Petit Lapin au Chocolat

After Sunday, not quite Tuesday

Works in progress, cut last night: The funky purple fabric is “oilcloth,” really vinyl coated fabric that I will back with flannel for portable diaper changing pads. The flower-ladybug fabric will be backed with the yellow flannel for baby floor mats. This will be the prototype, and my first foray into batting. Wish me luck. Someone (SouleMama?) recently used blue painter’s tape to mask off her quilting lines. I think this is a brilliant idea. I will steal it.

Today Lily’s babysitter called (again) to tell me (again) that she has “something to do” and wouldn’t be here at the appointed hour. Luckily my freelance work allows me to make up time at night or on weekends. I ask her to come only three days a week for a total of 14 hours, and almost every week, she either can’t come at all one day or she has to leave early or come late. I would get rid of her except that I shed blood finding her. Languages and learning about other cultures are important to me (read: an obsession of mine), and I have always wanted my child(ren) to have a Mandarin-speaking babysitter. Jenny is a lovely woman, is educated, speaks beautiful Mandarin, and came highly recommended. She just isn’t reliable.

The upside is I get to spend more time with Lily and blow off work. I’m wistful when it comes time to leave her with Jenny, and I always emerge from my home office (aka the unrenovated vacant disaster area with no ceiling that is the upstairs apartment) at least 15 minutes early to hear the stories of the day, see her latest tricks, and find out when and what she ate, whom she saw at the park, how she pooped…

This morning I couldn’t resist a photo of my pink princess next to my pink throne. This chair was rescued and then sat on for years with stuffing spilling out of its salmon-pink 1940s upholstery. I searched high and low for months for the perfect fabric. I looked at deep reds and some blue-greens. But the fabric I kept going back to matches the old upholstery almost perfectly. The chair was attached to its pink. Its will was too strong.

Worst Thrift Store Ever (WTSE)

The promised pictures of my new fabrics, soon to be works in progress...

On one of the coldest days of the fall so far, feeling lame for having kept Lily inside for most of the day, I trekked over to the thrift store closest to my house (WTSE). The impromptu trip was made possible by time I had left over from our visit to my friend J's and her baby boy H, onto whom Lily unleashed some serious attitude... after which we were asked to leave. So we nursed our wounds out in the blustery cold (thanks a lot, J) and over to Atlantic Avenue to hunt for wool.

I freely admit to jumping on the felting bandwagon, and was hunting for sweaters to felt for the adorable hat pattern in November's MSL. Despite Lily's piercing rendition of Go Down, Moses, from her prison on my hip, I managed to stay long enough to score three of the only, say, six? wool sweaters in the entire joint. But they are nice, all-purpose, muted colors, one of which is a lovely powder blue cashmere I will make into the hat for Lily and some booties for gifts.

I lived for a few years in Cleveland, where the thrifting was the stuff of madrigals and fairy dust, until New York got wind of it and started renting minivans for weekend raids. My favorite was Unique Thrift just down from my old neighborhood, which by the way is so fashionable now that just last week I saw some hip Brooklyn whippersnapper wearing a Tremont T-shirt for the love of Pete! Back in my day [creak of the bones, pinch of snuff], Tremont was full of dilapidated houses and boasted one indifferent little coffee shop. I had an 18th-century two-story house of some Civil War fame on a high bluff overlooking the hideous Cuyahoga River and the skyline of Cleveland – with a full attic, a back shop room, a laundry room (how I pine for one of those again), a charming little backyard with a patio, fish pond, and mature fruit trees (including two sour cherries!) – for 600 bucks a month. I was one of the hated gentrifiers. But I was one of the first with my then-boyfriend, now friend, Kyle. My boyfriend Kyle became my ex-boyfriend Kyle because the thrifting was so damned good (that's my story). I brought home countless projects-in-the-making, and never did anything but work in my vegetable garden.

The upside to this is that we stole two beautiful cats who loved gardens. One of them is the larger of my two babies (yes, still larger than Lily), The Black & White Kitty (Kitty for short – and Lily's first word). I lost Betty in the split-up, and she is now retired in South Beach.

I digress. I was spoiled by Unique thrifting. I bought tables for a dollar that I have sold for hundreds to New Yorkers (of course, I moved them across the country and stored them for years while I lived in Paris, so I made money on them not so much?) – my current sewing table is one I bought for three dollars (pictures to come). I found amazing vintage coats and all manner of pristine vintage housewares for pennies. So New York thrifting by comparison, to say the least, is dismal. Hell, it's dismal even not by comparison.

Is there any thrifting stone left unturned? I know you wouldn't tell me if there were (and you shouldn't).

I did manage to get a photo of the zucchini-oat-currant bread before it was duly et. This one's for you, E. I call it Still Life with Mini-loaf.