Rise

I bought this yarn and I love it.  It's rainbow dyed but I only used the red/orange/yellow part today, and this happened.

I wasn't intending to make an arch, when I set out I was going to make a square, thinking I might make some square pieces to use for my next thing... then I miscalculated, and my straight line started to arch, and I went with it.  I'm not sure if it will be at this orientation or if it will rotate a little when it's time to use it.

I also have some great purple earth tone yarn I was thinking of using, but wasn't sure what to do with it, and really wanted to get my hands in this yarn with some yellow.

I started some small frames and even some very small circle frames.  I have been applying to shows and they all want work under 24" or 36", so I thought maybe I'd do some small things.  But I actually really like working large with crochet, it seems easy for things to get really big really quickly.

Also today I tried out using a bowl to hold the yarn instead of letting it flop around.  I know yarn bowls are a thing, but I've never tried one.  I used a regular bowl that I made last time I tried ceramics.  It was lovely.

Today I started out at the dining room table doing online shopping for various things we need (stickers, child size sunglasses, bathroom non-slip step stool).  It was taking a while and I was watching my time tick away.  And finally I stepped from the dining room table into my "studio," just 3 feet away, but I was able to focus and get some more work done.  I've been leaving my space set up, with frames and yarn out (though the yarn is in a plastic bag, cats), and it has been nice to have that space out and ready for me at a moment's notice.  Though I can only work when the kids are asleep, I still get easily side-tracked, and seeing things lying out there has been really nice.

Challenge

I challenged myself to make an entire mini piece today, the crochet and painting and stretching.

I actually almost did it.

During the babies' nap I made two small paintings and cut them like I wanted them.  And I made one of the attachment crochet pieces.  And found a suitable picture frame.

In the evening I finished all the attachment crochet pieces, so now it is ready to stretch.  But I can't do the stretching in the apartment while the babies are sleeping (will need to hammer into the frame) so it's just not going to happen tonight.

So close!

I wanted to do a whole piece because I want to finish something.  I want to go through the whole process.  The last piece I finished, only the second one ever, I finished in November (?) 2011.  Since then I have started a few but never finished.

Using a picture frame as a guide makes it easy to stay small and not get out of hand.  I have a bunch of picture frames, I can make a few small works.

I'm going to finish this one tomorrow.  Then I'll have SOMETHING.

Lately working late

This is what my work looks like when I am working on it.

I do most of my work at night.  Sometimes I get some things done during the babies' nap during the day.  But actually this is a better view than I get while I work on it because I normally can't stretch it out as I work, I just have to imagine.

I am really getting into crochet.

I love that it has an immediate building quality that I don't always see with other media.  I can see how the stitches build structures.  If you make a chain like this or double back through here, it produces this shape or that shape or stretches or becomes stiff.  There is a real sculptural quality to crochet, something I hadn't considered in fiber before.

Another thing I love about crochet is how quickly my things become HUGE.

One moment I'm making a tiny circle that is the seed for a portion of my piece, and the next thing I know, the piece has become over a foot in diameter, and getting larger and more amorphous by the minute.  I don't know in what direction it will expand until suddenly I see it bubbling and frothing out to the right, or oozing down to the left, and I follow it with my army of hooks and yarn.

I wish I could show you but I can't because there isn't a way to stretch anything to its full size yet.  I don't even know what some of these pieces look like really.  I have to use my imagination.  I have one enormous piece, it takes up probably more than 5x5', but it is stuffed into my yarn bag.  (Another great thing about crochet, even though it is huge, it folds right down into my yarn bag.)

A few weeks ago I took a rare opportunity and bought some wood to be a frame for one of the pieces I'm working on.  It's pretty big (3.5x2.5') but not TOO big.  I'm trying to contain the size because the weight of the frame may make it hard to hang and store the piece.  But now the wood sits un-built because if I put it together I have nowhere to store it in our small apartment.  Maybe soon there will be a place.

I'm excited to have so many pieces in progress.  I bought some blue/green/purple dyed wool yarn the other night so I could start on another piece and have a wider color palette.  I haven't gotten to it yet, but it is exciting.

