Happy Thanksgiving from Me!

Happy Day

Things I am grateful for this day & everyday (in no particular order):
Health
My husband and kids
Friends
Babies & Children
New York & being born here
Knitting and all things fiber related
The joy of new experience
The love of craft
All the seasons
Ice Cream
New discoveries
All animals
Laughter
Being a blond - ok, almost
Truth be told, I haven't touched the tip of the ice berg. I only wish i had a picture of my silly grin. Wait, I think I do.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Peanut Butter Brownies

Keeping Up...

One of the things I love about this city and the kind of work i get to do is that both put me in touch with amazing and interesting people Take my pals, Bruce and Mark. Gifted writers and cooks, they have authored at least 9 cookbooks. I first met Bruce through our careers - he was a creative director and I was an Account Director. He says I made the decision to hire him on my account at the time, and I guess he must be right since he's younger than I am and remembers things far more accurately - or so he would insist.

Anyway, Bruce and Mark work out of their home which is basically a gigantic test kitchen. (Bruce and I try and get together at least once every few weeks so we can knit together - I taught him to knit, but he's got an artist's eye for color and combining yarns so I have learned a lot from him. ) So, it was with some strong sense of anticipation that I went to see Bruce the other day. We were going to doing a little gossiping, a little knitting and I was going to do a lot of tasting. He's in the middle of developing recipes for their newest book: The ultimate Peanut Butter Book, and it was BROWNIE day. Along with rice pudding, bread pudding and oatmeal raisin cookies, brownies are my all-time favorite dessert - provided there's at least a gallon or two of skim milk on hand. (It has to be skim, mind you, since whole is so fattening).
When i arrived there were at least 3 desserts cooling on the dining table, so I had a moment or two to decide which to sample before I dove in.
Who am i kidding? I tasted 'em all. They were fabulous, but it was the brownies that truly captured my heart: Peanut Butter/Chocolate Brownies - all mine.


When you get a moment, look up from all that holiday knitting, and check out their website: www.ultimatecook.com. They have done a number of Ultimates and they are well worth the google if you're looking for great holiday ideas - apart from knitted goodies that is.

working, knitting & mom

I've been immersed in a free-lance job all week, and I have missed a lot of my knitting time . So, today, after attending some meetings, I went across the street to the new Time Warner Center and grabbed a few hours to do my favorite things: first, i walked through Williams Sonoma and looked at their incredibly beautiful test kitchen, and then I went downstairs to the biggest supermarket we have in Manhattan: the Whole Foods at 59th and Columbus. It's enormous and beautiful and a shrine for foodies like me. Then I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down with my knitting, and I pulled out my NY Times Crossword puzzle and had 2 hrs. of solitary fun - in the middle of a giant coffee/jamba juice/whole foods milling crowd. It was glorious.

It was my late mom's birthday and since it was she who taught me to knit, my thoughts turned to her. My mom was a funny and rather gentle lady who taught me to knit when i was 8 and then promptly put down her needles. (Years later she told me it made her "nervous" and she didn't understand how I had the patience for it.) Nonetheless, she gave me an enormous gift so I think of her often when I knit.
So, I think it only fair that on her "birthday" I tell one of my favorite "mom" stories - When my mom was a little girl and she started school, she was very shy. When they enrolled her in class, the teacher recorded her birthday and understood it to be November 11th.
Since she was born in 1911, her birthdate was recorded as 11/11/11. In reality it was 11/20/11, but she liked the sound of all those eleven's and she was too shy to correct him, so she let it stand. For years - and I mean until I was at least 40, we celebrated it on the 11th - Veteran's Day. One day, she told me, with a silly smile , that her true birthday was the 20th. When I asked her why she had let us all go on like that for years, without revealing the actual date, she just smiled and said that, at first, she hadn't wanted to "make any trouble" and then she had grown to like it - that all of those 11's were kind of like a good luck charm - and besides 11 was a really nice number. She was a really nice mom, too.
Happy Birthday, Mom.

A ducky little sweater

It's all about the boys....

I know I said i didn't have any more knitted projects to show. Well, it's not exactly true. Actually, I do have some and since i'm beginning to catalogue them (in pictures), I thought I'd share one of my favorites with you. The daughter of my friend, Nan, recently had a baby boy. (Nan, you may recall, is my ages-older friend - she's the one who doesn't knit or read my blog.) Since I am always knee-deep in a stash of provence cotton and always have blue and cream on hand (you never know when a new baby will pop onto the scene), I designed a sweet little sweater for him. Here's a picture of it.

Right after that, our niece, Rebecca and her husband, Brian, had a little boy. He was born into a family of Yankee's fans but, unfortunately, he didn't bring any good luck with him in terms of the Series. (I personally think he may be an undercover spirit that was sent to help the Red Sox since he's been way too cheerful for the past few weeks.) So, I decided to knit him his first baseball jacket. That will be ready for its' debut later this week. With a little luck, I'll get the kid to model it for me.





I

My Leo

Have Heart!

I stand in awe and respect for my fellow knitter-bloggers, They have stuck to their knitting and are not bemoaning the state of the union. It's a credit to them, and to the craft, that they are concentrating on the positive. I, for one, have been busily lending my talents to a free-lance job in mid-town manhattan, and writing my little fingers to the bone so my knitting is taking a very temporary back-seat to a paycheck. I am sad that I don't have any new knitting to display, but it's coming, I promise. In the meantime, pls. take a picture of one of my favorite NYC sights. I now pass these every day on my way to this month's "office", and they never fail to remind me of the importance of strength and heart. I have a real weak spot for Lions. I am a Leo, my favorite relative was named Leo and one of my all-time favorites in the literary world is the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz. Not so cowardly afterall, he learned one of the ultimate truths: Bravery comes from the heart and not from the size of the roar! Take heart!

There's always hope but only if you Vote!

A New Leaf

The Farmer's Market at Union Square has always been a source of great pleasure for me. Not only does it underscore the beauty of fresh bounty from the earth, but it also proves to anyone who visits there that our hearts are eternally responsive to natural and genuine things. In walking through the market it is impossible to not feel more buoyant and positive - especially in the Spring and Fall, when nature is giving us her best efforts. It's also a place where photo ops abound. I thought that this market sign was particularly appropriate today: Whatever the outcome, let's pray that 2004's "New Leaf" represents a commitment to new growth, but not at the expense of other people and cultures. Please Vote!