Ever since getting a private tour (with wine!) of Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers exhibit on wicked plants, I’ve had a healthy respect for carnivorous greenery. Did you know that a Venus Flytrap can snap shut in less than a second ? Or that a pitcher plant can kill and eat a monkey (A MONKEY. it’s a plant!)? I apparently share this sense of wonder-at-the-awesomeness with Brooklyn based artist Kate Deedy of Grow House Grow. Her glorious hand-illustrated wallpapers celebrate women and science, history, literature, and the supernatural- all with an impeccable sense of spatial relation. The designs are the exact right blend of playful and macabre (while also being totally beautiful). Since I can’t wallpaper my (rental) apartment- le sigh-, I decided to get a roll of this carnivorous-plant-paper to line my desk… so I can gaze with wonder at the power of a man eating plant all day.
Check out all of the other gorgeous papers here.
Subway Valentine
Spotted on the Lafayette Avenue uptown C train platform: a subway valentine cut from a page out of Truman Capote. I Heart New York too, Truman.
Just Missed Him!
Ahhh! I just missed the knife grinder! I heard the bell going down my street, and saw the red truck cruise by the window, but by the time I got my coat and grabbed Grammy’s Henkels he was already off the block (and then I was just walking down the street in my house-slippers holding a bunch of knives like an old crazy lady). I have my own knife sharpener, sure, but- just like the ever dwindling seltzer guys- there’s something wonderful and classic about the traveling grinder. Maybe he’ll come back down, I’m ready…
image from here.
Happy Halloween!
Tonight we’re going to be marching in the 39th Annual Village Halloween Parade, singing into megaphones with our dear friends, the awesome boys of No Small Money Brass Band. Here they are, marching in the parade in 2009. It’s going to be almost as good as candy! And, BONUS, since I’m a grownup I can also have as much candy as I want all the time. Happy Halloween!
Childlike Wonder pt. 1
I’m not sure if it’s on purpose, coming from me- if I’m drawing a feeling of awe out of the air like a lightning rod or if there has been extra beauty latent in the world as of late and I’m drawn to it like a open-mouthed moth to a flame of awesomeness. Either way, I really feel like the past few weeks have been full of wonder. This is a hard thing to come by, so needless to say it’s been pretty great. Is it that we’re too tired usually to look around? Is it that the world is extra-lovely when it tilts its orbit to squeeze the last bit out of fall? I went to Dumbo to see the Creators Project and poke around and I simply could not get over how beautiful everything was. It was ever so marvelous a feeling.
Things Could Be Worse
I’m going to plan the rest of my day using this fabulous collection of drawings. First, I think it’s time for a mid-afternoon coffee. And then I think I might make myself something delicious and fall-y:
If I can get my mitts on the recipe.
And then maybe I’ll go see Roosevelt Dime play tonight at the fabulous Brooklyn Winery.
Cutest infestation ever.
A few sexy Halloween costume ideas…
Seeing as I already have the boots from when I was thinking about going as “Miss Piggy playing the Accordion”, I’m thinking Sexy Inexplicable Melancholy sounds doable. Though if I can get someone to go as “Masculine Toast Points” with me, then maybe Sexy Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg is where it’s at. So much sexy.
From the brilliant Jillian Tamaki as found on The Hairpin.
As always, thanks to Meags for this (who’s going as “Sexy First Edition ‘Old Man and the Sea'” of course.)
Rosamond Bernier is a pretty neat lady
In Wendy Goodman’s New York Magazine feature on Rosamond Bernier’s apartment, the 95 year-old Bernier says, of founding the art magazine L’OEIL, “It was everything that interested me. I would just think of things, or hear of things, or read about something, and off I would go.” I love that. If that weren’t enough, here are some pictures of her that are pretty damn fabulous. Her captions. 
Age 6 on her pony Teddy, after winning a cup at her first horse show. Philadelphia, 1922.
At 16, she played the harp in the Philadelphia Orchestra as part of a Youth Concert Series.
She moved to Acapulco in 1938 with her first husband Lewis Riley, who had properties there. Here she is with some of her menagerie.
When She returned from Paris to New York, she began a career as an art lecturer. Here she is talking about Henry Moore in 1972 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She still wears this dress.
Awesome. Makes me want to read her book.
Beware, Ms. White
Eating a fresh, crisp, delicious Granny Smith apple with a fresh manicure makes me feel a) totally awesome and b) like I might poison a princess sometime soon. If you live around Brooklyn with 7 other little dudes and are always cleaning your house… WATCH OUT!
Tea Party of One
One of my favorite things about the chillying weather (despite frequent deluges, this past week must be one of the most beautimous in New York history… also helps that Sweetheart and I have been listening to Billie Holliday on repeat) is the transition from cold brew coffee back to plain old dark and delicious hot coffee. But despite my militant affection for coffee, there’s just something about late autumn afternoons that seems to require tea. It’s such a lovely little ritual- the loose leaf Hediard that Maman and I got in Paris (and that Sweetheart replenishes from McNulty’s), the old copper kettle, with its real throaty whistle, the time and steep. Just a little honey for me, always.
Feather By Feather 
