A New Dress for Seattle

I have been losing a lot of weight lately, and it seems only few of my entire collection of dresses are fitting properly. Thus, the time has come to make something new.

During my visit to the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum with Vicki a few weeks back, I purchased a few spools of gorgeous ribbon for sewing. One was a "Renaissance" pattern, which you will see later, and the other a ribbon called "Mating". It is a beautiful seafoam and silver white with an image of a young woman and chap in costume approaching each other from different sides of a tree, and this image is partnered with a simple design of a three layer wedding cake. It is an incredibly beautiful pattern that I decided to pair with a white cotton weave with raw linen stripes.

Summer is waning, I know, but I wanted to have this dress for my trip to Seattle and California. I wore it in Seattle to see the famous troll in Fremont!

Vote for My Apartment for the Selby in Your Place Contest

Hello all,

I recently submitted my apartment to the Selby in Your Place contest and I would love to have your vote! You can vote through your Facebook account, by clicking on the link below.

Please vote for my apartment here!!

Thanks so much for voting guys! I truly appreciate it!

Love,
Daria

Lovely Day with Vicki: National Design Museum, Ristorante Il Melograno and MGMT

Our plans for Tuesday the 17th revolved around finally seeing the Otto Dix show at the Neue Gallery and lunching at the museum's Cafe Sabarsky. Stepping ceremoniously onto the first step, I almost landed in a pool of wet cement. The Neue Gallery and the Cafe were closed.

Standing in the center of New York's museum district, we were not completely disheartened. A few moment's indecision past, we were heading towards the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? exhibition encompassed the first floor of the museum and featured some amazing energy saving and alternate energy prototypes as well as some inventions that we often take for granted like twitter and the iPhone. No photos were allowed, so my apologies. I bought some incredibly designed ribbons to use in dresses which I will post as soon as they are realized.

After a walk across the park, we headed down to Ristorante Il Melograno for an early dinner before the concert. Il Melograno is Vicki's favorite restaurant to go before heading to the Met (Opera), and I am incredibly thankful to her for discovering it. We started off with a Caprese salad, which has been our go to appetizer since our first trip to Italy: delicate slices of fresh mozzarella and tomato drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar of Modena and a basil pesto sauce on a bed of arugula. Incredibly delicious! Vicki had pasta with shrimp and peas in a light sauce and I went for rack of lamb over broccoli and roasted spinach.

I do not know much about MGMT and decided to go on the knowledge of one song and hoped for the best. The past few weeks many of my friends have been mocking me for going to a hipster concert, but alas, I gave it a chance and it was a lot of fun. Not all the songs were as successful as others, but it was an entertaining evening full of dancing and singing along where one could. Vicki took a video of "Time to Pretend" which you can find below.

I had an amazing day and look forward to many others once Vicki finally moves back to the city.

Fire Island with Daisy and Lola

My usual beach spot is Robert Moses Beach, but this past weekend Daisy and I decided to give Fire Island a try. Fire Island is wonderful beach spot known for its gay scene and beautiful surf, and the beaches are rarely crowded.

An incredible number of New Yorkers head to Fire Island every weekend, so although it is a multi-step process, the transit authority has set up a very streamlined time schedule which was incredibly easy to follow. From Penn Station, you can take the Long Island Rail Road to Babylon, cross the platform and a few moments later take the train to Sayville. At the Sayville station, white vans wait for you a few steps from the platform which take you to the Fire Island Ferry.

A half an hour's ferry ride, with the scent of salt water and nail polish, deposited us on the yacht strewn port of Fire Island with at least two dozen bikini clad men waiting to see the newcomers. The walk to the shore is amazing. A raised wooden platform leads through a forest of bamboo hiding beautiful newly built summer houses, already equipped with amazing fairyland landscapes of tropical ferns and seasonal flowers, arching trees and flower boxes exploding with vines and begonias. Houses are on tiny hills surrounded by foliage, only accessible by somewhat haphazard wooden bridges.

