Stitching, Patch, and Pie

Today was extra special.  First of all, it is Pi Day, 3.14 of the year 2015.  So it deserves a little celebration.  Secondly, it is a Saturday, which is just simply a holiday perfectly built into every week.  And thirdly, it was a girl time day, because I had planned to spend the day with my friend Jenny.  Now I love a romantic weekend with Austin all alone, and I love company and always love traveling.  But it is very infrequent and extra special to spend a day with such a sweet friend.

We kicked it off right, with mimosas and brunch at the Shelter off of Coleman Boulevard.  It was a true spring day, cool enough for a light sweater and jeans and bright enough for shades.  We perched on heavy duty wooden high chairs at a high top table and basked in feminine conversation.

Then, to business.  I need curtains in my kitchen / eating area / sun room to break some of the day's most direct light, and Jenny is very crafty.  She also got a new sewing machine for Christmas.  So after planning from Pinterest posts on how to measure for, cut, and create curtains, we chose some fabric from Hobby Lobby and got to work.  Who knew how much math it takes to decide just how many inches you need to get the finished dimensions, and then to convert them to yards!  Lucky for both of us that the internet can at least convert for you.

The finished product (one of 2 panels)  is now hanging in the kitchen.  I'm pleased.  And a tiny bit proud, although I will quickly admit that Jenny was the only one to work the sewing machine.  I was intimidated by all the bobbins and pedals and inner workings of what seems to me a very complex contraption.  Maybe I'll be brave enough to attempt its operation for the second panel, or next weekend when we are planning to make ourselves some spring scarves.

But those scarves will wait, because we had had enough measuring and pinning for one day.  How better to end Pi Day than with pizza pie?  And with Patch Adams?  Which I had never seen and wholly enjoyed.

We decided over mimosas and re-confirmed the decision at the end of the day that Girl Day should happen at least once a month.  If we are true to this decision, I just might learn to be as crafty and capable as Jenny one day.  

In Search Of a Console Table, We Found a Haven

There is something very special about walking around a store devoted to antiques and collectibles or resale.  Especially antiques.  I love the musky, mysterious smell that seems to waft around antiques and old books.  Many of theses places are large and operate by the combined contribution of dozens of vendors, each with their little section to fill and arrange.  I first became acquainted with this style in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in a repurposed sewing factory with wonderfully creaky wooden floors.  It was named Knitting Mill Antiques.  I could spend hours in the Knitting Mill, and have slowly been discovering Charleston's versions of the same.  This weekend I found my new favorite, simply called "Antiques Market," a Mary Poppins bag of a highway shopping center store.  Unimpressive even from within the shopping center parking lot, nearly invisible from the road, it was enchanting upon entry.

Austin and I wandered in this Saturday in search for an entryway console table, after having already explored two other antiques/resale stores the same day.  Immediately, we were drawn in by that same, magical smell and the wonderful quiet of the store.  We enjoyed admiring the pieces, laughing at the curiosities nestled into the mix (like the ventriloquist's doll tucked onto a bookshelf as though it were not very strange nor rare), and flipping through the price tags and descriptions.  We were more task-oriented than usual, lingering less and flipping faster, looking for the right price for our table.

I peeked at the tag for every piece I found appealing, even when I could most often safely bet the price would not be right, so I was excited to see one piece several hundred dollars less than the number I had guessed.  We had been moving relatively quickly through the little sections but we were suddenly still, caught up in consideration over this piece. It was slightly pricier than other pieces we had already turned down, and yet so perfectly charming.  A refurbished buffet from Ansonborough, one of the oldest sections of downtown Charleston, it had real brass hardware and was a lovely duck egg blue.  We fell in love; we brought it home.  

You might think we had just gotten a new puppy the way we have been fawning over our new piece, but it is just so perfect that of course it deserves all of the attention.  Also, given that we live in the front half of a house built in 1930, a space outfitted with only two 2'x3'  closets and no other built-in storage, we now have drawers that can house things which have had no home!  This is exciting.

As an aside, we also bought a lamp whose body is a pleasingly plump little owl.  The owl is guard to the guest bedroom.  We love it as well.  

I am thrilled to have found my replacement for the Knitting Mill, which Austin and I have both missed since moving from Chattanooga.  With a good range of different styles of vendors, cheery workers, and the perfect atmosphere,  I have a feeling I know where I'll be the next rainy Saturday...

Inaugural Post

Never having thought I would ever blog, I now sheepishly nod an appreciative recognition to friends' blogs who have inspired this first, public post.

It was a picture of birds on a telephone wire, or a power cord, in Argentina and an accompanying brief contemplation that addressed them that gave me my first exposure to the power in a blog.  It may as well have been a short article in a Smithsonian issue, one page or less of coverage, but striking.  This was the beauty in my friend Sarah's eye, something so commonplace, perhaps even an unwelcome obstruction of view out her window viewed customarily, but a beautiful geometric pattern of crossing lines in her eyes.  I loved sharing in that beauty, viewing something differently through her, and remembering to look at the world with just such an appreciation.

The fresh, popping photography and pithy commentary of another acquaintance, Meg, in chronicling her family's daily life, its simple beauties, and even its comical struggles, continue to draw me to read her blog, though miles and time now separate even our passing interaction.  I barely knew Meg even when we lived within the same city limits, but I now lean in to listen to what moves her along in life and how it affects her.  Her photographic and written journalism are personal, frank, and unassuming.  Her determined and conclusive positivity about life on a whole is refreshing.

I find, most often, that Facebook increasingly fails to reveal the people that keep me on Facebook at all.  Littered with ads and random "news" posts, like flapping flyers on telephone poles, the social network's newest gimmicks do little for me but to clutter my search for friends' personal words and posted photographs.  My friends get lost in the strange Timeline function with other people's shared posts.  I feel that it is more difficult than before to project who you are on Facebook.  I have appreciated the use of this social networking system, but in search of a tidier and more thorough method with which to express thoughts and convey news and ideas, I now welcome the journey as a new blogger.   Here we go!