Happy Halloween

Lindsay is going to be a fairy today. My friend Simone helped me design and make the frame for fairy wings when she was visiting here. I just finished and painted them today. Hopefully the paint will be fully dry in a few hours! I'm really happy with how they turned out. I based the design on butterfly wing patterns and the swirls on the cheapo set of wings that came with her costume. The leaves in the center are to hide the joins.

Can you smell it?

It's so close I can almost smell it. Rhinebeck! Oh the sheep, the bunnies, the fiber, the yarn the books, the beautiful wooden tools that haven't changed shape in centuries! I'm giddy. Maybe it's the fumes from the sheep wafting all the way down to Brooklyn.

I can't wait until tomorrow!!!

Have you read?

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, underline what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Italicize those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice********
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace (I think I have, but can’t remember)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma****
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The historian: a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera*
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault's pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility***
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park**
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's travels (can’t remember for sure)
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela's ashes: a memoir
The god of small things
A people's history of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces (I can't seem to do the strikethrough, but ugh!)
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The scarlet letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion******
Northanger Abbey***
The Catcher in the Rye (this was banned in my highschool)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In cold blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth (White Fang??)
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

Storm King

After years of driving by it, we finally made it to Storm King! For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a sculpture park on 50 acres of gorgeous land near New Paltz, NY. The sculptures are of a monumental size, and by many of the big hitters in the art world. Neil and I had seen the Andy Goldsworthy movie Rivers and Tides and really wanted to see his rock wall that snakes through Storm King. It was wonderful. Here's a photo that obviously wasn't taken by me since it was quite warm the day we went.




This next one is by Richard Serra. We saw a show of his work at the MOMA, which we really enjoyed.

birthday fun

I had a really enjoyable birthday filled with friends and celebrations. There are times when I get moody and convince myself that I have no real friends. If it weren't for Neil and Lindsay, I would die alone and be slowly consumed by my cat. But then there are times like my birthday, when my friends really exert themselves in a way I cannot deny.

My wonderful friend Simone flew in all the way from Germany. Our neighbor upstairs was away and let Simone stay in her apartment. So we could see each other every day, but could also retreat into our own spaces at night. The week with Simone was wonderful. We laughed, made fairy wings for Lindsay's Halloween costume, went to Wave Hill ( a lovely public garden in the Bronx), and the Cloisters. It was kind of funny to go see medieval art in NYC with someone from Europe, but the views and art were lovely and we had an enjoyable lunch in their garden. Simone is also a fabulous cook. I trailed her as she made her famous tiramisu and chocolate-cherry cake. We made two huge trays of the tiramisu for my birthday and an 11" cake. Yum!

We went to Chelsea to peek at the galleries. There were two shows that really stood out to us. One was a Julie Heffernan show called Booty at PPOW.


The other show we enjoyed was Andrew Woffinden's show at Dillon Gallery.


Then there were my friends Sandi and Jim who came down from Rhode Island. They are in a particularly busy time with their business, so it was touching that they took the time to visit. They joined us for a lovely dinner at Po restaurant in Brooklyn. Our other friend Sue joined us for dinner as well.

Then Neil organized a small group of our friends to come over for wine and cake in our backyard. He decorated it with candles and with the warm weather, it was magical. I really felt celebrated.

40 years ago

On October 2, 1967 a not-so-little kid was born. This chunkster, weighing in at 8lbs 8oz was named Martha Farago Lazar. Fast forward 40 years and now Martha isn't so chunky for her frame. Probably better not to have so many rolls at this point. I can't quite believe I'm 40. I vividly remember when my mother turned 40. She was laughing and crying the whole day. It freaked me out as a kid. I don't really feel like doing either of those things. Mostly I feel sort of meh.

What feels really wonderful is that Neil has organized a small get-together in our backyard. Wine and cake. Yum. And we have a bunch of friends coming. My friend Simone flew in from Germany to celebrate my birthday. That has given me enough of a warm and fuzzy feeling to last me all winter long. Thanks everyone for making this gal feel celebrated.