Rhinebeck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.