a little more love for Chicago

My uncle just asked Dan and I the other day if we could think of Chicago as home, if we saw ourselves still there in our dotage. I actually think about this a lot. It's an expensive place to live. I think it was Forbes that just rated Chicago as the most stressful place to live in the country. But I love it.

Look:




It's an architectural wonderland. Living by Lake Michigan is almost like living by the ocean (without all of the car eroding salt and sand). And I'm madly in love with the unknowability of Chicago. NYC is daunting. Too huge. But Chicago is just big enough to not be able to fully know in a lifetime, while still small enough to give the illusion of feeling familiar and known. So, there's always this mixture for me in Chicago of comfort and ease and then suddenly being knocked out by something brand new and unexpected.

I love it.

I really do.

"It's a shame about our city."

Said Liam when we first arrived at the top of the Cobb. And then he said, "Where's the grandeur?"

Funny.

Chicago at sunset. Wish you could have been there.

Zapruder Point Week

It's been a musical week for Dan. Performance at Cole's on Tuesday and then tonight to the top of the Cobb Towers (Marina City) to film Dan, Elizabeth (from Canasta) and Liam (from Frisbee) performing "Steps from the Lake" for the Chicago Public Library Chicago song contest. Bob C was our ticket up and Camera Operator 2.

The music and the city were lovely.

light and linoleum

And Cole's had the most beautiful combo of floor and lighting.

Dan plays Cole's

and it was great!
(and so were Eric z and Denise Hadrecky!)

Hurry Up. Wait,

The fabulous Jill Huntsberger has a new blog (Hurry Up, Wait) that catalogs her work-travel exploits. Strange food, strange art, strange hotel carpets. And because the fabulous Jill Huntsberger is less likely to stay in large corporate hotels than she is in B&B's and kitschy themed hotels (think concrete teepees built in the 50's or silos converted into motel rooms), there are likely many odd and lovely stories to come.

Check it.

Hello Hiram!

New little mousy on the fivetrees etsy site.

Summer's End Garden

3 kinds of nasturtiums and hyacinth beans.

Weekend Fun

Renegade, then sushi.

How do I explain the cuteness?

Lest I Forget to Look Up. . .

I've been spending so much time scouring the streets for tiny reflective robots that I quite forgot that I had recently pledged to spend more time gazing at the sky.

But never fear, post from Britain provided reminder galore today.

I am a bona fide member of the Cloud Appreciation Society(undoubtedly, though, if any of the rest of the society members see this and my use of "bona fide" as an adjective in this way, my membership might be revoked. . . so, please keep it between us if you will).

Henceforth, forthwith and thusly, it would be ill-advised to use "cloudy" pejoratively around me or I might soundly rebuke you as required by my new position in society.

Robots Attack En Masse

They're cropping up all over the place.

And I have no recollection of changing my facebook profile picture to a robot.
But there he is, pretending to be me all over facebook.
I wonder if his buddies will also make similar moves into taking over my virtual persona. . . creepy.

Spotted in River North

blue fuzzy bike

Oak Park Farmer's Market

So, my folks were up this weekend--bringing furniture and manure for the garden (city mice still need their country mice for the good stuff!!!!) and Dad's plumbing skills to work on battery-powered sump pump installation with D.

But the whole weekend couldn't be all sump pumps and furniture moving. . . so we also ate our way through the weekend recreationally. Dinner at Fogo de Chao (fun, really good food, bad atmosphere, probably won't go again. . . but everyone should go once), chez Stewart/Phillips ala Jamie Oliver and food from the market, and breakfast at the Oak Park Farmer's Market and Nookie's in Lincoln Park. Luckily the gym was still open on Sunday after the folks drove away.

But from the offerings at the farmer's market (besides the redonkulously yummy donuts), it's clear that we've reached the thin footbridge between summer and fall. We still have musk melons, but broccoli and greens and late root veggies are beginning to take over, as corn and tomatoes and peaches dwindle off. Usually I'm sad, but not this year. I'm getting better at enjoying all of the seasons. . .

