"He found the chain store, bright and full of brisk business. Everybody was there inspecting trays of vegetables, buying great creamy slices of cheese, prunes, crackers, coffee, flour and potatoes. . . . Everything looked clean and appetizing. There were delightful smells of oranges, celery, coffee, on the air. . . How interested these people were, as if they were selecting a new car or a Christmas present."
So this is Felix's china. Is it perfect or what? These Homer Laughlin budgies are absolutely adorable.
I love how the blue sings right out of the quiet cream and gold setting.
And here's a teapot with a china bird on the lid: charming.
And there are several pieces, all beautifully shaped, with these wonderfully fat bluebirds on them. Lucky, lucky Felix.
Remember this project? I started it in January and knitted hard through the first part of the winter, much of it while caring for my grandmother.
After her death I put it away for a while, but I pulled it back out and finished it just in time for fall.
The pattern calls for embroidered embellishments, and I've tried three different colorways and textures, but find that I like it best without. The lovely dimensional texture is all the interest the sweater needs.
My mother, a dish addict, recently realized that each of my children needed a set of dishes against the day when they set up housekeeping. Not letting the grass grow under her feet, she has amassed an entire set of these charming "Priscilla" dishes for Clara.
We gave them a test run today, with a black chocolate cake on the platter and P.G. Tips in the teapot. Very nice. (To make a black chocolate cake, substitute Dutch process cocoa for the regular in the cake and the frosting. Delicious and messy.)
"For a girl who had a home and dear family to leave them to get along without her as best they could, and go away for a fuller freedom, and a selfish life of her own, seemed to Jane nothing short of contemptible."
Vintage sewing patterns for baby layettes are irresistible--I just can't get enough of the sweet cover drawings. Of course, the patterns are useful too! This little jacket was only three pieces plus the bias binding. And if only I had made raglan sleeves more recently than years ago (or if the pattern instructions were in the envelope), it would have taken only a few minutes to put together.
It'll be in the shop with lots of other goodies later in the week, I hope.
One last family get-together to celebrate the end of summer.
And to celebrate the newly-stained deck, accomplished by the sweat of the combined brows of Giles and the Composer.
We gathered in all the family we could, and got to meet the new step-daughters after the surprise wedding of my youngest brother last month . . . very sweet girls, and just the right ages to play princess Polly Pocket dolls with Daisy.
The pool has cooled off but that doesn't stop the most dedicated swimmers, or my father-in-law, who showed off his Olympic-inspired back flip dive.
The rain sets in tomorrow, and autumn follows soon after. A lovely summer, and a lovely Labor Day.
So we've sort of turned into a running family over the last year. The Composer started it, then Felix started, then Giles joined in, and the boys were sort of in and out but Giles has trained steadily since April. I started a little in January, ran my first 5K in the spring, then fell in love with it through the summer, while the girls have been in and out with me.
Today was a 5K race day for the Composer and Giles and me. Those fast guys were trying to break 20:00, and came very close--the Composer was over by seven seconds and Giles was over by only three seconds. I took a massive several minutes off my previous race and finished in 30:15. Which leaves lots of room for me to gain speed before our next outing in October.
It's so much fun to do together. I say "together" but we don't really do it together since we trade off our running mornings so that someone's on cocoa duty for Daisy, not to mention that the boys run too fast for me. But we write down our times in the same notebook. And talk about it all. A lot.
One last sewing project this week--a cobbler's apron for Clara to match Daisy's dress. Same floral, same red binding. I've used this pattern before, but this time I cut out the wider neckline: "poncho" style, the pattern terms it.
Clara loves wearing these all day over a crisp white blouse.
Felix offers these book and magazine recommendations for beginning birders:
The Sibley Guide to Birds, David Allen Sibley. "The best field guide, good for all of North America. It's a little bulky to take into the field but for that you can use the Eastern or Western edition."
Identify Yourself, Bill Thompson III et. al. "It's a very good reference for basic identification problems, like shore birds and stuff. It's also good for individual identification problems like female buntings, the wren plovers, and empidonax flycatchers."