The beach was beautiful and almost completely vacant and the surf incredible. The water carved out a three foot recess in the sand, so we set up our camp on the edge of the cliff and watched the crashing waves from above.

The water, was chilly and refreshing and a good cool off from the sun. Lola was terrified of the water and refused to let it go past her ankles. Most of the afternoon was devoted into tricking the three year old to get close enough to the water for the waves to hit her legs. No easy task.


We had a great afternoon and a picnic on the beach and escaped with only second degree burns.

My New Handmade Bed

For the past few months, my tripod bed has been supported by a stack of my heaviest and most sturdy books. Since shoving the precious volumes under my mattress, I have had an increasing longing to flip through their pages.

Over a month ago, I purchased a beautiful piece of live wood from eBay with the intention of making it into a platform bed. Since then it has been leaning against the wall gathering dust. This Sunday, I finally purchased the rest of the wood I would need, four casters and a $1 phillips head screwdriver, since my power drill refused to work.

Here's how to make a platform bed:
1 Beautiful piece of live edge wood
1 piece of 3/4in wood cut to same dimensions as live edge wood (15x79in)
3 pieces of 3/4in wood cut to 30x15in
2 2x4's cut down to 70"
6 2x4"s cut down to 43"
4 4in caster wheels
16 washers
16 L brackets
a plethora of screws

The 2 long pieces of 2x4" and 2 of the shorter are built into a rectangular grid, and of the remaining three, two are placed 4 inches to either side of the center of the long piece, and two, 8 inches from the foot and head of the bed, to support the wooden slabs placed on top. The joints are secured with an L bracket on either side. A caster is attached to each corner, wheel parallel with the shorter sides.

The four pieces of 3/4" plywood and my live edge slab are arranged as seen above and screwed into the 2x4"s. My three legged fold out couch bed is released from its remaining three legs and placed on top of the platform. Tada!

Although I sustained excessive bruising in my left hand from putting in over a hundred screws with a screwdriver, I am excessively proud of my slightly creaky platform bed on wheels! I no longer have to worry about dust under my bed because I can just move it out to sweep.... My dad said I couldn't do it, I feel justified.

Tiny Dress for Tiny Girl

Walking around SoHo, I constantly pass by kids stores displaying tiny mannequins donning frilly dresses and striped onesies with piles of hand-made toys and blocks spilling around their feet. These constant visions cannot help but make me daydream of dressing up my own son or daughter, if I am fortunate enough to have one in the future.

My mother made most of my clothes when I was a child. She made me adorable sweaters that I still tried to pull over my shoulders when I was fourteen. I had amazing summer dresses and crochet collars on my shirts. My first attempt at sewing, I remember clearly. I woke up early one morning, before my parents or grandmother. I found a piece of fabric in the kitchen, which I decided to make into a shirt and skirt set for myself. I cut out a rectangle, and cut a big hole in the center for my head, and wrapped the rest of the fabric around me like a sarong skirt. My mom freaked out and tried to make something decent out of my blunder. I have learned since then, and I look forward to making all of my kid's clothes.
My friend Daisy's daughter Lola recently turned three and I got to make her a dress. My first dress for a little girl. I bought Alice in Wonderland fabric from Purl Soho and a lovely pink fabric for the lining and bow. I love the idea of a tiny person with a huge frilly skirt that makes them look like a squishy triangle that is soft and comfortable to wear.

Boy do I love kids.

The End of a 3 1/2 Year Saga

I sit solemnly at a desk of a white washed gallery, looking over bookkeeping and receipts as I have done since January 2007. It is my last hour as prisoner within these somber walls. I look back at all of the memories and the things I have learned. Often have I felt oppressed and cruelly treated, but alas, it took me over three years to leave. I have learned an immense amount about the art world and have had incredible opportunities to run an art fair in Miami Beach and to understand how the gallery market works.

