knitting

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

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.

rich batter chock-full of blueberries

sprinkled with a yummy streusel topping, ready to bake

Want to make it yourself? Here’s how:

CLICK HERE to continue reading diary of a V-Day Eve...

Tagged with: baking • blog • blueberries • coffee cake • disaster • frogging • knitting • lace • lilac leaf shawl • recipe • shawl

About

On January 4, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Lori

knitting in croatia

If you met me, you’d see a tall 51-year old woman with a big smile and bad posture. You’d hear my deep Texas accent, which I can’t seem to hide even for delicate New Yorkers’ ears, no matter how hard I try. You’d also hear about all the things I love – my dear husband and our many travels; my oldest daughter and her husband, who live in Austin; my 2nd daughter and her fiance, who live in Chicago; my son who lives here in Manhattan and who is a dashing man about town; and my youngest daughter, who is a freshman in college, far away in Texas. You’d hear about social psychology, since I have a PhD in the subject and acquire books in social psychology for a famous university press.

You’d also hear – of course – about all the creative things I love to do, and have been doing since I was five years old. I started embroidering pillowcases during play periods in pre-school, and graduated to crochet when my Aunt Meecie (aint meecie, if you’re from the south) taught me how to chain stitch. I’d chain stitch my way through skein after skein of acrylic yarn, always begging my grandfather Big Daddy to run to Ben Franklin’s for more yarn. He’d grumble, then put in his teeth and make a yarn run. Gradually my handwork and creative outlets became more sophisticated, and I branched out: handwork such as knitting, quilting, spinning, weaving, lacemaking, a bit of crocheting, and sewing; photography; and baking.

Or we could talk about books! I’m always up for a discussion about any books by Rushdie, or Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, anyone?), or Victor Hugo, or Vonnegut, or Robert Solomon, or Moby Dick, or poems by Yeats or Heaney or Milosz. Lots more – I love to read. Or we could talk about movies – I tend not to find blockbusters very interesting, but can talk til the cows come home about “littler” movies.

I also really love art of all kinds, especially the art of a young printmaker and book artist whose work can be found here. Check her out, and buy something!

And finally, just so you don’t think I’m all fancy Manhattan-like, my secret shames include America’s Funniest Home Videos, Poptarts, and Cap’n Crunch. I can’t stop laughing at the first one, and could eat the last two until the end of my days.