My first trip to New York City in twenty years was a three day walking tour (from W 101st to Broome Street and back on the first day alone) and search for the perfect New York Style pizza.

My top three were the Highline, an off-Broadway show, and running in Central Park:

I am a big fan of public spaces, parks in particular, so the Highline was a major major highlight for me.

{To be sure, so was Central Park. But I didn't bring my camera on my run and I was too busy eating a Magnolia cupcake when we went back for our last hour in the city.}

Theresa and I also visited MoMA, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge on our way to Williamsburg (buck a shuck oysters from Long Island!), and checked out the shops in the East Village.

NYC, I heart you!

Greg and I spent Sunday afternoon canning. We found a few recipes on the Bernardin website; bought Bernardin mason jars, vegetables, pickling spices, and vinegar; carved out a few hours (halfway through, we realised we had to cancel other plans; pickling takes a long time), and, went to town.

We pickled green beans, fennel, carrots, beets, cucumbers, and (I have no idea why we did this, except that we had so much left after pickling the other veg) garlic.

And now, we wait.

I have to mention, I have never seen Greg as excited about a food prep project as I did this one. He wanted to talk about pickling and watch home canning youtube videos for days beforehand...

I have made chocolate chip cookies from the for me for you recipe easily a dozen times this summer, most recently for a Labour Day weekend cottage trip.

This is hands down the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I've ever found, but you need to let the dough sit for a day, which means you can't whip them up at the last minute. Well, actually, by speeding through the dough-waiting time (I let it sit maybe 5 hours?), I sort of just did.

A year ago my sister gave me some fabrics and asked me to make her pillows. The fabric didn't all match, so it took some time to find pieces for the backs. A year on, I've managed to sew a single pillow and two pair (the sumo print pillow has a match, too).

I have no idea where the print fabrics came from, but when I went to find a match for it (chocolate linen), the ladies at the fabric store went crazy for the sumo wrestlers.

I used Kwiksew 3844 (a pattern meant for knits), and the Grainline tutorial for flat bias necklines, to make, not one, but three tank tops.

The fabrics I used were a left-over purple silk, a funny stretch satin print, and an orange chiffon.

Sometimes you just need a night in with your girls, y'know?

tie-dye and batik cottons

(I happened across the end of summer sale at a local fabric store.)

So, Spain:

Claire and I spent 8 days visiting Barcelona, with day trips to Figueres (Dali museum!) and Sitges (oh la, the Mediterranean!!!!!).

Top three favourite travel moments:

1) The bike tour we took with Fat Tire Bike Tours our first full day there;

2) A day in Sitges (one day on the beach and I am so tanned);

3) The pintxos we ate, the cider and rosado we drank, the hilarious British couple we met, all at a fantastic Basque-style tapas bar we found in the El Born district.

Books I Read on Vacation

I've recently spent a week in North-eastern Spain.

In addition to Girls Like Us, which I had started long before we left and which I finished on a train ride from Figueres, I packed Your Voice in my Head (Emma Forrest, 2011) and Babette's Feast (Isak Dinesen, published as a short story in 1958).

I read Your Voice in my Head on the beach in Sitges, lying on a lounge chair, facing the sea, trying to stay hydrated with bottle after bottle of water. It is not a typical beach read, but in a way, reading it under the most brilliant white sun was the best way to read it.

My travel companion, Claire, and I had planned a second trip to Sitges before our flight home the following day. I read Babette's Feast in a Starbucks in Barcelona, where we took cover from the rain, trying to save the day with a latte and free Wi-Fi. Babette's Feast is a lovely short story (turned movie), which I finished before I finished my drink.

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I've read, in order:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2010); The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (2002); Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2010); Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards (1988); and Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller (2008).

Girls Like Us was the second 1970's music scene biography I read this summer. I began it a few weeks ago and just finished it on a train ride last week, breaking up the reading with many magazine and newspaper articles in the interim. It inspired me to buy a copy of Carole King's Tapestry at the record store yesterday, an album which topped charts for more than six years and won four Grammy's in 1972. Carole King was the first solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and the first female to win the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. Tapestry is still one of the best selling albums of all time.