I have made life-long friends and have buffered my resume with incredible qualifications. I have seen how artists are treated and learned how they should act and how to get a show, which will be very beneficial to my future. I have learned how to take care of artwork and how to hang a show, how to do my own taxes and how to ship and handle artworks. I have learned how to talk to clients and how to price my own work. I am thankful for all of the experiences I have had and will carry them with me for the rest of my life.

As I collect my belongings, scuffed and cracked with overuse, I feel at once a sense of dread and an immeasurable lightness. Soon after starting at the George Billis Gallery, I began a novel about my experiences starting out as an intern. The crazy tasks I had to do and the entertaining characters that strolled through our doors. I spent hours scribbling down my stories and reading them aloud to Tamar and Nicole when I came in to work. My writing was immature and goofy then, but I am still very fond of those hand written books. They contained my frustrations and my joys upon first entering the art world. I think about them in my last hours here, wondering how I would have completed those chapters, had I not lost the books. I would have written about crazy artists and "spiritualizing" the gallery to get better sales.

To mark my last days here, I brought in a cake from Billy's that I had inscribed with "Chief Daris Silky Smooz is out!!!". My friends here started calling me that after the number of impromptu spiritual cleanings I had to do of the galleries. I am still unsure why I was the chosen spiritual leader, as I don't believe in the whole mess, but alas, I got to dress up in silly costumes and parade around throwing water and scratching the floor with sticks.

I have seen so many people come and go in my time at the gallery, and find that I am the longest running employee to quit so far. I wonder if I will be missed, as there doesn't seem to be any kind of good-bye planned. Alas, if you are not appreciated for three and a half years, what makes you think you will be appreciated in the last 20 minutes.

I am taking "magic lucky powder" (a vial of burnt sienna) with me.

Parent Night and Lobster Boil

I don't see my parents as often as I would like since I live in New York and they live in Maryland. I visit as often as I can, but I can't survive in Maryland since I can't drive (as evidenced by my crashing into a cop car and the subsequent three and a half years of court dates that followed) and I have gotten far too accustomed to the late hours and speed of the city (I get frantic in grocery lines when my groceries aren't bagged fast enough).

Now that I am out of the house and my younger brother is heading off to college, my parent's have developed an exciting "camping lifestyle." It is almost pointless to call the house line since my parents are either at work, building sets for my mom's new opera or off in a tent somewhere in West Virginia or Maine. Last week, I got a call from my mom as they drove past New York on their way to Maine to eat lobsters and sleep under the stars. They wanted to stop by on the way home and spend the night, and granted my request for a lobster (and by granted I mean my dad said OK while my mom threatened to walk back from Maine if there was a live lobster in the car).

After an amazing day of painting in my studio on Monday, I threw another chicken in the oven and awaited my parent's arrival. We dropped of their car at the ghetto parking lot in my neighborhood and walked home with a dancing lobster in a plastic bag. I got home and boiled a pot of water to bathe my unsuspecting friend.

I did not have a pot big enough, to put him in the water, since he was fond of spreading his claws out, I had to sit him in a pot and pour scalding water over him. For some reason, I figured he would die instantaneously, like a shrimp. This was not the case. I poured water over him and yelled "Im Sorry, Im Sorry, Im Sorry" as i watched him squirm around. A bit of a traumatic start, but he cooked down and was delicious. I am saving half of him in the freezer to make a lobster risotto or a bisque. MMM.

The next day we walked around the city and I took my parents to my favorite sushi place, Zen Cafe on St. Marks place. I take every visitor there at least once, and since my parents love sushi, we go every time they visit. I had to report for work at 3:30, so I made my parents a couple of cappuccino's and gave them directions to the parking lot, and thus went my 16 hour visit from the parents.

16th Century Feast

I am extremely fond of the old world, not necessarily the right term for what I mean, but anything that existed before myself. I seem to possess a sentimentality for things the way they used to be, although I was never there to experience them first hand.

