New York - Amber and Fernando

I've had some really fantastic advice over the last few weeks about our trip to New York, (not least the inimitable Amber's .... Any apartment anywhere will be fucking amazing because you are in new York fucking city and it is the coolest city in the world. You've gotta love Amber.)

But I really had to share this email that Ellie, aka Miss Domm sent me, because I love love love it. It is her friend Fernando's top list of Things To Do In New York and I thought you might love it too....

Best Bowl of Eel
St Mark's is one of my favorite streets in Manhattan. It's where midtown starts to turn into downtown, midway between NYU and Tompkins Square Park. There's all kinds of quirky shops there: karaoke bars, head shops, comic book stores. The best reason to go is Kenka, which is a Japanese restaurant that serves great traditional cuisine (no sushi, though) and the cheapest pitcher of beer in town. Kenka's sign isn't in English, though, so to find the restaurant you have to look for the statue of the bear/raccoon god with the red eyes next to the candy floss machine. I'm serious. Once you're drunk and full of boiled eel, take your candy floss and go down to the West end of the street to have some shots at The Continental, the best bar in the neighborhood. They will probably be projecting a Dennis Hopper movie onto the back wall.

Best Middle Eastern Food
For me this is a tie between two places: Yaffa Cafe and Moustache's. Yaffa is on St Mark's near Kenka and has a lot of seating including an outdoor patio (but if they're going in the winter that doesn't help much). Moustache's is on the West side in the Village and has the best pita bread on the planet. Moustache's is really tiny so if you want a seat on a weekend night it pays to get there early.

Best Famous Museum in a City Full of Famous Museums
There's tons of famous museums in New York but you honestly can't do justice to all of them - if you can only pick one I recommend the Met. They just renovated their Greek & Roman sculpture galleries and their Islamic art wing was being renovated when I left - I think it might be done now. You can combine it easily with a walk through Central Park and a visit to other neighboring museums like The Guggenheim.

Best Not-Famous Museum in a City Full of Famous Museums
PS1 in Long Island City is a contemporary art museum that is housed in the former Queens Public School 1. It's a great space and the exhibits change regularly - it's always really challenging art and a great time.

Best Not-Famous Museum in a City Full of Famous Museums (if you don't like contemporary art)
The Neue Gallerie (on the Upper East Side over by the Gug) is run by The Ronald Lauder Foundation. It is full of Klimts. Like dozens and dozens. If you like Klimt, you have to go there. It's also quite small and you can do the whole gallery in an hour or two.

Best Sushi (in the world)
Ginger on 1st Ave and 10th Street is the best sushi place on the planet Earth and everyone should go there once. There is no more inventive sushi menu anywhere. I don't often get homesick for New York but when I do it's Ginger that I'm thinking about usually.

Best Neighborhood to Avoid
The Meatpacking District. It's full of far too many pretentious-likes and you'll pay $20 for a warm glass of Schlitz. It my humble opinion, this is not worth your time.

Best Bar
The Back Room on the Lower East Side has no sign outside, you just need to walk on the West side of Norfolk Street until you see a huge black guy standing by himself outside of an abandoned-looking building. That's the bouncer - ask him if you can go into The Back Room. The Back Room is set up like a speakeasy and they serve cocktails in teacups. It is totally great. Dress nice.

Best Plants or What-have-you
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is really lovely and if you go out during the day you can spend the evening going to cool Brooklyn bars like Matchless and Pete's Candy Store and hobnob with the hipsters.

Best Reason to go to Staten Island
This is a trick. There is no reason to go to Staten Island.



. image by Jen_Mo

Girl dislikes Tuesdays

I don't really like Tuesdays. I do kind of like Mondays though, there's only so much weekend I can take before I start feeling guilty about all that work I'm not doing. But by Tuesdays I'm bored of working again and ready for it to be the weekend. But the great misery of a Tuesday is that the weekend is So Far Away.

So I put on my happy playlist and ever since watching Celia and Joe's honeymoon slideshow (over and over and over again) this song has been at the top of my happy list... It kind of works.

Updates on the Christmas/cookies/cows situation:

Cows: I'm so relieved that y'all moo at cows too. Some of you asked who these weirdos who don't moo at cows are and let's just say peoplewithnogoddamnimagination and leave it at that.