Sibley's Birding Basics, David Allen Sibley. "It's not a field guide at all. Basically it's the mechanics of bird-watching. How to bird."
Wild Bird Magazine, published bi-monthly. "Very informative, gorgeous pictures, helps you get into the birding loop. It's where I found the American Birding Association, eBird, and other stuff."
This morning for half an hour the moonflowers were visited by a swarm of honeybees.
Can you go wrong decorating a cake with naturally gorgeous fruit? No you cannot. Love the almost-neon contrasts of the glowing kiwi fruit and the mysteriously dark grapes.
Happy Birthday to Giles, and thank you for closing out the Children's Birthday Season so stylishly.
"She took care to arrange the wrists [of her dress] with extra snap catches so that she might unfasten them and roll the sleeves above her elbows when she washed dishes. Also she had provided a pretty white rubber apron with little rubber frills around the edges which covered her satin gown amply, and was becoming enough in itself so that she would not feel out of place among the well-dressed women."
Isn't this a fabulous pattern cover? I don't know whether to choose the little girl pulling the train or the one with handfuls of suckers.
Lovely front panel sports an inverted pleat, and is trimmed, of course, with rickrack!
White linen collar and sleevebands, vintage green buttons, great sash that's twice as wide at the ends.
I think she stepped out of a Dick and Jane story.
This week Carol and I provided an after-the-funeral meal for a friend. We held it at our church and served about thirty people. It was fun to see how pretty we could make the tables using only what we could find in the church kitchen, and a few things we brought in.
I brought a stack of vintage and gingham tablecloths, and draped every table in at least two layers. All the tables were round, and all the cloths were square or rectangular, but no matter. I made a little centerpiece for each table using my thrifted milk glass vases and what flowers I could find in the parking lot plantings--pink impatiens and crepe myrtle, mostly. The mixed but matching vases and flowers sort of pulled everything together.
With time to fuss, we decided to plate the cakes Carol had made--one was chocolate and one was a very pink strawberry. We sliced them and laid them on clear glass plates, then set them around the centerpieces alternating pink and brown. Sweet!
When we found we still had time, we plated salads and set them on the dinner plates. To keep things pretty, we put salad greens in the center of the salad plate, then garnished each with little separate piles of salad vegetables--cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, alternating the bright colors.
Carol finished off the tables by digging up pretty glass punch cups and making sets of three, filled with different salad dressings and set on little plates. They added beautiful color also.
I think the family felt cared for. They ate and ate every bite of lasagna, Carol brought toys out of the nursery for the little ones to play with, and everyone stayed and talked for hours.
Last week we piled in the car for a string of errands. "Mommy! You're still wearing your apron!" exclaimed Bella. I told her I thought it looked good with my outfit and I had left it on on purpose. There was a pause. "Clara, do something!" she cried.
If you'd like to try an apron for town, this is a good one to start with. Dainty in dimensions, generous in pockets.
Find it in the shop!
The bronze fennel seeds freely in my flowerbeds and hosts generation after generation of black swallowtail caterpillars. Often a group of them will gnaw the branches bare, and Felix and I will carry them around the garden settling them on new plants, in a more equitable distribution.
Daisy's been keeping an eye on a chrysalis we brought into the kitchen last week. It hatched this morning, and Giles set it out on the back porch. For a long time there, the butterfly and Bossy, the fat tabby, sat side by side with their beautiful backs to the living room window, oblivious of each other.
Such a quiet evening.
Two black vultures hopped from tree to tree overhead, before they flew out over the canyon.
Daisy prided herself on her autonomy. And speed.
Middle children, one of the best kind of children.
A slipping-away sunset and mist rising over the rivers.
My blue kitchen walls are inspiring me in all kinds of ways, most recently towards the soft copper color of this new vintage breadbox. I love how it glows against the blue.
It's actually living up on the counter, holding our current loaf of bread. I've been using old breadboxes for almost as long as I've been making our family bread--fifteen years! They do a good job, with just the right amount of air circulation. I like to line the bottom with a fresh piece of parchment paper every few days, and keep the crumbs cleaned out.
This box is particularly nice because it has a handy hinged lid, and also because it says "Bread" in case someone was wondering.
