Tarts!

Look at my new amazing tarts!

This story start a long time ego and involves swaps, gifts, an elephant bowl and plate and just one of those connections with someone sweet I knew from online and never thought to meet face to face. Everything changed a couple of weeks ago, when I swapped one of the Koi fish tapas plate with her, then a couple of days later, she e-mailed me the sweetest e-mail about coming to NY to be a guest in the Martha Stuart show and asking if I wanted to meet in person.

I'm really shy and making plans and returning e-mails can be really difficult sometimes, but I decided that I'm not going to let this one slip by and wrote back. So today we met, had coffee, food and talked for a really long time, and I got those beautiful felt tarts she made!

I know it's felt, but I'm still tempted to try and eat them, just in case.

Thanks Sharon! you rock!

Snow Storm

I don't think I've ever seen so much snow, it was beautiful (though very cold) around here in the past couple of days.

Last Night Ned and I went out at about 3:00 AM to get some snacks and take some pictures, the streets were all full of clear white snow, untreated and so soft it felt like walking on icing sugar. The walk to the corner store felt pretty nice on the way there, with the wind to our back and horribly cold on the way back, I've trie taking as many photos as possible before my fingers started freezing!



Today, Ned and I went into the city, which looks very different while it snows then Brooklyn. The snow is being cleared from the roads and sidewalks so efficiently it feels like it's barely there. I walked around union square and the park, and it was beautiful. Though no birds or squirrels in sight, at the end I've found a couple of the birds huddled together on the construction area, I think the warmth from the cars was more appealing then the bare trees.




It's been a slow sad day, tomorrow we are going to see Ned's father in the hospital. He got a room today and starting treatment tomorrow. even though some good stuff happened - I was on Etsy's front page, and then sold a creamer and sugar bowl set, and I think I won the apartment therapy competition (winner hadn't been announced yet, but I got more votes then anyone else in my category), it all feels insagnificat and unimportant compare to all the sadness.

New coffee shop \ studio

Everyday when Ned go to the gym, I go out, sit in a coffee shop and do some drawings, sometimes it's stuff I later sell at the etsy store, sometimes it's stuff for the sketchbook. I listen to an audio book and focus really hard on drawing, usually, I don't even notice when Ned comes into the shop until he sits next to me or touch me.

In the summer, I usually went to the blackbird parlor, on Bedford street, which though pretty crowded, we eat at quite often, so I didn't feel so bad about hogging a table for 2 hours while only having one cup of coffee, but since it got colder and darker, I can't really sit there after 4:30 or so, it just get too dark and the place, though lovely with it's romantic lighting, isn't really practical for drawings and paintings.

So, I was out to find a new place around the neighborhood where I can work in. And while looking for one, I tried to comply a list of demands from a coffee \ studio space (surprisingly enough, good coffee isn't so far up the list).

1. Need to have good lighting!
2. Need to have more then 3 or 4 tables, or I feel too guilty about taking other paying costumers.
3. I don't like it when the tables are on the way to the counters so that any person passing by can look into my sketchbook - it's a little strange cause I like drawing in public places and I don't mind an occasional look or question - but when it happens all the time I feel too strange.
4. It's great if it's one of those places where other people sit with laptops or work, and then I don't feel so strange about sitting on my own.
   
5. This is a bit of a pet peeve but I'd rather not have to drink from paper cups.
6. Also, counter service is better for working environment then table service - I put all my socializing effort in the beginning and then I feel OK about not talking to anyone else for the rest of the time.
7. If possible - I don't like those huge American coffee mug and rather drink from a smaller cups - it's more a matter of aesthetic then anything else, but still...
8. and last - good coffee is always nice!

So today, giving a new spot a chance - the top 6 things on my list were fulfilled perfectly, I think I've found my new office, I might have to talk to the person in the counter to give me coffee in the cappuccino cups, but it was well lit, full of working people, and even had cool music and nice people, and I met an ex urban rustic waitress that I really like, so I didn't even feel like a stranger.