It's also exciting because it's like my secret.  Since I have to use my imagination, since the pieces are still stuffed in my yarn bag, since even if I laid it out it doesn't make sense to anyone else, it is totally mine.  I'm the only one who has it right now.  Just for me!

Day Book, D.A.I.Y.E. Day.

Today I made an organizer, because when I am feeling disorganized I make systems for organizing (and then maybe I don't use them).  I decided the first thing I would do after my time at my current position ended would be to do something that felt productive and grounding... so... and organizer it was.

I took three sides of an old box (plucked out of the paper recycling bin in our apartment, somewhat to JewishGuy's dismay).  I collaged on the outside, covered it with mod podge, and used brads to hold the "general to-do list" paper on one side.  Then I did something way too complicated to bind the other side together into a book and then sew it onto the cover very slowly.  I also put a brad on each side of the covers to be used as closure devices (a red string wraps around them to keep the book closed).

I might still sew a pocket into the large empty flap so that I have somewhere to keep business cards or whatever that I pick up.

Basically, I felt like I needed something to keep me motivated, because now that I have nowhere to go during the day I have become very anxious.  Okay, today was Day 1 of not having anywhere to go... and I already contacted a temp agency to help make some moneys while I continue the job search.

My position ended because the department closed, effective Erev Rosh Hashana, last Wednesday.  Last week was such a stressful week, and even though Rosh Hashana was good it was not due to our planning!  We were both so stressed we barely got what we needed to get done, done, and one of the meals we hosted was woefully short on food (I mean, for my standards - I want people to be stuffed with food of all sorts before dessert, and that just wasn't the case).

A piece of good news - I sent in my ATR application as soon as I got home from work on Wednesday!  All of my hours are finished, the application went in the mail, and this week (or next) I will follow-up to see if they got it.  Hooray!  I also put in for a hold on my LCAT permit, hopefully that will come through soon.

And finally, one of my goals for the month of October is to create a consistent online presence, which will mean a major overhaul of my website and blog.  I will keep updating (such that I have been) in the meantime, but look forward to some big changes soon :)

Frustrated!

I am so frustrated that my camera was stolen.  I am angry and sad and frustrated.  So angry.  I'm just going to say that over and over until I figure out how to cope with it.

My camera was so important to me.  So important that it is the only thing I keep on me at all times besides my phone and my keys.  The camera on my phone takes pictures and sometimes they are all right, but they aren't nearly the quality that I want.  They look better as fake polaroids than they do as regular images, I think.  At least then you expect lower quality images.

UGH. I'm so angry and frustrated and disappointed.

Today we went to buy a new camera but it was such a frustrating experience.  Not only because being in the store was overwhelming and frustrating, but also - I don't really want a new camera.  I wasn't in the market for a new camera before mine was stole and I don't want a new one now.  I want my old camera.  I don't want to spend money replacing something.  If I'm going to spend money I want an upgrade, I want a digital SLR, I don't want to re-purchase a perfectly functioning digital camera that suited all of my point-and-shoot and some of my better quality needs.  I wanted my next camera to be an upgrade to something that took really substantial, nice photos, not another point and shoot.  But I still need a point and shoot to carry with me for the random pictures I like to take.

It makes me SO sad.

And it was stolen from where I volunteer; I don't get paid to be there, so that adds another blow.

I know, it's a thing, it's not a person or a pet or something truly important, and it can be replaced.  But I am having a temper tantrum over here over having to replace it.  A lot of "I want I want I want" like a child.  I can't control this situation any more than I can control my job situation.  I just have to deal with it.

Expect lots of fake polaroids to come until I figure out what I really want to do next.

PS the picture above is from the garden.  I hung some paintings around the fence and they are slowly being overgrown by the ivy that has come over the fence.  Pretty :)

Professional Nerdiness (I love charts)

Because all of my hours are volunteering, sometimes I feel kind of low.  I keep a very detailed chart of my progress but tonight I made a graphic to show myself getting closer to my goal as a way to stay motivated.  I also calculated the percentage of the hours I've completed towards my two licenses - I am almost finished with 30% of the hours I need for my state license, and have finished more than 50% of the hours I need for my national registration!

