corner of the kitchen

I keep dreaming about gardens.

While I'm sure the time will come when I miss having a house, in general, so far, I really don't. I miss my kitchen, I miss having walls painted the color I want them to be, but I can deal. I spent a few twitchy weekends coming down from the home renovation high I've been on for the past two years thinking I should paint every room in the apartment. But once the shakes wore off and I remembered that I could actually spend my down time doing something relaxing, like reading, I've decided that I should spend the time and money I have while we are here doing things that are here. And painting the dining room/schoolroom/office isn't one of those "while in New York" things I want to take away from this year. We'll see how long my resolve holds. I could change my mind this winter when it's too cold to do anything and I've been staring at the yellowy walls for weeks on end.

But I do miss my garden. Not the yard part. Having no ginormous yard to mow and a plethora of parks out there has convinced me that the no yard part of apartment living is a definite plus. but the vegetable garden, well, that I really do miss. If we were going to be here longer than a year I would take on a plot at one of the many community gardens dotted throughout the city, but the timing of when we arrived and when we leave makes that hard, almost ridiculous. So instead I have to be contented with a windowsill for my garden tending needs.
This is my spot. My little corner int he kitchen. In a small apartment with two kids running around building forts in the living room, robots in the office, train routes down the hall and dollhouse/ninja lego worlds (Evelyn's dolls are currently obsessed with watching ninjago battles it seems) this is my haven. I spend a lot of time sitting and rocking and reading and knitting and typing in this chair, with my plants. I'm sitting here now, as I write this and when you read this, later today or this week or this month, there's a good chance that, if I'm home, that's where I am. No one else really sits here but me. From here I can supervise playdoh or painting on the kitchen counter, listen in but not be overwhelmed by the goings on in the living room or chat with Will while he works in the office while not having to sit on a dining room chair. Or just read and rock.

I am slowly building up my plant collection for this corner, wanting to squeeze as much in as possible. I don't have any vegetables yet but I did have some herb plants that someone forgot to water while I was in Missouri, which now need to be replaced. I have to admit, I've been kind of babying these plants. With no garden to go dig in, they are receiving probably more focus than little house plants normally get, but there you are. I move them out to the fire escape on sunny days, kind of like the caged birds in the parks of China, so they can get some direct sunshine and fresh(ish) air. They aren't really technically house plants so I figure they need some outdoor time. And I made them some pretty pots to live in.

Finding pretty pots for plants is one of those "where in New York do I find.." kind of thing. I'm sure there are places out there where you can buy such a thing. There is, probably, a "beautiful pot store" somewhere in Manhattan. Because there always is. But I haven't found it yet. And even if I did, I probably couldn't bring myself to pay whatever exorbitant amount they want for pretty pots anyway. So instead I've been digging through our recycling bin and making planting containers whenever I pick up a new plant from the farmers market. Two are just spray painted coffee cans but there are also a few Modge Podged yogurt tubs as well with another planned for later this week when Evelyn finishes off her current container of yogurt. I'm picking up one of those replacement herb plants later today and it will need a home.

The combination of slightly angled sides and patterned paper made this a little tricky but the end result is pretty good, so I thought I'd share

First lay out a piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper. You want something fairly thin, thicker papers won't blend at the cuts as well. If you don't have 12x12 you'll need two 8x10's to cover a standard large yogurt container.
Measure the distance from the bottom of the thick top rim down to the bottom and add 1/2 inch. I tried this having it the exact length and with enough for an overlap and the overlap version looked better. Cut two strips that are this dimension by 12 inches. If your container is really tall, you might actually need two sheet of 12x12, you could also cut a piece from the scraps, you'll only need an additional few inches, but that will depend on the direction of the pattern on your paper.
Once you have your strips, cut up from the long side every two inches almost to the top, but not through.
Turn your container upside down and coat the side 1/3 of the way around with Modge Podge. With the still connected edge butted up against the brim of the container, smooth down the first two-inch section. As you move onto the next two inch section, keep the bottom edge butted firmly with that rim, you want that to be straight, and then use the cuts to overlap the paper as the container slopes in . Add a little extra Modge Podge where the paper overlaps. Continue until you have gone all the way around, adding Modge Podge and the second strip of paper as needed.
Cut the overlap of paper at the bottom (now face up) of the container into smaller strips, about 1/2 inch each, and smooth over the bottom the way you did the sides of the container.

Smooth out any bubbles under the paper and coat the whole thing with a coat or two of Modge Podge to seal. Keep checking for and smoothing out bubbles as it dries.