Also, it's really cool that the name of the place is El Beit - the home in Arabic.

Memorial day weekend

After 2 months of being sick and busy and realizing I'm becoming a true social hermit. This week came along, it feels like all of our friends who were likewise, being social hermits crawled out of their holes and want to play... we mat people every single day this week, went to 2 parties one day after the other and actually gone out in Manhattan to meet a friend in a bar.

It sounds like the most casual and regular thing in the world, but it seem to take a massive amount of effort to get us to go out those days and crossing the water into the city seem more difficult then ever.

It's not even laziness, at least I think it isn't. I remeber how when I worked in the ad agency, almost all social events were better then work, but now, I like what I'm doing so much, that making the effort to interact and spend time and energy on people seem to take so much out of me. On one hand, I enjoyed it a lot, and it was so nice to catch up and see some people and realize that I do have friends here, and on the other hand, I'm almost resentful toward them from taking me away from my sketchbook and computer and what I do around the apartment.



I made a series of 3 large drawings for a magazine submission and I want to make more of the same series and see if I can get a show out of it, it's hard to get myself to paint in the mornings, but then when I start it's hard to leave it behind and go talk to people and interact more then I'm used to. I feel so out of practice and totally self conscious when I try.

Tonight, we went to a barbecue for a friend's birthday. I was really happy to see them, cause it's been a really long time, but after a short time I realized how hard it was for me to just handle the small talk chit-chats of this party. I felt like i'm just sitting there contributing nothing.

The party started at 6:00 and at 9:00 we were all supposed to go see a concert, However as we were cleaning up the roof from the food leftovers and beer bottles, Ned slipped on a stair and hurt is shoulder and hip. We decided to go home instead so he can rest in bed. He's feeling better now - but I think we were both relieved to have a reason to just go home and not feel so self conscious about our lack of social skills.

What does one do in a day of no crafting?

I didn't make anything today, usually I don't make stuff in a day before a shoot. Ned's shooting a beautiful model tomorrow and we are trying to get over the mass in the studio and turn it from an artist studio, a very messy place indeed, to a photography studio, which is basically a lot of free space. So what did I do today?


Well, Ned when into the city for a meeting and I came as well, we agreed to meet back at coffee shop in an hour and a half. I'm almost out of cool fabrics for the lining of the tarot decks, so I walked to PurlSoHo to get some new ones. The store was really crowded and it's tiny, but found some good stuff. It was cool to listen to all the conversation and how people are dealing with crafting problems and what they are making.



It was very cold and i was getting tired walking out, so I stopped in some tea shop and had some tea. I didn't have my MP3 players and for the first time in a while I got to sit on my own and listen to people's conversation that were very strange, There was 2 women in some meeting on one side, one of them were a voice coach or an English teacher and this was their first class, she made the other girl read out a poem lout loud in the middle of the cafe and they went over the difficult words.

On the other side, a girl was telling her friend about her trip to Pushkar, India. one of them watched a TV show about Pushkar and they were comparing notes and talking about guys.

While I was having tea and listening to conversations, I was finishing a painting I was working on for a while.



We went back home and Ned fell asleep while I was trying to clear the mess in the apartment so that we can shoot tomorrow. After a while I stopped, we didn't do the image research we usually do before shoots and I didn't know if Ned's going to wake up in time to do it, so I made one myself, after an hour of finding and downloading pictures, I went back to trying to clear the mess.

Ned woke up and we went out for a late late dinner in Kellogg's coming out, we saw the most beautiful snow falling. It looked like tiny shards of glass or the small tinsels in a snow glob, all tiny and shiny. It was very cold and the snow was staying on the ground, all dry and stiff, like powdered sugar.



In Kellogg's it was warm and crowded, and we had some sandwiches and talked over the photos I downloaded before, thinking about different ideas for tomorrow.