Luckily, I married an engineer.  Everyone ASSUMES he is the nerdy one.  But I am an ARTEEST.  Obviously that makes me cool automatically, right?  Coolness came when I bought my first canvas?  Or pastels?  Right?

This chart is so awesome, and it just keeps getting more awesome.  You can get so much information quickly and easily (well, YOU can't, because you can't see the headers).

The graph just makes the info look pretty, like at a fundraiser, I can see the totals rising.  I hated the color schemes so I put awesome retro wood paneling on it.

NOW YOU KNOW HOW COOL I AM.

Coming soon... art?  Maybe?  Sorry for the intermission of art making, I am going a little nuts.

Growing!

 

I've started my garden already.  It's still in the 40s out so whatever starts growing won't go outside for another few weeks, but I'm supposed to begin sprouting them inside so here we are.

So far I've already got spinach (above) and tomatoes that I can actually see above ground!  Also planted is basil, chives, bell peppers, and oregano.  Dill and cilantro will be sown once the weather warms up because they both want to be outside and don't transplant well.  Other plans for plants include mint and maybe jalapeno peppers - the peppers I am planting from seeds from peppers I got from the grocery store, so I don't know if they will actually grow, but you can sometimes see peppers growing inside other peppers so I assume there is at least the possibility.

I don't have a good track record for these kinds of plants, so that's why I'm growing from seeds this year instead of buying little plants.  The whole set-up so far has cost about $7, so I haven't invested too much money in it

Meanwhile, I've also planted the bulb I bought a couple of weeks ago and it is growing away...  It looks more and more like Edward Scissorhands kind of hand, as the fingers sprout further and further up.  At least it looks less like someone giving me the finger.  I can't wait until it blooms, because I really don't know what it's supposed to look like.  The guy at the plant store said this thing would grow in a cup of water, but since I planted it it really took off - in the cup of water it was growing roots but the tips of the parts that already looked like they were growing started to die.  And I even found a use for the flower pot I made last year in ceramics, yay.

Also, I purchased some wildflower seeds that I'll start tossing around the flower bed in a couple of weeks.  I'll do a little at a time, once a week or every other week, up until June.  Hopefully things will start to grow as other things are sprouting so we can have flowers all summer.

Also!  I think Mable the Maple has started to bud.  Pictures of that later.  Remember how pretty she was last fall?

I'm loving how green and fresh our apartment feels right now.  I planted a couple of spider plant babies I took from work and hung it in the window and they seem to be enjoying their new location.  I made some clippings of my plants I brought from Chicago and I'm letting them root so I can help them fill out (no thanks to the cat who keeps eating the leaves).  And I've got all of these things sprouting, hopefully to turn into one pretty awesome herb garden come May.  Hopefully I won't get stressed and neglect my plants like two years ago...

AppsAppsApps

I will update with some artwork in a bit but first I want to share my new obsession: apps.

Oh, yes, I know, I'm not the first person to become obsessed with apps after getting a new iphone (birthday present from my parents - thank you!).  But my app obsession is pretty single-minded.  I just want strategy and puzzle games.  That's all.  Basically, my iphone is a fancy gameboy.

But I'm struggling a little because I am kind of OCD when it comes to desktop spaces - not in real life, just virtual desktops.  I don't like messy desktops with lots of things you have to search through.  This is something people probably wouldn't guess about me considering what most spaces around me look like (have you seen the piles of paper and art supplies next to my computer?).  But on my iphone I want everything on one screen and neatly organized.  The problem with this is that folders can only hold 12 things in them.  I had to separate my folders into full version games and games I've got "LITE" versions of, aka "trial versions."

These aren't even all of the games I've downloaded.  I have culled a few already, and I've got Plants vs Zombies, Angry Birds, and World of Goo on the ipad (graduation present) so I didn't re-purchase them.  I'm on the look-out for more games, not that I even have time to play all of these games in depth.  I'm enjoying "Zombie Cafe" right now and I've got 3 games going in Words with Friends (aka Scrabble).   Today I downloaded everything you see in the "trial games" folder except StupidZombieLite, which I downloaded yesterday.  I'm excited to try bad air day, where you fart in an elevator and you have to get rid of the smell before people around you die. ...nobody said these were high brow games.

