Fabrics

Craft Central is going to have another Fabric & Trimming Sale on the 4th and 5th of December. I can't find any info on their website at the moment, but the flier I got via their mailing list says:

Amazing two day sale of high quality FABRICS, LACES, TRIMMINGS, LEATHERS, BEADS & BUTTONS: Gorgeous silks and wools £3-£5 metre, pure cotton from £1 metre, designer lace fabric from £4 metre, stunning vintage flowers, new & vintage beads and lots, lots more!
Thursday 4th - Friday 5th December 11am - 6.30pm
Showcase, Craft Central, 33 - 35 St. Johns Square, EC1M 4DS

They also going to have Jewellery Sample Sale at the same time. Of course I'm already going to be in Australia and won't be able to go myself. Last time I got two pieces of fabric for the projects I wanted to make - I probably would've gotten more if I had time to think, but over-tired grumpy toddler wasn't conductive to thinking or buying. And I already used one to make a cape for the Little Girl. She is too young for proper dress-up role-playing, but I couldn't resist as the material was exactly the right colour I always imagined a perfect cape to be.

I used this hooded cape pattern. Despite finishing it a week ago I keep on forgetting to take a better photo of it.

Discovering the world: baking

In New York

We went to the Central Park Zoo three times and I lost count of how many times we walked past it to listen to and look at the Delacorte Clock, which supposed to chime on the hour and half an hour, but actually does so at 5 minutes past an hour and at 35 minutes.

The Little Girl loved feeding alpacas, who successfully kicked the sheep away from the feeding hands; thought polar bears were hilarious (don't ask me why, she just kept on laughing every time she saw them), was totally fascinated by frogs; but most of all she enjoyed this activity:

Together, we also went to the American Museum of Natural History; Museum of Modern Art, which is too big to explore with a toddler and I only managed the top two floors where I was surprised to be able to recognizer most of the painters work by their style (maybe I know more about art than I think); American Folk Art Museum, which is trying to represent too many varied themes/works in a tiny space.

With Papa, who only got one day off, we went to the New York Historical Society, which I thought was perfect size and had good mixture of everyday objects, historical information and art. We also showed him a wonderful Heckscher playground at Central Park.

Actually Cat and I spent a lot of time exploring the Park and I'm totally in love with it and the bright fall colours, which shows in the photos from New York.

Pirozhki in English

If anyone wanted to trying making Pirozhki, Rachael now has the English translation of the recipe on her blog.

Back from New York

Katya and I came back from New York yesterday. The poor thing didn't handle the flight very well this time. I'm always impressed by people, who travel extensively with small children. However, I'm starting to accept that traveling far away with a toddler isn't for me. I would rather find interesting things to do close to home while keeping our routine intact, avoiding having to search for the food she would eat and having to discover the new tricks to get her to sleep while she is overexcited about new surroundings.

I'll post about all the things we enjoyed in New York once my husband comes back with my camera. He had to stay behind for few more days and I left my camera with him as I wanted to have as few items of luggage as possible and it wouldn't fit into my backpack. (Should I buy a bigger backpack, smaller camera case or both?).

Today the fire alarm system went off in our building during Katya's nap. There wasn't any smoke, but I didn't want to take a chance and decided to get us outside. Despite the loud noise right next to her bedroom, she was still sleeping, but talking in her sleep saying "Папа там" (papa is there), which just proves how much we miss him. The fire alarm was due to the system malfunctioning, but it took fire brigade almost an hour to get it to behave again.