Sunday round-upDecember 1 tomorrow! Do you have an advent calendar? I love them — though now the kids are older, we've tended to go without these last couple of years. However, I bought this rather arty-farty one in New York, and I won't open it this year but will save it for next year when Mack can open all the little doors.
See the dog-walkers? You really do see them in NY — here's a pic I took at Central Park in April. A dog-walkers' convention!
We always had an advent calendar at Christmas when we were kids. It was such a big part of the Christmas build-up. I just love them — the naffer and more glittery and sentimental the better.
:: It's cool at last — we even had more rain. Breathe a sigh of relief. We've stopped needing a fan in the bedroom at night, and we may even consider a second blanket on the bed. The picture above was the view from our bedroom window this arvo — it's been a misty moisty day all day. God, that's a dull pic.
:: I'm getting in holiday mode thinking of all the guests we're going to have here over Christmas. Dace and Halina and Max arrive from Tokyo on the 22nd or 23rd, around the same time Lily arrives home from college with two of her closest mates from Perth. Grace has been living in Chile this year, putting the immersion theory of learning a second language into practice. Pelham has been studying at the University of Illinois. They've both been here before, so it'll be fun to see them again. I think Nick is coming down for some of the pre-Christmas excitement as well.
There'll be bodies everywhere, and I'm on the scrounge for spare mattresses and air-beds. This afternoon I checked out how much bedding I have and washed, patched and mended Will's old quilt, which was getting a bit tatty.
I made it for him about eight years ago, I think, with help from Laura in the planning, basting, binding and colours — Will wanted a quilt in Dockers colours. Love Freo, but those colours are a challenge ...
:: Will's been bringing home some of his artwork from college. This is a little carving he made, working with dried-out clay.I'm looking forward to a whole lot more of these.

SundayImagine my poor dogs flying home to Australia in these little boxes, and then, when the nightmare journey does end, having to spend weeks in quarantine.
I worry particularly about Nipper, who is very much My Dog. He sits as near to me as possible wherever I am, usually touching my feet, or leaning up against my legs. Follows me up and down stairs. Waits outside the loo for me. Sleeps at the foot of my bed. He will pine in quarantine, so I hope he at least gets to bunk up with Yoshi.
I've been put in touch with a guy in LA who will help organise their trip home. The quarantine regulations are very complicated, so I feel better to have someone who knows the ropes helping me get them home.
:: Just got back from a wonderful chatty Sunday session-style arvo at the Bondi. There were quite a few of us — the drinks and nibbles were our prize for being the top table at last year's season of quiz nights. Sounds a bit weird, I know, to have won the series when we own the place, but I assure you it was all above board!
There was lots of talk about the new Baz whatsisname movie, Australia, which opens here the night before Thanksgiving. A few weeks ago, David and I saw a short trailer for the movie and were a bit worried about it. But on Friday night, we went to see Happy Go Lucky (really really wonderful English film) at the local cinema and there was a longer trailer for Australia, and I must say it looked a lot better. So we'll see.
:: How's your Christmas shopping? These are pics of FAO Schwarz, the fabulous, enormous, magical toyshop in New York on Fifth Avenue, right next door to the big glass-cube Apple store.There are whole wings dedicated to animals, books, Lego, and Playmobil and Barbie. Then there's a huge Harry Potter section — including these 'life-size' (or what you imagine life size to be) dragons.The one in the window was half -price — a snip at $2300. The unicorn, which was, frankly, a little grubby about the hoof, was a mere $800.
:: It's been hot and sunny ever since we got back from New York. There have been terrible fires in Los Angeles, with flames whipped up by fierce 96 mph Santa Ana winds — about 800 homes lost. Ghastly.
:: We bought tickets home to Perth this morning. So I feel I have a date to work to, and can now structure the time I have left and organise the things I have to do to get home. Also, this weekend, we booked a return trip to Santa Fe for when Dace is with us — fantastic! We'll be in Santa Fe for New Year's, which is bound to be spectacular.
:: Lily has had a second opinion on her foot, and will now not need surgery — thank heavens. She has a better cast, which has already made a difference to how she gets about, and has been told that the reason her ankles give out on her so frequently is that she has short, tight hamstrings and calf muscles, which she needs to stretch, strengthen and lengthen by exercise. Then she'll stop stressing her ankles by no longer walking on the sides of her feet.

