Craftiness: Onions and Wool!

Hoo-ie, it is so nice to have my own place, my own kitchen!

I haven't completely immersed myself into French provincial cooking or German sausage making, but I've enjoyed cooking some excellent fall food, through which the humble onion and its cousins shine. When I've been cooking the past couple of weeks since moving to 811 I've noticed:

• I try to use up the ingredients I have on hand (this week: potatoes!) 
• I don't really like to grocery shop, so when I do it's probably for a specific meal, and that's when I'm most likely to buy meat. otherwise I'm cooking with vegetables and grains (which sounds healthy, but I wonder...)
• I'd much rather eat vegetables than fruit!
• Well, I'd much rather eat cheese before vegetables, but we all can't be democratic with our foods
• I really enjoy having an entire refrigerator to myself
• My favorite things to cook for myself are generally simple, heck even old school, and I'm excited to whip out the Women's Club of Alcatraz Cookbook I picked up while visiting there last year and crack open the Cooking with Campbell's Soup cookbook I picked up for free at the Ames Library sale 5 years ago.

Ah, the classic leek & potato soup recipe I picked up while living in England that's only 6 ingredients: vegetable stock, water,  milke, garlic, leeks, and potatoes. Bam! 

When the weather gets cooler, I have a visceral need to wave my true Minnesotan colors and make some hot dish. Yes, that's Cream of Mushroom Soup and Chicken with Rice soup. No shame over here, people, no shame!

 Ah, and this morning I made the best potato-shallot frittata to date!

Look at this beauty! I ate it all. 

So when I was cooking all this I realized I need to make a rug in front of the colorless sink.  And I had an epiphany: I started knitting a bunch of squares years ago with the intent to felt and sew them into a rug and had rediscovered the abandoned project while unpacking. Those, people, would be perfect for 811! So I spent last evening felting and blocking the squares, which I'll have you know, is akin to hand-washing one's well-stained clothing in Tanzania. It's intense!

This week I'll hopefully find time to sew the lil' guys together and a no-skid mat on the back and have a rug for my kitchen sink in no time!

Craftiness: Flor

People,

The living room is starting to take shape, get colorful! 50 pounds of Flor carpeting arrived yesterday.

Modular carpet delivered right to my concierge desk!

I have to admit I was a little  very disappointed when I took the green squares out of the box for they were clearly gray. (There in the upper right. Saddness.) Ah, but I, as a true Minnesotan, thought "that's too bad, but I'll get used to it," and emotionally moved on.

Organized and ready for assembly

But, hooray! It turns out those green squares are just like your favorite color-shifting chameleons and once we started laying them down, man, I was feeling good, they were so green!

Maiden barefoot voyage on a mossy green square

And here we are a few days earlier without the Flor installed. I mean, the place is already great--it just needed some color, eh?

A look before the Flor

 And, so, pending any size adjustments or square rearrangements, here's the final Flor design in my apartment (bonus points if you can ascertain what website my computer is displaying):

Bright and early at 811!

Don't worry, they're not glued down yet (with the flash off)

 And so, just as the sun feels like an old, familiar friend, so too is 811 starting to feel like a home. Bitchin'.

Exploration: Internet Cat Video Film Festival

Oh, Friends,

What a soul-warming evening! I rode my trusty steel steed a couple miles on my first downtown dwelling bicycle commute to my friend's house for a little pizza and film action.

The bike ride was great: I kept finding wrong turns--entrances onto 394--and ended up riding through the bowels of downtown, but it was a zippy, safe ride, perfect for downtown dwelling.

The trusty Surly Cylclocross with a kitschy Serfas bike seat. I do what I can to keep things interesting.

The pizza and company were great, but what iced the evening was the Internet Cat Video Film Festival at the Walker Art Center. Us and about two thousand fellow video enjoyers sat on the lawn and enjoyed about 70 videos last night together. It was fun for a few reasons:

• We were outside!
• We laughed!
• There was a full moon!
• The video screen was tiny (we were waaaay up on the hill), which really gave a sense that we're still watching these on a teenie laptop; this time, a public laptop.
• And this: 

•  And this!

• And finally this:

 

Schematics!

People,

Ideas are percolating inside my head!

If dreams become a reality (fun fact: this magical transformation, dreams --> reality, is one of my favorite pastimes), things are going to get a little crafty in my teenie abode. I have a slight aversion to my windows being 4' off the floor in my new place. After a couple mildly pained anxiety events about my ill-positioned panes, I started resigning myself to this fact and started to accept their vertical challenge.

However, my dreams were stirred tonight into drawings and possibilities (the interim stage before action and reality; not quite to the action stage yet...naturally), as a good friend of mine helped me realize  that my remedy to this affliction isn't necessarily merely time to accept it, but perhaps a little bit of action and a circular saw.

So, with a little hubris, lumber, graph paper, and the wits of my friend, I may just build the one and only indoor deck at 811. It's such a good feeling knowing I have creative, can-do friends that see a need and meet the need with their time and talent. Sometimes it takes someone else's encouragement and enthusiasm to spur you on to greater things.

Raise the roof--er, floor-- for friends!



P.S. my phone's auto correct for "mpls" is "mold." Fascinating. 

Musings on 394

I was rolling back home on 394 from a friend's birthday party tonight and rolled up to lights of Target Field. I realized while zooming under garages A, B, and C, that Target Field is my backyard (a mere 4 blocks away, people!)! My house is peoples' out on the town. I go into town to go in for the night; others get out of town to go in for the night. I believe what we have here is a feral paradigm shift caught in the wild. Out is in, in is out. Downtown is home.

I have to explore this understanding and make downtown my own.

I have to get used to this cool, new reality.

I gotta get my bicycle out!

(speaking of, I hear One on One has excellent espresso. You should join me sometime!)

And we're in

But not quite living there yet. Turns out the building had a little permit issue so I'm living out of a suitcase until they give us the all clear to start sleeping there and getting used to our new digs.

First adventure: tackle the noisiness of warehouse living:

My couch is coming tomorrow (which will hopefully absorb a lot of the noise of being in a voluminous warehouse abode) and early next week, my Flor tiles for my living room rug will be arriving! That's right, it's 8' x 7' and designed with tiles on sale by yours truly. This 20-squared rug surely will abate most echos and yodels. (If this doesn't work, I'll climb up to the HVAC unit myself and shove blankets inside to quell the clattering.)

Straight off of Flor's room designing website, my 8' x 7' on a 17' x 11' cement-colored background! 

Hot tip: if you like assembling things yourself, like they style that modular design offers, embrace loud colors, and don't mind the element of surprise of ordering colored carpet squares online, then order modular carpet! I paid about half of what a decent standard rug of a tad smaller size would have cost me. And that's a big deal when I'm trying to keep my decorating costs under $2,000 (sans couch).

There you have it--almost. moved. in!

And I Ask: "why not?"

Why not get a garish, awkwardly faux-patinaed, blue coffee table? Why not? It was, after all, only $20.00 on Craigslist. And so, I feel like I've hit the second-hand furniture jackpot. I can leave it as is, do an inspirational refinish on it, or disassemble it for firewood or unique parrot perches: either way, well worth the investment. 

The photo from Craigslist that made me go get it

A little staging at my parents' house before it heads to 811!