This weekend, I hosted a "16th Century feast." It wasn't entirely 16th century, but it was definitely a feast. I invited all of my friends from Billy's Bakery, and prepared an extensive menu. I went to Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street and bought an amazing selection of cheeses: a simple Brie and a goat cheese with rosemary, a Morbier and a Comte de Saint Antoine, which I fell in love with on my first trip to the Franche-Comte region of France in High School and a Gruyere, an amazing alpine cheese from Switzerland. MMM. I made a spinach and artichoke dip with parmesan and colby jack cheeses which was paired with toasted slices of baguette.

For the main course, I roasted a chicken with rosemary, onions and butter. For those who didn't love chicken, and in theme with the century impersonated, I made a minced lamb pie. Potatoes were roasted with rosemary and olive oil, garlic butter asparagus and buttered green beans served as sides. I found buffalo mozzarella at the new Trader Joe's, and bought it immediately since it reminded me of my time in Italy, and made a caprese salad. I feel the need to have one at every formal meal, even if it doesn't fit the theme.

The dessert course was a chocolate croissant bread pudding which I made in single serve ramekins and strawberries dipped in chocolate and drizzled in white chocolate.

The party was a success and the random dishes seemed to mold together well. We played cards and told each other's fortunes with an old deck deck of fortune telling cards I had around and spent the majority of the night recalling entertaining mementos in our time working at the bakery. The room was lit by candles until they slowly drizzled down the sides of their holders and burned themselves out.

Brooklyn: Flea Market and Dumbo Picnic

I lived in Brooklyn for four years, and it never crossed my mind to explore any of the culture it had to offer. While I lived there, my focus was on school, and any time I didn't spend there I would take the train to Manhattan.

A year ago, my dear friend Tamar (seemingly switching places with me) moved to Clinton Hill, just as I made my move to Washington Heights. Tamar has absorbed herself in the colorful culture of Brooklyn, riding her bike to the Fort Greene green market on Saturday mornings, the library and gardens, a myriad of eclectic coffee shops in the area and the Brooklyn Flea Market.

This past Sunday afternoon, I met Tamar on the corner of Hanson Place and Flatbush Ave for my first visit to the Brooklyn Flea, which she assured me is the perfect place for me. In fact it was! I am not sure if I have been to another place that had as many of my random passions held together by one string of tables: Just as I entered, the narrow hallway was flanked with tables holding precious items that I wanted to possess, to my left a stand of typewriters, to my right a moss covered bench holding quaint glass bell jars. As I gleefully walked through the hall, I sucked in the scent of vintage leathers and home made soaps, marveled at the flavors of miniature cupcakes and was astonished at the paper quality of century old lithographs.

I had to reign myself in to prevent me from buying everything in sight, but what really caught my eye was an Olympia "De Luxe" typewriter from the late 50's or early 60's. It was beautiful and I have wanted one for years. It is in my nature to long for old world things, for mementos of an era in which I did not reside. I bought the typewriter and lugged it to Dumbo, our next destination.

It was a lovely day for a picnic, and I longed to sit with the grass between my toes and try out my new precious prize! Tamar and I stopped by a grocery store and picked up bread and goat cheese, figs and grapes, apparently I was in a Grecian mood. We sat on the steps leading to the shore and watched little kids frolic by the edge of the rocky, moss laden shore dipping their unclothed feet in the somewhat foamy water as their dogs paddled around only to come ashore and splash every adult in sight. It was a lovely sight of young families and embracing couples taking their wedding photos by the shade of a fruit laden tree.

Daisy met us in the park as we lay around looking at the sky and we took her daughter to the kids park down the hill. The jungle gym is shaped like a sail boat, with three decorative masts reaching high into the clouds, reminiscent either of Peter Pan's flying pirate ship, or the sail boats that must have glided past the land that holds this park even years before the Brooklyn bridge was ever built. Lola at first was hesitant about splashing around in the puddles of the water fixture therein, but soon became so comfortable and enjoyed the park to such an extent that she had to be dragged out over Daisy's shoulder after several failed bribes with ice cream and treats. We did not leave the park until the sunset hit the horizon.