It's bad because instead of reading on the subway I'm playing games.  But I am also playing strategy games instead of mindlessly refreshing facebook and email over and over, so I guess that is an improvement somewhat.

Also my background on my phone is a picture of a butterfly I took in 2002 when I went with some friends to the butterfly garden (I think it was in Philadelphia).

The butterflies were so tame they let you get really really close!

Anyway, that's my iphone games post for now.  Back to regularly scheduled art making...

Snow Day!! (Part 2)

Today I went sledding in Central Park with my friend. To meet her I had to cross the park, which took me a while to do because I kept stopping to take pictures. The park was so beautiful today, covered in snow, and everywhere you could hear people laughing while they were sledding down different hills.

We went sledding for about an hour before we became exhausted.  My friend ran into me a few times, which was hilarious and painful at the same time.  Then we got hot drinks and took the subway home - turns out the buses are back in business so I didn't have to walk across the park on the way back.

Click below to see more pictures from my walk :)  No pictures of me sledding, it was too crazy to try to have my camera out at the same time!

Filling a void

Part of the definition of "home" is a place where my guinea pigs are - the only mornings I've woken up without screaming pigs pretty much as long as I can remember have been mornings I've woken up somewhere else (vacation, camp, traveling, etc).  Part of the definition of "home" is the noise and the chaos of animals, and although guinea pigs don't contribute as much as dogs do, they do their share.  The last two mornings have been rough.  Lilly is noisy but not as noisy as a pig!  And most mornings she sleeps in.

I went on a really long walk today.  I went to six stores - four thrift stores and two furniture stores, to maybe look for a chair to sit in the spot where the guinea pig cage was.  The emptiness in that spot is really odd and jarring to me.  Probably not to anyone else, though.  I walked almost non-stop for three hours

I took some pictures.

Fiona

Yesterday I had a scare with my guinea pig, Fiona. She refused to eat and seemed really lethargic. She is also 7 years old, which is beyond geriatric for a guinea pig. It was a scary day. I cried a lot. I thought this was the end for Fiona. When a guinea pig stops eating you have a very short window to do anything, and even if you do anything there's no guarantee. They go downhill really fast. Also, being prey animals, they don't usually show signs of illness until they are close to death.

I took her to the vet and they wanted to do all kinds of fancy things, but she is 7 years old and I said no. I said, what is the least invasive procedure we can do, and let's do that. I just want her to be comfortable. So they injected her with fluids and some medicine to stimulate appetite and help with stomach issues, and I took home antibiotics and more stomach meds as well as some "critical care" mashed up food I was to squirt into her mouth to see if she would eat.

Well, needless to say the squirting food into her mouth didn't go so well, but some of it made it in. I then let her calm down for the rest of the evening and decided to start her on the medication when I got home from a meeting. When I got home, she had eaten a big chunk of pepper I left for her, some cilantro, and some of the pellets in her bowl.

Hooray Fiona!

Here she is, with those big pink piggy lips:


This morning she screamed for her veggies like usual. :)

I don't know if she's better for a while or just for now. Like I said, she is really really old. But! She is feeling better today, and that's good enough for me!

Fiona is a feisty guinea pig. In my head she's always cursing at me for not doing her bidding fast enough. I named her Fiona after Princess Fiona in the movie Shrek because I adopted her from two people who were moving to New York and she had never lived with any other pigs before. She had no idea how to be in a herd, it was kind of funny. She and Lilly get along well because Lilly doesn't realize she's a cat. The two of them seem to have no idea what they are and what their roles should be in relation to each other.

And now, pictures of Roxy and Madison, Fiona's former cagemates who both passed away when we still lived in Houston. Roxy and Madison were sisters from the same litter.

