Food

random threads

On February 18, 2010, In Food, books, knitting, By Lori

#1. Nothing screams “woman of a certain age” like a big fan on the desktop blowing on medium speed. During the month of February. In very cold Manhattan. What’s next for me – red hats and purple sweaters?

festival!

#2. Tonight is Night of Knitting at the City Bakery Hot Chocolate Festival. Am I excited?! I’m restraining myself from rampant and later-embarrassing overuse of exclamation points. I’m a very shy person who rarely leaves home, except to go to work, but I’m looking forward to being in this place tonight, full of strangers who also knit and love hot chocolate. For $30, City Bakery provides a full (and sumptuous, I’m sure) dinner, plus dessert, and unlimited wine, beer, coffee, and 10 kinds of hot chocolate. Plus, knitting workshops galore, local yarn shops representing, and a spinning workshop. The event sold out weeks ago, so I’m glad I hopped on it as soon as it was announced. I don’t know a soul (unless I don’t know that I know you through rav), but I cannot wait.

#3. Very sadly, since there’s just not enough time in the day/week, I don’t get to read nearly as much as I’d like. I belong to a book club that meets once a month, and it takes me the entire month to get the book read. Some months I can’t even accomplish that. Last month’s book was just wonderful – Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, as was this month’s book – The Partisan’s Daughter, by Louis de Bernieres. It’s not always the case that I like (or can even bear to read) our group’s selections, so it was great having two in a row that were rich and wonderful. I even finished The Partisan’s Daughter a few days early, so I flipped to the menu on my Kindle en route to work this morning and started reading The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, by Twyla Tharp. It’s written with an easy tone, as if she’s just talking to you, and so far it’s good – about the discipline and routine that feed creativity. I am a creative person, but in the realm of craft, not art. I have loved books and words with great intensity, my whole life. My mind spontaneously produces wonderful images and metaphors. A couple of weeks ago, I described a feeling of being a hollow shell full of birds. Wow! Evocative, powerful, and apt. But when I sit down to write, everything flattens. All psychological depth disappears and I write “and then she blah blah blah, and then he blah blah blah. And then they blah blah blah.” BO-RING.

Like many people, I have a sense that if I could just let go, I could be more creative. Of course, that’s easy to say! But when you sit at your desk, how do you “let go?” I do like the idea of discipline and routine as an entry to a creative process, so maybe I’ll try that. Anyway, the book is good, applicable to anyone who is (or wants to be) creative in any way, and not at all New Age-y or mysterious. You might be touched by God, as Mozart was said to be, but he also worked harder than anyone else, and was much more disciplined than the movie Amadeus suggested, so his gift worked because he worked it.

And, it’s Thursday – halle-flippin-lujah!

Tagged with: city bakery • creativity • discipline • hot chocolate festival • jhumpa lahiri • knitting • partisan's daughter • twyla tharp • woman of a certain age

WOTN Mondays

On February 15, 2010, In Food, knitting, lace, love it, photography, shawl, socks, sweets, By Lori

If you’re in the know, WOTN means what’s on the needles? Maybe I just made that up. Anyway, now you’re in the know too, so feel free to adopt WOTN Mondays for your own use, if you think you might be lazy on Mondays and need a guaranteed post. Ha. Not that I’m lazy today…..

So, WOTN! Item #1, the wedding shawl. Nupps are “fun.” I won’t show the shawl in its entirety, to preserve the surprise, but little bits here and there seem ok. Case in point: nupps.

nupps (unblocked, of course)

Next up on the needles: socks for my youngest daughter (nonrav link), whose dorm floors are very cold. I want to finish them by the time she comes home for spring break in a couple of weeks, so I’m alternating these with the shawl. (Doesn’t that gusset look mighty huge to you? It does to me.)

A's socks

While not technically on the needles, these are destined to be on the needles very soon – sock yarns chosen by my oldest daughter. Katie, which one do you want me to use first?

Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock: Beverly

Knit One Crochet Too: Meadow

When I showed my husband this photo of his blueberry coffee cake, he said “I want some now.” Me too honey, me too….but we’re back on our diets. Too bad:

I. want. some. now.

And finally, in this brief period between snows, we walked over to Riverside Park – our back yard, kind of – and I took a picture I take over and over, in all seasons. Here it is today:

winter view

And here it is a few months ago, and a few before that:

November

May

Seeing the park blanketed with snow, and ice in the Hudson River, made me think about Lent. I didn’t grow up in a church that focused on Lent (ours focused on the fun combination of both fire and brimstone), and I’m not religious in that way, but the idea of it struck me. There’s a longing for life to come – the life that’s pent up in the trees and plant life buried under the snow. The wheel turns, it’s bleak now, but rejuvenation is coming. It’s coming. The world will begin again, as it always does.

Tagged with: blueberry cake • hedera • Lent • Riverside Park • shawl • socks • wedding shawl • winter • WOTN

diary of a V-Day Eve

On February 13, 2010, In Food, baking, frogging, knitting, lace, recipe, shawl, sweets, By Lori

It’s been one of those 2 steps forward, 3 steps back kind of days. I spent the morning redoing things on the blog – things like tracking down plug-ins, finding dumb API keys, rediscovering the widgets I’d used, rewriting my “about” page, stuff like that. I’d been happy with things the way were, so I wasn’t working in the spirit of doing it right/better this time, but rather trying to recreate what I’d had. Ah well. I’m mostly there, just minus all my posts.

On the knitting front, I made it through the entire part of the shawl chart with the big set of nupps. And they were fun! I definitely learned how to do them better by the last row of them, but I was happy enough. Then, knitting the last set of lace rows to complete the chart, and *clunk*. Something was way wrong. After each row – partly due to overweening pride – I’d stopped, stretched out the lace, admired it, looked for problems, found none. After each pattern repeat, I rechecked the stitches. If each pattern repeat was correct, and each row was correct, I’d be in good shape, right? And yet I’d really screwed up something, somewhere. How hadn’t I seen it in all my looking?! Too much pride, too much “look, isn’t that cool what I did?” I guess. And so I had to pull that whole section out. Had I put in a lifeline? NO.

So I held my breath, got out a small tapestry needle and a roll of dental floss, and tried to put one in, below the nupps chart. A tiny little stitch at a time, through the cobweb-weight lace. plink. plink. plink. plink. plink. Across the row…..and then pull pull pull pull, unknitting. It worked, and so now I begin again. At least this time I’ll do the nupps pretty well from the very first row. So with the shawl too, I’m back where I started.

My sweetheart and I have been dieting – him on Atkins, me on low-cal – but here it is, Valentine’s Day (tomorrow). We’re going out for dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Awash, and then we’ll come home for something sweet. He really loves blueberry coffee cake, so I just popped one in the oven. Photos of a slice tomorrow, but for now, The Making of the Coffee Cake, followed by its recipe.