Postcard from Baltimore

I've been here since Tuesday working at the Craft Council's Baltimore Show. Pretty exhausting, but also fun and inspiring because of all the beautiful handmade work. I'm running all the demonstrations and the artists have been lovely. There was a point yesterday when I thought, am I really getting paid to sit here and watch this guy throw pots?!

I'm blogging about the show for American Craft - check it out!

This isn't much of a Postcard from Baltimore really. Although I've been here since Tuesday, sadly I've seen hardly any of the city. I could be in Dallas or LA or the middle of Iowa and pretty much have the same experience of shuttling back and forth from my hotel to the Convention Center. I'm sad to have missed seeing the Walters Museum and MICA, and I haven't eaten even ONE bowl of chowder! Ah, next time...

Can't wait to get home so I can pop up to New Paltz even just for a night to recharge my batteries.

Snow Day!

We got a major snowstorm last week - not quite a blizzard, but a foot of the most perfectly crunchy, packable snow you could ever wish for. Winnie and I met Catherine at the park for a break in the middle of our "work from home" snow days. It was still snowing pretty hard at this point, big wet flakes that completely soaked you. But there were people EVERYWHERE at the park! Making snowmen, having snowball fights, careening down hills on makeshift sleds - it was amazing. Here are some pictures:


Me and Winnie the snow bunny, who went into Crazy Dog mode as soon as we got to the park - rolling around on her back in the snow banks and tearing back and forth between me and Catherine.


Catherine the amazing cross-training athlete skied to the park!

Snowmen galore!


Controlled chaos on the sledding hill.

Givin' Some Thanks

I am in the midst of some Thanksgiving FEVER. I have never experienced this before. I think it's the combination of Patrick coming home for 5 days and gearing up to host a big motley group of friends tomorrow for the Best Potluck Ever that has caused my excitement to reach fever pitch. Seriously, if there were Thanksgiving songs I would be singing them right now. I found myself humming "Chim-chimney, chim-chimney, chim-chim charoo..." while I was cleaning earlier for lack of something more appropriate to the season.

I got off work at 2:00 today, which was a wonderful thing and a bad thing at the same time. Now I've had all afternoon to kill around the house anticipating Patrick's homecoming, full of this weird, nervous, perky holiday energy. I took a nap from 3:30 to 5:00 (does anyone else nap purely to kill time?) and woke up to complete darkness, which is just weird. Winnie is beside herself thinking that I must have forgotten about her dinner - when I come home early from work it totally throws off the little clock that her whole world turns on. Which is kind of sad. I'm remembering what this sweet little old lady said to me once on the street, when I had tied Winnie up outside of the sushi place to get my take-out and then came back to find the happiest dog on earth, gleefully sweeping the sidewalk with her brushy tail. She said, "Just look how happy you made her. You're her BEST FRIEND." Awww....

So here's what's on the menu for that New York orphans Best Potluck Ever Thanksgiving feast:

Jenny & Patrick, fearlessly hosting a dinner party for 13 in their barely a one bedroom apartment, will be making roasted sweet potatoes with caramelized onions, rosemary, and parmesan cheese, and two authentic Southern style pecan pies.

Heidi & Jeremy, even more fearless, are tackling the turkey, gravy, and veggie stuffing, and then TRANSPORTING them all here. Heidi ordered this great turkey from her CSA that, we have been assured, lived a full and free life in upstate New York.

Nissa & Justin, bakers extraordinaire (well, Nissa at least, I don't know if Justin can claim that?), are bringing pumpkin roulade with ginger cream topping, pumpkin pie, and cheddar dill cornbread.

The lovely and beguiling Nina is bringing purple potatoes (what does that mean??), greens, and cranberry sauce.

Parrish, an Old Fashioned kind of guy, is bringing the cocktail fixin's.

Jen, Patrick's awesome new professor at New Paltz, is bringing a cheese, bread, and apple appetizer plate.

Ray, a friend of Nissa's who I haven't met, is bringing butternut squash soup and mashed garlic potatoes. I think we're going to be fast friends.

Hannah, another mystery friend of Nissa's, is bringing salad. Which we will desperately need to temper all of those starches and sweets.

Matty, also a friend of Nissa's, is bringing "appetizers - veggie and whatnot." I like him already for using the word "whatnot."

And Heidi's brother Michael will round out the crew - he's coming late but bringing wine.

I'll be sure to take some pictures and post soon.... I'm dying here, how can I wait for all this??

A Weekend of Good Sports

No, I'm not talking about the World Series (sorry, Dad). I'm talking about masquerades and marathons in New York City.

I realized this weekend that Halloween is a completely different experience in New York than in most other American cities - not so much because the people here are more crazy and creative with their costumes, but because of the sheer practical imposition of the mass transit system. I didn't dress up this year and felt like a decidedly bad sport when I saw all the brave souls in costume on the subway Friday night. Of course there were some groups of masquerading revelers but mostly I noticed people who had obviously gotten dressed at home and then ended up riding the subway by themselves in all their costumed glory, completely disconnected from the context of whatever party they were headed to or from, and looking more than a little bit vulnerable. I wish I had pictures of some of the Halloween subway highlights from this weekend but these mental images will have to suffice:

A gangster dressed to the nines with fedora and penciled in moustache obviously trying to play it cool and blend in with the working stiffs in suits.

