Our neighbor told us about a store in Lincoln Park that is going out of business and said she thought we’d like to check out. So we took a drive there last week and we drove by a place I had seen from the bus a while ago and really wanted to check out. This week when we went to the store again (they are marking things down more each week and actually giving things away so we’re going to keep stopping by) we walked up to check it out. The Egyptian inspired building I had glimpsed from the bus turned out to be The Reebie Storage Warehouse which was built in the early 1920’s. I couldn’t get a photo of the whole building so here are two from a website called Public Art in Chicago which has a lot of information about the building that was inspired by a trip to Egypt and another Egyptian Revival Storage Building in California.
The storage company is still in business but they don’t use the front of the building anymore. In this photo the doors are closed and there is a sign directing people to the back but the front is now home to the New Elephant Resale Shop of Chicago so we got to go inside and see the interior Egyptian details as well. Unfortunately although the store had a sign that stated facemasks were required and the Ramses II statues in the front were wearing them the store’s customers were not so we didn’t spend much time looking at the resale goods.
In an earlier post I wrote about taking a look at my embroidery books before I began my first Time of Corona cross stitch embroidery project. I remembered that one of my older books had directions for a felt ball and I decided to make one for each of my twin grandnieces. I thought the book had a photograph of a ball but I must have been remembering an actual ball I’d seen somewhere (perhaps at my Northampton nephew’s) because the book only had some limited directions.
The directions didn’t include a pattern or even a size suggestion for the pentagons so I took a guess and downloaded what was labeled a 3 inch pentagon from a website. I also did some searching and read some posts and watched a video on assembling the shapes to make a ball. The book shows circular embroidery designs which proved to be pretty difficult for me. The pentagons became more like individual samplers of different stitches from the books and designs inspired by embroidery pieces I’ve seen on Instagram.
When I mentioned my embroidery books earlier (Crafting in the Time of Corona III) I wrote about the book “Hoopla” and my introduction to Mr. X Stitch and how I got an idea for my first Nero Wolfe cover cross stitch from the cover of his magazine. I also wrote to him about it and he printed my letter in his next issue and sent me an electronic copy.
I don’t think anyone would want to print a picture of my felt balls and rudimentary embroidery in a magazine (I think I should stick with counted cross stitch in the future) but I had fun trying things out and I think my tiny grandnieces will find them entertaining (as my friend Barbara would say).
I made another set of props for the felted playmat I gave my Chicago grandnephew for his birthday. I drew rocks on the dark grey felt and then stiffened it with watered down white glue to make the castle. Some gold trim I had was perfect for the crowns of the King and Queen and for embellishing their robes.
Meanwhile in another part of the land a dragon and some knights can be found. I needlefelted the dragon and didn’t really know how he would turn out but now that he’s finished he reminds of the dragon in the Tomie de Paola book “The Knight and the Dragon.”
Of course now I am looking at that feather coming out of the knight’s helmet and wondering if my peg knights need feathers…
When I purchased a Knitting Nancy in the Wisconsin Dells several years ago I must admit I was attracted to its looks not to its crafting potential. And when I bought the mushroom spool knitter in Brattleboro a little later it was with my collector’s eye, “I have one of these so I should get this one too.” They never did become a collection although thanks to Pinterest, I have seen some amazing ones.
I took mine off the shelf recently thinking the time of Corona was a good time to learn how to use them with my oldest granddaughter. Unfortunately I didn’t figure it out fast enough so she lost interest in learning but I went on to knit a long red “horse rein” to use as a Christmas tree garland.
When I told my Alabama niece that I was doing some spool knitting and hoped to do some more with my granddaughter she asked if she could send me some things she had come across during her Corona Cleaning.
One of the most interesting things about spool knitters are the many names they are known by. My niece mentioned that the large pink corker was perfect for making doll hats so when it arrived I tried making one. It took me a couple of tries and it turned out way too long but I am pretty proud of it since it actually looks like a knitted hat and knitting is a skill I never mastered.
