The Joy of Shopping at Farmers’ Markets

You can get pretty much anything your heart desires in the area where I live, courtesy of big ships from China and planes carrying goods from all over the world. But the shopping itself is … well, something you usually want to just get done with as quickly as possible. Big chain stores are loaded with merchandise, but the huge spaces, cold neon lights and linoleum/neutral-carpeted floors make you want to grab your necessities and run out. Not to mention that horrid music… Even the upscale, beautiful stores are somewhat too clean, too arranged, too sterile, making you feel like you’re in yet another pharmacy. The liveliness that is present in some shopping options in other parts of the world is simply not there.

The closest exception to this are the farmer's’ markets that continuously  grow in popularity. I am lucky to live in a town that has a large, year-round farmers’ market that operates one morning each weekend. Shopping there is not cheap by any means. With $12 bread loaves and pricy vegetables it can probably out-price even Whole Foods. Yet, I try to go whenever I can, and every time I do I find the place crowded with people. In fact, the crowds are part of the attraction. I enjoy looking at the flow of people, and am happy whenever I bump into someone I know, which happens almost every time. The outdoors shopping is a pleasant change, especially in spring and summer, and I find that the natural light enhances the beauty of the fruit, vegetables and flowers. The pharmacy-like culture seeps here, too, with everything being a little too-neatly arranged and too-nicely piled, but the overall experience is still enjoyable.

My absolute farmers’-market favorites are the heirloom tomatoes, sold every summer, with their strange shapes and many imperfections, yet with amazing flavors, somehow enhanced by the market experience:

Despite relying on imported goods for nearly every other aspect of my life, I love the idea of buying my food locally. I delight in the many organic options, grown within a radius of 80 miles from where I live. And when berries are in season, I make sure to load on a week-long supply, which my kids devour eagerly:

A couple of weeks ago my farmers’ market visit yielded a bonus: it made me realize that I haven’t sewn any totes for a while. And so, as part of preparing for my next crafts fair, I spent the last couple of weeks sewing Market Totes, which I greatly enjoyed:

I hope these will make someone’s market shopping even more joyous!

Brick Lane Sunday Market

September isn’t quite over, yet the tsunami that marks the beginning of the school year has already started erasing the memory of summer. A few weeks ago I’ve written all about my childrens’ highlights from our summer trip, but today I want to recall one of my own personal favorites, before routine blurs its recollection away.

London has many world-class attractions, from monumental architecture to grand museums. It is also dotted with little markets, hidden in alleys all over the city. Most operate all week long, but have a rotating display of booths: antiques on Mondays, crafts on Tuesdays and so forth. Some operate only on weekends. I really wish I could have visited all of them, but my time in the city was limited. Still, I was lucky to see some. Of those, my absolute favorite was Brick Lane Sunday Market and the alleys surrounding it.

Brick Lane Market is located in an area composed of many small markets that merge into each other. Some are outdoors, others, like Old Spitalfields Market, indoors. They offer everything and anything, from antiques to vintage clothes to arts and crafts to food. We visited on a Sunday, when the market is at its peak, and quite an experience it was!

When my children heard the plan for the day was to visit a market, they noisily objected. “Not ANOTHER crafts market!” they protested. “BORING!!.” But after dragging all over the city from one Harry Potter site to another just to make them happy, I had no intention of giving up. I promised to stay for only an hour or two, and off to market we went.

The place was BURSTING with life. People, noise and music mixed with the smells of many foods. There was much on which to feast the eyes. People were dressed in colorful, interesting outfits. Stall displays were eye-catching, and the arts and crafts booths were inspiring.

Here for example, is an old cab converted into a coffee stall. We just couldn’t pass it by without buying a latte:



And this is a picture of some of the stalls, displaying all kinds of knickknacks:



One stall sold interesting-looking leather shoes:



A few stalls sold handbags, though not necessarily handmade (or local. I suspect many arrived on big

ships from China):



Appealing foods were everywhere, colorful, beautiful-looking and fragrant. We ended up staying for lunch, tasting vegetarian Ethiopian food, Chinese dumplings, Japanese tempura, and, for dessert, some Dutch chocolate-filled pancakes.







There was also amazing street art everywhere, scribbled on walls, painted on doors, or hiding high above. Some of the artists had a good sense of humor. Once we realized there were a few threads of art spread around the neighborhood, hiding above eye-level, our entire visit turned into a fun, “Find Waldo” game.