Bertha: you most certainly can have a picture, once she's a little less nekkid. A situation that is getting no closer to being remedied, despite your plentiful suggestions. For those who pointed out that garlands and things that wrap are the way to go I would like to make it clear that Bertha is Very Fat and any garland I made would have to be 9 meters long just to go ffrom top to bottom in a fairly mean little spiral. NINE METERS people. You obviouly missed the part in my request (or maybe I missed it) where I point out how bloody lazy I am and request that your suggestions require next to no time or effort. To which I tried making some origami decorations last night. Yeah, origami's an asshole. Celia warned me and she says she would never lie to me but it's just folding paper right? Any idiot who can make a paper frog can make a paper tree decoration, right? And I can do it while watching One Tree Hill, right? Wrong.

Origami = asshole. And so Bertha remains unclothed.



Cookies: well there's little to say here 'xcept they're all gone. Maybe I'll share some recipes and photos with you later though.





* points if you can tell me which lovely lady blogger I nicked the title from. Without clicking the link darlings, without.

the littlest update...

Thank you so much everyone who's bought a box set from my little shop or who has posted about said box sets on their blogs, I loves you.



I just wanted to let you know that they are almost all gone. There are two Palace of Illusions, two Sepias and one Island Green left. After that no more until the new year, when I hope to get some brand new sets of images printed up as well as the ones that have been for sale over the last few weeks.

cookies, christmas, cows

Hello poor neglected blog.

I think that two posts in one week might be a new low for me. Yay for achievements.

I'm completely bewildered by it being eleven days until Christmas. ELEVEN DAYS PEOPLE. How did that happen? Despite buying our very first Christmas tree yesterday (and watching Elf, which we both found more than a little disturbing. Anyone else?) I don't feel that festive. I think I need to get down to making some decorations for our poor, slightly naked tree. She is sitting in our living room atop a table (rabbits + trees = frenzied trips to bunny A&E. And a nibbled tree) covered in lights but very little else. Which looks great in the dark when the lights are on, but during the day? We've pretty much just got a tree in our living room. A huge tree. Enormous. Well, not that tall actually, about five and a half feet, seven once you take the table into account. But I kid you not, that tree is at least five feet across. It's almost completely spherical.

I have paper and fabric and glue (idontlikeglue) but no ideas. HELP ME. What can I make?

(I really just want to go and buy these but I feel bad enough after spending So Much Money on the tree and we'd need roughly 100 of them to make Big Bertha (that's what she's called, our tree) look like anything other than someone who picked out a very nice pair of earrings in the morning but forgot to put any clothes on)


And for no other reason than because I like it, a picture of a cow.



Actually, now that I remember. I was at a cookie exchange on Saturday (Best Idea Ever) and the subject of cows came up. In particular the subject of mooing at cows. Now apparently not everyone does this. Neither, apparently, do very many people bark at dogs, baa at sheep or quack at ducks. Who knew?


And with that I will wish you a happy Monday.


. Belted Galloway by Grass Doe

yellow shoes...

"Later, I saw these beautiful, yellow maryjanes and decided to treat myself. The sales girl looked at me like I was crazy as I stood there in front of the mirror, giantly pregnant and teetering in 3 1/2 in heels. “They’ll be fun to wear after baby comes?” she said with a smile. “After? They’ll be fun to wear now.” I said back.

I gave up sushi, raw cookie dough, and red wine when I got pregnant - but I’m not giving up my pretty shoes, thankyouverymuch."

Words and photo from Stay Forever Sunday

I have a confession to make. I tend to stop reading your blogs when you get pregnant

There are some exceptions of course and Stay Forever Sunday is one of them. I love a pregnant blogger that retains the wit, style and intelligence they possessed before pregnancy and who doesn't feel the need to update me on their stomach growth weekly (with pictures!), enlighten me as to what foods are making them vomit today and ohsweetmotherofgod show me every last ikea purchase for their spare room turned nursery. Unless it's a room I'm going to want to live in baby or not, I'm going to struggle to care. Sorry.

I don't really know what my point is here. I think it's just that I want those shoes. In which case I should have probably just said that rather than invoking the wrath of The Baby Blogger. What can I say. I'm feeling a little esb today.

New York - art

I know a lot of you already suggested various galleries in my Tourist Stuff post (which leads me to believe that I'm not making my footnotes big enough, but whatever) but as darling P said


I don't count museums as tourist attractions because art is for everyone



(which is exactly why they get a separate post). So, tell me do. What are your favourite galleries/ art places in New York?

Big ones with Rembrandts and small ones with weird shit. Fancy ones with entrance fees and dingy ones down side streets. Traditional ones with paintings and and not so traditional ones with more weird shit. I will visit any of them. Alone it must be said. Boy does not like lingering and I do not like feeling rushed.



. richter / turner by Jen Bandini (aka escapetonewyork)

(Again. I tried looking for other New York pictures, honestly. But hers are the best.)