I would, ideally, like to fill up my fire escape with containers like ths of plants as well but this idea presents a few problems. 1) the Modge Podge isn't waterproof so the paper would just disintegrate anyway. 2) we are getting close to the end of the planting season so I'd have to either toss of move everything indoors in a few months anyway, and I don't have that much room and 3) Having a fire escape filled with plants is probably a fire hazard.

Ah well. Maybe if I ever get that behind the couch shelf I can fill that with plants too. Sturdier plants that can survive all the fort making and Wii sports and jumping on the couch that happens in there.
I'm curious, does anyone else have a spot that is just theirs? Where is it? What is it? A chair? A yoga mat? A whole room (heaven!).

speedball

A very odd thing happened in our family on Sunday. Something that, I'm one hundred percent sure, has never occurred in the 15 years that Will and I have been together. There we sat, the four of us, at a sporting event. A game had just ended and players for the next were filtering onto the field when Will said "Well, we better go." and I replied, wait for it...

"Do we have to?"

Now for those of you who watch sports, that might not seem strange. But trust me. It is. I hate sports. I would rather stick pins in my eyes than watch an actual football game all the way through. Unless my children are playing (and if I'm honest, even if they are) I'm totally bored at a soccer game. I once infamously ditched my husband and father in law at a Nascar race and watched Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth version, naturally) on the in-car entertainment system in the parking lot.

It's not all my fault. I wasn't raised in a sporting family. Other than a slight lingering and DNA induced interest in Arsenal, I never once heard my father show interest in a professional sporting event. It's just who we are. We talk (a lot) we read, we write, we cook, we play. But we do not watch sports. (Well, now a days my parents sometimes watch Mizzou football and my brother somehow came out of childhood with a mild interest in sports, but in general, we are not sports people)

So what was this miraculous sport that had me glued to the hard metal seats of the bleachers? Gaelic Football. Yes, Gaelic football. I know. You didn't even know you could watch Gaelic football in the US (Heck, you probably didn't really know there was such a thing as Gaelic Football, right?) But you can, and we did, and I loved it. But not for the reasons you might think.

Yes. I love Ireland and just about all things Irish. But no, that's not where this is coming from. Although, I do have strong feelings about some teams that stem entirely from conversations with cab drivers in Dublin. (Root for Dublin first and after that, anyone playing against Cork) and that probably helps. However, my interest in Gaelic Football goes back much further than our time spent living on the little green island. All the way back to Highschool PE in Pendleton, Oregon and a teacher called Coach Freeman.

As you may have guessed, I didn't do sports in Highschool. I joined the Dance team primarily because it filled the PE credit at the school I attended for my first two years. After that, I became a master at getting out of whatever we were doing in PE that day. Until Speedball came around.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how a coach in a very small town on the far side of the US came to adapt Gaelic Football into the sport we called Speedball (and thought he invented for us) , but he did, and we were crazy for it. I was crazy for it. I even got myself a pair of cleats and talked the teachers into letting me play with the guys. As much as I hated PE before, I loved it now. It even became, of all things, my favorite class for a while.

So fast forward a decade and there I am, sitting on our red couch in our apartment in Ireland, a book in my lap, ready to grit my teeth through yet another sporting event on TV when I realize, "Hey, I know this game! I LOVE this game." Because Speedball, as it turns out, is pretty much identical to Gaelic Football. (It's also similar to Aussi Rules football, by the way, except I think the Australians use a rugby ball instead of a soccer ball)

Living in the US has, as you may have guessed, limited the amount of Gaelic Football watching that I've been able to do. I haven't' seen a game in years. So when I my dad reminded me that there was a New York Branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association, I looked it up before he had even finished his sentence. And there it was, a game, straight up the subway line from us, the very next day. Three, back to back games, in fact.

So we went, and watched, and the kids ran around with a bunch of other kids, kicking a ball and making a racket that no one seemed to mind because, well, that's what kids do, and we had a great time. So great that I totally forgot to take any pictures, never picked up my knitting once and didn't look at a single page of my book, which when it comes to me and sports, is unheard of. Holy cow.

I think I'm in danger of becoming an actual sports fan. Oh New York. what have you done?

Somebody save me.

older

The summer I turned 18, I spent a week in a tiny village north of Rome going through "language camp" before heading off to a stint as a foreign exchange student. While the whole summer had a profound influence on me, that week was, in many ways, the most memorable.