My granddaughter found a doll it would fit and while she still wasn’t interested in learning how to do spool knitting or corking, she was very interested in learning how to make pom poms so I taught her how to make those instead. And it looks like I have a collection of wooden spool knitters now since “three of anything is collection”!
The Lakeview Post Office is the closest post office to us which was a surprise when we first moved here as it is not that close. There are two other surprises inside. The first is that while the name on the outside of the building is the Lakeview Post Office it is the now called the Steve Goodman Post Office.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post office that was named after a person before and the fact that this one is named after a pretty obscure singer/songwriter was surprising. The most well known song Steve Goodman wrote is “The City of New Orleans” which was a hit for Arlo Guthrie. But the song I most associated him with even before I moved to Chicago is “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” because the radio host of the show we listened to every Sunday morning in Northampton always played it on the Sunday closest to opening day of the baseball season. It turns out Steve Goodman also wrote “Go Cubs Go” the official Chicago Cubs victory song. And Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs, is also in Lakeview so it makes sense in a way but I still wondered how the post office got his name. It turns out that on August 3. 2010 President Obama signed the bill honoring Steve Goodman, introduced by Illinois Representative Mike Quigley, into law. As you walk into the post office you can stop in front of a display case with Steve Goodman memorabilia.
Then you turn a corner and get another surprise.
This wonderful WPA mural, “Chicago: Epoch of a Great City” by Harry Sternberg was completed in 1937.
It’s hard to get a picture of the whole mural which is a timeline of the building of Chicago with Fort Dearborn, the Great Fire, and a 1937 skyline in the middle. The right side depicts Chicago’s agricultural side and the left its industrial side.
There are framed panels with information about the Federal Art Project and the Works Progress Administration, the mural, and the artist on the opposite wall. Between this information and the information about Steve Goodman, you could spend hours in this post office although the layout would make that difficult especially now.
As I was writing this I remembered that I did actually used to spend a lot of time reading in the Nyack post office when I was growing up but reading of quite a different nature. At that time I was fascinated by the FBI’s Most Wanted posters and was never ready to leave – the same feeling I have now whenever I go to the Steve Goodman Post Office.
There is no more room for display so my cross stitch pulp series is now complete. I actually wasn’t intending to make a series but after I finished the first one I found another cover on the internet and after I finished that one I found yet another. This last one for “The Silent Speaker” features the monkey wrench the victim was killed with.
Since I know the colors aren’t always accurate on the internet images, I figured I could adjust them. I thought the orange blood a little weird so I did the blood in the same red as I had on the knife of the previous cover and I matched the greens to the body on that cover as well. The body on the tag had to be simplified. And I didn’t like how the monkey wrench on the actual cover looked like it had an eye so I eliminated that detail. I alternated the two black one green and two green one black threads for the background on the right and while it doesn’t quite recreate that area of the cover I think it has somewhat of the same effect and complements the purple of the “Three at Wolfe’s Door” cover.
We’ve been hooked on the HGTV show House Hunters ever since we started looking for our new condo. The house hunters often act like a house is either “move in ready” (perfect) or a “total gut job”. I think there are another two categories: “I wouldn’t have chosen it but I can live with it” or “I can live with it for awhile.” The light fixtures in our new condo belonged to the second category. There was mostly long white track lighting which wouldn’t have been too bad despite some odd placement except for the yellow discoloration. At some point after we moved in the track in the entrance hall broke and that along with a desire to hang the handmade glass globe light that was my mother’s led us to a decision to call an electrician recently and replace almost all the light fixtures in the condo.
In normal times we would have gone from store to store to find the best fixtures but in these times the internet seemed like the way to go. My husband did most of the searching and called me in for consultation. We ended up with a great selection.
There is one light we love in our condo. The light in our bedroom is in a ceiling fan. We had never had a ceiling fan before and now we are ceiling fan converts so we wanted one in the living room as well. There was a capped outlet in the open part of the room and the electrician was able to get it working again so we ordered a fan as well. I think it helps to fill the space in this oddly shaped room and it really helps to move the air conditioning to the couch area.