D had carrots in the early summer from Carriage House Farms and was floored--so in love was he with the unbelievably carrotyness of homegrown carrots. So, now he's more interested in carrots at farmers' markets.

My folks were most impressed (after the donuts and the prices that farmers can ask for their produce in Chicago) by the Pilgrim Church building and the bluegrass band.

Robot Attack

Do you see the little guy? He has friends on other streets. Pretty soon they will take over!

Robot next to the foot of the fabulous Jill Huntsberger for scale. I think they're made out of the same material that street lines are made out of. Cool.

Columbia Convocation

Columbia College Chicago was named after the Columbian Exposition or the World's Fair of 1890. And so for the last 5 years, convocation for new students has been set up as the midway of that fair--tents, old-timey carnival barkers, corsetted "cigarette" girls with tight lacquered curls of hair on their foreheads and the corners of their jaws (passing out swag from their trays instead of cigarettes, of course), a bearded lady, fortune tellers all advertised with beautiful signs painted on canvas and stretched across red and white striped tents. I didn't take lots of pictures this year. It is my 5th year. But I loved the above sack toss (you had to knock out his teeth) and the mix of old and new that is always the music stage--the old timey sign, the urban music. I work at a cool school.

Poppytalk Handmade Mixed Tape

yeah! I've been selected by the lovely Jan and Early of Poppytalk Handmade to be a seller in their mid-September to mid-October "Mixed Tape" collection of artisans and I could'd be prouder.

Quilting

I haven't quilted in quite some time. At the start of Dan and me, still a student, that was my most frequent gift to people. Dan bought the material and I made the quilt, so both of us were involved in the gift being given. That was years and years ago, though. . .

But I've been reading Jennifer Murray's blog, "and other silly things in the studio," and she made the sweetest baby quilt out of quilt squares with circles in the middle of them. She was even so kind as to include pattern drawings so the rest of us could have one, too. Mine, however, will be slightly larger than queen -ized.

I'm well underway, but, of course, as is always the case with quilting, I have a long way to go.

When I make quilts, Dan always gets to pick one of the fabrics. He picked two this time, but the one below cracks me up. We found it at the Needle Shop in Bucktown.

Cloud Appreciation?

Okay. So, I've been digging on clouds lately (though not the last two days filled with rain and that flat grey wall of a sky that comes when a storm really settles in to stay a while), and much to my surprise today, I found out that I am not alone.

Check out the Cloud Appreciation Society. They have a Manifesto devoted to the importance of taking the cloud's beauty, mystery and importance seriously. They offer images of the "Cloud of the Month." They sponsor "cloud chats" and report on breaking "cloud news." And they provide a forum for Society members' cloud art and poetry.

I totally joined.

(but they're a little lame about linking to their site. . . they obviously love the clouds, but don't fully get the webernets.)

Cloud Inspiration

the original inspiration. last friday. clouds doing their thing west of Chicago around 5:30 PM.

JShear's Modern Abstract Cloud Paintings on Etsy.



Ambera Wellman's cloud paintings are amazing. Each one is more beautiful than the next. If I had unlimited resources, I would buy a huge house and fill it with her paintings. . . and would take many trips to Halifax to buy her work personally. I both love her work and am horribly jealous of it.

Clouds

It's been stormy here in Chicago, which means knock out skies, beautiful clouds. I'm always watching the sky trying to figure out what makes clouds clouds, visually speaking. . . how the light plays on them, how they fit together so complicatedly. This last weekend, driving around, every time D and I saw the city, there was a bank of low clouds behind the skyline. Something about their positioning, that we couldn't see their bottoms, they created the illusion that Chicago was located on top of a mountain, high above the clouds. How do clouds do that? It's amazing.

I'm imagining a whole bunch of small punch-needle skyscapes showing up in the near future.

(don't fret.)!

More (don't fret.) on one of his most ubiquitous canvasses.

I swear that every time work gets hectic or times get tough, a new (don't fret.) shows up to remind me not to fret. Happy day.

Sunday

L.P. should get to have some fun.

dill seed from the garden, finally ready for harvest

paella is magic