LacyWhen I was in New York on the weekend, I went to the lovely eau-de-nil shop on the right (above) and bought some of thisand now I'm knitting this:Actually, the shop, the famous and much vaunted Purl in SoHo, is very pretty, but all the yarns are stacked by colour, which I find weird. And it is t-i-n-y. Take a deep breath, hold your elbows to your side and squeeze in.
It's really not a patch on the yarn stores I go to locally, in Encinitas and Solana Beach. But I thought, since I was right there in SoHo on Sunday, I'd better check Purl out.
There is a similarly bijou Purl patchwork store just a few doors up the road from it.
The pattern is for a wrap called Seascape — free pattern here.
The lace is gorgeous, but is going to give me brain ache. I started on ordinary needles — too blunt — and then I bought myself an Addi turbo circular, which is designed for fine lace knitting, with lovely pointy ends. Much easier.But oh! It's a pain in the arse if you drop a stitch, because you can't see where it went. Correcting mistakes is very hard. You have to come up with ways to compensate and just carry on. In the hope that no-one will ever notice it anyway.
The yarn is Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Beautiful. A blend of mohair and silk. It's like knitting with a cobweb. Don't breathe too hard!
Simultaneously, and to ground me, I have another very chunky beany on a sturdy circular beside me, to stop me floating away.

Rare airWell, we certainly landed okay when it came to the apartment we stayed in in New York. The pic above shows the view from our complex's roof terrace! Honest!
We had a very roomy two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with an enormous living room and fairly flash kitchen, and a balcony, in a historic building right opposite the NY Stock Exchange.
In the pic below, taken from the steps of Federal Hall, where George Washington made his inaugural address after becoming the first US President, you can see the NYSE to George's right, and our roof terrace over his left shoulder:The entire 40-odd-storey building and the building next door, which is right on the corner of Wall Street, were once upon a time the headquarters of the JP Morgan financial corporation. In 1998, they were both due to be demolished to make way for a new stock exchange building and office tower, but that all screeched to a halt after 9-11.
Instead, the two buildings were made over by Philippe Starck, converted from offices into very trendy condos and apartments. There was an Hermes shop on the ground floor, and in the lobby there was a ginormous crystal chandelier hovering just over the floor, recycled from the original Morgan Chase office building.
I don't understand why I have no pics of the inside of our apartment — but it was very groovy, and totally unlivable. A triumph of design over function. One bedroom was almost open to the living room, save for being slightly higher and having a half wall.
The main bedroom suite had no windows, and the wall between it and the front bedroom didn't go all the way up to the ceiling, to allow in a sliver of light and air.
And Will ended up sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a cupboard that was slightly bigger than his bedroom here at home!
The living room furniture was all very black, and very uncomfortable. You just can't lounge on a hard, shiny black leather couch with a low-slung back!
But we had so much fun, and were hardly there during the day anyway.
The amazing thing was the roof terrace, called Starck Park ...... with its water feature like a giant tap, and glorious view of the facade of the NYSE. It also had a ping-pong table, a huge dining table where you could hold dinner parties, and an open-air fireplace. Yum.
Security was understandably heavy in this area. The roads are all closed to cars, and there are patrol boxes and security guards everywhere. Ground Zero is only a short walk away — and it was really very spooky to consider what must have been happening in this area on that fateful day.
The location was otherwise excellent. It was a walk away from Tribeca, SoHo, Battery Park and the Hudson River ...... and a stone's throw from the out-of-this-world apartment of Nick's grandparents, who have 120-degree windows with a view of New York Harbour and across the Hudson River to the Jersey shore — this is just part of it, with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (click on it for a bigger image): We were also a short stroll away from the famous Wall Street Bull. How that poor beast must have suffered at the hands of our late-night revellers ...(Thanks, Iman, for your pics!)

Seven and one in a wheelchairOur five fabulous days in New York for Lily's 21st birthday (Sunday) went far too quickly, and this morning, sitting in the sunny silence of San Diego, I'm missing my girl and all the noise and excitement of being (almost) all together in that amazing place.We thought for a while that Simon would join us, and be there to buy his baby sister her first legal beer in the US, and we were so disappointed when he couldn't make it. Will made up for it, though, sticking close to his sister, sharing wheelchair pushing with Nick and Larissa for the miles and miles we walked, and helping her about.Of course, when we started planning this trip, we had no idea she'd have a broken foot and be in a wheelchair — but she didn't let that cramp her style, dampen her enthusiasm, or get in her way at all. From crowded Subway trains and tiny historic pubs, to Broadway and the top of the Empire State Building.
There were six of us to start with: Will, Lily, her boyfriend Nick, her room-mate Larissa (who turned 21 the Sunday before), David and I. Then, on Friday night we were joined by Iman, one of Lily's old school friends from Subiaco. Iman is studying in Washington DC and working until December as a Congressional intern in the office of Don Young, the sole Representative from Alaska, and a Republican to his gun-totin' boot straps.Iman (pictured above with Larissa) is staunchly un-Republican, though, and it was great fun to catch up with her and hear all her stories — especially about election night, when she was at the Democrats' sparkling celebration party in a DC ballroom.
She also really knew her way around in NY, having studied here for a while last year, so she was very handy when it came to negotiating our way through the Subway, one of the major lines of which had been closed for renovations. Chaos!On Sunday morning, early, we were joined by another old Subi mate, James, who's been in the US since August, working as a volunteer on the Obama campaign, doorknocking and 'getting out the vote' in Detroit, Ohio, Philadelphia and Virginia. More fab stories! It's a pity we couldn't have had longer with him, but at least he got there for Lily's birthday.

