Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve is one of my favorite holidays.  For me it has none of the pressure or expectations of Christmas, and the optimism and excitement of  a new year is as big a buzz as champagne.  It has lots of romantic significance for me too, as Phil and I have spent every NYE together since we started dating, despite various arrivals and departures before we were married.

We are very lucky to have managed this huge upheaval this year, and to have the opportunity to take our lives in our hands and make such a change.  I am also very grateful for the friendships we have started; several of them have great potential. I am not ashamed to admit how much Fred has help me in this area!

I thought I'd make a very brief Year in Review, and  mention some of the things I wanted to put into the blog, but missed:

• Phil and I went to see Dame Edna at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.  S(he) was great; very barbed and funny, and the audience participation segments were cringingly hilarious. For me this was a demonstration of Things We Would Never Do In London, because it was too inconvenient, expensive and difficult to arrange.
• We held a Guy Fawkes Party on November 5th and invited our new friends and -- with what in hindsight was a stroke of brilliance -- all of our immediate neighbors.  The invitations briefly explained what Bonfire Night meant in the UK, and joked about the fact that both bonfires and fireworks were illegal in Rollingwood, our section of Austin.  In the end, more than 60 people came from our street and the rowing club and various other places, I made 35 jacket potatoes in the oven, and we had a "bonfire' in a fire pit on the patio. I even managed to find a Union Jack which we flew from the upstairs balcony. Phil found this embarrassing but lots of people thought it was really fun. I know my father would have loved it.  Several people have suggested we make it an annual event.
• Two (count 'em, 2) friends from England have come to see us on separate visits. Both doctors, both attending medical conferences in the US, and both slept on an air mattress in the playroom without complaint! It was wonderful to see each of them...
• We spent Thanksgiving with my sister and her family in Wisconsin. It was great to see them all and to remember just how inconvenient snowstorms can be.  All the cousins had a blast together, Rita and I made pies and exchanged recipes, and Fred got to see snow.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We went to the Trail Of Lights in Austin just before Christmas. This is a huge display put on by the Austin Parks dept in Zilker Park, with help from corporate sponsors and food and entertainment from local businesses.  Over 300,000 people attended last year, which is not bad for a city of less than 1m. We were able to drive down a neighboring street and walk in, which is pretty neat.
• My mother's sister, Aunt Sara, and her son, Walt, came to visit a few weeks back. I'd not seen Walt since he was about 10. He is now an energy trader in Houston. I'd not seen Aunt Sara since my mother's funeral 10 years ago next month. We had a lovely brunch.

• And I unfortunately had the absolute WORST haircut in my entire life, which is why I've not posted any photos of myself for months. I am not exaggerating: the space between the top of my eyebrows, and the bottom of my bangs (fringe) was ONE-HALF INCH. If I'd been 6 years old, I'd have been mortified; at 44 it was a complete disaster. It has now been 10 weeks or so and I am nearly recovered. And no, I did not complain at the time -- I was too much in shock-- and Yes, I did tip the stupid woman. That is just how pathetically Nice I feel compelled to be when under stress. I think there's a new year's resolution there somewhere.... 

Happy New Year.

It's The New Black

If "Mommy Blogging" is rampant on the internet, close behind it -- and in many cases running parallel to it -- are the foodie blogs, the gardening blogs and, you may be surprised to know, the thousands of Knitter's Blogs. Or the Crocheter's blogs or perhaps to avoid the s(he) problem, the Fiber/Craft person's blogs.

Flickr and other photo sites are crammed full of people showing off their FOs (Finished Object - for those of you just learning the lingo) - linked to their own blogs. The Yarn Harlot, a blog written by Canadian knitter and NYT bestselling author Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, gets thousands of hits per day.  And the site that continues to amaze me, Ravelry, is a social networking website that allows knitters and crocheters around the world to share projects and ideas. By November 2008 it had more than 200,000 members and has an ongoing waiting list of more than 5,000 wannabes, which it is inviting to join at a rate of 800-1000 per day. Ravelry manages to combine knitting, showing off one's work, chatting, and shopping in a spookily successful way, as well as being a complete encyclopedia of knitting fashions, patterns and yarns. Via Ravelry I was invited to join two Austin knitting groups before I'd even left London...

