Stacyverb

Kudzu Antiques

I love poking around in junk stores.  Whether I buy anything or not, it's just fun to look at random crap.  Places that have "antique" in their name generally intimidate me, though.  They sound like they're full of old, valuable stuff that I can't afford and will probably break.  But I do love visiting Kudzu Antiques, just for fun.

This lady greets you as you approach from the west...

 

...and this one welcomes you if you're coming from the east.

 

One of my favorite sections is their salt and pepper shaker area.  I don't know why--I have no interest in collecting salt and pepper shakers--but they're fun to look at.  (I must admit, the Fonzie set did tempt me briefly.  It would go great with the diner theme we have going in the kitchen of Boogaloo Acres!  I resisted.  It is cute, though.  The juke box is for pepper and Fonzie gets the salt.)

 

Kudzu doesn't take itself too seriously.  There are crazy tableaux like these everywhere.  Some are using the word "antique" rather loosely, I'd say.

 

Some of the items are no doubt actually quite valuable, like this old shoe-shine chair.  When I see stuff like this, I get curious about so many things: Who will buy it?  What will they do with it?  I want to follow this chair home and see what happens.

 

How cute is this turquoise fridge?  And I can't believe I almost missed the fact that there was a small plane above my head.

 

This visit wasn't really about buying, just exploring.  We did make some purchases from the vintage beverage area before heading home, though.  These are all bottled by a company in Washington state, using the original formulas (real cane sugar! no high fructose corn syrup or nutra-sweet!).  Anthony chose his old favorite, Frostie Root Beer, and I couldn't resist trying the "private label" cola.  De-lish! 

Next time you're on the east side of the ATL, stop by Kudzu to shop, gawk around, or just pick up a tasty drink!

St. Vincent at Variety Playhouse

Last night some friends and I went to the St. Vincent show at the Variety Playhouse in Little Five Points. 

We've had these tickets since January.  It had been a long time since I'd bought tickets to an event way in advance and then waited for the night to arrive.  The anticipation of something like that adds an extra layer of excitement, I think.

St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) is a ridiculously talented guitarist, songwriter and singer.  Her music can be plaintive and lovely, and it can be visceral and aggressive.  She's also very stylish (bonus!).

I totally stole borrowed this photo from Wikipedia.  But by coincidence, this is the outfit she was wearing at our show!  How convenient. :)

The show was really thrilling, with Annie and her band playing songs from all three of her albums.  So much energy and creativity and skill--what an awe-inspiring way to spend a late spring evening.

Sunday scorcher

It had been a while since Anthony and I had visited the Atlanta Botanical Garden, so we decided to spend some time there today.  Our membership is about to expire, so we just had to take advantage of it one more time. 

So much for that bit of a "cold" spell we had last week--temps reached the 90s today.  I took lots of pictures, but am spotlighting the pretty things I saw that thrive on a hot hot hot day like today.

 

These orchids might be my favorite thing I saw today.  The color combination is exactly what my eye craves in the haze of humid Atlanta summers--hot, bright, unmissable.

 

The steam of the conservatory makes it easy to pretend you're on a tropical adventure in a lush jungle somewhere.

 

Post-Garden treat, speaking of tropical: Italian ice in Island Fusion flavor.  Mango, coconut, and I don't know what else.  Soooo good.  Several years ago, they were handing out piles of coupons for FREE Rita's ice at Anthony's job.  We're still working off of that stack!  (It was a lot of coupons.)  This really hit the spot after tackling all those hills in the blazing sun.

Back home, showered and rehydrated, I made a spicy veggie stir fry for dinner, and might paint my toenails purple tonight.  Hope you all had a fabulous weekend!

So what if your head explodes?

In the past couple of weeks, Atlanta has been setting new records for crazy high pollen counts.  It's normal for yellow-green dust to coat everything here at this time of year, but this spring has been INSANE because of the mild winter and early warm temps.

Even people who've never had allergies are suffering this time around.  Me, I'm more of an autumn allergy girl, so all I've had in the past few weeks has been some sinus pressure and sometimes a sore throat.  No biggie compared to the snotty misery many are experiencing, that is if they're not just knocked incoherent on allergy meds.