Unwearable Muslin

I sewed a pair of shorts:

I seem to have cut the pattern for Simplicity 1887 View C,too small, as I cannot get them over my butt. Disappointing, but I suppose my sewing strategy is to make wearable muslins. As such, I shall take this to be the risk that comes with sewing that we mitigate by making a muslin first (which I generally think is wasteful, which is why I make wearable muslins). Thankfully I tested this pattern with inexpensive fabric first, as opposed to the $19/m fabric I'd wanted to buy.

I suspect they would fit someone with 34 inch hips, which mine decidedly aren't, and I am shipping them to someone they may fit.

Up North

I was lucky to be invited to spend this past weekend on Georgian Bay, and, it was glorious.

My top three favourite weekend moments were: roasting s'mores over a bonfire on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night; finally having sufficient courage to climb to the top of an abandoned lighthouse I'd been too chicken to visit on an earlier trip; and, cliff jumping into the lake.

I Made a Skirt

I sewed a skirt this past weekend:

The shape is based on Badgley Mischka pattern from Vogue, V1127, but I added an extra inch at the waist, and a waistband.

And I wore it to the Smut Soiree:

{Because I love Hollywood gossip.}

Favourite Things

Early mornings are one of my favourite things in life, and though I could enjoy them often, I don't. I did this morning, though.

Here is the view from 6am:

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I've read, in order:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (2010); We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2006), though I have yet to see the movie; The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks (2012); The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2010); and Just Kids by Patti Smith (2010).

After blowing through the first two books in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, I couldn't wait to read the third. It took a week of streetcar rides and late nights during the last month of my contract at work. It was far from the strongest of the three, but it helped me to love reading again.

I read We Need to Talk About Kevin on a long weekend at the cottage. It was a very troubling book. I'm not certain I can suggest anything that redeems it.

At the first opportunity, once back in the city, I bought The Social Animal and Just Kids, two books as different from the last two as I could find.

The Social Animal was so interesting I read passages out loud on a road trip Greg and I took to the coast in early May.

Everyone who read The Hunger Games told me that they read it in one sitting, staying up late, avoiding family and friends to finish it. I was no different.

And then I read Just Kids. Patti Smith, I had no idea I would love the story of your friendship with Robert Maplethorpe as much as I did. I loved it so much that I broke down crying at the end, in a public place, in front of strangers. I drank a glass of wine, and then read the ending a second time. The setting, the 1970's and 1980's music and art scene in New York City, suited my end of work mood and properly started my summer of being a flâneur in the city.

Victoria Day

Kate had the brilliant idea to rent bikes on Centre Island this past Victoria Day. We took the ferry across the harbour and rode around from one side to the other:

Then we went for dinner and gelato, stopping at Kate's for sweaters and chairs, and then watched the fireworks at the beach with Charles and Camilla:

balance of the tulips, two months on

They then looked like this:

And this:

Finally this:

Tulips in Bloom Day 1

It was a shame I kept my tulips in my bedroom; without my contact lenses in, I couldn't really see them from my bed, and I spend so little time in my bedroom in any case. I should have brought them to work, but I've had bad luck transporting plants around and didn't want to risk the streetcar trip, as I would have inevitably had to balance the flower pot with my coffee, a book, my gym bag and my purse. All the same, on their first day in bloom, they were a pleasure to look at first thing in the morning:

The Last Five Books I've Read

The last five books I read, in order:

Nadja by Andre Breton (1928); Last Nights in Paris by Phillipe Soupault (1929); White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000); The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011); McSweeney's Issue 39 [This took me from after New Years until last night, when I finished the story about Carlos the Impossible (bullfighting! And the bull won!)] (2011).

