marthaknits

Rhinebeck

2009-10-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

I have been so bad about posting personal stuff because I started another blog. Take a peek and let me know what you think.
Anyway, I went to Rhinebeck to the Sheep & Wool festival a few weekends ago. We stayed in Woodstock with our friends at their home tucked away in the woods. It was a spectacular weekend with beautiful fall foliage. The dads took the kids at the festival for kid fun, while Alison and I walked around and petted wool. I showed amazing restraint and only came home with soap. I don't need any more fiber in my home. In fact, I probably have a few years of knitting to get through the fiber I already have. I just inherited some wool from a woman who was cleaning out the house of a departed woman. She truly had a stash beyond life expectancy. Actually what I saw, which was supposedly about 1/3 of the amount was mind blowing.

At the end of the festival my friends (who were already in the market) caved in and bought a beautiful silk angora bunny rabbit. I've always kind of wanted a bunny to spin from, but didn't want to bring yet another pet home. My friend doesn't spin, so maybe we can trade some fur for some spun angora. How fun! The bunny's name is Caramel.

A Princess and her hens

2009-05-05T13:14:00.001-07:00

A princess and her chickens. Does life get better than this? Lindsay has a classmate who's family is from Mexico City. The princess mania has caught on there with a vengeance. Sometimes girls will wear princess costumes to their first communion in place of the traditional white wedding gown. Yikes! There are women who hand sew these princess costumes and the detail is amazing. When the mother of Isabell asked me if I wanted to order a princess dress for Lindsay (her mom was coming for a visit) I jumped at the chance. This dress is undoubtedly the fanciest dress we have in the house. The detail is amazing. There is boning, piping, lacing, you name it. And it cost less to buy than one from the Disney store.

Twilight

2009-04-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

I'm about 25 years too old to be admitting this, but my friend has invited me to a Twilight party tonight. I'm happy for a chance to see some friends and have an early evening. For those of you too intellectual to know about the Twilight books, they are vampire romance stories. Okay just typing that made me cringe, but I found them enjoyable to read. This year was an extremely difficult year for me and reading some trashy fluff was perfect for my distracted state of mind.

I offered to make dessert for tonight and chose this cupcake recipe. The whole thing looked insanely sweet, so I substituted a mixture of strawberry and red currant jam for the cherry filling the recipe called for. I thinned it out with some Quantreau to make the blood drips on the top. I wish I had done that for the filling because it seemed to cut down some of the sweetness. I haven't tried one, but I think they turned out sufficiently cheesy!

Hat from Lisa

2009-03-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

This beautiful hat was a present from Lindsay's aunt and my sister Lisa. It has become Lindsay's favorite hat and fits her beautifully. I'll have to pin Lindsay down to take an overhead photo of the hat because it comes together in thirds to meet at the top.

Curious Lindsay

2009-03-09T17:29:00.001-07:00

Have you ever subscribed to a magazine, decided you didn't like it enough to renew, but then kept receiving copies for-freaking-ever?? They are trying to keep their subscriber list looking healthy to pull in advertisers. This is why I still receive Parents magazine every month. Not because I love the open this can and add this frozen package type of recipes they have.

Anyhow, now that I've explained why I even have Parents magazine in the house I can get to the point. Lindsay saw some cartoon characters on the back cover and decided to flip through the magazine. I was on a work call, so I wasn't paying close attention. Suddenly she gets excited and says, "That's me with Curious George!!". And sure enough, Getty sold one of my photos of Lindsay to make this ad.........

It's from a trip to Montauk the summer before last when she was 2 and a half. It's always been a photo that I think sums up childhood exploration and curiosity well. Oh, and I sewed those little green shorts.

Edmund Ivan Lazar - June 11, 1924-February 12, 2009

2009-02-15T17:27:00.001-08:00

How can I possibly describe my father? He was born into a prominent Hungarian family, but lost his wealth during the war, fled his country to start a new life, raised children as a single father and never once complained about how hard his life was. He enjoyed his life tremendously and had no regrets whatsoever. He loved his family, his friends and baked all kinds of goodies for all of us to enjoy. He was a gentleman and he loved women. Three wives and two daughters! He loved to be surrounded by all of our little girlfriends, and listened to all of our silly conversations with delight. He taught us about the world, about conservation and renewable energy. He taught us about liberal politics, about nurturing any animal that crossed our path, about laughter and about Mozart. He taught us to think for ourselves instead of following the flock. In his last few months, he taught us about bravery. I will need that now because I miss him so very much. I love you dad!

New Ideas

2009-01-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

This blog has taken some turns since I first started out. It began as a way to keep track of my knitting projects. Then Ravelry came into existence, which is a fabulous site and pretty much did away with the need to track my projects on this blog. So that left blogging about my family and some ranting about the environment.

Well I started a new blog, which is called TheNewGreenBlog. It gives ideas about living a simpler, greener life in the city. Please stop by and let me know what you think. It's in the early stages, so I'm still tweaking the design part.

Ice Skating

2008-12-26T17:58:00.001-08:00

We decided to spend the day after Christmas at the local ice skating rink. This was the first time Lindsay used single-blade skates. She got used to balancing on them while we walked to the rink. It's amazing how much better her coordination has gotten since last year. While she didn't really want to let go of our hands completely, she did a few times. And she did well. So laps were skated, hot cocoa was drunk and a good time was had by all.

My Little Ballerina

2008-12-13T08:21:00.001-08:00

On thursday, Lindsay had her first ballet recital. The whole thing was so sweet, it made your teeth hurt. Little girls in pink, bunchy tights with tutus tucked into the waistband, squirmy girls at quiet moments, super-earnest girls trying to do the Tea Dance from the Nutcracker, Lindsay running over to give me a hug in the middle of the performance, etc. I mean, aren't we just programmed as parents to eat this stuff up??? I sure am.

What made me the most proud of my little girl was, when receiving a bouquet of flowers from us, Lindsay asking if she could divide the bouquet up between all of the girls in her class. I was about to explode with pride.

Thanksgiving Dinner

2008-12-02T16:01:00.001-08:00

This is Lindsay's account of Thanksgiving. I think it's a pretty good one. I mean, who doesn't like dessert best? We had gingerbread cake with whipped cream that I made and we had brownies and ginger molasses cookies that Graham's father made.

Thanksgiving Travel

2008-12-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

For Thanksgiving we drove up to Neil's parent's house. You can see us all in our minivan in Lindsay's drawing. It was a nice visit with good food, early morning babysitting by nana and papa, and a small hike. We decided to go back Saturday to give ourselves a day to re-group. It was a good thing as Neil's back went out and he was in excruciating pain all day yesterday.

Here's my illustration of the drive home.

Say Cheese

2008-11-10T14:00:00.001-08:00

Whenever I travel I like to explore not only the various towns, but also the food. I find it fascinating to wander through village markets and check out the new tastes and smells. My dad lives in Provence, which is home to some of the most delicious food in the world. In any tiny town that has a market day, you will find the loveliest local cheeses, produce and charcutrie.

These gorgeous veggies were in his local supermarket in Lorgues.

Every time I visit my dad, I love to sample the cheese. Last time I came I barely fit into my pants by the end of the trip. I find my father's illness stressful, so who could deny oneself a little comfort in the way of tangy, stinky or creamy cheese? My sister came along on this trip and is as eager as I am to taste as many different kinds of cheese as I am.

Here is a sampling of cheeses we bought today.

The plate on the left:
The bright orange cheese is a mimolette extra vieille. The extra vielle means that it was aged an extra long amount of time. 18 months in this case. I think this cheese was the hardest for us to describe. It looks like a cheddar, but doesn't taste like one at all. It was a hard cheese, but wasn't crumbly or hard. I said elastic and Lisa said waxy. Neither description sounds particularly appealing though. Here's a more professional description. The next photo is a close-up of the rind of this cheese.
The creamy white cheese is a Tomme de chevre, which is a goat cheese. It was the most creamy decadent cheese we bought. And when I say creamy, it wasn't bland. Absolutely delicious! I searched for a good description from the pros on this cheese and didn't find any that resembled this little circle of heaven.

The plate on the right:
The large cheese on the bottom is a brie according to my stepmother. It is a perfectly good cheese. Seems a little sweeter and milder than bries I've had in the states.
The cheese to the left and above is a Ecorce de sapin, which is a triple cream cheese from the Franch-Comté region. It is wrapped in spruce bark, which imparts a subtle piney flavor to it. Sounds weird, but is delicious!
The cheese on the top is a Saint-Félicien Moulé å la louche. It's a stinky cow's milk cheese. It is very soft and drips off your knife when you bring it up to your bread. Yum.

My friend just sent me the funniest quote about the French and cheese:
"France is a country that understands…the range of smells that makes life interesting includes some rather severe ones…When they smell [Soumantrain, a particularly pungent cheese], Americans think 'Good God!' The Japanese think, 'I must now commit suicide.' The French think 'Where's the bread?'" - Luca Turin

Oh, and did I mention that they have zillions of olives here. Growing in my dad's yard, in fields, and on random trees along the street. Don't try and eat one from the tree unless you want your mouth to be stuck in a permanent pucker. It's a joke the locals play on olive-loving tourists. These guys need to be cured or pressed to be edible.

Cautiously Optimistic

2008-11-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

I am so hopeful listening to various reports that Obama will win the election. I keep thinking about the world series a bunch of years ago when the Yankees were losing to the Red Sox. At a certain point the Red Sox started to paint their field (the game was at Yankee stadium) with the words World Champions. They lost. Oops. I can wait to do my victory dance.

Who looks the part?

2008-10-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

Is there any question of who looks more presidential? An elegant man who refuses to get pulled down into the muck? Or a pathetic man grasping at anything to get attention?

Obama Roasts McCain

2008-10-18T06:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago John McCain and Barack Obama made speeches at the Alfred E. Smith dinner. It's a Catholic charity that has always brought in presidential candidates and other high-powered politicians. Alfred E. Smith was mayor of NYC and the first Catholic to run for president. So every 4 years they have the presidential hopefuls make speeches, and they are required to be funny and roast one another.

Here's Obama's speech.

