Christmas

Hope yours was merry and bright.

Everyday

The following is a draft from a series of 500-word essays I am writing for my Design Writing Criticism course. If you have any critical feedback, please comment below or e-mail me. I would love to hear your suggestions or edits:

Last week I spent £12 on soy lattes. I may have a problem.

My excessive consumption wasn’t for lack of caffeine. A full container of instant coffee sits between teas of various strengths in my kitchen cupboard. The milk has not gone off. I’ve not run out of sugar. I own four coffee mugs.

Snuggled into my usual drafty corner of Café 67*, the buzz doesn’t matter. What I crave is everything that surrounds my soy flat white. Despite the isolation of laptops, headphones and newspapers, the patrons of Café 67 find silent companionship in our cozy neighborhood of brass-topped tables. Across the way an American accent competes with the soundtracked, ooh-ing magic of Darlene Love’s Winter Wonderland. With every drink ordered, the espresso machine screams in frenetic delight. I could go many days without caffeine. But days without the jovial, excited bliss of a room like this?

I blame it on college. In downtown Columbia, Missouri the most difficult exam-related question I encountered was where to study. The library was distractingly quiet. My house was just plain distracting. But at the intersection of 9th and Cherry a trifecta of coffee shops beckoned me with affordable lattes and decent music. I’d grown tired of smelling Lakota’s burnt coffee beans from my second story apartment. I dreaded the packs of Ugg-booted sorority sisters who “studied” at the Artisan. But the red Delonghi that glistened in the window of Kaldi’s drew me close. I walked in and never looked back.

I attended cuppings. I wrote about fern-shapped latte art in the city’s magazine. I became such a regular that formally ordering my drink was necessary only when I felt like talking to Dylan, the cute barista with the bird tattoo. Still, life at Kaldi’s wasn’t perfect. For its college-town location, there was a serious shortage of power outlets. The plush couches encouraged large amounts of inappropriate snuggling amongst college-aged, sexually-frustrated members of Christian youth groups. But encounters with abstaining co-eds were worth it for more reasons than a dry cappuccino: Kaldi’s was a hub for snippets of conversation and my own knowledge-harvesting in an nonacademic environment. The café sparked my love and addiction to the culture of coffee.

All good things must come to an end. I had to leave Columbia. The owner and I commiserated over chocolate-covered espresso beans. Everything will be fine, he assured me. “There will be others.”

When I moved to Kansas City, I rebounded. For proximity’s sake, I could walk down the hill to the townie cafe. Or, I could drive to the Roasterie for a Mac-using, frequent-smoke-break-taking, Facebook-checking Hipster fix. Every shop had something, but no shop had it all.

When I moved to London, I worried I’d be forced into a life of Twinings. Unable to quell my appetite for froth and free wifi, I embarked on a search for café culture in a supposedly tea-drinking country. There had to be a decent spot in my neighborhood. That’s when I walked into Café 67. I ordered my first drink — soy latte. Delicious. I felt guilty for admitting it was better than Kaldi’s. I stopped by again. And again. Two weeks later, the owner knew my order. Two months later, I am in my usual corner. Café 67 possesses the familiarity of far away but the sparkle of something new. My doctor would be shocked at my caffeine intake. But despite frequent bathroom breaks and late-afternoon shakes, I am happy here.

*Café 67 is actually called Number 67, but for the sake of clarity, I changed the name.

8:48 a.m.

Many of my friends are not red meat-eaters, and I've posted my fair share of carnivorous dishes, but can we all take a moment to appreciate the incredible mashed potato crust that topped the cottage pie T made last night? A sight to behold.

9:36 p.m.

An image of yesterday's batch. After the first attempt, I had to make more, this time with bigger, juicier apple bits and more topping. Mmmm.

This afternoon I took a deep breath and partook in a bit of culinary chemistry. I decided to pursue a recipe that had been on my mind for days and faced my biggest baking fear: conversions.

With the cold weather, temptation of comfort food, and an oh-so-deluxe food processor as an early Christmas present, I couldn't resist an attempt at tasting what might happen when flour, butter and sugar combine.

For me baking is the ultimate challenge. Even a recipe as simple as the one on the back of Tollhouse chocolate chips is loaded with obstacles. Baking powder instead of baking soda? Was that 3 cups of flour or 4? There is an obnoxious exactitude to baking; one that I never encounter when making dinner (usually because I steer clear from anything savory-pastry-related). If you pour too much wine in the pot, the stew will eventually soak it up. My fear of the oven, however, is absolute. And despite my bizarre affinity for my high school anatomy class, I've never been a science girl. This avoidance of chemistry, paired with the British Imperial system of measurement, makes baking all-the-more intimidating. Yet tonight, I couldn't get the idea of nutmeg out of my mind.

