Favorite Things Friday: Tiny Chairs

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Hope

my chair rail brings all the toys to the yard

So I actually like all kinds of tiny furniture, but I have a particular affinity for tiny chairs. I don’t know why chairs are at the top of the heap. (Note to self: look up chairs in a dream symbolism book or somesuch.) There is a country store in Frankenmuth, Michigan, where one could quickly assemble a large collection of tiny chairs from all interior design styles/eras, but that would be no fun. They’re expensive, and the thrilling part for me is the hunt! Over time I have accumulated a small collection of tiny chairs from flea markets, thrift stores, and one or two eBay splurges.

These pictures don’t even show all my chairs, as a few of them are on loan to various vignettes around my house and it’s Friday afternoon and the photos are already taken and I am determined to just get this done. Some chairs are part of other favorite collections so I am saving them for supporting roles in those posts.

Speaking of vignettes…which I will discuss in depth on another Friday…I like evolving art. I love it when visitors rearrange my little scenes and/or raid my treasure chest (a vintage plumber’s toolbox) to switch out the objects. So if you come visit, please note that my house is not a museum and I love surprises. Hint, hint. (no not really/who am I kidding?) HINT, HINT.

Lately I have happened upon a lot of vintage cake toppers in my thrifty excursions, and I thought this football guy’s obvious sense of flair was perfect for today’s shoot.

isn't this chair diVINE?

The large, futuristic chair was a recent find, and I don’t know why that vintage bunny works so well with it but it just does.

space-age bunny

The upholstered wooden chair was a bit of a splurge as it’s handmade and German and part of a set with a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table. I didn’t really need a whole set of tiny living room furniture. And yet, it called to me. It looks super comfy and sturdy to me, the perfect place to plop down with a newspaper after a long day at work in a miniature alternate reality.

(I collected a few tiny toilets when my book Potty Animals came out, too. A kind of game of thrones.)

I know that my affection for tiny furniture has something to do with the fact that our household was always in some sort of physical chaos (renovation, moving, etc.) when I was growing up. I love nesting. But I also love the mind play that happens when I handle small objects. I did a lot of imaginative play until I was quite old…dolls, paper dolls, Fisher Price, Legos. It was both a creative outlet and an escape when things were kind of ragged on the home front. Imaginative play is also how all kids make sense of their world and practice social skills. I made up stories for my toys. I don’t know whether that was because I was already destined to be a writer or if I became a better writer because of all the practice, but I have met many other writers who played with toys for embarrassingly long times. So I am no longer embarrassed. In fact, I’m proud. If you want to come play with my toys, you are welcome.

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Favorite Things Friday: The Crafty Nook

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Hope

step into my studio

I like to make things…birds, collages, art, toys, assemblages…those subjects will each get their own feature at some point or another. One of my favorite places in my house is the crafty nook where I keep my art supplies and do my work. It’s a small area jam-packed with good stuff so I’ll have to spread the tour out over a few posts.

A few years ago I went to a collage workshop by one of my favorite children’s book illustrators, Melissa Sweet. She gave us a slideshow tour of her studio and let us peek into some of her supply stashes. This inspired me to do a better job organizing my own supplies for a few reasons: so I’d know what I have, so I could access things more easily, and for the tactile pleasure of sorting and cataloging and arranging these favorite objects.

A lot of my supplies are vintage or recycled…I spend less money and find more charming stuff this way, I think. Hunting for props for my assemblages or birds or whatever gives me focus at garage sales and flea markets, and meets one of my most important criteria for stuff I collect — it needs to be useful. (Maybe not today or tomorrow, but SOMEDAY!)

My workspace includes a workbench with drawers (contents to be revealed at a later date), shelves with supplies and books, and two cabinets full of tools and fabric and other miscellanea. Today we’re just visiting the items that wouldn’t require a search warrant — those things in plain sight.

A recurring favorite theme of mine is large quantities of particular kinds of objects. I don’t mean a million Precious Moments tchotchkes, but a bunch of different versions of the same thing, such as tiny chairs or buttons or whatever. (Again, a topic for a future Friday!) In the photos below you can see many vintage thimbles, buttons, and jars of items: scrabble tiles, bingo numbers and tokens, and a jar of hands. Yes, hands. I like hands and find all kinds of meaning in them.

beloved buttons in cool jars

This photo doesn’t do the colors of my buttons justice, nor does it give you any sense of the scale of my collection. This is just a small sampling of hand-picked favorites, sorted by color and material. I like to plunge my fingers into the jars of buttons like Amelie plunged her fingers into the barrel of beans in the movie of the same name.

I approach crafting much like I tackle gardening — with a general plan but plenty of room to change course as I go. I often prune unused or less loved items from my collections and pass them along to someone who will make better use of them. Sometimes I rearrange the way I group things or display them because that affects how I use the materials. Some drawers (like the magazine clippings drawer!) are quite disorganized but that’s part of the magic…happy accidents occur when you let your supplies comingle.

Every few months the clutter accumulates as I start and stop various projects. At the point when it’s so chaotic as to be unusable, I catch up on favorite TV shows (Mad Men, anyone?) while I restore order in my garden of goodies: weeding and pruning and fluffing.

What do you collect? How do you unwind? Where do you do it?

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Vintage Advice: The Art of Cooking and Serving

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Hope

The Art of Cooking and Serving
by Sarah Field Splint
Proctor & Gamble, approx. 1932

The Art (yes, Art, I tell you!) of Cooking and Serving

The cover art attracted me to this little book–I love me some Art Deco. The author’s name sounds like a pseudonym a la Betty Crocker, but apparently Splint was a homemaking editor at McCall’s magazine and elsewhere.

