40 lbs. marrow bones post-roasting, pre-simmering. current status: STOCK!

Today he’ll be caramelizing 10 pounds of onions for the french onion soup, and chopping god knows how many pounds of cabbage (20, I learned!) for the cabbage soup. I don’t know if you can tell how giant that stock pot is, on the left, but we have three pots about that size now, filled with a very light, rich beef stock.  YUM. One thing is for sure, my house is going to smell great this afternoon.

In addition to relaxing and eating a really luscious meal yesterday, I got some knitting done. I don’t have a good hat, and my ears get very cold very quickly, and then I get a terrible earache. Kelly gifted me a hat pattern for my birthday, so I cast on yesterday and nearly finished — will do so today. It’s A Hat for Eudora, but I call it Berry Welty.

Berry Welty -- my birthday hat! That's a peek of madelinetosh DK in iris, for the hem. Sometimes you just need a hat, you know?

Yesterday we also took a nice walk — where else, Riverside Park. I noticed something kind of weird, but it’s just the schizo aspect of this part of autumn:

leaves ahead of me.....

no leaves behind me.

So happy fragmented Friday to you; I hope you are enjoying this late autumn day, whatever you’re doing. Here’s a Thanksgiving poem that’s really not about Thanksgiving:

Home For Thanksgiving

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons’
as harsh
as the fathers’.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly—
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us.

-Linda Pastan

central park, so moody

central park, so artistic

central park, such a destination

central park, so dreamy

And now, without further ado, here it is: my version of Thea Colman’s Vodka Gimlet, which I named Ozma’s Delight (my rav project page here). The yarn is Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted, which is merino and cashmere with a soupçon of magic.

my sweet, sweet Ozma Delight. I'll be wearing this one to death.

what's that behind you? yeah, that old trick worked on me.

There isn’t one thing I’d change about the sweater. I’m very very long-waisted, so I had to add a few inches before I did the waist detail; unfortunately, the sweater grew a bit so the detail doesn’t hit me at my waist. Fortunately, I still think it’s amazing-looking. I love everything about it, including the 6″ of ribbing at the cuffs. Of course you can’t see the orange hem that’s hidden on the inside, but you’ve seen that before, a few posts ago.

I figured out the details for my Laurayana sweater, so I’ve cast on and am working away. Knitting + reading + cups of Lady Gray tea = very happy me.

the glorious earthy red of a sumac, always takes my breath away

the sidewalk at the edge of the sidewalk

there's an enormous part of the park below the street level, down at the level of the West Side Highway. The light's very different down there; it reminded me of a di Chirico painting

I never ever EVER get tired of this view. It's everything an urban park should be.

all the lights were on with this one

this guy was quite small; there was a GIANT cardinal in Katie's backyard, remember, Katie?

As always, Mary Oliver has a beautiful poem celebrating this particular glory:

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Good job, trees.

moody berries -- don't know why, they just struck me as moody. sullen, perhaps.

i want a little house like this, on a river. in fact, i have a very well-developed and detailed fantasy about such a house. i know what it would look like, down to the pillows on the couch.

not the most brilliant orange i've ever seen, but it'll do!

knitters and other yarn-ey folk like me might look at this and see a brilliant semi-variegated yarn. at least, i did.

a short and winding road. leads to someone's door, i'm sure.

Two weeks from today will be my birthday, and I was telling my husband this morning that in the lead-up to my birthday, I always find myself feeling more and more grateful…..about every little thing. Light. Color. Sweet air. smoke from fireplaces. Good coffee and tea. Thinking. Smiling. Everything. I feel overwhelmed by it, and I’m even grateful for that.

We generally restrict our visits to the area around Phoenicia, Hunter Mountain, and Windham, though we did explore the northern parts once en route to Montreal and Quebec City. But it’s this area I know best, and dearly love. To a Texan, mountains and forests are really special, so they always thrill me no matter how many times I come here. And fall color — I used to think that robins and colored leaves were made-up things, just for storybooks. So even though the fall color is not that great this year, thanks to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene, it’s still thrilling to little old Texan me.

no reds and oranges, but lots of vivid yellows

gorgeous rushing creeks, water pounding against rocks

sometimes yellow + creek!

i just thought this was super creepy. those two muddy puddles looked like eyes to me.

i always love this and have dozens of photos like it

this one too. rocks and leaves in a puddle. why do i love it so?

and this, the color and texture make me so happy

Hunter Mountain -- autumn technicolor, waiting for the blast of snow that will transform the landscape

THRILLING

makes my heart soar

yours too?

Here's my wonderful Wintry Mix sweater, by the way!

this autumn, 2011

The promised partly-cloudy but sunny skies never materialized yesterday; it was quite chilly and the skies were always flat gray, covered in clouds, but it was still a beautiful day. We hike and tramped around, ate some great food at Brios, and generally enjoyed this autumn day. The devastation is kind of shocking to see; Hurricane Irene was a joke in NYC, ballyhooed and overly prepared-for, but just a bit of wind and little rain. Up here, though, bridges and roads were destroyed, homes were devastated, belongings lost.