So there is my justification for sharing my latest FO - the Seaside Sweater by Debbie Bliss, published in her Bright Knits for Kids. I made it for my nephew, James Krisko, and dispatched it -- hopelessly late -- in the Christmas parcel last week. It has taken me so long to finish it that I am convinced he has outgrown it in the meantime.  If Laura sends me a photo of him wearing it, I will post it with great delight!  The sweater is knit in Rowan brand cotton glace. It was supposed to be worn on his North Carolina beach holidays with his grandparents (Last July!)

 However, I have to confess that the acres of stocking stitch and the intarsia work (that's the isolated color work for the motifs, as opposed to the multicolor rows (fairisle style) along the rows of the cuffs and the ribbing) were a bit of a slog, as we say in England. And I kept getting distracted with smaller projects.

But it's done, and I got to click FINISHED on Ravelry and get my 30 seconds or so fame on the main page before it was pushed off the FO gallery by someone else.

Renovations

We are beginning the renovation process at our house; or at least we are starting to begin it. We've had two "builders" or contracters come around to discuss our ideas, and two architects. In all the "remodels" we've done over the years-- and my old friends know all about this -- we've never used an architect but we're definitely going to this time.  

The house has some amusing features, most of which we're going to remove. It was built in 1988 but seems to have some lingering 1970s style..

Here is the intercom system, which, if it worked, would allow you to page people in different rooms or at the front door, or on the patio. I keep thinking it is a modern version of the servant's bell.

There is also a wet bar in the living room, in case you or your guests are too damn lazy to walk a dozen paces into the kitchen to get yourself a drink. It has a mini fridge, a sink, and glass shelves with a mirror behind to show off your crystal.

Note the slatted doors to the bar: very Bewitched, I think (and boy, does that date me!) There is another set of slatted doors -- saloon style-- in the guest bathroom, separating the toilet from the rest of the room. I can remember thinking those doors were totally trendy when I was about eight years old. 

Sadly, all these features will go when we knock out the hallway wall to make a larger hall and place to put my father's piano. We're also going to add a large family room off the kitchen, remove a wall between the current two utility rooms (!) and add a swimming pool.  Sure! and it will all be done in time for summer.... HA! HA! HA!

And you'll notice that the blog has also been renovated, thanks to Lucy. Hope you like the new design - a bit cleaner and easier to read, I think, and I'm determined to get my head around HTML, if only to be able to circumvent Blogger's ridiculously stupid formatting.  Enjoy...

A milestone

Fred was two years old on Tuesday. We had two of his friends (and their parents!) round for a birthday tea and a play in the yard.

Here are a few images from the last few months.

 

 

This is his first hike, at the Balcones Canyonlands reserve, abou

t 30 minutes or so from our house. We were only able to take the buggy a short way down the trail, so he walked quite a bit of it (and was carried some too!)

Happiness is a Kitchenaid Mixer

I have already been accused of turning into Bree on Desperate Housewives, but I'm just going to tell you how much I love my new Kitchenaid. Or more specifically my Kitchenaid Artisan 5qt stand mixer. 

My mother had one of these in the 1970s and I learned to bake with it. Hers was an Avocado Green Sunbeam mixer, which she upgraded to a Harvest Gold Kitchenaid (told you it was the '70s) before I went to high school. I have wanted one since I left home, but for many years they weren't available in the UK, and when they were, they were priced more in sterling than than they were in dollars in the US, and I refused to stump up for it. 

Amazon has literally hundreds of reviews of this product, some from people who claim to have owned theirs for 20-30 years. My sister had my mother's yellow one which still functioned perfectly but was damaged in the great Gays Mills Flood of 2006.

So, once I decided that the 6qt model was more power and capacity than I needed, and that the Professional series, was just marketing, I had to choose between more than 20 possible colors for my Artisan. This process took more than two weeks, and several email conversations with like-minded friends, and much patient, feigned enthusiasm from Lucy.  

For the record, the finalists were Empire Red, Ice Blue (which Phil liked because it was close to a Cambridge blue) and the two possible yellows. But Lucy declared both White and Majestic (?) Yellow to be too L-Shaped Room.  In addition, Phil made me promise not to insist on a complete kitchen remodel, just to co-ordinate with the mixer...

My Apple Green Kitchenaid arrived the week before Thanksgiving. It is funky and contemporary, and doesn't clash with the kitchen. I am starting the Christmas Cake tomorrow..