Woodbury Fall Arts Fest

 

http://fallartsfest.blogspot.com/

 

 

I'm so excited to be participating in the Woodbury, NJ Fall Arts Fest on September 29th from 11-6 pm.  The location looks beautiful and the music and vendors will be amazing.

 

 

I've been busy getting prints made and framing new images taken at Bartram's Farm, the Spring Gardens Community Garden and the Ambler Arboretum.  As a grad student at Ambler, I get to walk the grounds in every season so I began photographing the woodlands and formal gardens with my square format camera during breaks in classes.  It's a beautiful setting to study in.

 

 

 Philadelphia, Bridge

 Spring Gardens Community Garden, Lamb's Ear

 

Dingman's Ferry, Fern Forest Floor

 



 Bordentown, NJ

 

 Smithville, NJ

 

 New Garden, Cucumbers

 

Burlington County Farm Show

 

 One of my new clay pieces                          New terrarium creations

 

Lots of local trips to farms and small towns, as well as camping and hiking will influence my booth, as well as the terrarium making we are engaged in for my Forest Ecology class. I also worked in a clay studio again this summer and some of my newest pieces may make an appearance at my table as well. 

 

And as halloween is getting closer, I'll be selling photo cards I made using pictures I took in Charleston and here in my neighborhood near Girard Ave.

What Makes a Neighborhood

Great local color and history

 My design class has been focusing on one neighborhood in Philadelphia and researching the neighborhood's history, the current uses, the projects planned for the space and the community members and their opinions on what is and could be happening there. We're reading Image of the City by Kevin Lynch at the same time, where three cities, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles (circa 1960) are examined for their successes and failures of imagability and what people who live there think of the cities, remember and love. It's an interesting thing to think about what makes a neighborhood great and what makes it miss the mark.

 

Historic details and architecture

New Cookbooks for the New Year!

I just found out I have a cousin who works at Powell's Books in Portland and I was so excited I asked for a gift card from there for the holidays. While most of the books are going to be for school, yesterday I ordered tons of cookbooks!  I found one great new book on making jams, pickles, sauces and crackers, then I browsed all the low priced used cookbooks and found book after book under $1:

Bikes of Philly Photo Contest

Leave a comment under your favorite bike photo on my flickr site and get entered for a chance to win a free bike photo!  

Screenprinting at Bartram's Gardens

I scored some great new t-shirts, hand printed by artists on the lawn at Bartram's Gardens this weekend. I heard about the Art in the Open program through the Print Center's email newsletters, and stopped by the Buffalo Exchange for some cheap t-shirts to print and decided to layer the designs over each other.

While I was there I wandered around and checked out the trees, flower gardens, some cool raised beds with pitcher plants and hand twisted vine trellises and the boardwalks to the waterfront.  They are having a membership sale for $25 till the end of June and you get all kinds of free passes and discounts.  I picked up some unusual tomatoes and peppers while I was there, they have on sale for $3 each, pretty good for good sized plants and varieties like Czech Black and Bishop's Hat you won't ever find at Home Depot.

Philly Bikes, Reading Terminal Market

I'm going to start posting my newest Bikes of Philly photographs today and throughout the week. I'm leading up to my bike photo show at Fairmount Bicycles on Sunday April 17th from 2-6 pm, for the Arts Crawl in Fairmount. They are at 2014 Fairmount Ave. I'm also showing across the street at Wellpoint Oriental Medicine!

I decided to offer a free print if one of these bikes belongs to you! So far only one person contacted me about their Bike Love bicycles in Northern Liberties.

Check them out and tell me what you think. http://www.etsy.com/shop/allisonostertag

Snow Day in Fairmount

Photos from the Bike Path

Cooking From The Garden and Farm

I've been cooking every weekend, mostly because I have no money and need food and getting it from the garden where it grows for free is the only way to eat, but I love cooking so it's been a fun time. I stopped by the garden last weekend and found turnips, chard, over-grown scallions, chives, fennel and the usual herbs and a few leaves of collards that were not hole-city. Oh, and a few red tomatoes!

I got them home and wanted to capture my harvest so I started taking pictures on the counter, which turned out to be a great backround for green veggies. I'm just so proud I can grow a vegetable. They may not be gorgeous, but they're mine!

I cooked up some Middle Eastern Stew, then muffins, first with banana, barley, oat, then with pumpkin from the Halloween pumpkin and pumpkin seeds.

Washing Greens

Cutting the Chard

This weekend I cooked up similar but better stew, Yam and Chard Stew.

1 large yam

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 turnip (I used three small ones)

1/2 yellow onion

10 large chard leaves

1/2 cup rice (I mixed basmati and arborio)

3/4 cup red lentils (I got them from Margerum's Herbs)

1/2 tablespoon curry

1/2 tablespoon cumin

salt and pepper

I'm working on my food photography in hopes of getting some cookbook or local farm/food vendor advertising work. If you know anyone, let them know I'll do it for free to get some experience!

I convinced my family to fork over $4.50 a lb. for a bird from a local farm in Lancaster and despite all of the complaining about the price of turkeys at ShopRite, it was beautiful and tasty. We joked about having no idea how to cook a turkey without a pop-up button or wrapped in plastic, and it did take an hour longer than we thought it would, but it was super good.

I brought over beets and Peruvian Purple potatoes from the garden (further convincing my family I was crazy), but my mom loved the potatoes and you barely need butter they're so smooth. My mom has a funny masher that makes everything look like fat noodles.

More Pictures from Swap O Rama Rama

Dana Henry's design for a Franken-pin. Her designs were fantastically simple and amazing.

My finished felt interpretation of her design.

The line for screen printing was long at times. This is the chickadee line (I got that print last year on a tee I love).

The Handmade Philly table was popular with the 8 and under crowd as well as adults.

A finished creation.