Madison:


Madison was the dominant pig in our little herd, which I guess I didn't much realize until I introduced Fiona in 2005. She always won the "nose wars" (this is when they stand with their front paws on something and try to get their noses higher in the air than the other pigs, which demonstrates their dominance somehow). One time, when I was living at my parents' house between moving out of my apartment in undergrad and moving into my apartment in Houston, Madison chirped! That is still the one and only time I've heard a pig chirp. They squeak and scream all the time, but chirping is somewhat rare and nobody really understands why or when they do it.

Roxy:


Roxy was a mama's girl. She used to crawl up on my shoulder and sit with her head in my neck. It was so cute. She let me do whatever I wanted with her, like clipping her nails or checking her ears. I felt like she really was a little piggy princess. I had no idea but apparently when it was just Roxy and Fiona (Madison died a year and a half before Roxy), Roxy used to beat up on Fiona when I was out of the house. I used to think Fiona was the dominant one of the two, but after Roxy died I found abscesses from bites on Fiona's butt and back. Nobody ever was bitten like that during Madison's reign, but I guess I couldn't be around all the time to keep the peace. I literally never heard them fighting. They waited until I was out of the apartment to go at it.


Fiona is my last guinea pig. She has been living by herself for almost 3 years now. On one hand I feel bad about it because I know pigs are supposed to be happier in herds, but if any pig is going to be okay as a singleton it would be Fiona. For the first two years of her life she was alone, then she lived for 2 years with cagemates and I'm not sure she ever really fit in. She seems very happy to rule the roost and occasionally come in contact with the kitty.

So this post is dedicated to Fiona, who made a glorious comeback yesterday, and who is demanding I go shopping for more lettuce today.

Today's Finds

Today my friend (CankeyB) and I went walking around the neighborhood (CankeyB was in town visiting yay!). We stumbled upon a street festival and also a farmer's market/craft/antique fair, so we walked away with some great stuff!

Here's my favorite thing I bought today:



These earrings are by Alicia Piller (designsbyaliciap.com). She has some amazing work, especially her suede and bead jewelry and wall hangings. I love these earrings - they look like cells! (Although JewishGuy says they look like steaks haha)

I also got this basket, CankeyB haggled it down in price for me:



After I bought it the seller gave me a flyer for AFACE.org so I figured I should mention it, too. It says "AFACE works directly with various African organizations in assisting underprivileged children obtain basic school supplies & repair classrooms." I imagine this basket as holding chunks of challah to pass around the table when we have guests (like for Rosh Hashanah).

And finally, this awesome vintage shirt:


It looks better with a belt. I got it from Honeysuckle & Hearts (honeysuckleandhearts.esty.com). CankeyB also got an awesome white dress from them that will be the perfect canvas for some of her amazing jewelry she has collected along the way :)

It has been a really fun weekend! Although I have to say I'm pretty exhausted from spending so much time out in the sun. (haha)

Nice Friday

Today was a nice day. I thought I'd talk about it.

I went to the pottery studio down the street and officially set myself up for their work-study program, which means I get my own shelf, free clay, one free class each week, free glazes, and access to the studio during open studio hours in exchange for 3 hours of work a week. Not bad! I just have to pay for firing (I think it was 50c per cubic inch). I put my name on a shelf now, so it's mine! It's not even that small, but I'm happy having a small shelf because it will help me edit my work down.

Then I went on a job interview, and while I was walking around I saw this free concert so I went in.



The band is called Dumm Spiro Spero and they were playing in a community garden. It was a nice way to wind down after the interview, and also a good place to cool off (it's hot walking around in business-y clothes!).

I also took a lot of pictures of textures and patterns I saw while I was walking around today, which will come in a future post.

Shabbat shalom!

Job fair

I went to my first job fair ever on Monday. It was quite an experience and honestly I was a little overwhelmed. BUT. I think it went well. Afterward, I was still sort of shaken (it's hard putting yourself out there face to face for 2 hours!) but feeling good, so I did a journal entry, of course.


It started off as a repetition of circles, then blossomed out more and more into what feels to me like a sunflower.

