Sustainable Hats at the Harvest Festival-La Plaza Cultural

It was a gorgeous day on Saturday October 6th, 2012 when many of the community gardens of the east village had events to celebrate fall with the Harvest Festival 2012.  Our community gardens are places for people to meet, for children to play, for food to grow. They are places to get some oxygen and watch the bees, birds and plant life to flourish.

I wanted to use my skills to celebrate the garden and what it does for me. I decided to make sustainable hats.

I got together a few of my milliner friends, Wanda Chambers, Jazmin Zorlu, and Miki Katagiri to help me construct hats from recycled paper that could be decorated with leaves, twigs and flowers. We also put a packet of seeds in each one so the hat could be worn and then planted. The money  that we raised is for our cold frame fund. Cold frames help gardeners keep growing food through the winter and start their seeds in the spring when it is still cold. Not only do we enjoy the looks of the garden, the birds and the oxygen, but we eat from it too. It was a great day, hats we worn and the garden was happy.

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Bastille DayMill-a-Bout

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Bastille DayMill-a-Bout: On Saturday, July 14th, I joined my fellow milliners of the Milliners Guild for our annual Bastille Day Mill-a-Bout on the ...

Bastille DayMill-a-Bout

On Saturday, July 14th, I joined my fellow milliners of the Milliners Guild for our annual Bastille Day Mill-a-Bout on the High Line of Chelsea, NYC. It was a gorgeous evening with a slight breeze. Everyone was decked out in their raise the barricade finest. One of my customers showed up in a hat that she bought from me fifteen years ago. She and the hat looked fantastic!! We wore hats ranging from Royalist to Napoleonic, with lots of plumes, flowers and cockades.


There was the usual good time had by all, telling jokes and exchanging insider sewing tips. We gave out bateau paper hats and Milliners Guild pins, and then had a nice visit amongst the lovely wild flowers of the High Line.

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Share camp 2012-FOOD!

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Share camp 2012-FOOD!:  I was talking yesterday about my experience at Share Camp 2012. What I really love is eating yummy food. We had a fantastic smörgåsbord ...

Share camp 2012-FOOD!

 I was talking yesterday about my experience at Share Camp 2012.
What I really love is eating yummy food. We had a fantastic smörgåsbord of great eats that everybody made.

  There is a wonderful mix of people from different countries- Japan, Korea, China, Russia, Poland, Columbia, Slovenia, to name a few. Many people bring the ingredients and cook up their native dishes and other yummy ones that are fun for everyone to enjoy!

 Here is a small list of yummy things that I sampled. (I am not even listing meat dishes,because I didn't eat those.) Korean Pancakes, Chili Brussel Sprouts, Cervice, Kale Salad, Raw Chocolate Pie, Sushi, Spicy Green Beans, Raw Tarte Tatin, Peanut Fudge, Summer Rolls, Curry Stew, and sushi sushi sushi!

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Share Camp 2012

Fascinators, Hats, Food and Horticulture (FH2): Share Camp 2012: Last weekend I was invited to attend Share Camp 2012. This fun event is a spontaneous music and arts festival organized by Share ( www.sha...

Share Camp 2012

Last weekend I was invited to attend Share Camp 2012. This fun event is a spontaneous music and arts festival organized by Share (www.share.dj/share/) and hosted by Grace Space (www.grace-exhibition-space.com/about.php) owners Jill McDermid-Hokanson and Erik Hokanson.

In addition to leisure, fine dining, and community fun, there were amazing videos, arias, fire performance, modern dancing, experimental music jams, and fire sculpture.

Part of why I was there was to assist my husband, composer Wolfgang von Stuermer (iwvs.am) with his surround sound audio-visual installation "blue cube ++". Together, and with the help of others we constructed at 10'x10' fabric covered cube. There were eight channels of sound inside and video projected on the outside surfaces. We placed mats inside, so the sounds could be leisurely enjoyed under the stars.

What is great about communities like this one is that everyone can contribute to the whole. Also, everyone has something to contribute. If you want to jam on a guitar, dance, make scratchy sounds with your iPad, project video on the trees, or swim in the pool with fish projected on the surface, those things were all possible and encouraged. In an environment that is an open slate, many amazing things are allowed to happen. I will be talking about my experience there over the next couple of days.