Bearded Ladies

2008-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

When we got back from visiting my father in France (photos to come), the girls were 2 weeks older. They weren't appreciably bigger, however two of them grew beards. I think these ladies might be of Eastern European descent with all that facial hair! But, in their case it looks awfully cute.

This is Edie.

Here they all are in their coop.

Lou Lou and Edie on top of their coop run.

We didn't get a photo of Andie that really shows off her nutty hair doo, but I think you get the idea.

Chick Magnet

2008-09-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

The coop arrived a few weeks ago and the girls are now used to living outdoors. The first photo shows Andie with her increasingly crazy hair-doo outside of the coop for a little free-ranging. Chickens are omnivores and love a varied diet. By eating grass and plants (along with all kinds of bugs), they get a lot of beta-carotene in their diet. Much more than the mostly corn-fed factory chickens get. The yolks of the chickens who eat their greens are a much deeper, richer yellow than we are used to getting from the grocery stores here. In Europe, the yolks are still quite orange. My girls haven't started producing eggs yet. That should happen sometime around Christmas/The New Year.

The second photo shows my friend Ruth the chick magnet. She came to visit right before we left to visit my dad in France. The girls absolutely adored Ruth and kept trying to eat her shirt. They are 6 weeks old in this photo. At this point they were still making cheep cheep noises.

So Many Expressions

2008-09-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know this blog was originally about knitting, and now it seems to be about all things chicken. I'm assuming the novelty will wear off a bit, and I will start knitting again...

In the meantime...Neil and I were talking about how many expressions are derived from our poultry friends. Here a list of a bunch. Please add to the list.

-chicken/ chicken hearted (acting cowardly)
-strutting like a rooster (showing off)
-cocky (I guess pretty much the same as above)
-hen party (a party for women only, especially one that is organized for a woman who is soon going to get married)
-hen pecked (a husband who suffers from a nagging or domineering wife)
-laid an egg (to fail to make people enjoy or be interested in something) Anyone know why this has negative connotations?
-egg head (again, anyone know the origin of this one?)
-crowing (announcing something great)
-cock-eyed (this is to do with how a rooster sizes up a potential threat. They won't look directly at the foe, preferring to try and seem nonchalant and look straight ahead. All the time they are trying desperately to see via their peripheral vision.
-chicken feed/scratch (a very small amount of money, especially money that is paid for doing a job)
-coming home to roost (if you say that chickens are coming home to roost, you mean that bad or silly things done in the past are beginning to cause problems)
-a bad egg (someone who behaves in a bad or dishonest way)
-a good egg (a person with good qualities such as kindness)
-egg someone on
-a chicken and egg situation (a situation in which it is impossible to say which of two things existed first and which caused the other)
-have egg on your face (to seem stupid because of something you have done)
-a nest egg (an amount of money that you have saved)
- put all of your eggs in one basket (to risk losing everything by putting all your efforts or all your money into one plan or one course of action)
-as scarce as hen's teeth (to be very difficult or impossible to find)
-be no spring chicken (to not be young any more)

Vote!

2008-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

I got my voter info card in the mail the other day.

It looks as though they are trying something new and you need to pull out your 3-D glasses to get the information.

3 weeks old

2008-08-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the girls at 3 weeks. Andie is sporting a very sophisticated hairdoo. They enjoyed munching on the grass and eating mosquitoes that I smacked on my legs and then handed to them. Gotta give them a taste for those buggers!

Peaceful vacation

2008-08-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

Well we loaded up the girls in the car and drove up to the Berkshires. The drive was relaxing and comfortable.

Ha ha. Actually Lindsay is nicely showing you how roomy the new brooder cage is for the little ones. Our friend Courtenay loaned us her dog's cage and it is great. I was getting sick of having no real solid floor on the bottom of the first cage. I had to lay down a towel and then put paper towels on top of it. The girls learned how to scratch the ground a week ago, so the paper towels went everywhere, and subsequently their poop went everywhere as well. This new cage has a solid bottom so I can lay down pine shavings. Chickens get sick with cedar shavings, so they should never be used. I put cardboard around the bottom of the cage to keep the pine shavings from being kicked out of the cage. It's working perfectly. Plus the chicks have gotten so huge! Their heads are about the size their entire bodies were when they first arrived.

The first day we were here, Lindsay and I went out to hunt for good perching sticks. We put in two perches and already the girls have discovered them and love hanging out on them. They sleep on them at night, which is something adult chickens do.

This picture just makes my teeth hurt it's so cute. They look like owls or some other kind of wild bird to me. Andie's hairdo is getting funny. Her feathers are really coming in and standing straight up on her head. She has a kind of ratty mohwak. At the end of their second week, they have gotten feathers on their chest and around their necks. They still have fluff down their midlines (heads, backs, tushes, and lower bellies)

They LOVE grapes and make us laugh hysterically as they run around their cage cheeping like lunatics and trying to keep their prized grape pieces away from the others. They are so frantic that they don't realize that all of them have grape pieces. So that means that 3 chicks are running around the cage like pinballs trying to avoid the others. Lindsay was practically crying, she was laughing so hard.

Of course we let them go outside and taste all of the delicious Berkshire grass. We have to keep a close watch on them because the yard is big and there are usually hawks flying overhead. I think they are enjoying their vacation as much as we are.

Going on Holiday

2008-08-06T11:05:00.001-07:00

We're leaving tonight to go to the Berkshires. Neil's sister Dani is turning 40 and his parents are flying out to celebrate. We will stay at their house while they are gone. And, yes, we're bringing the chicks with us! Their area is one of the last holdouts for high speed internet, so I won't post while we're up there. They have dial-up! Remember that? Good news is that their town is planning on getting dsl this winter!

So, I'll leave you with some beautiful pen and ink drawings of Kip Mieke Roth's. Kip made drawings of chicks growing up. Lisa and Robb have both directed me to them and they are lovely.

I brought the chicks into Lindsay's pre-school today and they were a bit hit. Lindsay was in heaven being the teacher with her friends. I brought our inflatable kiddie pool and put them in it. That kept them protected from 18 sets of very excited hands. What cracks me up about NYC is that you can walk down the street with a cage of chickens and a kiddie pool and nobody blinks an eye!
The chicks survived the visit and even showed off for the kids by flying up onto the side of the pool and strutting around. I think I am definitely securing my crazy chicken lady title!

10 Days old

2008-08-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

It's been fascinating to watch the changes these chicks have gone through already. In their second week they have tripled in size, started to scratch the ground and learned to fly about 2' off the ground. They have quite a lot of feathers on their wings and they have gotten silly little tail feathers. They start to look really mangy when the feathers start to push through the baby fluff. It will be pretty hilarious to see how scruffy they look when the feathers on their necks and faces start to come in.

In these photos you can see the girls (mostly Andie) getting feathers along their shoulders at the top of their wings. Andie's feathers are developing faster than the others, although she's now the smallest of the group. Pushy Louise (who we may start calling LuLu) has overtaken Andie in size and is my bet for the dominant hen. I keep saying I hope she doesn't turn into a rooster! Someone on the chicken forum I read had a saying that holds true for me. "If it lays it stays, if it crows it goes" Let's not talk about the fact that I just admitted to reading a chicken forum.

Now I will attempt to distract you from my nerdiness with some cute chick photos...

Ahoy Matey

2008-08-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

This silly chicken thinks it's a parrot. I was sitting at my desk and the chicks were practicing flying. Louise was able to flap up to my lap and then up to my shoulder. Of course my camera was downstairs and I wasn't about to walk downstairs past the cat with a chicken on my shoulder to get a photo. So this is w/ my cell phone and makes me look about as bad as possible, but I had to capture her triumph. I'm not sold on the sensation of weird reptilian claws walking around on my shoulders and neck.

I took more photos this afternoon, and will post them shortly to make up for the awfulness of this one.

This afternoon Stephanie, who I met through her blog and who works in this neighborhood, came by to meet the chicks. We were talking about crazy chicken owners (of whom I am one), and I mentioned people who keep their chickens in their house and put diapers on them to avoid the poop problem. There are even patterns for these chicken diapers online. I swore I would never turn into one of those crazy chicken people. I still do, although I think this parrot/chicken thing is loosening my footing on the slippery slope to crazy town.

And in case you have never heard of chicken diapers, let alone laid eyes on them. Here's a visual. The straps get lost in the feathers (so I've read).

Oh, I figured out that I can take a photo w/ my computer, so here's another grainy one.

Day 4 of chicks

2008-07-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

For the chicks 4th day of amazing growth, Neil and I took them outside for a photo shoot. We put a little photo sweep backdrop down and then tried to have a picnic table and the cage to corral them in a bit. At first they were totally freaked out with me bumping their cage down our spiral staircase to the back yard. They kept very close to me, which made me feel like mama hen. Yes, these odd things really matter to me.

You can get a pretty good idea of their size here. Louise on the right is crouched down a bit, but she is definitely the smallest of the group. She's the pushy one though, so don't feel sorry for her. You can also see that their wing feathers are starting to come in through the chick fluff.

Once they got used to their surroundings, they had a blast pecking at the grass and scratching around on the ground. I'm going to take them out every nice day to let them have a little spa treatment.

We went away to Abington, PA for the weekend to visit friends who moved out of Brooklyn. Their daughter Quinlan was in daycare with Lindsay, so she is one of Lindsay's oldest friends. It was a lovely weekend of hanging out in their new house. They were crammed into a typical NYC apartment, and now their house feels like an absolute mansion. We're so happy for them, although we're going to miss having them here in Brooklyn. My upstairs neighbor watched the chicks while we were away.

Hey Chicky

2008-07-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, I can come up with a whole bunch of stupid headings w/ the word chick in them. Try doing a Google search with "chick" in it and a whole lot of questionable content comes up.

So the girls are 4 days old today and have already doubled in size. They make the sweetest little cheep cheep noises. It seems unbelievable that their cheep will eventually change to bowk. What I also learned is that the colors of their adult feathers may have nothing to do with the color they are now.

A lot of people have asked how I got chickens in NYC and are amazed when I tell them that they came through the mail. I thought I was going to have to pick them up at the post office, but they were delivered to my door. I am lucky that they came so quickly because the chicks were healthy and very perky.