So I looked up sunflowers to find out more about them. One thing that's really interesting I learned was that sunflowers are "heliotropic," which means they follow the sun throughout the day. Some plants grow in the direction of the sun, but a sunflower actually moves during the day depending on where the sun is in the sky. What an interesting characteristic!

The job fair I went to was for art teachers, not for art therapists specifically. But the jobs I applied to were for teaching art to kids who may not have many opportunities for them, especially in art making. So I wonder if this is me turning my little head towards the sun, because I am feeling kind of in the dark about art therapy and where I fit into the field. I can bring my art therapy training to after school art programs in my intention to my projects: to empower kids to recognize their strengths and the resources they have, to work on team building and cooperation skills, to build self-esteem through learning new skills and creating projects, and so on. Maybe this is a good direction for me? And if not, I believe I can be flexible enough to shift positions again if I need to.

Where I Live

To me, it doesn't quite make sense where I am right now. I get really disoriented. In my apartment, or in my neighborhood, I could basically be in any other city (except the availability of kosher food either puts me here or in Israel). I walk around, lalala, grocery shopping, learning where the stores are, as if I'm just in any new place. I've moved to two other major cities before this, so here I am, another major city.


Yesterday I went to midtown to meet up with JewishGuy for dinner and there was this beautiful sunset that made a perfect gradient of color in the sky. And that perfect gradient was reflected in a tall, smooth building in such a cool way, it almost didn't seem real. I wasn't the only one taking this picture.

And then after I took that picture I turned around and was like, what?



So that was a little disorienting for me.

New York is the city I have visited every year, usually many times a year, since I was a baby (and also in the womb). I come here, see stuff, and go home either by a long car ride or by plane. So it's disorienting to be somewhere and see the stuff I used to see on those visits, and then get on the subway and go home in a few minutes. Anywhere else in the city, any other neighborhood, it could be any other neighborhood in any other city in the country. But for some reason seeing the things I used to see as a tourist and a visitor on my walk to dinner after work ... it's just weird.

Fruit

A very short time after moving to NY someone said to me, "SOOOOooo! What's your favorite thing about living in NY so far?!!" A lot of people have high expectations for living in NY. So far, NY has been okay, but since we don't have a lot of friends here yet, we are kind of lonely and missing Chicago (at least I am!).

However, one of my favorite things about living in NY so far is the availability of delicious fresh fruit. There's the weekly farmer's market, little fruit stands, and some pretty awesome grocery stores with great fruit selections. Not all the grocery stores are awesome - in fact, I pretty much dislike grocery shopping here on the whole. It's even more stressful than grocery shopping in Israel, where I am at a language disadvantage, mostly because the grocery stores here are so small and people are pretty rude (rudeness would be okay if only we had more space to be rude in).

So, in honor of this, I am trying to eat more fruit. My summer favorites are nectarines and apricots, but maybe I will start to branch out to some more interesting fruit. I'm looking forward to the massive amounts and variety of apples this fall at the farmer's market. OHHHH the pies and crisps and cakes and all kinds of things I will make with them!

New Garden

As a housewarming present, JewishGuy's parents are assisting in paying for some things to plant and put out on our fabulous new patio. So on Tuesday I went out and bought some bushes and also some herbs (thyme, chamomile, lavender, basil, oregano, spearmint) and even one little pepper plant. Most of the plants were on sale because it's the end of the planting season, or maybe it's too late, I don't know.

Then I spent about two hours ripping up the flower bed, taking out all the weeds and dead brush, also the trash that seems to have accumulated there. ALSO, as an added special bonus of awesomeness, it seems the indoor/outdoor cats who live upstairs that like to terrorize Lilly have also been using our flower bed as a litter box. Luckily they're only pooing only in one spot, which I carefully avoided, and later I will purchase some anti-cat hormone spray so hopefully they will stop it. If not, our neighbors can look forward to a sweet passive-aggressive note I've already composed in my head ("Hello! I was wondering - how do you manage to keep your cats from pooping in your garden? Because I'm having trouble keeping your cats from pooping in my garden.")