 

But there is an upside.  This azalea was thisclose to blooming for quite a while, and then one morning and I went out and BOOM, there it was.  Despite the fact that I'm the one who planted this bush, it continues to stay alive.  That must be because I've never done anything to it except dig a hole and stick it in the ground.  My brown thumb hasn't touched it enough to curse it.

 

Ditto this lovely Japanese maple tree.  I wish you all could know what a tiny twig it was when I planted it a few years ago, and now it's about five feet tall and thriving.  Again, that's because I haven't done anything to it.  No "gardening"--no, that's the kiss of death for any plant I get involved with.  Better to just plant it, walk away, and let the pollen work its magic.

Author Talk: Anne and Sam Lamott

Last night, as part of the Dekalb County Public Library's Author Talks series, I went to a reading by author Anne Lamott and her son, Sam.

When I learned about the event a week or two ago, I debated about whether or not to go.  Lamott's book Bird by Bird is a classic about the craft of writing, and I've owned a well-loved copy of it for years.  But to be honest, I haven't read any of Lamott's other books and wasn't particularly interested in the topic of the talk, the new book on which she collaborated with Sam about the birth of his son and her own transition into grandmotherhood.  So I was torn, but in the end I decided to go.

 

Sam and Anne Lamott

 

The Lamotts took turns reading passages from the new book, Some Assembly Required, and bantered a bit in between.  The readings were funny, and moving, and the familial chemistry between mother and son was clear: these are two people who genuinely not only love, but like each other.  After the readings, they took a few questions from the audience.  Some were about this book specifically, while others were about the craft of writing.  It was nice to see that I wasn't the only one who came to the event because of BbB.

Following the Q & A, the Lamotts signed copies of SAR.  As the crowd began to form a line, Anne made her way to the signing table and passed by where I was, and stopped to chat with me.  She saw I was holding my copy of BbB and graciously offered to sign it (so often, authors won't sign anything but their current book, let alone a dog-eared paperback copy of an old one).  She was very kind, and before she continued on toward the signing table, she thanked me for coming and gave me a hug.

 

Anne Lamott and me, now BFFs (well, okay, not really)

 

Hearing Lamott speak in her honest, funny way about writing reminded me that it's important for me to make time for literary "stuff" in my life--writing, reading, and talking to others who love those things.  Even just flipping through BbB while I was waiting, re-reading passages I'd underlined long ago, I found myself nodding a lot and thinking, "YES, that makes sense."  I'm really glad I decided to take a chance on this event.

Snapshot: Mermaid Access

Restroom at Harbour Bar & Fish House

Spring fever

[How about those storms last night, local readers?  Glenn Burns was having a blast with his stormtracker radar thingy, instilling panic in citizens throughout the metro area.  I can't say he totally over-reacts, because I know things did get bad in some places.  But right here, we had mostly gentle showers all night, apparently with some thunder and lightning around 2 am, which I slept through.  We awoke to minor drizzle, gray skies, and birds tweeting. And now the sun's out.]

Spring is just about here.  Are you feeling it?  Here in the ATL, we typically don’t have much winter anyway, but this year it’s been even milder than usual.  But something switches on in my brain that says, SPRING!!! and gets very excited.

This winter hasn’t been cold, but it’s been gray and dreary often enough that my eye is craving COLOR.  Last weekend I took myself on a little shopping spree (for me, fifty bucks constitutes a spree).  I bought makeup, and bras, and tried on some clothes that I had no real intention of buying—I just needed some newness, or at least ideas for newness.

For whatever reason, lately I’m obsessed with this color of green:

Jade?  Malachite?  Whatever.  A cooler green than I normally wear.  I figured it was too far to the blue end of the green spectrum for me (blue makes me look barfy), but I tried on a top in this color, and it turns out that I look AWESOME in jade/malachite/whatever.  The style of the top wasn't great, so I didn’t get it.  But now I’m plotting what I need in my new color.  It's a gap in my wardrobe that must be filled!

Speaking of Closing The Gaps, I spent the winter knitting a brown cardigan that I need to show you, when I feel like having a photo shoot.  My hair has been going through an... awkward phase lately, so I’m not feeling very photogenic.  I’m kind of growing it out again, but right now it’s not yet longer, just wider.  It makes my head look three times bigger than it really is. 