Here's a photo of the inside of the shipping box. The green goo is a nutritional gel that kept them fed and hydrated during their journey. Chicks actually don't need to eat or drink the first few days after they hatch, which is why hatcheries are able to mail them. The sooner they arrive the better, because these guys are remarkable eaters and growers.

This little one is Edie (Sedgwick). She's the sweetest of the group. On the first day when she was held for a few seconds, she would drift off to sleep on your hand. Her markings make her look a little like a chipmunk. And there are few things cuter than a little chipmunk. She is called an Easter Egger chick, which is kind of a mutt that is derived from the Araucana chicken. It isn't a purebred, but it does lay the same blue/green eggs of the Araucana chickens. If you look at these photos of Araucanas, you will see the wacky ear-tufts on their faces. I hope my girls will have such distinguished features.

This little pee-wee is Louise (Lou Reed) and she's an Easter Egger also. What she lacks in size, she makes up for in brattiness. She has the bratty little sister in her (and I'm speaking from experience). When her sisters fall asleep, she chirps her head off and deliberately wakes them up. I don't know if her motivation stems from loneliness or sadism, but she's got quite a personality. I'm putting my money on her to be the top of the pecking order.

This is Andie (Andy Warhol). This photo was taken today, so she looks bigger and older than the others. She's the middle sized chick, w/ Edie being the biggest. She looks like a cross between an ostrich and an alpaca. Her long, gangly neck looks positively broken when she's sleeping. Enough to make a new mommy freak out. She is a silver laced polish chick. Here is a photo of what she will look like as an adult.

They eat mostly their chick crumbles and drink their chick gatorade (water w/ electrolytes and vitamins in it). I gave them some uncooked steel cut oatmeal and they LOVE it. They will race out of their brooder cage to peck it off my floor. I put it on my hands, which makes them hop up and eat out of them. I want to get them used to me. Already they associate me with food.

The names are based on Andy Warhol and members of his factory. I think that Polish chickens look like Andy Warhol with their wacky hairdos. And I will have "factory" eggs, although these gals will be the farthest from factory hens you could imagine.

Here chick chick chick chick

2008-07-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Awwww........they are so insanely cute!! Here are quick cell phone photos of the 3 girls. The mail delivery person brought them to my door about 30 minutes ago. They are healthy, perky and are eating, drinking and pooping without any problems. I can't stop gazing into their little brooder and making clucky new-mommy noises.

10 Years Ago Today...

2008-07-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

Neil and I exchanged vows in the garden of his parent's Berkshire home. It doesn't seem like 10 years have passed, although it doesn't seem like yesterday. Our lives have changed so much with the addition of Lindsay.

We are having a lovely, low-key NYC day (brunch, a movie and dinner out) and Lindsay is having her first sleep over. The big question is, will we actually be able to sleep late tomorrow morning? It would be the best anniversary present ever!

I'm Voting Republican-Ha!

2008-07-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a very funny video that touches on a lot of campaign issues.

Hungry for Change

2008-06-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Move On is a wonderful organization. I heard that they amassed their fortune originally by inventing the flying toaster screen saver, but I'm not sure if that is true or not. Anyway, they believe that individuals are able to make a difference in politics. I find this refreshing in a time when most people feel so disenfranchised.

They send emails with different "actions" that you can add your voice to. They also make things very easy for the armchair activist. You can just add your name to a pre-written letter and hit send and they send it to your correct political representative. It doesn't get much easier than that.

They also organize house parties, where someone volunteers to host a bunch of strangers and people attend the party to make phone calls encouraging swing state citizens to go out and vote. I've attended these parties in the past, but I have to admit that I really hate cold calling people. Makes me feel like a telemarketer. I've done date entry for them when the option came up last election.

I was so happy to see their latest action, which was called "Hungry For Change". They brought people from all over the country together (they organize that part) to have bake sales to raise money for Obama's campaign. Isn't that fabulous? Last weekend I baked cookies for Obama. There were about 6 different bake sales in my immediate area and the one for which I baked cookies raised over $700!! Over 12,000 MoveOn members across the country held bake sales and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. What a simple and effective idea. You can click here to see photos from the different sales. I didn't make these cupcakes, but thought they were adorable.

Martha vs. the Mulberry tree

2008-06-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

My garden is bursting with greenery as we're having a nice and wet spring/summer so far. The red dahlias in the pot are from my friend Simone who is growing her own in Germany. We can think of each other when we look at the pretty red blooms.

On another note, I'm starting to battle the mulberry tree that hangs over the back of my garden. This tree drops mulberries in my garden, which not only attracts flies and bees, but it also smothers the grass. Each year I try and pick up the berries as they come down, and each year I lose the battle. This has been going on for over 10 years. I plant new grass each spring only to lose it to the blasted berries. I can't even eat the berries because by the time they drop they are overripe. There are so many that they actually mold in lumps in the yard (and stick to the bottom of our shoes). That with the cloying smell of the rotting berries drives me nuts.

This year I tried to get smarter to win the war against this tree. (We aren't going to chop it down because it blocks out the neighbors and for most of the year is a lovely tree) I bought a miracle gardening fabric that allows 70% of light through. It is water permeable and lightweight, so the grass doesn't get smothered. I laid it down in the back of the garden and Neil helps me gather the corners to dump the berries into the compost bin. We collect the berries about every other day. Today I think we had about 15 pounds of berries in the fabric. The amazing thing is that after 2 weeks, there are still loads of berries on the tree. I think this year I will win the battle of the berries!! Here are some photos:

Open Studios and chickens

2008-06-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

I recently went to an open studio tour of a friend of mine who is a painter. Actually, he's also a teacher, but I mostly know him as the father to one of Lindsay's classmates. In fact Lindsay decided about a year and a half ago that she was going to marry his son Mason, and continues to stick to her guns. Both sets of parents are thrilled at the prospective match. But I digress...

It's always worrisome to go see a friend's artwork. There's the potential that you will find it ghastly and have to pretend you like it. Fortunately we liked his work and the work of many other artists. There was a woman named Alyssa Ettinger who is a ceramic artist. She makes these lovely vases that have a subtle (more subtle in person) knit pattern on them. The glazes are pretty shades of ivory and celery.

And on another note.................my landlady gave me the go ahead for having chickens in the back yard!!!!!

Farmer Girls

2008-06-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

I'm doing more and more chicken research. I think I'm almost ready for the hens. What do you think??

Funky Chicken

2008-06-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

I have become completely obsessed with wanting to have chickens in my Brooklyn backyard! Ask Neil, he'll vouch for me. It all started when I was reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. There was a whole section on Polyface Farm, where they raise pastured chickens. Did you know that chickens prefer to eat grass and bugs (ticks and mosquitoes too!!) over the corn-based grain we give them? Did you know that the grass adds beta-carotene, which is what makes the gorgeous orange yolks you see more in Europe? Pastured chickens produce eggs that are higher in Omega 3s (because of the green grass) and lower in cholesterol (because they aren't eating corn). I thought that was really cool. So then I started looking online and that is where the obsession continued. Here's a great chicken site.

Then I started talking with my friend Allison who works for Heifer International. She is in charge of many (most?) of the projects in the US, and knows a lot about farming. Turns out she's interested in keeping chickens also! She found a couple of women who keep chickens in their Brooklyn backyards and we went to visit them this weekend. Both women live in beautiful brownstones in my very fancy neighborhood. Both couldn't have been lovelier and more generous with their time and knowledge. Chicken fever continued! The first family had a totally modern chicken coop from a company called Omlet. It's called an Eglu and it looks a bit like a colorful IMac computer. It came with these two chickens.

The second woman had a more "traditional" wood and wire coop in her backyard. Her garden was filled with herbs and vegetables. I think she's a chef as well as a classically trained singer. She had an araucana chicken called Uno (her dog ate the other two) Here's a photo of a hen. These ladies lay lovely blue/green eggs.

I'm torn about which breed I like best. I can only keep about 2 here. I am really smitten with the Polish variety of chickens, although they aren't the best egg layers. Who could resist a face like this? Or this?

Neil was completely opposed to this idea, but is starting to cave. He said that he would agree to chickens if the landlady said it was okay. Isn't he great?

Designing your own font

2008-05-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

I just found a really cool thing. You can turn your own handwriting into a computer font with fontifier.

This is something my sister should do because her handwriting is so cool and unique. I don't have any samples of her writing to show.

Has anyone else noticed how "The quick red fox jumped over..." practice sentence got a PC make-over? Lazy dogs can't be brown anymore because it has negative connotations. Sometimes a dog is just a dog, right??

Mother's Day

2008-05-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today was a lovely day here. We spoke to Lindsay about letting mommy sleep in today. She was so excited about Mother's Day that she woke up at 6:40am declaring the holiday. She was too excited to go back to sleep, so Neil took her and entertained her until I woke up at the decadent hour of 8:45. They were busy making a lovely breakfast feast when I made it upstairs. Lindsay helped squeeze oranges and buy croissants and Neil made bacon and eggs with fresh berries on the side. It was delicious.

After the feast we went to the car wash, which is a huge treat for Lindsay and then the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, which is a huge treat for me. The gardens were spectacular with gorgeous peonies, wisteria and lilacs in full bloom. We had fun rolling down this green hill. Neil did it too and looked about as graceful as I did.

We are now in the midst of excavating dinosaur bones out of a dinosaur egg that Lindsay got at her friend Noah's birthday party yesterday. Too fun!

What to say?

2008-05-10T18:59:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I don't have anything interesting to post lately. I have been so tired at the end of the night that I have hardly knitted a thing. I finished another little hat, which I will post. I have a sweater that's mostly finished and part of a second sock that have been languishing. I don't know why I can't wrap my brain around finishing these two mostly-done projects. I think I've just been under such a tremendous amount of stress that my brain can only do one thing at a time. Maybe two if they are both auto-pilot things (tv and a follow the pattern to a T project).

Why am I so stressed? Well part of it is money. I scaled back my work once Lindsay was born and we are feeling the loss of income quite a bit. Partner that with the fact that our neighborhood has become super-trendy (read...expensive!) and we are probably going to be pushed out of this place that I've called home for over 15 years. We don't own, so we are at the mercy of landlords deciding the rent. Our lease is up in a year and we probably are facing a huge increase. Our rent has gone up $300/mo in the past 2 years. We just can't afford to buy in Brooklyn unless we live in a crack den. And the schools near a crack den aren't very good.