Enter eatmakeread's recipe for Spice Apple Muffins, and this afternoon turned into a proper gladiator-style challenge of Cups versus Grams.

Things started out okay. I bought the right ingredients. Butter melted. Apples roasted. T helped with the conversions. I precisely weighed dry ingredients on the plastic scale. I factored the meniscus into my liquid measurements. Soon the smell in the kitchen actually qualified as fragrant. Things looked like they might taste delicious, at least until I reached for what I thought to be the ground cinnamon, and instead dumped a teaspoon or two of ground cumin into the mixing bowl. Guh.

So as dinner's soup simmered on the stove, I began again on dessert. This time my measurements were hastier. I quickly weighed flour on the scale and swapped teaspoons for pinches. I might have even thrown in some dashes. Yeah, I'd say the second time around was more fun. More fly-by-the-seat. And when the muffins, topped with a crumbly coat of cinnamon and sugar, went into the oven, my once dismal hopes were elevated to realistic. Patiently I endured an invisible chemistry class, with the hope that my concoction might, might be tasty.

My thoughts raced back to several weeks prior, when after plugging through hours of an uninspired writing session, I surrendered to my own literary ineptitude and made cookies. The batter looked — and tasted — delicious. I had splurged on Green & Black's chocolate. If I couldn't write, I thought, maybe I could make a living feeding people. Visions of opening a bakery/cafe formed loose and fast. By the time the mix was ready, I was 10 years ahead of myself. In a daydreamy, batter-induced stupor, I doodled apron designs until it was time to check the oven. I was abhorred to discover that the beautifully shaped doughballs had melted into one ugly, flat, brown crisp that hardly resembled anything you'd dip in milk. Santa would have turned these cookies down.

Tonight, with the memory of failure still fresh in my nose, I worried. Despite quick checks on the oven confirming that the batter was indeed rising, I refused to trust any sensorial organ except taste. Butterflies abound, my stomach prepared itself for an impending failure. But I was wrong. The muffins were delicious. Somehow the ingredients — the nutmeg, crispy butter, brown sugar and apples — mixed exactly how they should, and I was rewarded with spiced apple muffins that served as more than tonight's dessert...or tomorrow's breakfast. They became a dozen small symbols signifying that I not only stand a chance at converting cups to weights, but also that I'm adjusting to life here. The days may darken at 4, and the oven temperature might be impossibly read in Celsius, but I now know that 1 cup of flour equals 125 grams, one egg is equal to one egg, and butter tastes good no matter where you are.

11:52 a.m.

Sunnyside Up

8:32 p.m.

They noticed on their walk home this afternoon that yesterday's snow had already melted. And instead of the flurries that had gracefully settled on their eyelashes, raindrops now pelted their exposed noses. He swung the plastic bagful of groceries. She held his gloved hand in hers. It had been a good day. A wake-up-at-noon day. They would make a dinner. They would share a bottle of wine. They'd light the candles in the nonworking fireplace and listen to Christmas music. The house would never be warm enough. Their feet would stay cold all night. But their cheeks would be radiant, and they'd be happy nonetheless.

1:03 p.m.

I have been neglecting this blog, lazily uploading photos instead of spending anytime writing anything good. I will get back into it, I promise.

But for now, enjoy this December day, wherever you are, and peruse the blog of my friend Kiernan who has been making beautiful posts about the 4-month-long roadtrip he took across the United States. He also contributed a story to Mastering the Art of Thanksgiving!

Market

The following is a draft from a series of 500-word essays I am writing for my Design Writing Criticism course. If you have any critical feedback, please comment below or e-mail me. I would love to hear your suggestions or edits:

Standing at the intersection of St. Martin’s Lane and Cecil Court, I steal glances inside a shop where tightly bunned heads, framed by amber-lit windows, gracefully bob up and down. Slender arms lengthen into arabesques. The lithe limbs belong to ballet dancers of all ages — nine-year-old girls in pink tights who’ve not yet lost their babyfat; and women in their 20s who roll onto their toes with the ease of a prima ballerina — and they’ve come to Freed of London to buy pointe shoes.