These, all looking to be by the same artists, were posted high above doors on different lanes:











My son liked these cute dinosaurs, also spread in two different locations:





And I assume these two works represent the same face:





There was also a lot of colorful graffiti:



This one, around the corner from a mosque, looked sweet and hopeful in a week besieged by terror and fear:



And a couple more paintings I liked:





This little guy, which we noticed right before we left, is one of my favorites:


Needless to say, we ended up staying much longer than one or two hours. In fact, we spent the entire day at the market. At the end my daughter came to thank me. “Thanks for taking us there,” she said. “It was really fun!”

High Sierra Backpacking

My husband and I used to backpack before the kids were born, but since they came around we’ve only gone car camping. During our London trip this summer we realized that our youngest can walk up to ten miles a day, and decided that the time was finally ripe to attempt our first-ever all-family backpacking trip.

So a couple of weekends ago we packed our sleeping bags, tents and bear canister, and, after about a decade of absence, headed to Yosemite National Park. We originally intended to try a four-mile trail, but since permits for that ran out, we had to change our plans and commit to a six-mile hike.

Six miles don’t sound like a lot, but walking around London is quite different than walking up and down mountains with a heavy load on your back. So we gave the boy a symbolic pack (containing a Platypus full of water and a snack), and hoped for the best.

We all thought our youngest will be the weak link in the group, but about a hundred steps into the trail I was stunned to realize that I could barely walk. My heart was threatening to explode, my legs were crumbling, and the backpack felt like a crushing load. My husband came to the rescue, relieving me of half the burden. This helped, somewhat, but I still found it difficult to move even on a relatively flat surface.

For the rest of the day I trailed behind my family, eyes fixed firmly to the ground, concentrating on the next step. At every break I collapsed to the dirt, enduring pitiful looks from my children. I dragged my feet for the duration of the hike, overridden with guilt and self loathing. Three years of twice-or-thrice-weekly gym visits were obviously useless. Tracking about London seems to have done me no good, either.

When we finally arrived at our destination I let the others put the tents up and cook. I myself crawled into a tent and lay motionless for quite some time, determined to never, EVER, do this again. Yet, when I got called for dinner I had to reluctantly admit that the view was quite stunning, and that MAYBE backpacking had its advantages. This is what sunset looked like from our campsite, courtesy of my husband:

After dinner the headache that accompanied me all day got worse, and only then did I suddenly remembered: I ALWAYS have trouble at high elevation! I haven’t been to Yosemite in over a decade, and forgot the nasty tricks that altitude can play on one’s body...

The next day everything seemed better. My headache was gone and I was able to look about and enjoy the glorious beauty around me. The magnificent, panoramic views:

As well as the beauty of the little things, once you take notice and look up close.

The patterns that cracks etch on the earth:

The varied, strong textures of rocks, bark and roots:

And the beautiful, colorful paintings of nature:

Walking back, even on the long, uphill parts, wasn’t a problem. I was able to enjoy the fresh air, the wind on my face, the feeling of warm sun on my skin. As I feasted my eyes on nature I was deeply grateful for the amazing gift of National Parks, a true treasure currently celebrating one hundred years of existence. I relished the occasional conversation with passing-by, seasonal hikers, some many years my seniors, and, most of all, I was relieved to realize that I wasn’t that out-of-shape after all.

Overall I enjoyed the experience, and was proud of my children, especially the youngest of the three, for bearing on without complaints. And yes, I will consider trying this again next year, though I will need to make a note to myself to drive up a day early, to give my body a chance to get used to the elevation.

Post-Summer Blues

Summer is over. The days are becoming shorter, sunlight is getting yellower, and the shadows are beginning to stretch. A few trees in my yard are showing reddish tints, and I seem to be reaching for a jacket more often. I like the ambiance of early fall, yet I am finding myself these days feeling rather sad. My kids, you see, are all back to school.

The first time this happened was when my eldest daughter started going to preschool. And it has been happening persistently every year since. For years I’ve been spending summers with my kids, being with them all day, every day, for almost three months at a time. Some vacation days have been interesting, exciting and fun, while others can be long and boring. But hanging out together is usually nice, except for those days--mostly towards the end of the vacation--when the kids just can’t stop fighting with each other. On such days they drive me absolutely nuts, and I find myself wishing for school to just start, so that I could finally enjoy some peace and quiet and have the house back to myself.