Next major stress is the school situation. Here's an article that speaks about how overcrowded the decent schools are. Our neighborhood is insane and we're zoned for the local ghetto school. I've toured schools, become the president of the board at Lindsay's school (don't underestimate the power of the parental resumé), etc. to see what our options are. They are grim. The good schools are so full there basically isn't a chance of getting into a decent school. We thought that maybe we could have Lindsay tested for the gifted and talented program as a way out of our local crap school. Turns out they are going to put a G&T program there next year. It's a sleazy way for "failing" schools to raise their test scores. If you have one class of smarty-pants kids, they will raise the school's average test scores. The school doesn't improve, it just looks better on paper. Private schools cost around $25,000/year, so that's not an option. See stress point #1.

My father's cancer is back.

And my mother is such a creep that I just disowned her. Long story, but she's a mean, selfish person who has chosen to hoard money instead of helping her children in a way that her parents helped her. I've given this woman so many chances over the years to act decently, but she keeps choosing the creep option, so I'm done. Surprisingly enough I don't feel sad at all. Just somewhat relieved.

I organized a huge spring auction as a fundraiser at Lindsay's school, where I "won" two things. One was a 3 month gym membership. I have been going several times a week for the past 3 weeks. The other item I won was a stress management/relaxation strategies consultation session. Nobody bid against me. I guess they were either too embarrassed, or they knew how stressed I was and didn't dare bid against me.

I think things are changing for the better. I did a casting last week and may do the production on that job (good $$). The work outs feel great and I have the stress consultation to look forward to. Plus the weather is getting really nice. I've also decided that it would be fun to raise chickens, but that's a whole other topic!

London Calling

2008-05-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago my cousin Ilona came with her son Remi to visit New York. Although we saw them 4 years ago in London, Remi hasn't been to New York since he was 6 years old. It was fun to see what he remembered about our place and introduce him to new places all over the city. During their week here they actually went to all 5 boroughs.

We went to Coney Island and Neil and Remi went on the Cyclone. Here's a photo of the two of them right after riding it. They both look like excited kids.

And here's a photo of them on the ride. They are in the front seat.

Kid's Drawings

2008-04-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've been working for over a month to organize a big fundraiser for my daughter's preschool, which we had this weekend. It's a fun event with a silent auction of donations from local businesses and families. The kids get to hang out with each other, and we have food and activities for everyone. We had items to bid on like Yankees box seats, gym memberships, a stress management workshop (I won this one. I think that everyone at the school was too scared to bid against me!), gift certificates to restaurants and stores, etc. I asked one of my friends to run this event with me and she pulled in donations from tons of kids clothing vendors, so we had a small children's boutique set up in the school filled with things she secured. She has a company Appaman that makes children's clothing, and knows a lot of other companies through various trade shows. We raised $16,000, which is a record for the school. I'm thrilled with the amount we earned and I'm also thrilled that the event is over, so I can get back to my regularly scheduled life.

One of the things we auction off each year is artwork from each classroom at the school. The teachers make a group project with the kids and they are usually really wonderful. This picture is from my daughter's classroom. Each kid did a self-portrait. I think one is funnier and sweeter than the next. Many adults try to make "kid art", but I don't think they ever succeed. There is something so special and honest about these kids drawings. Each one makes me smile. I love the one on the top left because sometimes I wake up feeling like that. My daughter's is the purple one on the left with the long hair.

Digital cameras for kids

2008-04-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Lindsay's friend has a little Fisher-Price digital camera that is specifically made for little kids. Its cute and indestructible. We got some of the photos that the kids took one day when we went to Coney Island and I really like the quality of the image. It reminds me of other toy cameras that many photographers have used over the years to obtain interesting/artistic results. The file sizes are pathetically small, so I doubt I will trade in my camera any time soon for one of these, but it could be fun to share with Lindsay. This photo is an example of one from her friend's camera.

How Vile

2008-03-31T16:49:00.001-07:00

This stuff sits in its box on the shelf. It's not in a fridge. You don't even have to cook it. Because you can never get back those precious 10 minutes spent cooking bacon.

Some people shouldn't be allowed to eat. What's even scarier is that there are several different brands of this "ready to serve bacon" Can you believe they actually made bacon more artificial??

Earth Hour

2008-03-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight at 8pm (everyone's local time) turn off your lights to participate in Earth Hour.

If every American household turned off their lights for one hour 16,500 tons of CO2 would be saved from escaping into the atmosphere. Yikes! That's a lot of junk.

Hungarian Recipes

2008-03-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Since making the chimney cakes with my father, he and I have been finding lots of great Hungarian recipes. He got some links to a nice Hungarian woman's blog, in which she lists many traditional recipes (especially for holidays and festivals). On her site I noticed a site with a great name called chew.hu. It also lists a lot of great recipes. I have to make some of these soon because these dishes can be very heavy w/ sour cream, regular cream, eggs, etc. They are better winter meals. Even youtube has videos of people making chicken paprikash! The following one is pretty funny.

Who knew there were so many crazy Hungarians floating around.

Here's video of a professional making the chimney cakes. It was good to see because "roll out the dough" meant to roll it out and then cut strips, not wrap rolls of the dough around the wooden post the way we did.

Gretel

2008-03-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

I have been working on this hat by Ysolda Teague, or some version of it for a while. The actual knitting wass quick and fun once my addled little brain could handle it. I've been on a yarn diet for a while, so I chose a lovely ginger colored yarn from my stash. I once knew what yarn it was, but it was given to me from a photo shoot, so it didn't have it's label. Anyway, the yarn was many years old, so I'm sure the color was probably discontinued. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. I was 3/4 finished when I finally ran out of yarn.

I'm not a big fan of knitting things twice (which explains why I have had only one sock finished for about a month now), but decided that I really wanted a slouchy beret of my own. I brought a lot of projects with me to France when I visited my father. I wasn't sure how his energy level would be and I think that I had fantasies of how much time I would have without a 4 year-old to entertain. I knit a lot on the airplane home (8 1/2 hours) and then finished it yesterday. The yarn is a wool/angora blend, so there's good stitch definition with a nice halo of soft fluff. I'm quite pleased with how it came out.

Easter

2008-03-25T06:12:00.001-07:00

We spent a lovely weekend with our friends the Remke's at their house on the North Fork (of Long Island). It's really beautiful out there with tiny old towns, rocky beaches, zillions of birds, protected land and lots of agriculture. They seem to be very careful that it doesn't turn into the obnoxious scene that the Hamptons have become. When you buy/sell property there is a 1% tax that goes to a land trust. They've been buying up land to preserve. There is a vineyard for sale across the street from our friend's house that has a stipulation that there can't be any development of that land. They can't even build a building for the vineyard, so it is going for what is a very cheap price out there. Something like $800k for over 30 acres.

We explored the beaches, had our first bbq of the season, and had an Easter egg hunt. Here are some photos of the weekend.

little hat

2008-03-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

I finished this little pink hat while I was in France. It's a bit big on Lindsay, but still looks cute on her. Besides it's PINK, which is the ultimate color for Lindsay. She's turned into such a girlie girl wearing only dresses, ruby red sparkly shoes a la Dorothy and preferring pink over other colors. I'll have to remember this phase when she's a teenager. This hat was inspired by all of the cute hats that I saw on Mustaa Villaa's site.

We went away this weekend with friends. After a while I noticed that their sofa was made with a knit stitch. How funny. Knitting knitting everywhere! Neil hates this photo of him and wants me to add the asterix that he just woke up.

a visit to Provence

2008-03-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

I just got back from visiting my father who lives in Provence. He and my stepmother live in the old village train station that was converted to a house. The name of the town is carved into the side of the house and you see signs of where the tracks were in the back yard. Actually you see two long stone lines that go through their garden, which just look like the edges to the flower beds. The main house was the main station house, and then there's a small house, which was the waiting area for the other side of the tracks. It's a lovely house which gets a lot of light.

They rent the main house out in the summer and move into the smaller house. It's a great way to get some extra income, especially with their retirement income being in the deflated dollar.

With my father being ill, I didn't know what to expect when I got there. He's always been very healthy and shunned taking medicine. Although things are quite serious, I was pleasantly surprised with his energy (he still enjoys chopping wood for the fire) and interest in new things. I helped him set up a camera on his computer so we could Skype one another. It's a great way for him and Lindsay to see and talk to one another. I helped him set up a blog, which is something he's wanted to do for a while. And we cooked together. On his blog you can see the Hungarian chimney cakes we made. This is a dessert that is cooked on the bbq. You make a dough, which you wrap around a wooden tool that resembles a baseball bat. Then you baste it with melted butter and grill it over the bbq. After it cooks a while, you roll it in sugar and ground walnuts. When it is done, you rap it to make the dough fall off and then steam comes out of it to resemble smoke emitting from a chimney. It was delicious, and now I'm the proud owner of my own pastry baseball bat. I definitely need to refine the recipe we had, and now have some experience under my belt.

It was a wonderful visit. I decided not to bring my daughter and I'm glad I made that decision. I was able to spend uninterrupted time with my father, which would have been impossible if she had come. We had nice conversations, and were able to generally enjoy each other's company in a way that we hadn't for a while.

I also did some knitting while I was there, which I will post shortly.

What is eaten in one week?

2008-03-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting comparison of what families in different countries eat in one week and the associated costs.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina (Sure hope most American
families eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less junk food than this family.)
Food expenditure for one week $341.98

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

Tree Sweaters

2008-03-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a funny article today about a town in Ohio that is putting sweaters on the trees along one main avenue.

All Look Same?

2008-02-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've worked on a lot of different jobs finding people of different ethnicities to participate in photo shoots. I fancy myself as being fairly savvy at telling the difference between a western european vs. a central european a japanese person from a chinese person. Just recently I had to cast bona fide chinese people and bona fide japanese people. The clients are very picky because the ads are running in their own countries.

I was talking to one of the model agencies today and she showed me a great website called alllooksame. I recommend going to the website and clicking on the exam room. Unfortunately you have to register, but it takes a second to do that. Then you look at faces and try to guess if they are Chinese, Japanese or Korean. It's pretty interesting. I failed miserably.

Snow!!

