bowls told the story of how the factory owners cooked rice to go with the meals the women brought in (this way they didn't have to go out to eat and were able to get to work more quickly after a lunch break). in recorded interviews, mrs. wong shared how she and her fellow workers enjoyed arriving and chatting in the morning over their tea and coffee before starting up the machines. there were several stations in the room i missed listening to so i look forward to returning.

on our way to the gumpertz family apartment . . 

the museum owns two buildings now. above is the original building at 97 orchard street which is next door to the building with their offices and gift shop.

looking from the small bedroom into the kitchen . . 

at the time natalie and julius gumpertz lived on orchard street in the 1870's and 80's, the area was known as little germany. they had three children, rosa, nancy and ulka who were all under the age of ten. there was no sink or refrigerator in the kitchen and the water had to be hauled upstairs from the building's yard, where the outhouses were. at this time in the early 1870's work was hard to find and the family didn't have enough money for rent and food. they requested help from the united hebrew charities in their neighborhood, and received a stipend of $5 (their name can be found on the charity's ledger for that year). unfortunately, in 1874 julius disappeared and natalie was left to raise the children on her own, probably with a lot of help from her neighbors and the community.

just like mrs. wong, natalie went into garment making and managed to set up a successful dressmaker's shop in her small home, making garments for clients who hired her.

the family lived here for many years before moving uptown to the yorkville neighborhood in 1886.

afterwards, we walked to soho for dinner and waited for chanda to join us. 

admiring korrina's latest knitting project . . 

we ate at the burger place we had been to with chanda a few weeks ago . .

the moon was full this evening, and shone into the living room.

poem for a sunday morning

what it looks like to us and the words we use

all these great barns out here in the outskirts,

black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.

they look so artfully abandoned, even in use.

you say they look like arks after the sea's

dried up, i say they look like pirate ships,

and i think of that walk in my valley where

j said, you don't believe in God? and i said,

no. i believe in this connection we all have

to nature, to each other, to the universe.

and she said, yeah, God. and how we stood there,

low beasts among the white oaks, spanish moss,

and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,

woodpecker flurry, and i refused to call it so.

so instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,

its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name

though we knew they were really just clouds--

disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.

by ada limón, current poet laureate, from bright dead things, 2015

step into hopper

 
do you remember the edward hopper exhibit last year? this weekend they set up scenes from three of his paintings.

i thought this man looked as if he had just walked out of one the paintings . . 

waiting in line for a turn . . 

----

breakfast at oscar's earlier today . . 

kind of like dining in a hopper painting . . 

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.

----

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.