I duck inside, attempting to nimbly weave between agile bodies, maneuvering past Christmas-themed displays of black leotards and heeled character shoes. But no one notices the displays or me. They are looking at their feet.

Freed of London has handmade pointe shoes since 1929, and in 81 years, the methods have barely changed. Each shoe is constructed, uniquely, from the inside out. Each pair is made by one of 34 shoemakers. And each year, Freed of London sells more than 250,000 pointe shoes — more than any other manufacturer in the world. As official shoe providers to companies such as the American Ballet Theater and down the road at the Royal Ballet, Freed of London has a close relationship with the professional dancing world. But they aren’t only for the pros. If the shoe fits, any girl can own a pair.

Back inside the shop, all of these dancers want the shoes to fit. A clerk thumbs the wood block that surrounds a dancer’s foot. “Are you sure? You seem to be sliding down when you roll en pointe,” she says.

“No, no,” the dancer insists, furrowing a brow pulled taut by her slicked-back hair. “These definitely fit. They’ve got to.”

Because of the one-off shoemaking process and the who’s who-type list of dancers who wear them, Freeds are synonymous with beauty, and dancing in them is foreshadowing for the rest of your ballet career: If you can fit into Freeds, you have an ideal foot. Slide them on, and from the knee down you stand a chance at looking like Sarah Lamb in the Royal Ballet’s Giselle.

Still, it’s not just about pretty feet; pointe shoes are tools of a rigorous trade. At the height of ballet season, a principal dancer averages one pair per performance. So if a ballerina is lucky enough to find the perfect pointe shoes, they must be replaceable. All of Freed’s shoemakers bake a mark into the sole of every shoe, allowing dancers to identify what they need simply by looking.

When a ballerina leaps on stage, an unspoken partnership blossoms at her feet. The makers of Freeds — some of whom have made their mark for 40 years —are dedicated craftspeople that represent the role design plays in the performing arts. Theirs is a supporting part that exists in the basements of shops like the one on St. Martin’s Lane, where timeless methods are used to make the pink satin icon most girls dream about and few are lucky enough to roll up into.

2:35 p.m.

First snow

Thanksgiving

11:38 p.m.

It was a weekend of pie.

Gingerbread Apple Upside-down cake: Joseph Beeman

Pie Enjoyer: Kathryn Zack Crawford

Cheddar-Apple Pie: Jess Bannerman

Pumpkin pie: Kate Nelischer

Chocolate Amaretto Pots: Richard Pring

Cherry pie: Tom Loughlin

11:32 p.m.

Flower Market

Mastering the Art of Thanksgiving

I am so pleased to announce that the Thanksgiving zine is finished! Have a read through Mastering the Art of Thanksgiving. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please pass the zine onto anyone. Post on Facebook, your blog or send it in an e-mail! The more the merrier.

Open publication - Free publishing - More thanksgiving

4:47 p.m.

Bits

Wild Nothing 5:53 p.m.

Last night was the Wild Nothing show, and I’m still living in the stage-lit, crowded, dream pop incandescence of what I heard. Wild Nothing transports you, sparking just a hint of heartbreaking nostalgia for those who grew up in the 80s, causing unexplained bouts of eyes-closed, wide-smiled, arm-flailed dancing, and instilling in anyone who kept a diary during adolescence the terrorizing desire to find it, unlock it and keep writing.

Jack Tatum’s the dude in charge (he writes and plays all of the music on Gemini), but for tours, he has formed a band of more dudes, all with earth-shattering jaw lines and a sartorial look so cohesive it just can’t be planned. Hailing from Virginia and areas nearby, the well denimed band aren’t stereotypically nice southern boys; they’re just nice. And no-nonsense. Rarely speaking to the crowd except to smile and say thank you, Tatum’s is a presence that radiates because of his quiet stage demeanor. He just wants to play the next song. And the audience wants to hear it. Despite Cargo’s unmemorable-ness*, the band projects an inclusive coziness. It’s not weird, I promise. It is precisely Wild Nothing’s bashfulness and sneaky smiles that makes you like them more. But don’t get me wrong; they are not wallflowers, and they don’t hold back.

With high ticket prices and supporting acts that are a struggle to get through, live shows can be more pain than pleasure. Wild Nothing makes up for any bad show you’ve been to lately. The band are as tight as Tatum’s album but don’t play to those exacts. Instead, their live sound is an imaginative extension of Gemini; an artwork in its own right. “The Witching Hour” took the driving force from Gemini and accelerated. Despite the cold he claims he’s getting, Tatum jumped effortlessly between ranges, hitting a surprise landing an octave higher than the recorded chorus of “Live in Dreams.” “My Angel Lonely” was still angsty and achey, but last night it was filled with the band’s collective push, forcing you to do more than listen.