2008-02-25T09:13:00.001-08:00

We finally had a nice amount of snow here. While I was at the Met seeing the Jasper John's show Gray with my friend Simone, Neil and Lindsay built this adorable snowwoman.

Poetry in Stitches

2008-02-22T07:41:00.000-08:00

Here's my new favorite sweater from the book Poetry in Stitches. I bought the book and a kit for this sweater years ago. I didn't enjoy knitting it because the row repeats were so long, I couldn't memorize them. That meant that I had to have my nose stuck in the book to look for each upcoming stitch. The glacially slow rate was killing me, so I put it down and there it sat glaring at me from my closet for years.

In a fit of spring cleaning last year, I pulled the sweater out (calling the 2" I knit a sweater is reaching a bit) and decided that this was adding to my psychic weight. I asked Mari, a former knitting student of mine, to finish it for me. She did a beautiful job and it is one of my favorite warm sweaters. It goes beautifully with the green scarf my sister made me. Lest one thinks I don't knit at all, I made the hat.

At my former fiber arts school, Urban Knitter, Mari met one of our teachers Shirley Paden. Mari instantly stood out as a star pupil with her instant grasp of new concepts as well as her lovely and insanely prolific knitting. Mari has gone on to be one of Shirley's main knitters when she's designing a project for Vogue Knitting or one of the other magazines she designs for.

Les Peaux de Lievres

2008-02-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here's an lovely video using over 700 frames of knitted imagery. The band is called Tricot Machine (knitting machine) and the song is called Les Peaux de Lievres.

Learning to draw

2008-02-19T12:59:00.000-08:00

A friend of Lindsay's gave her a book on drawing animals and Lindsay's aunt Dani gave her an easel for her birthday. Here are her drawings of 2 lions. She did the entire one on the left, and the mane on the small one on the right. The other creature is the beginning of a cat that later got arms, legs and a tail.

Winter Wonderland

2008-02-18T17:11:00.000-08:00

This weekend we decided to break our routine and go up to the Berkshires to visit Neil's parents. Neil's dad is making a miraculous recovery from his second hip replacement operation, but they are still somewhat housebound due to the snow and ice outside. His father is able to walk quite well with a cane, but it is too risky to go outside and possibly slip on the ice.

It was a real treat for us because we have basically had no real winter here. I'm not a huge fan of the cold weather, but there is something very unnatural about bypassing an entire season. I don't count one week of cold weather to equal winter.

We took a short, but pretty walk behind the Beckerman's house to see such lovely ice sculptures as the ones below.

Lindsay is a real nature lover, and for the most part gets deprived the absolutely wonderful childhood pleasures of things like eating snow and icicles. She more than made up for that this weekend. She must have consumed a gallon worth of snowflakes. We even served her snow soup.

Then we decided that since the ponds weren't quite frozen enough to skate on, we would make our own rink. Neil got his parents hoses and sprayed a patch of their yard to make a rink. After the first attempt of using frozen hoses, we got smart and hung them by the fireplace to thaw. The second attempt was much more successful.

I got a new pair of skates that weekend on a pretty impressive sale. They now make sporty INSULATED skates! What a great idea. Wonder why that took so long to figure out?? I don't have a photo of it, but some of the droplets of water from the hose froze before landing and made beautiful frozen jewels. We felt like we were gathering diamonds as we skated around the rink. It was a very special winter weekend for us.

So cheesy

2008-02-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

The more technology (and stress for that matter) creeps into my life, the more I look for a simpler life. I learned knitting as a way to de-compress from my work. Then I learned spinning. Then I got very interested in bread making. Now I'm interested in making cheese. I joke with friends saying that soon they will see me beating my laundry on the banks of the East River.

So far I've made yogurt and mozzarella. I bought the book shown above along with supplies from the author who runs New England Cheesemaking Supply Co. She has a kit for 30 minute mozzarella. I was somewhat skeptical because you use a microwave. However, I made a delicious ball of fresh mozzarella. And felt very clever I might add. Here is a tutorial on making the mozzarella. I highly recommend trying it. You end up stretching the heated curds like taffy and then rolling it into a ball.

I'm not sure what kind of cheese I'm going to try next. I need to make or buy a press to make hard cheeses, so I think I'll stick with soft cheeses for a while. Now, I just need a good source for fresh milk...mooooo!

Frozen New York

2008-02-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun video of an improv group in Grand Central Station. I love how something unusual and totally harmless can bring complete strangers together.

A new week

2008-02-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

The week my grandmother died was one of those weeks that was totally off the charts. If a meteor hit the apartment, it wouldn't have surprised me. I even got a jury duty notice that week. For Valentine's Day. Seriously folks, it was a bad week. It was far worse for my grandmother and other beloved family members though.

The next week was a busy work week. I had to cast people of different ages, gender and ethnicities for a pharmaceutical ad. Nothing too sexy. I saw close to 400 people in two days, which kept me busy and thinking of things other than personal stresses. I also helped a friend out at the New York International Gift Fair at the Jacob Javits Center. It was fun to be surrounded by hand-made crafts. Each artist had a booth with their artwork for sale. Retail buyers would come through looking for items for their shops. It was friendly and so much lower-key than my industry. People were nice and uncomplicated. There weren't people blowing their chests out trying to prove how in-demand they are. I would almost say it was a breath of fresh air if it weren't for the completely stale recycled air in the convention center.

This week is a re-group. Pull the apartment back together, work on the upcoming fundraising event at my daughter's school, retouch more images for Getty (which put itself up for sale. Again, that happened during that awful week)

my grandma Betty

2008-01-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

My grandma died yesterday. She was a tiny, spunky, smart woman. I had the pleasure of living with her and my grandfather for a year after I graduated from college. She lived in Chappaqua, NY in a sweet house that was kept immaculately clean. She loved her house as much for the yard as for the house. She was an avid gardener and had bountiful vegetable gardens for years upon years. She was also a nature lover. She bought day-old bread to feed the raccoons, skunks and opossums that came to her back door every night. They would scratch on her door to let her know they were out there. Her favorite place to sit was at her dining room table with a large picture window looking out onto the backyard. I don't think an animal passed through her yard without getting fed. She had many different bird feeders that were always kept well-stocked. She knew all the birds that came to eat and sometimes even named them particularly. She had a grosbeak called gorgeous george that would come right up to her window and peck until he got her attention. She would go out and feed him special treats. She would also make a whistle to let the birds know she had just replenished the feeders, and don't you know that those birds knew her voice and came flying over!

This photo was taken just over 4 years ago when I was pregnant with Lindsay. In recent years my grandmother suffered from Alzheimers. I'm happy to say that she never had to leave her beloved house. Even though she wasn't able to always name the birds that came to her window towards the end, she still enjoyed them.

To her, I owe my knowledge and love of birds and other animals. I learned gardening and taking care of houseplants from her. She called my sister and me her "nature gals" and we were proud and loved it. She will be greatly missed.

my dad

2008-01-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

My dad goes into the hospital today for an operation tomorrow. A year after finishing chemotherapy and radiation for cancer of his larynx, the tumor came back. He and his doctors decided the best thing to do is to remove his larynx entirely. After the 5-hour surgery he will have to re-learn how to speak. He's lived in France for 10 years without learning how to speak French. I hope he does better with this speech therapy. I will miss his voice. I'm crossing my fingers for a good outcome tomorrow.

etiquette

2008-01-16T18:25:00.001-08:00

When did people forget their manners? I'm not talking about people who wear white after Labor Day, or some other outdated rule by Emily Post. I'm really wondering about common courtesy.

Some examples:
1. A parent in Lindsay's class invited all of the parents to her house for a wine and cheese party. We were the ONLY ones who responded to her invitation. I don't mean the only ones who said they could come. I mean the only people who even acknowledged the invitation!! I was absolutely shocked by this.

2. Last year we gave what was for us a considerable amount of money to Lindsay's teachers as holiday gifts. They never said a word of thank you to us. There was some note in the next newsletter generally thanking the parents, but there was no individual acknowledgment.

3. This year I knitted scarves for Lindsay's teachers (different teachers than last year). I spent weeks working on intricate stitch patterns for both of them. What kind of acknowledgment did they give?? Not one word. The only reason I spent the time doing this is because they have both commented/complimented my knitting in the past. That and the fact that I think they are great teachers. I am so stunned by their lack of response, I keep wanting to say something to them. Ask them if they liked the scarves. Maybe mention that I knitted them myself in case that wasn't clear.

Aargh!! When did people get so rude??

The sweet smell of childhood

2008-01-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had something that transported you back to when you were a kid? It could be an old photo, a taste, a smell. For me it was this book last year. I hadn't thought of this book for at least 30 years, but when I saw it in Barnes and Noble last Christmas, I remembered having it as a kid. It had the added memory of the smells from the scratch and sniff. I seem to be thinking about smells a lot lately.

This year it was another book that transported me back. Crictor! I loved and forgot this book as I did the Christmas one. I found it in a box of Neil's old books that his mother had saved. I am thrilled to have this book back in my life. It's really sweet. I wonder if anyone else remembers either of these books.

Crictor the boa constrictor was sent as a present by the woman's son. After she identifies him as non-poisonous, she embraces him as a beloved pet. He holds her book for her as she knits him sweaters. You see him happily sporting the sweater she knit here in the snow. What better pet than one who enables and appreciates knitting??

Old photos

2007-12-28T18:52:00.001-08:00

Some people dread looking at other people's family or travel photos. Me? I can't get enough of them. Especially older photos. There is a quality to the old photos that simply can't be captured by today's technology. Some people think it's because the photos are black and white that they look timeless. That is over simplifying it. You can take a photo with a digital camera and convert it to black and white and it will not look anything like a real silver gelatin print. In fact, the black and white paper I used as a student didn't even look like the older silver prints. The paper companies cut down on the silver, so you didn't get the same rich tones.

I really like this photo of my father and my grandmother. I don't mind the fuzziness of the photo. In fact I think it actually adds to the atmosphere a bit. I love how they look so comfortable together. The fact that they are even wearing practically the same outfit adds so much to the loveliness of the photo for me.

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas!

