Watching Deadline Whitehouse, making chicken stock and dinner — I must be home. The sky is leaden, rain imminent — I must be home.
Trip to see younger son in Colorado was a little disorienting because we had no room to furnish or apartment to find or supplies to buy. Didn’t drop several hundred dollars at Target, so we went out to eat instead!
Best meal in Denver was not either of the three-dollar-sign dinners, but rather a reasonably priced lunch at Rotary Eats, one of the stalls in a place called Avanti. Avanti : like a food court, only good!
Exterior of Avanti, above, and interior, below.
My selections were roasted chicken thighs, roasted cauliflower with tahini sauce and golden raisins, and the best homemade potato chips I’ve ever had.
Our first special dinner was at The Black Cat in Boulder. The place gets great reviews and takes seriously the farm to table model of dining, but I didn’t like all the pickled vegetables or the flavor of the sauce served with my artisanal pork, so I was a little disappointed. I’m prepared to admit that the fault lay with my palette and not the food preparation. Salad was outstanding — greens picked that morning! — as was the service.
Brunch at “duo” in Denver proved disappointing, too, probably because I’ve had southern biscuits and the biscuits in my breakfast were grainy and muffin-like. K loved his meal, shown next to mine below.
(Biscuits and gravy with two eggs).
Sharing the meal with Denver friends we see about once a year, Marc and Kim, was great though. Marc and I went to law school together.
The other restaurant in the “duo” is located in Vermont.
We had another special dinner in Denver at a place called Vesta. I had braised lamb shank on a hot pepper infused polenta. Delicious! The meat fell off the bone, as it should! Those yellow chips are deep fried garlic slivers — insanely good.
The place is known for its sauces, so we started with a selection. The most popular was the hot pepper, horseradish a strong second.
I’ll leave you with “crack bacon.” I misread the menu at the breakfast joint “Syrup” and thought the dish was “cracked bacon” (as in crispy). Oh no. The strips were sautéed in brown sugar. Caramelized. They meant “crack” as in instantly addictive!
The phone is ringing and it’s not my sister. If you’re tired of her and my relationship, consider this post done!
My sister got very anxious whenever I left town — amped up worry informed mostly by abandonment issues and imagined travel mishaps. She never could keep straight the dates, so for weeks ahead of time, I would have to keep reiterating the plan. It got annoying. It didn’t help to write it on her calendar because usually her calendars went missing.
My sister magnanimously deemed my time away as vacation from her, partly because she knew I needed a little separation and partly because she kept forgetting about cell phones. Even so, to her utter amazement and gratitude, I’d generally check in at least once while away.
Obviously, this trip there was none of that. And no quick call immediately upon arrival home to quell her anxious misery. I missed that a little because her intense relief at my being back was a form of welcome.
On the other hand, there’s the relief: no need to scramble and rush up to the North Shore for a visit during the very same days when I need to settle back into being home. The car engine smelled like burning rubber or oil today while out for groceries. Instead of irritation I felt only gratitude — it wasn’t happening en route to Salem! I wasn’t gonna have to juggle car repair and a trip to Salem! I was headed home, where I would stay for the rest of the day!
It’s been two months and a week since she died — a fact I find amazing.
It’s amazing what a dampening effect weather and disappointing news can have. Parts of Colorado got nine inches of snow! Don McGahn didn’t show up to testify and he’s not in jail!
A delicious homemade broth with ramen was a definite perk last night. We could walk there too, which was nice.
It’s a maxi skirt, so it’s a decent bit of yardage.
Also, I’m a sucker for stripes, so this beautiful cotton skirt grabbed my eye.
I photographed it on a quilt made for D (13 years ago?) to show the consistency of palette.
This quilt represents probably as much success as I’ll get with choosing more subdued colors. It’s almost finished, PS.
This dress, while a 100% polyester, has just the kind of patterning that I love. Also, because it’s nearly sheer, it can easily be stitched on top of other fabrics. And check out the buttons!
So, what to do while Rome burns? Have a decent meal and indulge in colors that please you. Is that what I’m saying?
We had time to kill before our brunch date, so stopped for coffee in a hopping place situated under (and named for) an iconic sign: Olinger Mortuaries.
The building originally housed a mortuary and was the first in Denver. Billy the Kidd’s body came through the place. Now, they dropped the “O” to call the restaurant, “Linger.” K and I were two of four people over the age of 35.
After brunch (food to be posted later), we toured around in the car, always taking care not to hit motorized scooters. They were EVERYWHERE.
A quick stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art was sufficient: a small-ish space and unimpressive works.