My Wintry Mix sweater is absolutely wonderful to wear; it’s a bit more rumpled-looking in the photo than it really is. I’d been hiking in it all day, and pulling on/off a coat, so it’s a bit goofed-up looking by my shoulder in a way that it’s not, really. I love everything about it, and imagine I’ll wear it a LOT this fall and winter!

It’s not because I just don’t care anymore, don’t have an interest in maintaining this blog, don’t care to stay in communication. Nope, it’s not that either.

It’s not that I’ve quit thinking, quit noticing, quit pondering. It’s not that I’ve given up on knitting, though it is true that my burning desire to knit all the time is in a lull. Still, I’m just about to finish the band on my featherweight cardigan, then I’ll do the sleeves. It’s adorable, y’all. Wait until you see it.

It’s not that life has become boring; in fact, if anything it’s because life is not at all boring! I’ve been seeing friends regularly, going to my writing group, my book club, my poetry group; out to lunch and dinner with friends; I have been out and about in the city, and going to free concerts in Riverside Park (including a semi-bluegrass concert — semi because it didn’t have a banjo or a fiddle!! WHAT???!, and also a Middle Eastern concert, complete with lovely and breathtaking belly dancer); I took a 12-mile hike in the Catskills with a friend and learned that while I love to walk, hiking is not my bag if the rocks are slimy and mossy and muddy.

I’ve been keeping up with my strength training, although I’ve just hit a pretty nasty snag. Someone hugged me very hard last week and broke one of my ribs. YIKES. First, yikes to the pain, a broken rib is excruciating; second, yikes to the setback; and third, yikes! Are my bones so brittle that a hard hug breaks a rib? Really??

And I’ve been writing poetry, which turns out to be a lot of fun. I was too intimidated, and thought I’m a brilliant consumer of poetry and have poetic turns-of-phrase now and then, but I’m no poet (but look at my feet, they’re Longfellows….hahaha). Well, I tried anyway, and it’s wonderful (writing poetry, that is….my first poem, not so much). When I’m a little less shy about it, I’ll post one or two here.

Despite this busy-ness, it’s the first absolutely gorgeous spring day here, and I just had to get out in it for a little breath of air. I took my camera to my dearly beloved Riverside Park, and enjoyed all the blooming flowers in the beds, the gorgeous yellow-green of the leaves, seeing everyone in much less clothing and many more smiles. I think Europe has had this weather for a while, from what I gather, but this is the first one for us, as far as I remember.

So here, a bit of Manhattan:

my standard shot, and why this is my favorite park. It's just so lovely.

this is where parents take their kids in NYC -- these are our playgrounds. Very different from the kinds of playgrounds my kids played in, but filled with parents playing with their children.

the persistence of spring, forcing its way through the cracks

Happy spring, it’s so nice to say that and feel it!

From the photographer: This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

Music by my friend: Ludovico Einaudi – “Nuvole bianche” with permission.

Chinatown is not what it seems. Nothing and no one in Chinatown is what it seems. There’s a lot of subterfuge being played out and you don’t even know it, unless you’re there to look for it. I wasn’t — I was just there to enjoy the gorgeous blue skies we had yesterday, and to watch all the goings-on. As always, we bought some fish and veggies, and we stopped for a bit of Vietnamese lunch. It was a nice day out. To minimize the length of the post in case you’re not interested in the photos, they’re here as a gallery – but you can click any image to see it full-size:

And now it’s March 6, the brightest day of the year! Thanks for bearing with me. Today I’m doing some housecleaning and baking some bread, then I’m going to spread out my knitting and cast on something red. I have no business casting on a new project, but I find that I need something red, and you know how that goes.

winner of the best mullet prize

the holiday market set up in Union Square

the sky made this shift in 45 minutes

Then when I was transferring subway lines in Times Square, I heard these guys — Roosevelt Dime — and I really had to tear myself away, they were so good. Usually Andean flute players are set up there, and while I do enjoy Andean flutes (especially when I heard them in Puno, around Lake Titicaca in Peru),  these guys brought it.

Roosevelt Dime, in Times Square - MAN. I do always love a banjo and a washtub bass.

Finally, exiting my subway stop I emerge above ground at my corner market, all duded up for the holidays. I probably shop here every single day, at least once:

Westside Market, my corner grocery store

And now you’ve just spent the afternoon with me. I wish you’d really been with me, we could’ve had such a nice conversation while we stopped for dark hot chocolate with marshmallows at Max Brenner.  You probably would’ve warned me against drinking through the sippy hole, because you’d have realized that the marshmallows would clog up against the hole and if I pulled to take a hard sip it would come shooting through the hole along with a big mouthful of scorching hot chocolate. You’d have stopped that from happening, you’re very nice that way.

Have a wonderful wintry evening y’all –