Razor sharp I left all my paper-cutting gear out while I was in New Mexico, and Will decided to have a go. These are all his work. While I drew my designs before cutting them, Will just got stuck straight into it with the scalpel. The dancing skeletons (below) were part of an assignment he had at college to come up with designs for the Day of the Dead (October 31 to November 2).
:: I love all the Day of the Dead art everywhere in this part of the world. A store in Santa Fe had this great display of papier mache dancing skeletons ... ... and I was able to pick up a bit more to add to my collection at home! Love it.
:: We had awful news this morning: the apartment we'd booked and paid for in New York for next month, where we'd planned to celebrate Lily's 21st, doesn't exist. We've been the victims of a well-organised scam which is apparently under investigation by the FBI. Poor Dave is so furious. We've never been ripped off, or stolen from, before — apart from identity theft on my Visa card, which the bank reimbursed me for — and it's really sickening.

Worshipping at the shrine
Our trip east last week was all about the pictures And a bit of sculpture..
I studied art history for three years in the '90s and I just can't tell you what it was like to see many of the works I'd only been able to study in books, or online, right there in front of me.
I couldn't get enough, so it was lucky that we only really scratched the surface of all that these two great cities have to offer. We'll have to go back and see more!
In Washington, we spent most of one day at the National Gallery, especially in the East Wing, which is full of the Modern stuff, an amazing building full of light and spaces like this (click on the pics to see them b-i-g!) ...... the red blades are part of a massive kinetic sculpture by Alexander Calder, and despite its size and weight, you could see it slowly and silently moving if you looked long enough.
There was a room of smaller Calders in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (below), and I just loved the calm of the monochrome setting:
The two cities each had a casting of an Alberto Giacometti sculpture, Hands Holding the Void, and while the Washington one stood alone against a wall ...the NY one had a lovely Picasso glowing behind her to keep her back warm!There were plenty of yummy treats on the top floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, where they keep all the contemporary art:
The stripy painting is a three-dimensional Sean Scully, of whom I've long been a great admirer. I can't tell you about the neon/video installation map of the US states, because I actually ignored it to look at other stuff. Though looking at it in this pic, it looks pretty amazing, don't you think?
This is another view of the same fantastic room: And this is all quite apart from the wonders of the National Portrait Gallery, which shares this magnificent building.
In New York, MoMA was also full of mind-blowing spaces ...
... the views through the building, the scope of its walls and windows themselves as awesome as the artworks.
The black object (below), suspended by electric cable over this void in MoMA is an ordinary domestic fan. Free from a stand or a frame and left to swing by its long cord, it whirls over the heads of the people below, flying in random arcs and curves through the space.
Of course, after all the Big Names ...
my brain felt a lot like this:But oh! What a glorious way to spend a few days!
And our worshipping was in no way confined to the big galleries. there was plenty of great stuff all around us.
In SoHo, for example, I stumbled across this amazing work by a very talented and enigmatic Brooklyn street artist who signs himself Elbowtoe. I think this is his blog. He paints these (to me) Egon Schiele-style figures on stiff paper, cuts them out and pastes them about the city. Fantastic!
In midtown, we walked past the Lever Building almost every day, and the first time we did we saw this:
A man in a striped bobble hat wrapping an enormous sculpture of a pregnant woman. The sculpture, The Virgin Mother, is by Damien Hirst, no less! It had been standing here for six months and now it was time to move it out and bring in some new wonder.
Here the removal team has just started wrapping her head and feet in preparation for shifting her out of this spot and bringing in a new work. By the evening of that day she looked as though she'd been attacked by giant spiders:We were told the new work would be installed at midnight last Friday, but when we returned to check it out, the removal team was still building the enormous crane that was needed to lift this hefty Virgin Mother out of her plaza setting. The next morning, she was gone, but nothing had yet been installed in her place, so I can't tell you what masterpiece occupies this space now.
Oh, but these weirdly distorted sculptures of his own body, by Richard Dupont, are in the lobby gallery of the same building:Being in New York also provided the chance to visit Pace Gallery, which represents my very fave artist, Jim Dine. I had visited this gallery's website for years, checking out JD's prints, so it was a thrill and a half to actually visit it.
When I boldly asked to see some of Jim Dine's work, a very pleasant young woman came to talk to me. I told her that though I did not have the means to buy any of his work, I intended merely to worship at the shrine, so she smilingly pulled out some of the great man's prints to show me.
In truth, it is his more energetic, gestural plant drawings that are my absolute favourites, but just seeing his prints was an unforgettable moment.