THE SUN IS COMING

It was 10°F when I landed in New York. That was almost two weeks ago; it was cold then and it is cold now and I have had just about enough, thank you but no thank you. More than the temperature though, what I am missing most right now is color. All these soft, watery winter sunsets have lost their charm. Entire meals have become based around ghostly white vegetables produced from the bowels of my refrigerator: turnips, kholrabi, daikon, shriveled parsnips and pithy knobs of celeriac.

Give me a fresh Rainier cherry and a bundle of glossy, fragrant tarragon and summer squash filled up with sweet yellow sunshine. Give me a fat chicken and a red pot and a bottle of cold white wine. 

P.S. I've done an interview with Zoé, and it's on her wonderful blog Wild at Heart.

(All photos taken on a Canon AE-1 Program using Kodak Porta 400 speed film, June 2012, upstate New York)

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...And just like that, I'm back in the gritty city.

(Photos by Alex, taken almost two months ago today on my birthday, when I had pink tips and drank fancy cocktails in three different fancy bars. You guys, I've got an awful lot of catching up to do!)

BE MINE

Today, my two better halves are far, far away (and without both my halves, where does that leave me??) Alex said "hajimemashite!" to Tokyo yesterday morning, and as I type this I imagine Dagmar is snug in her little cabin with a big ginger cat named Kingston and Berserker the attack rabbit curled up at her feet.

Dag's visits to New York are few and far between, and usually end in her vowing never ever to return. Which I can respect. But this past fall we spent a giddy afternoon at the Met, wandering sleepy eyed and soft-footed from room to room until, fifteen minutes before closing, we burst back outside into reality and the rose-gold rays of late October sunshine. Last year I spent Valentine's Day getting tipsy on Champagne and then grinning my way sheepishly through a guided tour of Picasso's sculpture at the MoMa. This year I'd be happy to settle for a waterglass of Gato Negro with my dude, my lady, and me.

CRYSTALINE ENTITY

Home in the islands for a while, hunkered down, ploughing my way through Jane Eyre, wooing shy felines and baking big chocolate cakes. Hope your 2012 thus far has been as magical, and then some, as this torso-sized amethyst I saw on the top of Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina in 2011. Strange, strange magics indeed!

IS THAT ALL THE FALL THERE IS?

It snowed here in NYC today. And not just a bit of fluff or the occasional frozen droplet floating by. Hefty, hearty, driving flakes. Big ass flakes. Flakes to write home about, or at least all over your facebook wall. And while the forecast is somewhat more optimistic, I fear today may mark the end of that sweet, fleeting season between tank tops and Gore-Tex. Ah fall, I hardly knew ye!

Two of the (many!) highlights of the season: last minute, impromptu visits to the Met. Always at or near 3pm on a weekday, grab a friend, rush to the train, guiltily slide whatever cash you may have in pocket towards the demure looking young lady in gold rimmed glasses behind the entrance desk, and proceed to the roof. Point out the Plaza Hotel in the distance and rest your elbows on the dense shrubbery. Spend what time you have left wandering through the 2nd Floor galleries and come face to face with what may be your favorite painting of all time. Good Goya.

Also: flowers! And how. I had the extreme pleasure of working with a certain Ms. Amy Merrick on two weddings in the last few weeks. One a small Manhattan affair, and the other an over night, upstate, semi-wilderness adventure. Both involved early mornings, cold fingers, heavy lifting and long hours. As well as an immense sense of satisfaction, several different types of cats, enormous cornbread muffins, slumber parties in converted sawmills, takeout Chinese and FUN. Lotta that. I may be a fool, but I'm hungry for more.

THE LONGEST WEEK

The past week has been equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. Being booked to work all day every day during Fashion Week (on a non-fashion week related project) meant long days followed by long (for me, anyways!) nights and a weekend spent meeting many new yet familiar faces for the first time.

I also attended my very first proper fashion show, having only worked presentations before, and had a taste of that particular magic that exists only for a few minutes, when the lights come up and the music swells and the girls come marching one by one (hurrah, hurrah.) A Détacher S/S 2012 was a thing of beauty, and I can't thank Caitlin enough for inviting me!

(Photos borrowed from Domahoka and Zimbio)

CAMPING IN THE ISLANDS

The first few days I was in Washington, we went on a camping trip up into the Gulf Islands in B.C. Our boat is an Albin, originally meant for nosing into fjords with families of lithe, blonde Swedes at the helm (it also came with the original 1970's-era manual), but she does a fair job tackling the Salish Sea as well.

The price of an incredible sunset from our campsite that evening was a steady downpour starting at about 3am, but the next morning the clouds slowly broke as we ate our fried potatoes. That day I finally set foot on Saturna Island, a hulk of land that I had spent 26 years gazing at from North Bay, off in the Canadian distance. We slept aboard the Tern that night, Dag and I bedded down in the aft cabin with our National Geographics. When I crept out a few hours later for a midnight bathroom break there were shimmering phosphorescence in the cold salt water all around us.

DOWN BY THE SEA

These photos by Todd Selby from Gidon Bing's Auckland studio have me jonesing something fierce for a stroll by the sea. Every time I'm home in the islands, I make a point of taking a nice, long, solitary walk along the shore, stooping to pick up the odd piece of beach glass or puzzling detritus from the deeps. The beaches at home are as beautiful in winter hail and gentle rain as they are at sunset in the summertime: the salty smells, the stacks of a cargo ship far across the channel towards Canada, the cries of the gulls or the sudden screech of a Great Blue Heron, interrupted.

I always return from these walks with a shell or two rattling in my pockets, but I never seem to know just what to do with them when I get home. Eventually they are lost in the yard, underfoot, in some dusty corner, or perhaps sent to a watery grave in the washing machine. Seeing these drawers upon drawers of carefully sorted specimens gives me all sorts of dangerous ideas. As if I needed something new to hoard!

(All photos by Todd Selby found on theselby.com, please give credit if you repost)

INTO THE ALGARVE SUN

Right after my last post, I came across this spread over on Youthquakers. Taken by Norman Parkinson for UK Vogue January 1973, these photos pretty much encapsulate everything I'm aching for at the moment. While they were shot in Algarve, Portugal, which is actually bordered on two sides by the Atlantic Ocean, the colors, the sun, the sand--they all feed into my current (and ok, long-standing) obsession with visiting the Mediterranean.

The closest I've gotten was during a visit to the Cinque Terre too many years ago now (which, technically, is on the Ligurian Sea anyways! Bah!) More recently, this obsession has been fueled a) by Summer Lovers, aka the most atrocious movie you absolutely HAVE to see and b) by discovering Filicudi Island thanks to the newest issue of Apartamento. Algarve, Filicudi, Vernazza...it doesn't matter so much, as long as I can bring along my cutoffs.

PRETTY IN PINK

I received several belated Christmas presents on my visit home back in January, but easily the sweetest was this beautiful little Fifi Lapin pin that my Mom surprised me with. The best part was opening up the envelope and finding a family snapshot that explained just why she had to choose that particular bunny in her little paper crown...

Alex has been gone on tour for over a week now, but fortunately we got to spend Valentine's Day together. Among the far too many things he treated me to that day was this bunch of deep pink and white tulips. There's something so wonderfully languorous and graceful about the way tulips droop and then arch themselves towards the light. They make even the messiest of kitchen table tops look fit to print.