At first I really took the Stay at Home order to heart and thought that not only should I stay at home but that I also had a responsibility to help everyone else stay at home too which meant that I should only shop for essentials. I also thought that we should leave the store as quickly as possible so that meant that even though I went to the drug store to pick up a prescription I should not visit other aisles which meant no browsing for Easter decorations and no chocolate Easter bunnies.
Food shopping was challenging since we hadn’t gone on weekly shopping trips for years and pretty much shopped daily for whatever we needed. But our younger daughter said we weren’t doing social distancing correctly so my husband has been really trying to consolidate his food shopping trips.
While others ramped up their online and pick up purchases to help the economy, I embraced a make do philosophy. When I started crafting I looked to see what I could make from the materials I already had. And I framed my first embroidery piece in a frame I already had. But then I didn’t have the right frame for my second piece and I needed mats for the next two pieces so I decided I could order some items online. Michael’s had opened for in person shopping by the time I started my first pulp cover cross stitch and I didn’t have all the thread colors I wanted for that so I decided shopping there was okay.
Vacation posed another shopping challenge. I already wrote about how I went to the Dollar Store to buy suitcase presents but what about actual vacation shopping. Popping in and out of little stores is always a highlight of vacations but this year while the stores were open they are very small and the streets were crowded, so we didn’t shop and I didn’t get anything new for my collections!
I will have something to share soon though because we did just make a series of online purchases.
Vacation was always going to be tricky this year. In 2017 right before we moved to Chicago our younger daughter and her family joined us in Rockport for our last East Coast vacation for awhile and at that time she declared that we would return in 2020 for a family reunion vacation. Unfortunately at the end of that vacation we found out that our older daughter had colon cancer and shortly after that she told us that it had metastasized.
We all vacationed together in Saugatuck, Michigan for the next two years. At the beginning of this year we knew there were no more treatment options so when it was time to plan a family vacation we knew we couldn’t plan to go to Massachusetts and I was even reluctant to reserve a cottage in Michigan. But our younger daughter went ahead and reserved the cottage we had last year saying, “Whoever can come will come for however long they can come.”
And then the coronavirus hit. After some considering she decided to go ahead and pay the final installment. “Even if all I get to do is sit in another house that will be a change,” she said. A smaller family now the six of us headed for Saugatuck last Monday knowing that Oval beach was open but not knowing what else to expect. I did think it might be less crowded. In fact, it was more crowded since apparently people stuck closer to home and rental houses were at a premium. We limited our interactions sticking to early morning masked visits to the playground, two rides on the chain ferry, a daily trip to the beach, and an ice cream cone most days. We didn’t go out to eat except for a spontaneous lunch at The Grilled Cheese Shack a new outdoor venue we stumbled upon.
It felt pretty safe to vacation in Saugatuck. I checked the NYT coronavirus map each day and Michigan was the same color as Illinois (unfortunately while we were there the Illinois numbers went up and Illinois got darker). It was easy to stay 6 feet from others at the beach and in the water and most people wore masks in town.
Last year I wondered if my older granddaughter was outgrowing the suitcase present tradition (see previous post). That was certainly not the case as she asked me even before we left if there would be presents in my suitcase this year. I was glad I had found enough presents on my only trip to Michael’s and a supplementary trip to the Dollar store. Since there were no visits to the small amusement park or the children’s museum or play space, the suitcase presents became one of the highlights of the vacation.
Last year my daughters and I went to an outdoor yoga class in an orchard but this year my younger daughter and I did Yoga with Adrienne each day. “If anyone had suggested doing iPad yoga on vacation last year I would have thought they were crazy!”, my daughter said.
The Lakefront is finally opened for walking, running, and bike riding only dubbed “Keep it Moving” by the city. My daughter says she imagines someone patting people on the butt admonishing them to, “Keep it moving” if they stop for a moment to tie their shoe or take a sip of water. This is not the case at all as people flagrantly flaunt the mandate by picknicking and even swimming. On my recent walk I briefly stopped moving for a moment to appreciate and snap a picture of the Keith Haring sculpture “Self Portrait” that was recently installed and that will be the center of an AIDS memorial garden someday.
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 