I spent a pretty ideal day out at Fort Tilden on Sunday. I’ve lived in New York for 15 years but just discovered it has a beautiful, swim-able beach this year. Straight up Flatbush Ave. Twenty minutes from my place (by car); it’s like opening a door that you always thought was a closet and finding a fabulous atrium or something.
One of last natural dune systems in the city.
We built a little shelter – I would like to live in it.
And I sewed some little birds.
But mostly swam.
And birds and spiders too.
*This week will be the last opportunity to order sweethearts for a while – I won’t be able to take new orders for the next few weeks (I will still be adding ready made sweethearts occasionally). I will stop taking sweetheart orders on August 20th.
I replaced my giant wooden work table with a much smaller iron table with a glass top. It feels light and kind of unobtrusive in this little place. Working on the glass top is sort of an odd sensation but so far I like it, if it starts to drive me mad I can replace the glass or cover it with homasote or something.
I’m in the midst of a major getting rid of. I’ve been wanting to make changes here for a while but couldn’t see new possibilities until I started to clear stuff out. It’s taking much longer than I thought it would -I’m still very much in the purge stage – have been for weeks – it’s kind of wonderful and kind of painful, no regrets though. I’ll post more as the situation evolves.
And a peek behind the curtain:
More coming soon, also, there will be new things in the shop next week – please join the mailing list if you would like to be notified when they are available.
*Update: I’m not going to update the shop until next week, the first week in August, but I’ve just added a couple campers.
I’ve just put Barnabas in the shop and there are also some new spiders –
and new pirates, campers and corsage girls.
miss bird says hello
I was sitting by a window working on an owl on Sunday- a new dark owl ( made from a variety of 19th century garments and the backing of an old quilt) and I heard an unmistakable sound outside, the clippity clop of a horse going by. I almost didn’t look because it’s never happened before and I thought I was imagining it.
I love horses and grew up with a big Shetland pony named Ginger.
That’s me and my stylish father and Ginger in 1970. We were building bird houses. I was 4 and I remember the day distinctly. Ginger was an interesting character – he had very definite ideas about things. He lives on a beautiful farm for old horses now.
I had a lovely time this morning with coffee, chet atkins and a big box of Japanese textiles. Stephen Szczepanek of Sri sent over another surprise box of wonderful things.
When stuff like this shows up I can’t think fast enough or sew fast enough. Thank you Stephen!!
And the beginning of the new spider system . Spiders take me forever to make and that’s mostly fine, I like making spiders, but it isn’t practical. As I make more I get better at it and things begin occur to me that speed up the process; having the wire cut to length for each part makes a big difference and next I need to make jigs for forming the leg shapes . I’ll probably need help with that.
I’ll show you more highlights from the Sri box later and maybe some new things in progress – I’m finishing some things over the weekend that will be in the shop early next week – some spiders, an owl or two and some little birds, if you would like to be notified when the new things are available please check back here or join the mailing list at my shop.
*p.s. -I’ll also be spending some time this weekend getting caught up on email and if you’re waiting to hear back from me thanks for your patience*
I’ve been thinking about mobiles for a while, I love Hanna Sandin’s work and saw the Calder exhibit “The Paris Years” at the Whitney last year. I made this one over the weekend and hung it from the ceiling medallion in the center of my place.
Cloudy days are nice for taking pictures here and I’ve been meaning to show you that antique jacket for a while. It has great military style details.
*Find the sewing pattern to make your own traveling birds here.
Just before they depart, they line up for inspection, equipment and name tags.
Mudlarking – I like the word very much, I first encountered it here. That’s me in the photo below, mudlarking my ass off at Dead Horse Beach. I’ve been getting wonderful little bits and pieces found there from the bottle man at the park slope flea market for years, last Saturday I finally got out there myself with my friend Craig. The history of the place is fascinating, you can read more about it here and there is an article about the Barren Island fire of 1906 here.
photos by craig duff
We were there when the tide was out revealing a crazy blanket of old glass bottles and all sorts of other things – everyday sorts of things – old timey trash.