2007-12-24T07:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas has crept up on me this year. I keep slowly chipping away at things and think I may actually pull it off by tomorrow. I made a snowman-shaped cake for Lindsay's school holiday party. I have the gifts. I knit those cute little cork guys. I baked Christmas cookies yesterday. I have to wrap the presents tonight. And then voila....Christmas tomorrow!!!

Happy Holidays!

Scarves

2007-12-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

We had a holiday celebration at Lindsay's school today. All the parents bring in food and mingle and then everyone gathers together to sing holiday songs. I'm such a sap that it makes me misty eyed each year. Can't imagine how much of a basket-case I will be when Lindsay is in her first school play!

We are so lucky this year to have two lovely teachers. I knitted them each a scarf as a way of thanking them for all of their hard work.

This scarf is made using Barbara Walker's Open Star Stitch. The yarn is a mystery since it's from a ball someone gave me. It is soft and a bit fuzzy.

This is from the Knitty pattern Wisp. I made it with one ball of kidsilk haze yarn that I dyed using Kool Aid. It was a test skein for a pattern I wrote for the first Stitch and Bitch book. The pattern in the book is hand dyed also and is called To Dye For sweater.

What's next a bald eagle???

2007-12-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

I was looking out my back window two days ago and saw something large moving in the grass. It was very hard to make out what it was because it was brown and everything in the backyard is brown right now. Besides it was behind some plants. Upon further inspection I realized it was a hawk and it was tearing away at something for its lunch. I grabbed my video camera and put it on zoom, but it was even less noticeable than w/ my own eyes. Kind of like the white bunny in the snow storm. It flapped over to a part of my backyard that I couldn't see from my window, but seemed to still be in my yard. Lindsay woke up from her nap a few minutes later, so I picked her up and quietly opened our back door. At first we didn't see it, but then it flapped away carrying something round and dark in its talons. A rat perhaps? This neighborhood has been overwhelmed with restaurants and bars and subsequently with rat sightings. I think it's a wonderful tipping of the natural scales to see hawks coming to Smith Street to dine. I went into the part of the yard where the hawk was eating earlier and saw a pile of feathers and a small piece of intestine. Probably a starling.

I'm not sure what kind of hawk it was because I really didn't get a good look, but I'm guessing it's a Cooper's hawk.

In Focus

2007-12-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

This past Thursday I was asked to participate in a focus group. They selected people who are pretty certain that they are going to move out of NYC in the next year or so. I have always wondered what focus groups were like and always wanted to be a fly on the wall during one. Well, my friend Ruth hooked me up with this group. I keep forgetting to ask Ruth how she knew about it in the first place. The group actually was Philadelphia specific. They really wanted people who were considering moving to Philly. I have a friend who is moving to Philly this summer, so I was able to get her into the group as well. The client was the Philadelphia tourist board, and they are looking to lure people away from NYC to live in Philly.

It was FASCINATING! Okay, the questions were pretty simple, but what was interesting were my fellow participants. How DID they find some of these people? One guy interested Reiko and me the most. He spoke a lot, but it was really hard to understand what point he was getting at. He was interested in moving to Philly because there was an MTV episode of The Real World that took place there. Yikes! I'm sure some of these people vote also!

At the end of the 2 hour session, we each picked up an envelope with $125 in cash and went our separate ways. How funny. I'm also selling stuff on Ebay if that doesn't cement my status as white trash.

Dum dee dum

2007-11-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

I could possibly be the most boring person alive. I've finished a few projects, but still need to take photos of them. I'm just knitting a few scarves, nothing earth shattering about that. Refer to the first sentence in this paragraph. Sigh.

The ants come marching...

2007-11-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

The temperature dropped last night, which made lots of ants run for shelter in my warm garden apartment. The positive result of all of these ants, was that I saw this beauty on my back steps munching on them. It's a northern flicker (yellow shafted) and is a bit larger than a mourning dove (13" long). They differ from other woodpeckers in that they like to forage for ants and other delicacies on the ground instead of in trees.

It's always special to see something other than pigeons, sparrows and starlings here.

Halloween recap

2007-11-05T17:44:00.001-08:00

When Lindsay came home from school on Halloween, I surprised her with her new fairy wings. She promptly burst into tears and desperately wanted to wear the crappy store-bought ones that came with the costume. I asked her if I could wear the big ones and she didn't like that. I understand that she wanted to be the only fairy, and who am I to steal her Halloween thunder? Sigh. Next time, I won't make an amateur mistake like showing her the crappy store-bought wings ahead of time.

We had a fun time. Photos can be seen here. Lindsay had WAY too much candy that night. The next morning she was a beast with her Halloween hangover. We've successfully avoided questions about remaining candy and are trying to detox the sugar from her system.

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

Lindsay is going to be a fairy today. My friend Simone helped me design and make the frame for fairy wings when she was visiting here. I just finished and painted them today. Hopefully the paint will be fully dry in a few hours! I'm really happy with how they turned out. I based the design on butterfly wing patterns and the swirls on the cheapo set of wings that came with her costume. The leaves in the center are to hide the joins.

Can you smell it?

2007-10-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

It's so close I can almost smell it. Rhinebeck! Oh the sheep, the bunnies, the fiber, the yarn the books, the beautiful wooden tools that haven't changed shape in centuries! I'm giddy. Maybe it's the fumes from the sheep wafting all the way down to Brooklyn.

I can't wait until tomorrow!!!

Have you read?

2007-10-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, underline what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Italicize those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice********
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace (I think I have, but can’t remember)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma****
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The historian: a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera*
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault's pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility***
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park**
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's travels (can’t remember for sure)
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela's ashes: a memoir
The god of small things
A people's history of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces (I can't seem to do the strikethrough, but ugh!)
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The scarlet letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion******
Northanger Abbey***
The Catcher in the Rye (this was banned in my highschool)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In cold blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth (White Fang??)
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

Storm King

2007-10-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

After years of driving by it, we finally made it to Storm King! For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a sculpture park on 50 acres of gorgeous land near New Paltz, NY. The sculptures are of a monumental size, and by many of the big hitters in the art world. Neil and I had seen the Andy Goldsworthy movie Rivers and Tides and really wanted to see his rock wall that snakes through Storm King. It was wonderful. Here's a photo that obviously wasn't taken by me since it was quite warm the day we went.

This next one is by Richard Serra. We saw a show of his work at the MOMA, which we really enjoyed.

birthday fun

2007-10-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

I had a really enjoyable birthday filled with friends and celebrations. There are times when I get moody and convince myself that I have no real friends. If it weren't for Neil and Lindsay, I would die alone and be slowly consumed by my cat. But then there are times like my birthday, when my friends really exert themselves in a way I cannot deny.

My wonderful friend Simone flew in all the way from Germany. Our neighbor upstairs was away and let Simone stay in her apartment. So we could see each other every day, but could also retreat into our own spaces at night. The week with Simone was wonderful. We laughed, made fairy wings for Lindsay's Halloween costume, went to Wave Hill ( a lovely public garden in the Bronx), and the Cloisters. It was kind of funny to go see medieval art in NYC with someone from Europe, but the views and art were lovely and we had an enjoyable lunch in their garden. Simone is also a fabulous cook. I trailed her as she made her famous tiramisu and chocolate-cherry cake. We made two huge trays of the tiramisu for my birthday and an 11" cake. Yum!

We went to Chelsea to peek at the galleries. There were two shows that really stood out to us. One was a Julie Heffernan show called Booty at PPOW.

The other show we enjoyed was Andrew Woffinden's show at Dillon Gallery.

Then there were my friends Sandi and Jim who came down from Rhode Island. They are in a particularly busy time with their business, so it was touching that they took the time to visit. They joined us for a lovely dinner at Po restaurant in Brooklyn. Our other friend Sue joined us for dinner as well.

Then Neil organized a small group of our friends to come over for wine and cake in our backyard. He decorated it with candles and with the warm weather, it was magical. I really felt celebrated.

40 years ago

2007-10-01T20:11:00.001-07:00

On October 2, 1967 a not-so-little kid was born. This chunkster, weighing in at 8lbs 8oz was named Martha Farago Lazar. Fast forward 40 years and now Martha isn't so chunky for her frame. Probably better not to have so many rolls at this point. I can't quite believe I'm 40. I vividly remember when my mother turned 40. She was laughing and crying the whole day. It freaked me out as a kid. I don't really feel like doing either of those things. Mostly I feel sort of meh.

What feels really wonderful is that Neil has organized a small get-together in our backyard. Wine and cake. Yum. And we have a bunch of friends coming. My friend Simone flew in from Germany to celebrate my birthday. That has given me enough of a warm and fuzzy feeling to last me all winter long. Thanks everyone for making this gal feel celebrated.

Oregon Coastline

2007-09-30T19:36:00.001-07:00

Oregon Coastline
Originally uploaded by marthaknits

Does this one photo sum up why I want to move out to Portland? I just heard the term nature deficit disorder as a joke, but I've got it! This gorgeous beach was about an hour and a half outside of Portland. Everything there is a bit of a drive, but holy smoke! This is worth it. I was a magpie the whole time on my trip, but instead of picking up shiny objects to take back to my home, I was collecting dried seaweed, pretty stones, interesting dried seed pods, etc. Brooklyn just isn't cutting it for me these days.

Ravelry

2007-09-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

Oh, I just got onto Ravelry's beta site and it's so much fun!! You can easily queue up your favorite projects, search to see what other people are making to get inspiration, see who else is working on the same projects you are working on, etc. etc. etc. It's a huge time suck, but a lot of fun.

Karma

2007-09-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

In case you think karma doesn't exist.......HA HA.

And because I know news stories don't stay online for long. Here's the headline:
O.J. Simpson arrested in Vegas robbery

Simpson was to be booked on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit burglary and burglary with a firearm, police said. The district attorney, meanwhile, said he expected Simpson to ultimately be charged with seven felonies and one gross misdemeanor.

If convicted of the booking charges, Simpson would face up to 30 years in state prison on each robbery count alone.

I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does.

Back in Town

2007-09-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

After being gone for 3 weeks, we are now back in Brooklyn. We left mid-August for several reasons:
1. Escape the brutal heat that engulfs the city in August.
2. Visit our sisters and friends on the West coast.
3. Travel as a work/play diversion while Lindsay is out of school.

