Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Some Miscellaneous Scratch

It's fall!  The best season to be in New York, as anyone will tell you.

It feels great to be able to enjoy this season with no deadlines or massive projects to complete.  Instead, I have lots of small projects that I can now attend to and enjoy, including making that kimono and fixing up the house to feel new and refreshed.  I got out the Benjamin Moore colour card set (yes, a friend who knows my love of painting the living room gave me the complete set) and Lucy and I have been deep in discussion about what the next incarnation should be.  Occasionally we get side tracked by the names of the colours.  Lucy created a quiz game where she read off the names and I had to guess what the colour was - if you think "Stoney Iron" is a rust colour, then you would be wrong (it is a deep blue).

The one downer has been that, in my absence, we developed an infestation of pantry moths.  Considering that the kitchen had not really been used as a going concern for almost a year, I guess we were lucky it was nothing worse.  Still, it was slightly alarming to find a dozen little caterpillars on the ceiling in the morning.  As a public service, I offer you my three-pronged strategy for getting rid of the infestation: 1.  Kill every visible moth and caterpillar mercilessly.  2.  Clean out all the cupboards and throw away anything that isn't sealed in metal.  This was tough from both an environmental and economic perspective but again, I had to be merciless.  And there were some scary items at the back of some of the below-the-counter cupboards.  We shall not speak of the container of black rice from 2009.  3.  Scatter bay leaves liberally on the shelves.  Apparently your man the pantry moth hates the smell with a passion and will pack his bags immediately upon getting a good whiff of it.  I read that on the internets and I can't say that it is true for sure, but I do know that three days of this strategy seems to have eliminated the problem.  Go bay leaves!

If you too are lucky enough to be enjoying autumn in New York, may I make a suggestion for an evening out this week?  Consider attending the short-film festival "Made from Scratch", which is billed as a celebration of New Yorkers who "create products and companies from the raw materials of the city itself  and themselves.  My project, Spindle 7, was entered by the person who edited the video about it,  Susan Forste, and it is a finalist!  A screening and reception will be held on October 6th at 287 Spring Street beginning at 8pm.  Hope to see you there!



4 comments:

Taos Sunflower said...

Glad you're home again to enjoy fall, Robyn. I sure enjoyed your trip postings. PS I love that a Buddhist killed some moths...I finally did a wholesale slaughter last week here at our place.

dorinalouise said...

so cool about spindle 7. sorry about the pantry moths . . not fun.

welcome home!

Xxx. Xxxx said...

So wish I could be there. Hope to have news soon of trip south... Also hope that muscle in neck that feels like stoney iron will have softened and relaxed by then! :)
xoxo

Kerry O'Gorman said...

I love the game with the paint colour names! I always wanted to be the person who thought up those same names! I too am cleaning house and getting ready to nest for the winter.
One of these days I will spend a season each year in New York...they all would be tremendous...walking through cherry blossoms by brownstones in spring, picking over Dead Horse Bay in summer, kicking through the leaves in Central Park in the fall and of course skating in Rockafeller Sqaure in winter.
Thanks for stopping by my blog...have a great week.