I’ll be taking a break for a little bit. See you soon!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Autograph Hankies
This past weekend Lindsay, my friend Eve and I took a free class at the NY Public Library. It was another installment of their crafternoon series. This one was making embroidered silk hankies.
One of the instructors, Rebecca Ringquist, brought quotes she pulled from her grandmother’s autograph album. This album was autographed by friends during middle school years. The quotes were funny and sweet and gave us inspiration for words to embroider on our hankies.
This was the quote I chose. Lindsay is working on this one, which when finished will say, “Roses may be red, violets may be blue, but there aint no maybe, about what I think of you”
Some others that were fun were:
I love you little, I love you big, I love you like a little pig
Don’t make love under the garden gate. Love is blind but the neighbors aint. If in Heaven we do not meet, hand in hand we’ll stand the heat.
Pigs love pumpkins, cows love squash, I love you, I do by gosh
If I were a head of lettuce, and scattered my leaves apart, I’d give all my neighbors the outside and leave for you my heart
Merry Christmas
Every year we hang the stockings, listen to Christmas music, bake cookies and wrap the gifts. Then Lindsay writes a note to Santa and we leave carrots for the reindeer, and milk and cookies for Santa. And EVERY year we forget that our cat jumps up on the coffee table and licks the powdered sugar off of Santa’s cookies. Euw.
When Life Gives You Lemons…
We are extremely fortunate to have gotten through the storm without any damage. Our neighborhood sits a little higher than the surrounding neighborhoods, which got clobbered. We lost a lot of trees, which have closed some of the parks and playgrounds. These downed trees certainly didn’t stop the kids from playing!
We Were Very Lucky
We have very luckily survived hurricane Sandy unscathed. The biggest gift for us was that there wasn’t much rain. The storm swells reached about 1 block away from us on one side. The neighborhoods to the north and south of us were under up to 4 ft of water.
A tree cracked in half across the street from our building, blocking the door, and my husband was able to clear their doorway with his chainsaw. Our neighbors can’t believe he has a chainsaw in the middle of NYC, but he’s used it twice in the last couple of months.
And our chickens went to bed in their insulated coop the night of the storm and woke after the worst of it passed. They didn’t even know what hit us!
I feel very fortunate. The footage of the devastation surrounding us is daunting. The subways are down indefinitely, which is crippling the city.
Hunkering Down
Hope everyone is somewhere safe these next few days!
Wish us luck as Hurricane Sandy comes here. We live in the basement apartment…
My Aunt Lillie
At the end of August we went to Sweden and Iceland. The reason for the trip was to visit my father’s twin sister Lillie in Stockholm. She is 88 years old and I knew she was starting to have heart trouble. Lillie lives alone. My father passed away a few years ago and her other brother lives in Belgium. My cousins are scattered around Europe and we’re way over here in the US, so she doesn’t get many visitors.
We had a wonderful trip and I’ve been meaning to post pictures and stories from our trip. It’s been very busy here getting Lindsay settled back in school and trying to establish a routine, so I haven’t made these posts.
I just got a call from my cousin a few days ago to say that Lillie passed away. I knew she was putting up a brave face when we visited, and could tell that she was getting more and more tired. But I had no idea her time was so short. I am so glad we were able to visit. We took her to visit the little cottage in Ekerö she used to go to every summer, and which I visited a couple of times as a child. It was a happy day, although we all knew this was most likely the last time she would visit it. Here’s the view from her cottage.
On Vacation!
The blog will be on vacation while I’m traveling around Sweden and Iceland. See you in September!
Happy Holidays!
Buy Nothing Day 2011
In the same vein as my last post, here’s a link to info on Buy Nothing Day, which is Nov. 25th in N. America. I’ve been thinking about how to acquire less and reduce the amount of clutter in my home. Not buying anything is a great and obvious first step. I’ve been knitting away, making gifts for friends and family. We have a few sets of babies coming soon who will need something warm to wear. Baby clothes are a great way to make something cherished, and to use up the odd balls of yarn I have in my stash.