(Upstairs is where the mean cats live, you can see there are lots of places for them to poo, plus there's a whole ground-level garden patio down those steps with more places for them to poo)

It was really fun getting dirty and actually putting my hands in the soil. There is this whole little world down there, including lots and lots of potato bugs (pill bugs?) that curl up when you touch them. They are like eentsy weentsy armadillos.



Can you see him scooting away from my camera towards the chamomile?

I didn't think about this but we have to get our soil tested before we can eat from the herbs I've already planted. D'oh. I haven't planted the basil or spearmint yet so if the soil comes back and we can't eat from it then we will still have the those (and the lavender, since we won't be eating that). Don't worry, I didn't lick my hands while gardening and washed them afterward.

Grocery store gardening

Shhh! Don't tell JewishGuy, he thinks this is so gross and annoying (I think). I like to buy herbs at the grocery store and set some aside to root and eventually plant. Cilantro was something I tried once but it just rotted in the jar. Well, I'm trying it again, this time because when I bought it it had its roots still intact.


It's gross because last year I rooted and planted beans, garlic, and onions, only to completely forget about them when they were moved to another room, and they ended up dying and rotting.

I've also put some spearmint in a jar to root. Apparently spearmint is one of those weeds you don't have to really take care of and will root at the slightest opportunity. I got the spearmint at the farmer's market and it might be a little dry, so I don't know if it will want to come back to life.

I almost bought some basil from the farmer's market to try to root but I know that doesn't work so well. I will have to buy a basil plant, especially since our back patio gets good afternoon sun.

Covering my hair?

I'm married and I'm Jewish and I don't cover my hair.

AHHHHH.

I mean to say: like all the other married women in my family, and most of the married women I know, I don't cover my hair. I don't want to cover my hair on a regular basis. I like my hair out and about.

However, I am going to shuls nearby that are more observant than me and I have been wondering if I should cover my hair when I'm at shul. When I would go to the Modern Orthodox shul in my neighborhood in Chicago, I would cover my hair because I wanted people to know I was married (it's kind of a single's scene sometimes) as well as out of respect of the customs of the shul. I know a few people who cover their hair only at shul, even at a Conservative shul. It feels weird to potentially wear a hat only at shul, but then again most men I know only weird their kippah at shul, too.

There's been a lot of buzz on the internet lately about women covering their hair, which has made me really think about it. If I go to one of these shuls and don't cover my hair, I am making a very strong statement. I also run the risk of people being unwilling to eat in my house (because for some reason not covering your hair - though it's not a law - will make people question your kashrut).

This is also compounded with the fact that I generally don't like the way I look in hats, and I have short hair which makes it challenging to use a scarf.

Redefining Rebbetzin posted today a link to a site (The Style Underground) where a woman not only makes scarves but also has videos on how to use them in interesting ways. Most of the techniques require having a ponytail to serve as a base for the wrap, but I could probably pull off this one:

I'm new to the community so nobody would know whether or not I always cover my hair (at shul or all the time). I'm definitely not going to cover my hair all the time, that would not be my style - although it kind of was my style freshman year of college. But maybe I will try out covering it at shul, or maybe just at some shuls, .... I DON'T KNOW. This is too much for me.

Maybe if I find a really cute scarf before Shabbat it will help me make up my mind.

Pizza, I'm Home

One great thing about our neighborhood is there is a pizza place around the corner that actually has good pizza. Maybe I shouldn't say "actually" in New York. But I can't even remember ever being able to go and get pizza that tasted really good - whenever I wanted. Sure, in Houston there was this place that had good pizza, but it was a trip. Not a long trip, but still a trip, we had to decide to go there and then get in the car and go. In Chicago, there were a couple of places nearby that had acceptable pizza, but it was just acceptable. (When making a list of pros and cons of moving to Chicago, the lack of good pizza was definitely on that list!)

Sure, the place around the corner isn't gourmet. I'm not looking for gourmet. I'm looking for something that's crispy on the bottom and smothered in orange grease all over the top. Something you can fold and eat with one hand. Ahhhh yes.


[NOTE: This post was written on Friday and scheduled to post on Saturday because I am spending Shabbat in Queens and won't know what time I'll get home. I didn't post on Shabbat, don't worry...]