We left a couple of days after her camp ended and flew the week-old airline Virgin America. I kept thinking of how elegant airplane travel used to be. People actually dressed up in their best outfits to fly. What a far cry it's become. Now you have to drag your bags around along with your children. The security is spotty and seemingly pointless. My sister used the term "security theater" and I think that's dead on. There's a huge show, with great inconvenience to all, without actually making the passengers safer.

Tell me why we still have to take our shoes and belts off? It also seems that some of the restrictions have been kept to earn the airports more money. Why can't we bring drinks through security anymore? Actually, if someone is going to tell me about explosive liquids, I'll mention that you are allowed to bring milk, formula and juice if you have an infant or toddler. I brought on 2 large cups of juice without one question being asked. Check the TSA website and you will see that it's allowed. There was an incident a few years ago when a mother was questioned about a bottle of breast milk she had for her infant. I think she was forced to drink it to prove that it wasn't some sort of bomb making liquid. I guess there was a lawsuit, because the TSA specifically states that you will not be made to drink the liquid you bring for your child. I'm all for this, but please tell me why childless people can't bring liquids on as well.

I was shocked by the discomfort we experienced with Virgin America and was already to pen one of my letters to customer service. It seems as though this is the norm these days though. They charged extra for absolutely everything. They supposedly had food, but it was a tiny snack for $7. They charged $8 for movies and several dollars for "premium tv" I was half expecting to have to swipe my credit card to use the bathroom! Kids tv consisted of god-awful cartoons instead of anything decent like PBS kids, or Discovery kids. I felt that 3 1/2 years of brainwashing my kid had been undone on that flight.

We allowed extra time at the airports because I was actually bringing film. Remember that stuff? I don't like them to x-ray it because it fogs. So they need to hand check it. They are still encased in light tight foil packets and the TSA folks usually just swipe them with their little cloth and run it through their chemical sensor. Every now and again, I get someone who hates the world and wants to teach me a lesson. We had one guy in England deliberately take his sweet time swiping one roll at a time. I think he was hoping we would get all stressed out about missing our flight. The joke was that we had about 3 hours, so we didn't bat an eyelash with his power play. Other security guys offered to help him to speed things up, but he sent them away. Anyway, we allow lots of time when we fly with film. In the San Francisco airport one of the women started to open all of the foil packets. This isn't desirable because the rolls are then apt to get fogged from sunlight. I asked her why she wasn't just swiping them and she called over a colleague. I overheard that they were out of the swiping cloths (it was 8:30am). She then made a big show of inspecting each roll as though that was the approved method. Security theater!!

I will post more about our trip later, which was wonderful.

Summer Days

2007-08-05T13:05:00.001-07:00

Today was a lovely sunny day in the low 80s. We got up early and went to the beach at Jacob Riis national park. I don't know how I've lived in NYC so long and never went here. It's a beautiful, clean beach, which doesn't get overly crowded until the afternoon.

Tonight will still be warm, so I'm going to serve gazpacho with small, red new potatoes. I boil the potatoes and then sautee them in olive oil and butter until golden brown. Then I put some sea salt and pepper on them. They are so sweet, that they don't need anything else.

The gazpacho recipe I make is adapted from Moosewood's first cookbook.

4c Tomato juice
1 small onion
1 med bell pepper
1 T honey
1 Cucumber
1/2 lemon, juice of
1 lime, juice of
1 t tarragon
1 t basil
1/2 t cumin
2 T olive oil
2c diced tomatoes (can used canned, but fresh are better)

I put the onion in the food processor first, pulse, then add the bell pepper and pulse, cucumber, pulse, and diced tomatoes with all of the spices and pulse until it is the consistency you like. We like pretty chunky gazpacho. Then add to the tomato juice and chill for at least 2 hours.

Eat with a yummy crusty bread and you have a great meal.

A happy Day!

2007-08-03T18:15:00.001-07:00

After years of being engaged, it took almost losing their health insurance to prompt our friends Dennis and Maria Christina to tie the knot. They invited us to be witnesses at their City Hall wedding. Once we realized that we were at City Hall in Manhattan and they were at City Hall in Brooklyn, the day got better. Dennis was beaming, Maria Christina was gorgeous, and their 5 month old baby Joachin was an angel.

It's amazing that all of the nervousness, all of the emotion and all of the euphoria of getting married are present at a City Hall wedding. Everyone was beaming at them during the ceremony, which probably lasted all of 4 minutes.

Afterwards we went to Balthazar in Manhattan for a delicious brunch. We all decided that drinking champagne in the morning was a very civilized way to start the day.

Their friend brought this beautiful cake decorated with tulips, which was a lovely nod to Dennis' Dutch heritage.

July 18th

2007-07-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

July 18th was Neil and my 9th anniversary. The day started out quite rocky. We had a huge rainstorm, which left our apartment under 1-2" of rain. It was all pouring in through our back door into our living room. The amount of rain was quite amazing, because it came to at least a foot up our back door and sneaked it's way in through the cracks around the door. All we could do was to watch the flood waters rise.

Neil called our landlord to come over and deal with the mess since she just raised our rent substantially. Historically, we would deal with minor inconveniences ourselves because we had a reasonably low rent. No longer! It is now our challenge to spend every penny of the $2,400 rent hike she imposed on us with minor and major repairs. Cue the evil laughter.

Our landlord took our rug to be cleaned and in the process of helping her take it out of the apartment, Neil threw out his back. When he does this, his spine is visibly crooked. One hip is noticeably higher than the other one, and he's in excruciating pain.

After cleaning up the mess and picking Lindsay up from school, we just took it easy and all watched a movie together. Our friend Graham came over to babysit Lindsay and Neil and I went out to eat at Po. Po is a restaurant in the village that was opened by Mario Batali. He since sold it and now one has just opened in our neighborhood. The meal was absolutely delicious. We shared a shaved fennel, watercress salad with dried cherry tomatoes, and then I had a pasta with sweet corn and chorizo. We finished off with a panna cotta for dessert with some marinated cherries. It was a wonderful evening, which we extended by having drinks at the Brooklyn Social Club.

The flowers are growing

2007-07-13T08:45:00.001-07:00

I've been knitting a few rows of the intarsia here and there. I must admit that I needed a little auto-pilot knitting, so I knit one of the sleeves. I'm getting slowly better at the intarsia. I've been replacing the plastic bobbins with handmade "butterflies" (as Shirley Paden calls them). The plastic bobbins add quite a bit of weight that makes the knitting a bit unpleasant. Basically, the butterflies are just small center-pull skeins that you make by wrapping the yarn around two fingers. They are lightweight, so they are much nicer to knit with. You can see a couple of them at the bottom of the knitting.

After the intarsia is done, there's a bit of embroidery to do on top of it. I might scale that back a little. For one thing, I'm not very skilled at embroidery and for another, it might just be gilding the lily.

Intarsiaaaaack

2007-07-05T07:11:00.001-07:00

I am currently knitting the Wildflower sweater for Lindsay from Lucinda Guy's book Handknits for Kids. When you look at the photo above, you think how cute. The colorwork is going to be really pretty when it's finished. When you look at the photo below, you think, boy is she nuts to knit something in intarsia with all those cursed bobbins tangling up on the back of the work.

I'm having a hard time finding a photo of the project. This is the best I could find. You have to scroll down to see the Wildflower sweater. It's going to be so sweet when it's finished. I was even able to use some stash yarn for the project, and only had to buy two additional skeins. I'm pretty much sticking to the same color-scheme for the sweater because I think Lucinda's color combinations are really gorgeous. I also really like the Dougie sweater and hat/scarf set in the book as well as the Jack Frost jacket and the knitted flowers. Does anyone ever really knit these baby blankets? Seems like an insane amount of work!

I am slowly getting better at the intarsia. I was being stingy with the amount of bobbins I made and was carrying one skein of blue across the whole thing. I added a few more blue bobbins and am now only carrying one color across the back at any given time. I can't say I love this technique. I also think that I'll make the back of the sweater plain blue because I can't really stomach the idea of another side of this glacially slow progress.

On another note, I've started a knitting group in my neighborhood. We meet the first Wednesday of each month at the Tea Lounge. So far there have only been one or two people who have come, but they have been really interesting women, so it's been very enjoyable.

Blue Dress

2007-07-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

It looks as though I'm sewing for myself and knitting for Lindsay. This is a dress that I completed in my sewing class. It's a New Look pattern (6615) which was adapted a bit. I didn't add the ties in the back and made it a bit more fitted. I'm pretty pleased with it, although I think that the tie in back would have made it a bit more fitted over my derriere. I absolutely love the fabric, which is a Japanese fabric I got from Brooklyn General store. They are expanding their stock to not only have knitting and spinning, but now sewing and embroidery. And, no, I really do not want to become an embroiderer. I really appreciate all the adorable embroidery I've been seing on people's blogs, but I CAN'T learn one more thing. Family and friends may have heard me say this about spinning and sewing in the past. But, really now. Hee hee. I'm serious this time. The project I'm currently working on for Lindsay involves some embroidery, but that will be all. I swear it.

I think I look really dorky in this photo, but I was melting from the impromptu lovin' of a 3 year old.

Yellow Dress

2007-07-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Photos at long last! Isn't there something about the cobbler's children.....
I'm pretty happy with this dress. It fits Lindsay well. Hopefully I will get two seasons out of it. I made the length for a 5 year old. Keep in mind this pattern is from the early 70s, so short was in!!

I decided that smocking the variegated yarn probably wouldn't look great, so I changed the yarn to a solid. I'm pretty happy with the results. Lindsay likes it and very sweetly tells people that her mommy made it. And, no I don't bribe her with lollipops to do that!

Spinnerin

2007-06-21T08:44:00.001-07:00

I've been knitting a pattern from this 1972 copy of Spinnerin. It has a lot of fabulous patterns that I will post and knit later. You can see a photo of the dress I'm making below. I've made a bunch of changes, namely having it stockinette instead of reverse stockinette. I also used a variegated yarn and a contrasting color on the smocking. It's actually done, but I need to snap a photo of Lindsay wearing it.