But when the school-year actually does begin, as it inevitably does, the house suddenly feels awfully quiet…

I did many things this past summer, but sewing wasn’t one of them. I’ve been missing it quite a bit. I got lots of new ideas while traveling, and have been eager to get back to my fabrics and start experimenting. However, now that I finally CAN sew again, I find it very difficult to concentrate. I turn my machine on only to realize, half an hour later, that I haven’t sewn a stitch. Or I start one thing only to stop and go do something else. I miss the kids, with their noise, company, constant demands, and yes--even their squabbles…

So I’m trying to start small, with simple projects to get me back into a sewing mind-set. I made a couple of book marks, a zip pouch or two, and even managed a cross-body sling. And for over a week I’ve been working on a bunch of journal covers that I am slowly starting to finish and put up in my Etsy store. I hope to get back into routine quickly, so that I could soon progress to the more complicated, demanding and interesting projects.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

We arrived in London a couple of weeks before the official opening night of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the new play by Jack Thorne, and a few weeks after previews of the show started opening to the public. This original story, written in collaboration with J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany, is the eighth installment of the Harry Potter series. It takes place nineteen years after the events described in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and is the only story in the series written particularly for a stage.

As Potter fans, my daughters heard a lot about this play long before we decided to go to London. They followed news articles that discussed it, knew all about the main-character castings and controversy, and were very curious about the story line. Of course, once they knew we will actually be in London they begged to go watch it, but when we looked into it we discovered that tickets, even for the pre-opening rehearsal stage, were sold out months in advance.

As it happened, the place we stayed at turned out to be only a couple of blocks away from the Palace Theater, where the Potter play was showing. And so, as we toured the city, we passed by it almost every day, sometimes more than once. And every day our girls asked to go.

We found out that there were two far-fetched ways to get tickets to this popular show. The first was through the Friday Forty, an online lottery that takes place every Friday at 1:00 pm, in which forty tickets are released for the following week. The second was by going to the ticket office and waiting in line to see if any tickets become available for that evening’s show, through returns or cancellations.

Well, we didn’t win the lottery despite spending our first Friday afternoon glued to a screen. And when my husband and daughters suggested going to the theater to stand in line the following week, I really thought they were crazy. I told them that there was no way they would get tickets, for who in their right mind would give up tickets to this show? I said it would be a waste of a precious day, in which we could continue touring the riches of London. And I suggested that they should be content with visiting the Studios, and shouldn’t be greedy. I absolutely refused to stand in line for hours, in vain, on the cold, dreary street. But they insisted, and were willing to wait all day long if needed. So my son and I left them standing in line, and went back to our apartment, expecting to pass the entire afternoon pursuing quiet activities.

To my utter surprise they texted an hour later: not only were they able to get tickets, but they were able to get them for the entire family. And not only did they get five tickets, but four of them were for the best seats in the house, at the center of one of the very front rows. The fifth was further out, but still on the first floor. WHAT?!?!?!?!

The girls were in heaven! That afternoon our apartment was filled with wild cries of happiness, ecstatic dances and earnest preparations, as we all attired our nicest travel clothes and got ready for theater (alas, we each had only one pair of well-worn sneakers).

We arrived at the theater more than an hour early, only to find a LONG line of people already snaking around the building, filling the entire block:

The palace Theater, which opened as an opera house in 1891, and which hosted an array of famous musical since, is a gilded, majestic building, an appropriate setting for the Potter play:

The play comes in two parts, on two consecutive nights. Since the script was not yet released when we watched it, we all got pins after the first part ended, asking us to “Keep the Secrets.”

We have never been to a two-part play before, and we absolutely loved it! After the first night our seats already felt like home. We all thought we could easily get used to this and just keep coming, night after night.

Since the script has since been published to great fanfare and is available for all to read, I will not write about the story itself. I personally wasn’t wowed by the story, and thought it didn’t have a lot of new content. But the play was absolutely AMAZING! The acting was superb even in that rehearsal performance, the character casting didn't bother me at the least, and the special effects were really awesome! Favorite spells like Polyjuice transformations and even flying were done in a wonderfully-convincing way. The magic felt very real, even up close.

For my daughters this was the second highlight of our trip, and it ranked pretty high on my list, too. So, if you plan to head over to London any time soon, I would strongly recommend not reading the script and seeing the play instead. It’s worth it!