The front matter includes this gem: “Are your meals in a rut? The appliances on pages 35 to 38 make old dishes new.” What was new at that time: measuring cups, cooking thermometers, muffin tins, gelatin molds, etc. I wonder what cooks of yesteryear would think of today’s immersion blenders, food processors, and crockpots?

One thing that I find intriguing about this book is that it differentiates between table service in the servantless house and in houses with servants, which reminds me of Downton Abbey. But I’m saving that post for another day, because today I want to talk about sandwiches. A chapter in my current work-in-progress features strange sandwiches (don’t ask) so the Sandwich chapter in this book is a good diversion.

It starts with a reference to the Earl of Sandwich folklore, and says, “If this story is true we owe him a debt, for sandwiches are a convenient and delicious food for school lunches, afternoon teas, picnics, and motor parties. They are even becoming a “square meal” when made of hot meat and thick, rich gravy.” Isn’t it funny to think about sandwiches as a novelty or trendy food?

The book includes recipes for the old standbys: ham, club, chicken salad. But there are many peculiar and unappetizing ones: cheese and pickle, egg and olive, lettuce, nut and raisin, pickled walnut and cheese. The chapter ends with Wide Open Sandwiches, which are essentially open-faced ham/egg/pickle salad sandwiches. Revolutionary.

As I looked over the recipes, a common theme emerged: Crisco. It’s in every sandwich. Even peanut butter is not paired with jelly, but with Crisco Spread. There is a special recipe for Crisco “spread” which I will share below. This was the point where I realized the book was essentially an advertising piece for Crisco…but an artfully done one with many chapters that don’t even mention Crisco! There are general tips for sandwich success (use day-old bread; try toasting the bread to mix things up, etc.) and most sandwich recipes end with the direction to cut in fancy shapes. Charming.

For the curious and strong of stomach:

CRISCO SANDWICH SPREAD

1 cup Crisco
1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp mustard
1/8 tsp paprika
few grains cayenne
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 TBS lemon juice
2 1/2 TBS vinegar

Cream Crisco. Add egg yolk slowly and beat well. Mix mustard, paprika, cayenne, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice together and stir into the first mixture. Add vinegar, beating in a little at a time. Mix thoroughly. This will keep in a cool place for several weeks. If it becomes hard, warm slightly and beat to proper consistency.

[Hope says: in a cool place? How about a REFRIGERATOR? If it becomes hard? It’s got raw egg yolk in it. Maybe you mean, “if it turns rancid.” ?!]

LETTUCE SANDWICH [note: a.k.a. the anti-manwich!]

Cut thin slices of white or whole wheat bread and trim off the crusts. [Note: Sliced bread was not yet a staple!] Spread lightly with Crisco Spread. Lay a crisp leaf of lettuce on a slice of bread, spread with mayonnaise Dressing, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover with another slice of bread and cut sandwich in halves diagonally. Serve at once. [Hope says: And stand back, because there’s sure to be a stampede at the buffet for these babies.]

NUT AND RAISIN SANDWICH

Cut thin slices of white or graham bread and trim off crusts. Spread lightly with Crisco Spread. Make a filling of 1 cup chopped raisins and 1/4 cup chopped nuts moistened with Mayonnaise Dressing. Spread between two slices of bread. Cut with round cooky cutter.

Interesting side note: when I googled the author, I discovered that this book features prominently in a Margaret Atwood novel, Moral Disorder. You can read about that book here.

 

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Favorite Things Friday: Ann Arbor Farmers’ Market

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Hope

This Friday favorite is a little bit alliterative: it’s the Farmer’s Market!

so package-y!

When I travel, I love to visit local produce, fish, and flea markets just as much as I like visiting historical landmarks and museums–sometimes maybe more so. You really get a sense of the local community at a market. (The tiny, impeccably-dressed Sicilian grandmothers shopping for single servings of fish and produce in Sicily both broke and warmed my heart).

Ann Arbor has a great farmers’ market. Open Saturdays and Wednesdays, you can find all kinds of tasty, homegrown and homemade items and talk directly to the people responsible for them. Local growers have a reverence for their products that I find appealing, whether the vendors are dreadlocked, organic young upstarts or leathery cheeked, bright-eyed older folks who have been coming to market for decades.

Right now all the spring flowers and first veggies of the year are overflowing in the stalls, including one of my top three veggies: asparagus! Oh, how I love it oven roasted or grilled with olive oil and sea salt…or sautéed into an omelet…or puréed into soup. YUM. Someday I will write asparagus a poem, I love it so much.

This week I walked downtown from a friend’s house on the Old West Side. The weather was gorgeous and the company, grand. We didn’t plan to go to the market, but it was a happy coincidence when we realized our excursion was happening on a market day. I love to walk and I love to talk and doing so in my old stomping grounds gives me warm, fuzzy feelings about childhood adventures. One of the highlights of my childhood was my relative independence…if something was in walking distance from our house on Sixth St., I checked it out.

Feast your eyes on the goodies below, then hot-foot it to your local market and see what turns up!

Bonus: The A2 Farmers’ market is located a stone’s throw from another favorite A2 institution, Treasure Mart, which deserves its own post. And Kosmo Deli! Mmmmm, (Bi Bim) Bop!

Posted in Farm, Favorite Things Friday, Food | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment