Late this afternoon.....
a most extraordinary collection of creatures
were rushing up the tall steps and begging on 22nd Street.
Even the tiniest children caught the spirit of the thing!
Such a flurry
and a hurry
as the season turns.
November 1: For a very touching post about the Day of the Dead go here
The first pumpkin of the season on a stoop on 15th Street. Very elegantly, colorlessly New York. I have been having a field day with fancy filters like Instagram, Camerabag, Hipstermatic and Old PhotoPRO -- all either free or very inexpensive -- and have concluded that, though terrific fun, they are something to add to the gigantic pile of stuff marked 'timesucks'.
So, back to looking out of the window with my regular camera to greet the chill clouds of fall.
A science experiment --sort of. Put drop of olive oil in avacado. Add drop of balsemic. Balsemic sinks through oil. Eat science experiment.
Continue endless scarf in alpaca.
Contemplate miniature garden in tree pit by building. Remove Snapple bottle from the same. Have another stab at the 700 page biography of Patricia Highsmith I may be able to discuss on Thursday. Hmm....Walk dog.
Repeat from top.
A friend brought me this cotton boll from Alabama. I think it is very beautiful though I rather doubt I would have thought so if I had to pick cotton. I digresss.
On Saturday we were helping with a stall at a flea market and I was looking round our spare apartment for stuff to get rid of.
This character, Mr Samuel Worsley, who has lived in my desk for some years, had this miniature done in 1821 . He seems to have lived in Orwell in Suffolk and looks a little like Wordsworth.
He was almost certainly married to poor Sarah ( above) who died aged 55 years. Where he looks bland beyond bland, she seems rather pinched and miserable. I cannot imagine how they came into my mother's possession unless they were relatives of some distant sort. However, I do not feel I can ditch them to the tender mercies of people who will feel even less connection to them than I do.
Item: two slightly sentimentally sweet French prints of children playing with animals. Kate Greenaway meets toile, much beloved by my grandmother.
I can't ditch those either.
Forgive my obsession with
this very green jug which lives on the windowsill and is used to water plants. I think of Giorgio Morandi who painted the same things over and over again. I'm just too lazy to paint.
A cushion on a wooden chest that's now being used as an ottoman.....it used to hold paints. It was made in woodshop by my father in law in the 1930's so is probably almost an antique now.
Was at Union Square green market yesterday and bought plums, peaches, pears
and beets ( a very under-rated veg)
and a butternut squash --the first of the season -- so there will soon be a lot of soup.
Am also making a lot of elf hats see here.
A small town on the Hudson --here a table in the public library where we enquire about Edward Hopper the town's most famous son.
Here a higgeldy-piggeldy independent bookshop which I didn't enter for fear of buying all sorts of things.
Here a consignment shop where we could have dropped off things.
A very old fashioned office with clock and photo of the founder, and,
at last, the Hopper House, which, since it was Monday, was closed to the public, so
I took a photo of the porch
and the trash can outside, then
went in search of Hopper architecture
and lunch.
We go to dinner in Queens
not to Ovidio's bar, where there are 'barmaids' apparently........
Perhaps the barmaids wear dresses as .....as.... indescribable as this one.
New Yorkers wear uniforms of all different kinds; most of them are black. This afternoon I'm going out to buy a dress for something. I think it may not be black, but you never know.
It certainly won't be white like the one I saw the day before the wedding.
Last week I went to a supper where the table was decorated with the first peonies of the season and there was asparagus risotto.
Ah! The joys of spring!
First you need some sort of pretext. (No prizes for guessing)
Then an invitation from a neighbor.....
who you help cut bread into heart shapes.
She has set out the very best teacups (but we're drinking bubbly as we work).
Here is the first part of the spread:
ham and cheese sandwiches and the egg ones, and the chicken and the smoked salmon and cucumber (of course). The jam and the clotted cream are for the scones which you can't see.
Enter the ladies with hats.
The fascinator.....
the feathered do
the sunhat adorned with tulle. (What is tulle?)
The piece de resistance --from an ostrich I think.
But the day, really,
is all about crowns.
I recently went to the Edward Hopper show at the Whitney. Whenever I actually get out of the house and do something, I realize how much my imagination is nourished by looking at things. I immediately start making photo/sketches of people I'll never paint....
the girl at the fruit store in Chelsea Market.
a man waiting for a bus on 5th Avenue
the counter people at Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop
a young woman, intent on her cell phone --an archetype almost -- I think of Vermeer's woman reading a letter.
the reincarnation of Guilietta Massina from La Strada, haunting 8th Avenue in search of a cab
if only ancient Fuzzy-Hair hadn't been sitting behind her....but so easy to delete in a drawing
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I am going to the dentist on Monday.
Not this dentist, quite another one, who I'm sure will make my teeth as gleaming white and my gums as rosy pink. When I had to find a dentist in Morocco for a friend whose crown had fallen out, we went to a very fancy female dentist --who turned out to be the wife of our notaire --not terrifying at all.
The shoe maker in Gueliz.
Shop window mannequins often look surprised or bored -- or both. This poor dear doesn't look as if she has much in the way of conversation...
... but maybe a little more than this one whose expression can only be described as brain-freeze.
For some reason I like the colors in this quite out of focus picture of
an Amish couple at a design show on Pier 94.
On Saturday I managed to break my Coolpix camera.....or rather the message came up 'lens error' and that froze the whole thing. So
that evening, when the moon was at its most brilliant, I only had my ancient camera the one with the rubber band holding the battery in.
It was exciting nonetheless.
Monday morning. Snow. Ugh!
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