The first floor featured a tattoo artist who has innovated a “watercolor” style of applying ink. I thought her subjects looked like they rolled in a paint box, leading to the conclusion that just because something is original doesn’t mean it’s good.
Wachob’s use of tattoo inks on paper were also “meh” (below). While the application of tattoo inks on paper may be novel, the results were not.
Her works on lemons filled a small alcove and were fun, but art? Maybe not.
It is common, I learned, for tattoo artists to practice their trade on fruit.
Upstairs, the curator’s organizing theme was a good one: artists’ creative responses to Georgia O’Keefe. Apart from some skillfully rendered abstractions on 10×10″ pieces of wood, though, I thought the work was uniformly awful. I didn’t photograph much of it.
I don’t know if the hall pictured below was part of that show, but as I said to K, “it’s hard to be enamored of a painted grid when you’ve seen it skillfully rendered with 1/4” strips of fabric.
(Hand positioned for scale. It is not actually touching the painting).
The top level featured a cafe with expansive views of the city and a rock garden.
Returning to the car I found a chalky design on the sidewalk. I liked it better than anything in the museum — by a sizable measure.
The base. Pieced. Bottom left sea green patch bugs me and presents itself as a problem to be solved.
What if I go back to my hybrid method of quilting? I used to combine piecing and appliqué in a somewhat slapdash way that embarrasses me a little now. It sent me into a purist phase — everything must be pieced! What if I now consider some of those “nice” purely pieced quilts as unfinished — or at least, as potential canvases?
How much fun to defy the lines of the seams and extend patterning in a spirit of play?
And, as always, how about adding more houses? The pinned one on the left, believe it or not, is a “discovered” house, fussy cut from a rayon blouse. The green house to the right was made by simply topping a vertical rectangle with a roof.
There are so many more pictures of Italy to share but they already feel like old news. But I will be sharing more, if you don’t mind… along with a half dozen mini book reviews. They’re piling up! Turning into homework (ugh!)
(My street — San Rufino Ave).
Maybe that was one of the reasons I was so taken with the statute of David at the Cathedral of San Rufino — the dynamism of his raised arm, about to strike! I deleted two entire chapters while I was at it. Highlight, click! Highlight, click!
Once home, I put up a batch of bone broth and made a delicious mushroom, cheese and scallion omelet. Yeah!
Above: the front rose window from the outside on Good Friday and from inside this morning, reflected in the glass flooring that’s been used in order to reveal Roman wall work underneath.
On one side of the cathedral, next to statues of Jesus, Mary, David, Isaiah and others, is a preserved arch opening into an ancient Roman space.
Here, a hokey inclusion of my own shadow to hint at the insubstantial brevity of this life.
Not three minutes later, there was a beautiful and perfect feather in my path. Some say finding a feather means an Angel is near. I thought cynically, it also means pigeons are near. But then, not two feet away, I found a sticker emblazoned with a pentagram, a symbol important in magic generally and to my sister personally. And so, there she was. Hello, Noreen!
I took out the little owl that I’ve been carrying around in my pocket (one of hers) and photographed it near a new picture of Francis in her honor from my favorite perch of this visit — my chair by the windowsill. Need I say — I am a sucker for religious iconography?
I finished the first Assisi-inspired quilt (below) and am rushing to finishing another to give my host before I leave.
Didn’t get to share pix of the sweet cafe where I had breakfast or the many incredible street views returning home, but look how long this is already. I’m going to load some wall and door pix on Flickr and otherwise will be posting about this trip for weeks to come!
The door into the woods is in the middle of that long wall on the right (below).
An Assisi-inspired WIP. All hand pieced but with some areas of appliqué — what I call a hybrid approach. I got a little inventive to accommodate the design (and to work with limited scraps brought along on the trip), but also in response to having heard 
Here are some shots of Saint Clare’s alb. Ssh! Don’t tell. Photos were prohibited there (you cannot believe what scant attention people pay to those signs, BTW). I did not use a flash.
There is some beautiful pull-work down the middle which you probably can’t see. I wondered if Clare had been a giantess, because the gown is BIG. But no, my host said the style was for cloth to pool about the feet. Perhaps, too, some length was cinched up by a simple belt.
This picture, from “The Little Flowers of Saint Clare,” tells of the time when Clare came up off her sick bed to raise the monstrance to pray for the sisters, who were defenseless to an advancing army of Saracens. She then prayed for then soldiers, too. A sweet voice came out of the object (“because of your love, I will watch over you and them always”) and the army changed course and went elsewhere.
Can’t remember if I mentioned, but we attended a choral performance at St. Clare’s the first night here (below).