Of the first two, surrealism... I suppose. They're both French, though I read them in English. Maybe something is missing from the translation. White Teeth was a book club book, but I was the only one who actually read the book and so the book club failed. The Marriage Plot I loved so much that I recommended it to other people. McSweeney's Issue 39 was 95% excellent. That last five percent is missing because I couldn't get behind a poem called "Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover". I tried, but "When he says he needs some time off, jam his hand into a toaster oven" and "When he shows up with flowers, nibble the hair from his arms" were two of the most benign of Amelia Gray's poetic offerings and I have a weak stomach for tortured love.

A Month of Tulips

A couple of months ago I decided I was going to try to become a vegetarian. I like hand-packed burgers, Sunday roasts, and meat platters as much as the next girl, but for a variety of reasons, the time seemed ripe to make a change. My friend Claire is a vegan, and for the most part, it's difficult to figure out what to cook for her, but I'd bought a new cookbook to help me with the new diet and was inspired to try my hand making Claire dinner. I tested out the ratatouille recipe three times before inviting her over and I spent so much time making the main, I ran out of time to make us dessert. Claire brought me a tulip plant as a hostess gift, which was incredibly thoughtful and totally unnecessary. The first day it looked like this:

It bloomed for four days before it looked tired and I had to trim it. However, it seems to have at least one more flower in it. More photos to follow on Mondays to come.

Tulips

tulips = spring.

Black Dog

It's sort of mine, but I've also promised a friend I will give him this painting one day:

In any case, I love it.

Mola

I bought this wall hanging at an outdoor market in South America a few years ago. It's a Mola, and was handmade using reverse appliqué; several layers of different-coloured cloth are sewn together and the design is formed by cutting away parts of each layer.

These funny birds have been sitting in a cedar chest since that trip in 2007, with a collection of other travel souvenirs, waiting until I moved somewhere I planned to stay for awhile.

A Functional Muslin

I sewed myself a dress this weekend:

It is incredibly disappointing to spend several (20) hours sewing something, only to find it doesn't fit or it fits strangely. And if you have used $30/metre fabric? Oh la; that disappointment is then also compounded by frustration. I don't like to make muslins, though, and when I do, I like to at least chance making something I can wear in public. I use the pattern-ease measurements as a guide and I test it out with some $5/metre fabric as a muslin-making compromise. As I did here.

(B5316: an out-of-print Butterick pattern).

Stone Necklace

My talented friend gave me this necklace, which she made for me after the much gushing I did seeing the similar necklaces she'd made for the shop she works at:

This was not the first time I've been so lucky, either.

Hearts, Cupid, Chocolates, and Flowers

I'm giving in to the pink and red:

(my Valentine will be getting chocolate and candy; his sweet tooth rivals mine.)

Kinda Like A Trade

We went out for dinner the other night, a few girlfriends of mine and I, and in the midst of all the food and girl-loveliness, Claire and I exchanged Christmas gifts. A homemade trade. I gave her cloth napkins and she gave me three jars of condiment goodness:

No Snow in January

In a month where our snowfall usually averages 14 inches, this past January we saw one blizzard, which left us only three inches of snow. Enough to make a very small snowman, which my roommate did.

It was already three degrees celcius again when I woke up (with a forecasted high of seven degrees), and so our little winter hero didn't even make it to noon.

This Thing I Have I for Purple

I have a thing for purple, as evidenced by fabrics I chose for the Rachel Comey shirt, the Cynthia Rowley dress, and this current Vena Cava dress I made myself.

The pattern was very simple, with an invisible zipper that, to be honest, never needs to be used, french seams, and two pleats.

Were I to offer any useful suggestion to would-be sewers of V1228, it would be to choose your fabric carefully, because as much as I dig this print, the fabric itself has a serious static problem and I almost have to walk around with a spray can of static guard to have any hope of winning the battle against a dress that rides up.

Heartbreaker

It was a little unexpected that my brother was coming to stay with me for most of the ten days he was in the province, but he brought his puppy, Artemis, with him, so I opened the door to my apartment wide:

They were visiting from BC, and as she's still just a little puppy, it was her first trip:

(My brother made this sign for her crate she travelled in). Heartbreaker. Absolutely.