"ethnologie"

After reading my posting on the stained glass kalidescope and quilt, ABJ thinks that Anthropologie is getting greedy so I have figured out what we could do. We could start our own business on Etsy and call it ethnologie and carry much more creative knock-offs of anthropologie and other overpriced merchandise. The name would be very genuine because both of us have degrees in Anthropology. What do you think ABJ?

Just looked at my emails again and they have gotten truely nervy! Now they are doing these pretentious bits they call theanthropologist. net for "inspiring works and inspiring individuals". What advertising wiz came up with this one? Hmmm I can think of candidates for the ethnologist.net from our real lives. This could be fun.

Christmas Crackers

Liberty has some awsome and very expensive Christmas Crackers. I would never spend this much on something that will get torn apart in seconds, but I seem to remember that you could buy kits to make your own crackers when we lived in the UK. Nothing like that here.

ABJ come home and go into business with me

I know you could do this and so much more ........ (anthropologie at $368) And doesn't this really remind you of the poof quilt squares on Naomi's dress, but bigger and much easier and not quite as nice as I would make..........(anthropologie $498)

Circular Vest

I was going to write about the brunch I made for my brother and his wife today, but my camera battery needs recharging so I will save that for tomorrow. This weekend I got a chance to look at my new issue of Threads and this article on making a circular vest is my favorite. You can create it in an hour and it doesn't take more than a meter of fabric unless you are very busty. The binding is made of ribbed knit and getting it right is the trick. There are additional instructions about how to measure the armhole length and sew the binding on, but this gives you the general idea........

Halloween

It has been a rainy, warm Halloween evening. I guess we don't have a lot of little kids in Penn's Greene these days, because the number of trick or treaters has fallen off significantly. Among our visitors, there was a Death Eater, two Little Mermaids, and one little girl who told me she was a renaissance princess. One whole family, including the parents, came dressed up and kept asking me "don't you know who we are?" Unfortunately I had no idea at all.

When Adam was little we lived in West Chester and I sat on the steps of the porch and handed out candy for hours to endless streams of children. Adam and Aaron would come staggering home with massive bags of candy, which we carefully screened and rationed out, to their chagrin.

When ABJ was little, there were only six houses within half a mile of our house. I would put her in the car in her costume and drive her from house to house. With so few children, our arrival was a major event for the occupants of these houses so they usually had an elaborate basket or decorated bag of candies and goodies waiting for her. They often invited us in and spent an inordinate amount of time admiring her costume. No one would come up the 1/4 mile driveway to our house, so we didn't see a trick or treater for about 6 years, when the houses in Penn's Greene started to be built.

Colors of Autumn

Picture taken outside of our house this morning. It is going to rain for the next two days so I know that a lot of the leaves will fall, so I wanted to catch the brilliant colors of the maples.

Rainy Weekend

The past four days have been dismal and rainy - more like late November than early October. It hasn't gotten above 47 F the whole time, with a wind chill of 36 today and we have been blessed with 2 driving Nor'easters with high winds in three days. Pretty soggy . I was in the mood to make some comfort food so I tried a recipie for cheddar-apple bundles and got about half the way there. What I would change about the recipe:
1. Use Nana's pie crust and don't ever try to make a crust in the food processor , no matter what the recipe says. The crust was too thick and not at all flakey.
2. I couldn't taste the cheddar at all, so I wouldn't bother with it.
3. There weren't enough apples so it wasn't juicy.
4 Maybe try putting the apricot jam on top after they come out of the oven like they said.
After this summary, it sounds more like I got 25% of the way there. I guess the real message it to just wing it the way I usually do instead of trying to follow someone else's recipe - especially for pastry - since it rarely turns out as good as my own instincts.