I was the oldest student in the group and that was a strange feeling for me. Between having an August birthday and living in states with August and September kindergarten cut-offs, I have spent my life being the youngest at everything. But here, for once, I was the mature one, the oldest, the one who, purely by my age alone, was the leader of the group.

That lasted for about a day. And then I started feeling young again.

Another girl - her name, like that of the little village, is lost in the folds of my brain - quickly turned into the oldest in the group. She was 16, a New Yorker, and just by looking at her you could see that she had seen and done far more than an almost 18 year old from a small wheat farming town in Eastern Oregon. Everything she did, from the way she dressed to the way she talked to how she shaved her legs, perched on the edge of her bed with a can of thick pink foam and a small bowl of water to rinse the sleek razor in, exuded a worldliness that I could never hope to match.

The sensation of feeling younger than everyone else has followed me around through my adult life as well. It's not good or bad, it just is. I finished college early, finished grad school quickly, had a baby when most of my friends were still doing the bar thing. All my choice, all things I wanted to do when I did them. Just all slightly before others in my age group. And as a result, when I stand in a group of parents of nine year olds, I am usually the youngest in the group.

For a long time I have been a little self conscious about this status. You know how people lie about their age? Well I don't precisely lie, I just avoid telling. I have felt, many a times, that if I came out and said "yeah, that show you're talking about watching as a kid, I wasn't born yet when that was on." I might find myself sans friends. Or at least with some odd looks. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the expression "Oh, you're just a baby!" through the years. As a bride, a grad student, a teacher, a parent. It's the universally nice way of saying "Shit! You're how old?"

This weekend I turned 34. And, for the first time since I was ten, I'm starting to feel the right age. Almost as if my age has caught up to my life. I not even sure if it's a change in the number or a change in the location that I'm feeling. After all, no one is odd here because everyone is odd. I mean, I saw an ancient lady hobbling along our street the other day in a plain brown housecoat and above the knee purple glitter cheetah print rainboots the other day, and also a guy cruising around with a washcloth perched on his head. So having a nine year old at 34 is pretty blase by comparison, ya know?

I haven't quite decided if this whole "feeling my age" thing is a good move or not. On the one hand, I don't feel like I have to pretend to have watched Hogan's Heros (actually, I recently watched that show for the first time, hilarious. And also stupid. But hilarious-stupid) But also, well, I'm starting to realize that it's time to get a move on and do something with my life. I've spent almost a decade being a mom, I've bought my self one more year of being at home because of homeschooling (although I promise that's not why) but after this, well, my kids will be in school and it will be time to get myself a purpose outside of making playdough with koolaid. Not that I couldn't happily make Koolaid playdough all day for the rest of my life, but since there won't be anyone at home to play with it, well, it might get a little old after a while.

I remember this feeling from that summer, long ago. The pre-college, time to decide who-you-will-be-in-life moment. The feeling that you have, what, 6- months? A year? to figure out who you will be for the rest of your life. Its crap, of course, people change who they are many times in their lives, but you feel it nonetheless. And, although I am older and wiser and know that I too, will get to reinvent my life many times in the coming years, I can't help but feel that tick-tick-tick who will you be when your kids are all away at school.

Have you gone through that? I wonder if most women who have been stay at home moms feel that pressure? When I was in college I latched onto careers that were in my family tree. Journalist and teacher. They were familiar and soft and known. But since then I've often marveled at all of the interesting careers out there that I never knew about. Like, you know, Fossil Explainer. Who knew you could be a Fossil Explainer in this world?

Did you return to the career you had pre kids or start on a whole new one?

snippets from the week

Because we spent the week playing turbo tourists, I didn't tote my camera around town most of the time. Too much weight. So most of these are iphone pics, but fun all the same.
The Zoo! I forgot that we went to the zoo. Was that just a week ago? Wow, it feels like, well, longer than a week. On this trip to the Central Park Zoo we visited the Children's Zoo for the first time and Evelyn made friends with this Alpaca. She spent an hour tempting him with zoo treats, squealing every time he licked one out of her hand. They had to kick us out when the zoo closed.
The play on Saturday was a bust. We went, roaring in right as the play was about to start only to find that they had cancelled the show that day because no one else was there. Although I don't actually think Evie knew what a play was, she was disappointed none the less, so off we went to Serendipity where she ate an ice cream sunday as big as her head.
I noticed a few weeks ago that most of the benches in Central Part have memorial plaques. I try to read them as I pass (when I can, I'm usually saying either "hurry up!" or "Wait! Wait!" when I walk in the park). This one is my favorite so far. How sweet is that?
Waiting, waiting... when will they get here!
I'm not sure what this thing is embedded in the sidewalk down in Soho, but it was layered with stickers and looked sort of stunning next to the gray of the sidewalk and the black of the street.
Boat time!
You think that they are looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, but in fact it's the Mr. Softie Ice Cream Truck that they are watching. Because we never see any of those...
Chillin. On the boat. Just two guys and the Statue of Liberty.