Green and Black

2007-06-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

Eve,

I don't need to use last names because you know who you are. I walked like a lamb behind you in the store that fateful evening before the Yarn Harlot's talk when you purchased the green and black nectar of the gods. I knew you were picky about the chocolate you eat, so I knew it had to be good. I was completely unprepared. I have consumed a small lake of chocolate since that time.

Now I know how Adam felt- oh Eve, you evil temptress.

Camping

2007-06-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Neil and I are taking Lindsay on her first camping trip on Monday. We chose Beartown State Forest as the best spot. First of all, it is beautiful. It's a small park with a small lake. There's a nice trail that circles the lake. It's actually the place where Neil proposed to me. The other reason we chose Beartown is that it is quite close to his parents house in case anything goes dreadfully wrong. I'm not anticipating anything, but we want an out just in case.

So, we're spending a lot of time planning, shopping and packing. I'm not a camper, so I really have no idea what to pack for meals and supplies. We're going to stop by the in-laws on the way up and borrow their big coolers and some plastic bowls and cups. We have a picnic basket w/ plastic plates and utensils. We have an ancient canvas tent that someone gave us and we just ordered sleeping bags.

The funny thing about Beartown is that there actually are bears. Actually it's not very funny. I'm concerned about the whole food/toothpaste thing. They say you should put your food and cosmetics in the back of your car. So here's the thing...we had a friend who worked at Yosemite National Park. He said that putting food in cars didn't stop the bears. One family came back to their car to find their windshield completely ripped off and a bear sitting in the backseat munching on whatever they left inside. Yikes!!

So besides the bears, I'm really looking forward to this trip. Neil predicted that this is going to be one of those ugly New York summers and it looks as though he's going to be right. Tempers are already high. We had a murder on our block last week, where two brothers got into a fight over a bicycle and one shot the other. It was an ugly scene with police in riot gear, police tape crisscrossing the street, dogs trying to sniff and track down the brother who did the shooting, etc. The man who was shot was one of the crazy characters who grew up in the neighborhood who everyone knew.

I'm looking forward leaving the city to do some outdoor knitting. I've packed watercolor paint and paper and will do some painting with Lindsay. She just tried watercolors for the first time a few weeks ago and seemed to enjoy them. I'm looking forward to being where it's green and taking some nature photos. And I'm looking forward to exploring the woods with Neil and Lindsay and finding the spot where we got engaged.

White cardigan

2007-05-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

I actually knitted this little sweater for Lindsay last summer when I decided she needed a plain white cardigan for cool evenings. When it was all seamed up, I realized that the arms were *way* too short. So the sweater sat around for months and months. Finally I added a couple of inches on to the arms and body of the sweater. I camoflaged the join with some nice ribbon and voila. The sleeves are still too short (although less so than before) because it took me so flippin' long to make the alteration. Eegads. I can add on to the sleeves more easily this time since they are knitted down. But, I'll probably procrastinate....see where this is going?

SPECS
Pattern: Dotty from Jaeger Handknits JB29
Yarn: Mystery yarn from a cone someone gave me. It's so unbelievably soft I think it might be cashmere.
Changes: I decided not to embroider the little dots on the sweater. I made a couple and they looked awful, so I decided to quit while I was ahead. I lengthened the crazy short sleeves and added a ribbon.

Mother's Day

2007-05-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

For mother's day we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. It's been a tradition with us since I've been a mother. What a nicer way to celebrate than to stroll around on a gorgeous day and look at lilacs and other amazing flowers blooming? Well, sleeping late was pretty wonderful! Neil let me sleep late and then we had croissants (plain, chocolate and almond) from the super yummy french restaurant that makes all their own bread and pastries. The extra-special surprise was that my sister was in town from Oakland. We haven't seen each other in 2 1/2 years, so it was a real treat.

Neil brought Lindsay home for a nap and Lisa and I got to walk around the gardens at a nice, leisurely pace.

This plaque gives me an unreasonable amount of silly pleasure.

This gorgeous flower was in the tropical hot house. Aren't the colors lovely?

This plant gives a pretty good show of the fertility of spring!

I hope everyone had as lovely a day as we did. We even had a nice grown-up dinner afterwards in the neighborhood.

A Line Skirt

2007-05-09T06:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the skirt! I think there's a trend happening. When I asked Neil to photograph me outside w/ the skirt, Lindsay got upset. Flashback to the shawl w/ #20 edging photo. Aack. But, I was able to distract her w/ some flowers and mint. She loves picking and eating herbs.

Sewing class

2007-05-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a sewing class at Brooklyn General, which is a wonderful yarn store here in Brooklyn. They've been expanding their stock to include fiber for spinning, fabric and sewing supplies.

I made an A-line skirt out of the Sew U book. I bought the fabric from City Quilter.

I'll post photos of my finished skirt shortly. One of the other women in the class made her skirt out of a gorgeous fabric. I decided to make a dress out of the same fabric. I think I have the bug, because after I finish the dress I'm going to make a shirt out of the Sew U book. I can see how I'm going to have a stash of fabrics to go along with my yarn stash. Very frightening picture.

It seems that Autumn makes me want to knit and now Spring makes me want to sew. Tra la tra la.

Earth Day

2007-04-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

We went up to the Berkshires for some good old country fun last weekend. The weather was absolutely breathtaking and warm.

On the way up we visited my grandmother, who lives in Chappaqua, NY. She sold a lot of her land to the Audobon Society, so her yard connects with a nice amount of woods that will never be developed. While we were visiting, we sat in her dining room which has a large picture window on the back yard. Lindsay had fun putting out peanuts and birdseed, and we had fun watching the chipmunks, blue jays, titmouses (titmice??), red bellied woodpeckers, and chickadees diving in to eat. The highlight of the nature parade was a coyote sauntering across her backyard.

On Earth Day we went for a bike ride to Mill River, which is the next small town from Hartsville. We noticed people on the side of the road picking up litter and we decided that it was a great idea for celebrating Earth Day. After Lindsay's nap we went out onto Neil's parent's road with their little wagon. I was shocked at the amount of garbage we picked up. In less than 2/10ths of a mile we picked up over a case-worth of beer cans and bottles.

We also bought some compact fluorescent lights for our closets. Naomi Dagen Bloom of A Little Red Hen was the catalyst for my finally buying them. So what with the litter collection, the bike riding and the cfls, I felt pretty good about celebrating the planet.

The next day we went for a hike up Monument Mountain. This is a hike that Neil's family has done for years. It's a nice moderately steep hike with a lovely view at the top. They laugh because Canyon Ranch takes their clientele up there now. So the Beckermans get a nice spa treatment for free every time they do that hike. Lindsay did well on the trail and fancies herself a mountain climber now. She insisted on carrying my backpack on some of the stretches.

aran lace scarf

2007-04-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

I just completed a bulky-weight lace scarf for a fundraiser at my daughter's school. The money will go to the scholarship fund. I also donated private knitting lessons. Both of which I'm hoping someone will think are nifty and bid on.

Anyway the specs for the scarf are:
Takhi Lana yarn
size 15 addi needles
Barbara Walker lace insertion pattern called Dayflower. The pattern gently undulates on the sides, which adds a bit of grace to the lace.

I had knit my daughter a scarf with a worsted weight yarn in the same pattern. Time was limited to make this one for the auction, so I pulled yarn out of my stash that was quite bulky. The yarn looks a lot like aran fisherman sweaters even in the lace. Several non-knitters who saw it mentioned that.

Berkshires

2007-04-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

After spending Passover in the city, we drove up to the Berkshires to stay with Neil's parents. Lindsay is on Spring Break until the 12th. Rather than stay in Brooklyn and get caught in a rut, we decided to go to the country.

We visited friends who moved up there from Brooklyn. They have a daughter Ruby, who is one of Lindsay's good friends. We all had a nice time catching up with them. After leaving their home in Ashley Falls, MA, we drove for a minute or so out of town and saw a bobcat flying across the road. It was an amazing animal, running full speed a la National Geographic special. It did stop a second to glare at our car heading right towards it. Absolutely majestic animal. Although it was incredible to see such a beautiful animal, it was out of place where it was, which was a sad reminder of how all of the houses being built up there are displacing its habitat. I hope it finds a good new home. I think it was eating a chicken before we so rudely interrupted it.

I was talking about unusual animals with the owner of a pet store here in Brooklyn. He mentioned that there are colonies of wild parrots in Brooklyn. I can't wait to look for those guys. There's a colony at Greenwood cemetery, which is a gorgeous park-like place that I have never gone to.

Z hat

2007-03-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a fun knitting week. On Thursday, I went out in the great world of grown-ups to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka The Yarn Harlot speak at FIT. She was launching her book tour here in NYC. As usual, she was lovely and hilariously funny.

I also finished a little hat for baby Zach. The first one was kind of awful. I tried to do the Z with intarsia and it came out really lumpy and uneven. I might have tried to overlook that if it weren't for the fact that the hat almost fit my 3 year-old. Don't know what's happened to my knitting mojo since the shawl, but I think it has more to do with the fact that I haven't been able to sleep well lately.

Anyway, I think this hat is suitably cute for a newborn. It will get packed up with some nice kids music, some wonderful organic baby shampoo and lotion and sent off to Zach.

I have friends who had a baby 2 months premature. I think that little baby needs a hat. I just have to figure out how small to make it.

When in doubt, spin

2007-03-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

Since finishing the shawl in VLT, I have had a hard time starting a new project. I made a little hat for Zach, but I can't say it was a success, so it's going to the frog pond.

During this phase of floundering, I have been doing some spinning. Nothing like the simple act of spinning to soothe the soul. This skein is 80% merino and 20% mohair. There's just enough mohair to have a beautiful sheen, and take the dye beautifully. The merino keeps it soft. The color is beautifully gradated shades of dark blue. It wasn't until I plyed and tied the skein that I noticed the color choice being similar to my blog colors. Funny how that works without one realizing it.

I am now spinning some yak fiber I got at Rhinebeck. It's unbelievably soft. Makes you just want to roll around in the roving. The fibers are extremely short, so it lends itself to a fine highly spun yarn. Ruth if you are reading this....this might be harder than the cormo.

Zach is in the house

2007-03-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

Little Zachary was born in Santa Cruz this morning weighing in at just over 8 lbs. Mom and baby are doing well. Lindsay is a cousin and I am an aunt. Does that mean I can crash people's picnics?