I’m blessed/cursed with a ton of hair.  Seriously, I have to wear a size Large hat, and no other part of me is even close to large.  My hair/self ratio is freakishly out of proportion.  Sometimes I have fantasies of shaving my head (sort of kidding), but then I’m afraid my head would suddenly look really tiny (mostly kidding).  These are the things that keep me up at night (definitely kidding).

So, someday soon I’ll show you that brown cardigan, maybe with my head blurred out like some guy on Cops who didn’t want to sign a release form.  In the meantime, I decided I also really, really needed a black cardigan (and really, how do I not already have one?  I don’t know.). So I started knitting that, but I’m already bored with it because it’s BLACK and as we’ve established, I’m craving COLOR.

I also started sewing a new top.  It’s colorful, but it has also black in it, so my hope is that it and the black cardigan will want to play together.  It’s this pattern, which I’ve made three times before, but this time I’m doing the cuffed short-sleeve version that the model is wearing: 
and this is my fabric:

More details as all these projects progress!  What are you doing to get ready for spring?  (Or, for my southern hemisphere readers, autumn?)

"Old Man Cabbage" screening party

A few months ago, I mentioned that my husband had shaved off his goatee for his role as an extra in a music video.  It wasn't just any music video, but a 15-minute "long form narrative music video" produced by Ninja Puppet Productions and featuring the music of Atlanta's fantastic Blair Crimmins & The Hookers. 

This week we were invited to a screening party of the almost-finished video at The Goat Farm (an amazing venue that might need its own post sometime).  Director Raymond Carr introduced the film, and the band performed the soundtrack live.  It was a great evening of music, wine, and creative folks.  At the bottom of this post, watch the trailer for the video!

 

Anthony appears very briefly at 1:02, but is much more visible in the full video. :)

Fall frolicking

I hope everyone's enjoying a beautiful autumn (or spring, for those of you south of the equator).  There have been some lovely days and nights here, and I seem to be spending less time on the computer--thus the lack of blogging.  Let's catch up.

 

What could be more autumnal than a nice crackling fire?  Our friends Kerri and Dave have this fire pit on their back deck, where we celebrated Kerri's birthday a few nights ago.  It was a great evening of friends, fire, good food, and...

 

...pumpkin carving!  Personally, I am terrible at pumpkin carving, so I abstained this year.  I did, however, save the seeds for roasting later.  Mmmmm...pumpkin seeds.

 

On Monday, Anthony and I went out to lunch.  Our work schedules have been out of wack lately, so this was a rare day when we could both be off all day on the same day.  We took advantage of the nice weather and ate outside at Sun In My Belly.

 

Yum!  I couldn't resist this omelette of the day, with chicken sausage and roasted red peppers.  And their biscuits are sooooo good.

After lunch we meandered over to Little Five Points to spend some money at Criminal Records, but on the way we ended up wandering into a Halloween store and, well, this happened:

This might be my favorite photo of my husband, ever.  I giggle uncontrollably every time I look at it.  Not every guy would put on a cowboy hat and gladiator shield and let me take his picture, am I right?  Oh, and he would like you all to know that he was giving the battle cry, "FOR SPARTA!!!!" in a very manly voice when this shot was taken.

 

Moments later, I was viciously attacked by this flesh-eating ghoul baby.  Zombie babies: they're real, and they're hungry.  Beware!

SSS: Days 25, 26 & 27

We're in the home stretch of Self-Stitched-September now, kids.  Woo-hoo!

My Steelers shirt again!  This was the outfit I wore to work during the day on Sunday, but I got off in plenty of time to watch the game on TV that night. 

• Top: Vogue 8078, now apparently out of print
• Skirt: The ubiquitous yellow McCall's 3341
• Earrings: Beaded by me

 

Speaking of sporting events, here I am at the Braves game.  I didn't have any self-stitched Braves-related clothing to wear.  That's probably why they lost!

• Top: Ever-popular cowgirl print shirt, pattern now forgotten (have I ever mentioned that this shirt is about 10 years old? and still going strong)
• Earrings: Beaded by me

 

This is a bad photo of this outfit because a) you can't tell there's brown in the print of my shirt, and b) my pants don't look brown anyay.  I assure you these garments go together better than they appear to.  The wrinkliness of my pants, however, is sadly accurate.  (Ack.)

• Top: McCall's 4922, also apparently out of print
• Necklace: Stacybeads Mimosa design, available in my Etsy shop