island hopping

I have a thing for islands. My favorite places in the world are all islands. Ireland, England, The San Juan Islands, Nantucket, Bainbridge.... I haven't been to New Zealand but I'm pretty sure I'd love it there too.
For some reason, I find it hard to think of Manhattan as an Island. It is, I know, but it just doesn't seem that...island-like. I think it's the wind thing. If you'll notice, all of my islands are cold and windy and wet kind of islands, except for maybe Nantucket, but when we visited, it was, so it counts. I like the salt wind that makes your face sting a little and the smell of ocean water. Here the wind smells like, well, it's August and the streets are getting pretty hot, so I wont describe what the wind often smells like, but it's not ocean or salt or island. I'm sure it will be nicer in the fall.
Yesterday I got a wee little island fix. After two days of go-go-go sight seeing, we spent the day at a slower pace with a trip to the end of the line and then a ferry ride to Staten Island. I'm going to be honest, the fact that it was gray and threatening rain made me a little giddy-happy. Because I'm weird like that. The prospect of being out on the water, heading to an island in Northwest-like weather was just what I needed after the weeks of hot and humid days. We didn't actually plan on doing anything when we got there, it was more the ride over and back that we were after (although, I picked up some maps of the island and a day long trip back is high on our "To Do Before School Starts" list.) But for yesterday, it was enough to just ride on a boat and feel the wind and run around on the deck of the terminal with the city in the background.
It's wasn't quite the kind of island I am partial too, but it was close enough to count. Is it foolish to think that a few hours out in the wind, away from the city, can recharge your soul a little bit?

big knits and little knits

When we visited New York over Spring Break, I caught a glimpse of a woman hurrying on to the subway at Broadway and 72nd, wearing the most beautiful sweater vest. I was in love. I have to have it. Also, I was freezing cold and a sweater seemed like heaven at the moment. The sweater in question was pretty close to this pattern from Quince and as I had a ton of leftover yarn from the last sweater I knit myself, I decided to give it a go. And now, what four months later? It's finally done. Just in time for the heat to well and truly set in.
I really like the shape and the fit of this sweater but the yarn, not so much. I knit the sweater in this because I had most of what I needed and I wasn't sure I would like how it looked on me. Now I'm wishing I'd gone ahead and knit it in a nicer yarn. This yarn isn't my favorite for a number of reasons, most of which would be boooring to anyone who isn't a knitter so I'll spare you. But the worst is pretty obvious, and really, it's my fault. I didn't note the dye lot when I bought the first two skeins and when I needed a third, well, as you can see, it totally didn't match.

The solution, I think, is to overdye the whole sweater, maybe a dark brown or greeny-brown. I've never done it so I'm not sure if it will work, but I guess it's worth a try. Anyone ever dyed a sweater before? Advice?


When this sweater got too big to haul around on the subway with me, I switched to some smaller projects. Now I would first like to say that these are NOT for me. No. Not at all. but they are pretty darn cute.
The booties are this pattern which is available free on Ravelry.
This hat is for a small girl acquaintance of mine but Evelyn and Will have already requested their own. It's a pattern that I made up and I'll share it with you once I work out the sizes for someone other than a one year old. I might even knit one for myself. I like that little elf peak!
I've got another hat in the works right now and am about to get started on some serious Christmas knitting. I know, Christmas? But Briton wants a hoodie sweater and that will take me ages. I hate sleeves (notice how my sweater was sleeveless? Ahh, I like sleeveless sweaters!)

Anyone else starting to get into homemade Christmas gift mode? I know it's crazy but it's going to take me the four months + to get done all the things I want to make, so I guess it's now or never!

reunions

It's good to have friends in town. Lots of laughing and late nights and showing off our city and watching children, heads bent toward each other, catching up on two months of happenings. Just what I needed!
Also, did you know that there is a guy at the Museum of Natural History who's job is "Fossil Explainer"? If you ever get a chance to go, find him, it's amazing the things he knows!