brooklyn flea redux.

look what someone left on my table. thank you, stranger, for coordinating your contribution so well with my display.

i think we have decided it - when in new york, brooklyn flea is the place for us.

it should also be noted that we are being housed by our wayfaring friend, melissa. we went into her 4th grade classroom on hallowe'en to make ugly drawings and buttons with her students and were tickled to bits to find a stack of thank you letters waiting for us at melissa's place when we pulled in late last night. they were such a joy to read and really took the edge off our tearful goodbyes (the most heart wrenching yet) in philadelphia last night. i wish i had more than a few hours to sleep between then and this morning so i could have properly photographed them all. i will have to make scans when we get home, because, really, this is some priceless stuff. aitor and i have deicded to keep them safe and pull them out again whenever we feel down.

philadelphia independent craft market.

today was the big craft market. if you are in philadelphia and have not yet made it out, i highly recommend that you go. off the top, i was very excited about the grid wall that the market supplies to artists. it gave me the opportunity to finally display the security envelope buttons i can't stop thinking in all their glory and large numbers.

to make things even grander, the collection of quality vendors are complimented by and always-impressive musical line-up that julie pulls together. everyone was amazing. we especially like joe duffey and the spinning leaves. the spinning leaves even had sage, ella and hazel join them for a couple of songs which was pretty exciting to me. i guess it take a week to develop auntish feelings of pride. speaking of which, is there a feminine counterpart to the term 'avuncular'? i think i am coming to the age where i could use that word a lot.

philadelphia adventure fun day.

okay, i have to admit that aitor and i did embark on this trip with a less than glowing impression on philadelphia (or, flithadelphia). i mean, we knew that cool stuff was going on and knew some of the cool people doing it, but overall the city seemed a confounding mess to us. well, spending this week in the loving arms of a whole philadelphian family has done much to adjust our opinions.

today, we were treated to a great amount of tourism with julie as our fearless guide. but then, you have to be fearless when your outings usually involve having three offspring in tow (regardless of their naturally pleasant demeanors, of course).



we started our tour in chinatown where we marveled at knick knack and paper cuts in the shops and scratched our heads at the boxes of roach houses julie has become fascinated with. really, i wish i had a picture of the box. it's quite odd. oh, and those chickens up there reminded me of aitor's hallowe'en costume.



after chinatown, we went to redding terminal where we all ate in the market and hazel and i squished pennies. aitor also consumed his very first philly cheese steak, another notch in his food tourism belt. i wonder how it compared to his kentucky hot brown. i also wonder where vegetarians go for food tourism? india? speaking of which, hazel and i got some chana masala and saag paneer which was very yummy, indeed.



we also got to go to the italian market (which reminds me a bit of kensington market). it's a pretty keen place but the day was starting to get drizzly and there is no way that my energy level can keep pace with those of our youthful counterparts. i marvel at julie's abilities. i did have just enough eneery, however, to settle into a raucous evening of party games with a belly full of blood orange gelato.

you know, this town is okay. and so it being enveloped by a family of recent strangers. aitor always used to say that our best friends are strangers. he's pretty clever about such matters.

mutual admirations.

today was a relatively easier day. well, as easy as a day can be in a house with three kids and five chihuahuas.

we did some drawing with the kids (surrealist exquisite corpse exercises) and then moved on to conveying obsessive habits onto the girls. hazel already had a rubber band ball, so we shared tips and stories and worked on ours. ella needed to start one. i hope i haven't inspired to girls to steal all of julie's rubber bands. remember, it is best to find rubber bands on things like vegetables, not your your parents' (or atior's) office. i have learned this the hard way.







i should also mention another up shot of our stay in this family; i get lavished with constant portraits. here is one from ella:



you may notice that i am wearing my amazing horseshoe shirt that i bought at why louisville. the girls were pretty enamored of that shirt.

pumpkins.

how cool is it that our friends in philadelphia saved pumpkins for us to carve with them?

it may be after hallowe'en, but i can't think of anything much better than getting to be adopted into a family and making jack-o-lanterns with a seven, a twelve and a fourteen year old.

while julie and the kids were out, we scoured the house for tea lights and made a display on the porch. it was pretty sweet.

so long baltimore, hello philadelphia.

well, we are now back where we started this whole wild tour, philadelphia. we rented a motel room in baltimore last night and (if my calculations are correct) slept for fifteen hours. today we decided to do a bit of ambling through baltimore before leaving - mostly to visit some of our favorite places is hampden.



we also got to visit the new storefront of our screen printing friends at squidfire. kevin was there manning the shop, so we got to catch up a bit, too. they have taken over the storefront that used to be atomic books and have filled it up with all their creative output. unlike their website, this affords them the possibility of selling of test prints and small runs. if you are in the area, you should probably visit their shop. you'll probably find something entirely unique. they are also nice dudes. oh, and they do custom screen printing, too, in case that is the kind of thing you might need.



after this last splash in baltimore, we took to the back roads and made our way to the loving arms o our adoptive family in philadelphia. our friends steve and julie and three kids and five dogs, so there is constant action in the house. in my current state of exhaustion and confusion, this is a surprisingly comforting distraction. i thought about explaining this series of pictures from our first evening in their home, but i think i'd rather let you all make up your own narratives.













maybe if you are all very good i will explain our evening's activities. but for now, i'd like to hear your guesses.

a day of being visionary.

now, this is something i really should have announced earlier but recent events waylaid many of my plans.

today we spent the day as special guests of sideshow, the more-than-a-gift shop at the american visionary art museum. the proprietor, ted frankel, had invited aitor to spend the day there doing unflattering portraits. i was really just tagging along. pictured above are the two tables the staff set up for us - draped with hand painted posters for bollywood movies. ted thought this matched the theme of portraiture. he's he real visionary around there.

now, for those of you doing the math, yes we were celebrating hallowe'en in new york last night. and yes, it is almost a four hour drive. and yes, store open in mornings. we've had no sleep.



in spite of all of this, we did our best to keep ourselves together and had a splendid time. ted is a prince among men and stellar host. we both feel very indebted to his hospitality. an interesting side effect to spending a day doing portraits at a museum is that one gets to interact with visiting tourists from all over. we got to chat with (and aitor got to draw) a visiting professor from little rock, a honeymooning couple and, of course a bunch of the staff at the museum and shop.



i have said it before and i will say it again, you really have to visit sideshow if you are in the baltimore area. they were unpacking thirty boxes of books (my total weakness) when we were there. i showed great restraint in not picking up any of these:



ted seems to have acquired one woman's entire life's collection of craft books dating back to the 1950's. if you are in the baltimore area and are a kindred spirit, i enourage you to pick at least some of these up. they are dirt cheap and i've never seen anything like them. i am just trying to be a touch more minimal in life now. but that doesn't mean you have to be.