A sexy nurse who self-consciously tugged at the hem of her "uniform" as if rethinking the sluttishness of her ensemble in the garish subway lighting.

A guy dressed as Slash from Guns N Roses (I think), in acid washed jeans and an afro that must have been at least two feet in diameter and pressed up against the roof of the train like Marge's hair sometimes does on The Simpsons.

Heidi reported that she saw a girl in full Marie Antoinette Rococo regalia struggling to navigate the turnstile at the 7th Avenue station. That's just such a great metaphor for the way that glamour and fantasy can smack right up against harsh reality in this city. I love it.

Continuing the theme of good sports, Winnie and I walked Patrick to the subway this morning to catch the bus back up to New Paltz and remembered that it's marathon day! The NYC Marathon was slated to come through 4th Avenue in Park Slope starting around 10am. We were there around 9, so we watched the volunteers setting up elaborate house-of-card constructions of water cups that would shortly litter the street several inches deep, then I walked Winnie back home for a bit.


I came back down around 10 to meet Heidi and her mom Rita who was in town for the weekend visiting from California. We were there at the perfect time to watch the top runners come through like a pack of two-legged hybrid man-horses. They were seriously like MACHINES! So beautiful to watch, so intense.

I was remembering back to last year when Patrick and I experienced the marathon for the first time. We were staying in Park Slope for the weekend with Heidi and walked down to meet our friends Amy and Brian who wanted to see one of Amy's co-workers running. It didn't really occur to me until we got down to 4th Avenue what a scene it would be - what a spectator sport the marathon really is. Sure, there are some people like our friends who were primarily there to support someone they knew in the race, but most people just come out to celebrate the will power and stamina of the nearly 35,000 people each year who can chalk it up among their accomplishments that they ran in the New York City Marathon.

This year, the spectacle of Halloween ran right into marathon day, with tons of runners and spectators alike in costume. I was so swept up in all the great energy and humanity of the whole experience. We clapped and wooed for random people who looked like they needed the encouragement and shouted the names runners had written on their jerseys. One lady near us in the crowd had brought several boxes of Kleenex and held out tissues for the runners that came by. How thoughtful is that?

Thank you, Heidi and Rita, for the pictures and for all the great company today!

Creating a New Craft Culture

I hate that it's been so long since I've posted anything - my only excuse being that work was going full-tilt all last month as the Creating a New Craft Culture conference (my main project since May) approached. I flew up to Minneapolis for 5 days of craft mania in mid October. Although it was exhausting, the experience as a whole was completely amazing. I met so many wonderful people, reconnected with old friends and colleagues, and generally felt incredibly proud to be a part of what really felt like one for the books. One attendee actually sent my boss Monica and me singing telegrams from India to thank us for all of our hard work in putting together such a positive and insightful conference! The song went like this:

Thank you for being you
Thank you for all you do
You turn the sky to blue
Thank you for being you!

Seriously. How hilarious is that?!

Last week at work, I started tackling the project of transforming our conference website to showcase overviews of each talk, photos, and audio podcasts. Four pages are live already - check them out!

I'm still digesting all of the intense dialogue from that week and trying to decipher the musings I scrawled in my Moleskine notebook in the cab on the way back from the airport. But once I have a bit more time to mull it over, I'll write about the conference and post it here.

Bergen Street apartment

Thursday, September 17

I took this picture on my way to the subway this morning. I've been really fascinated lately by couples that kind of look like twins. These guys were amazingly matchy matchy - and even perfectly in step!

Not much to report here after an extremely busy work week. (To see what's been keeping me so busy, check out the Creating a New Craft Culture conference!) It's been pretty much a standard routine kind of week. Wake up, feed and walk the dog, feed and dress myself, oh and have I mentioned the kitties? They are decidedly playing second fiddle to Winnie these days, poor guys, but I usually remember to feed them. Head to work - typically a 20 minute commute including walking time, just enough time to read a quick chapter on the train. Work all day, eat at my desk (I don't know why I really never take a proper lunch break), head home an hour after I intended to, feed and walk a desperate Winnie dog, make or pick up dinner, try to read or watch a movie but end up working on side projects. Fall asleep. Not so thrilling!

I do have some good lunch highlights from this week - delicious panini from Ceci Cela Patisserie on Tuesday, banh mi sandwich today, delicious Mediterranean-style lentil soup leftovers in between. And I just made a lovely salad nicoise for dinner which featured farmer's market vegetables and green beans from Jeremy's garden.

What else? I mixed glazes in the studio on Tuesday night then met Heidi and Catherine for drinks after at Cherry Tree on 4th Avenue. We had our first drink in the backyard in what looked like an old kiln or pizza oven outfitted with cushions and a table. It was fun at first then started weirding us out. We were joined later by Jeremy then moved on to Zuzu Ramen so he could get a late dinner. Please join me for a moment of silence in appreciation of the Zuzu Ramen pork buns. Oh man are they good.

I've met lots of good dogs and two new shop kitties on my walks with Winnie. I wish that she was the kind of dog that got more satisfaction out of socializing with other animals - she really couldn't care less. Lately, since I've been so busy, Winnie seems increasingly morose. There's lots of sighing going on around the house. However, she has no idea that she has a weekend in the country in store for her! We're heading up to New Paltz tomorrow so hopefully she can fill up on green grass and squirrel chasing enough to sustain her through at least the next few weeks of being a city dog!