At the live show, Gemini transcends its place as a sleepy bedroom album; it is infused with both kinetic energy and the feeling that time has stopped. I have no idea how long Wild Nothing played. No one, though, was ready for them to go. Thankfully, they said another sweet "thank you," and played an encore: "I hope this isn't too obvious," said Tatum (his only semi-joke of the night), before breaking into a short but strategically placed "Bored Games."

On the first week of many that has changed to winter, Wild Nothing envelopes you with a longing for summer days, but leaves you happily wrapped up enough to make it home on a cold November night.

*In terms of ambience, Cargo is a run-of-the-mill venue. Situated in a nook of East London, it can afford to sell bad food, sell cans of beer at 4 pounds a pop and play music way, way too loud because of most of the excellent acts that play in the backroom. Cargo isn’t a memorable place. I struggle to find words to describe its interior. It lacks personality. But the seating near the bar and in the lounges is ample, comfortable and leathered. Even on nights as moody as yesterday, the back garden, despite its size, is cozied-up with yellowy-glowy lighting and couples snuggled close together on benches, sipping indecipherable cocktails, striking matches, sharing cigarettes, wearing cute fuzzy fingerless gloves.

3:35 p.m.

Lunchtime

It's never too early for a little Christmas pining.

Showing

Dollface, now exhibiting at the Museum of Childhood, is a study on the many ways of showing. The display of a dozen photographs of nine different dolls extends beyond the museum’s mostly unseen doll collection — portraits of the dolls, taken by Craig Deane, are the memories of childhood, the reflections of societal projection and the representatives of systemic ordering.

Of the 8000 dolls that are catalogued in the museum’s basement, Deane selected a handful to bring to life through large-scale portraiture. Looking out to the audience from metre-tall photographs, the dolls are now larger, living versions of themselves; breathtaking specimens of play and perception. By photographing the dolls from an upward angle, Deane seems to have captured the objects in real moments, suggesting that the role of child and toy, once hierarchical, is now an egalitarian one. Long separated from the children who played with them and now unearthed from the storage toy box, the little wax-faced and porcelain things become mysteriously fleshy and human-like, making innocent, surprised eye-contact that grazes the edge of sinister.

Concerned with how people represent themselves over time, the exhibition displays portraits of dolls that were made over 150 years. Though the photographs are not shown chronologically, the limited selection of portraits makes the historical transformation of Dollface obvious. Withdrawn, sad-eyed girls of the 1800s perk into all smiles and red lips by 1930.

The exhibition encourages comparisons and urges viewers to consider past and current relationships with life-like toys. An ebony-painted porcelain face called Cosmopolitan Doll, made in 1930, is the first portrait in the series. Paired next to an identically sized photo of a peach-colored doll, their features are strikingly similar. Despite the fact that they were made 20 years apart (one in Germany and the other in England), they have the same kewpie curled crown of molded hair and both, surprisingly, have brown eyes instead of blue. Encased within a round bubble of a face, they have the classic features of 20^th Century babydolls and foreshadow the remarkably unchanged face of American Girl dolls. The only difference is that Cosmpolitan Doll is painted dark brown and the other is clearly Caucasian. Both have unnaturally womanly red lips. Though painted a similar shade of red to the white doll’s, Cosmopolitan’s mouth is unfaithful to her actual lip line, suggesting the impossibility, even on porcelain, of a cupid’s bow as flawless as the one on the lips of the pale-faced twin to the right.

Deane writes that “cataloguing and storing objects is just as fascinating as the objects themselves.” Each photograph is titled by the doll’s museum reference number and store location. By including the reference number with the portrait, Deane toys with the idea of the unaffected organization of emotional attachment. Besides year and place, very little information is attached each doll, and with titles such as “T.186-1931BGML05172,” it is only natural to start making categorizations based on the information at hand.

By building a time-conscious narrative from the museum collection, Dollface shows a portion of the V&A toy box numerically as well as a social history of self-perception and projection through play. Although there is much to show, the exhibition lacks transparency regarding Deane’s choice of dolls. With an inexplicably limited selection of portraits, the exhibition lends itself to more questions than answers. If all except two portraits are white, what does that say about the museum’s overall collection? What dolls remain as history’s playthings? What — or whom— are we playing with?