a southern gal in the north

well, i am bummed….

i live just about two hours (so google says) from Rhinebeck but don’t (yet) have a car.  i thought i had a ride there just for Saturday but it seems to have fallen thru.  I am fine with going only one day – i imagine a lot of sensory overload !  but going alone is kinda scary.

The only other way to go would be to take two trains and hope that i can get a cab from the train station (i don’t even know if there will be any available that day!).

sigh

its so close but still so far away.

oh well, i guess next year….

From the THINK PINK Challenge gal…

So… for those of you who missed the deadline, or who have an urge to do more, I've decided to keep the project going. I'd originally thought of making it an annual event, but after talking to some of the nurses and volunteer coordinators who work with women fighting breast cancer every day, it occurred to me that they could use our support every day, not just one month out of the year.

So I'm willing to make a deal with you… You keep those pink scarves coming and I'll make sure that they get to the women who can be blessed by them. Each time I get 20 or so scarves, I'll send them to the next hospital on my list. For now, I'll rotate among the hospitals we've already made contact with (I'll post a list once they're confirmed), and if you know of hospitals that you think would be appropriate to add, please send me the facility name and a phone number and I'll follow-up.

The Think Pink Challenge: What an amazing finish!!!.

After much web research, found a company offering reasonably priced slipcovers – i realized the material i had was really not suited to everyday use – its the same as the burgundy pillows on the sofa – and decided on a black upholstery grade duck (50 cotton 50 poly and machine washable).  Including made to measure cushion covers.    I ordered Sunday night and when I checked today, it was supposed to be here on Thursday – but lo and behold, the package came today (no surprise since it was only from Woodside NY and i am in Westchester, NY).  So tonight as the Mets beat the Cardinals, i moved the sofa and cleaned up and vacuumed (thank god for dustbusters!) and then pulled and tugged and pleated and folded and arranged the cover.

Ta da my newly covered sofa!

I should take a photo of the window and its treatment to show you how the black ties in with the room’s decor – my battery is recharging (ill add one later).   There are black velvet curtains and a dark blue roman shade (like the wall color) and a swag across the top of the burgundy fabric.  In the photo below you can see the hooked rug (ebay) with its black border.

Anyway, i love it and am thrilled that after buying new foam cushions and a new slipcover I have a semi new sofa for FAR less than a brand new one.  Of course with the cats, i will be forever vacuuming up hair from the black cover – but well, what the hey.

I also tried out a new recipe from the EAT blog – Lidia’s Meat Sauce.  Its really easy but needs to cook for 2–3 hours – she says – the longer you cook, the better.  And its really true – it was amazing to watch and taste it thru the hours– but yes, after three hours of slow simmering – its wonderful.  Its a very basic recipe with no seasoning except bay leaves and S/P, but i added some thyme and oregano FROM my OWN herb garden!  Yes those are some of the plants that MR Ghog has NOT eaten and i have dried some of them already.  Actually need to get out there and harvest more and dry them before it gets too cold and they die.  but thats another day…

Lidia’s Meat Sauce – recipe here

And an older FO – this from last year – its a Pelerine from one of the Spun Outs from Schoolhouse Press.  Its shorter than I really wanted cause I ran out of yarn – but i really wear it around the apt in the winter so i can keep the heating down low and save $.

Friends ask: Why don’t you find another hobby? I just look at them, wondering where to start. Gardening is not a hobby to me. It’s a deep need, like breathing fresh air, hearing the sound of water, seeing the sun rise. Feeling the soil, watching an earthworm wriggle out of sight, planting a tree and helping it grow: these are as basic to my existence as loving a person. If I couldn’t garden, I would feel cut off from life.

Besides, it’s hard to know where danger is lurking, and thus hard to guard against it. Yellow jackets are all over the place, especially this time of year, and they are just as likely to land on your hamburger or your sweet soda pop at a picnic, as to fly out of a hole in the garden.

Although a careful person might tell me to limit my risk by staying inside, even that is no guarantee. Once, one flew in the window, unbeknownst to me, and landed in my teacup, where it began to drown, until I took a drink and it stung me on the tip of my tongue.

No, better to fling yourself back into the world, armed with a little more knowledge about the risks.

Bzz, Ouch! Love and Death, on the Wing – New York Times.

Attic Salt for October 15
Gardens a source of endless fascination
By ED CULLEN
Advocate columnist
Published: Oct 15, 2006

A friend, who’s not a gardener, once told me, “I know when you’re hard up for a column because you end up writing about gardening.”

Only someone who doesn’t garden would say such a thing. Gardeners would write about nothing but if they could get away with it. Gardens are sources of endless fascination for the people who tend them.

Perhaps, you’ve seen a spouse or a parent standing at one end of his or her garden, cup of coffee in hand. They last looked at that particular row of beans or cut flowers the previous morning, but there they stand in almost worshipful posture to look for the slightest new growth, signs of bugs or, in my neighborhood, the telltale work of an armadillo.

Armadillos are after the white grub worms that get turned up in freshly worked dirt. Armadillos seem to almost cultivate a planted row, carefully lifting plants out of the ground with their noses as they plow for late-night dinner or predawn breakfast.

I replanted lettuce starts this morning after an armadillo worked the row over during the night.

Gardeners know to the tiniest detail what’s going on in their plots. Here is a domain that men and women may control to the extent that bugs, animals and the weather will let them. Success or failure comes by the gardener’s hand and industry.

2theadvocate.com | Ed Cullen's Attic Salt | Attic Salt for October 15.

There was a recent article about the “disappearance” of Agatha Christie in The Observer in light of a new book by Andrew Norman [quote from article below]

“The solution to the darkest of all Agatha Christie mysteries may be at hand. What lay behind her extraordinary 11-day disappearance in 1926? Several plausible theories have competed for favour over the years, but biographer Andrew Norman believes he is the first to find one that satisfies every element of the case.

In his study of the writer’s life published this autumn, Norman uses medical case studies to show that Christie was in the grip of a rare but increasingly acknowledged mental condition known as a ‘fugue state’, or a period of out-of-body amnesia induced by stress. In effect, the writer was in a kind of trance for several days, he claims.

The mystery, which has puzzled both the police and Christie fans for 80 years, is a why-dunnit, rather than a who-dunnit. It began on the evening of Friday 3 December at Styles, the Berkshire home of the crime writer, by then already an established name, with a sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, selling well. Around 9.45pm, without warning, she drove away from the house, having first gone upstairs to kiss her sleeping daughter, Rosalind. Her abandoned Morris Cowley was later found down a slope at Newlands Corner near Guildford. There was no sign of her.”

Today in The Guardian Frances Fyfield “answers” Mr Norman.

The “disappearing act” by Agatha Christie over 11 days in 1926 has always been a subject of huge curiosity and mystery. Why did a famous and successful woman cut and run, leaving her car abandoned in a way that suggested self-injury, to fetch up in a genteel hotel in Harrogate – where she remained oblivious to newspaper headlines and a national hunt to find her while acting perfectly normally as a guest?

Agatha was never ill-mannered and it was so unlike her to cause any fuss. She had been a good daughter, wife, mother; a little schooled in self-effacement, perhaps. Perhaps part of the enduring fascination with her apparently irresponsible disappearance was because it was so out of character, but also because it was so obviously the result of a disordered mind. There may well have been a certain satisfaction in this discovery.

She was, after all, a woman who wrote about murder, a female who dabbled in blood and wielded the not so blunt instruments of homicide with unseemly satisfaction and considerable success. Such an unsuitable job for a woman. Of course she had to be bonkers.

rest of article

Today is chock full of lovely items – The “money” opera is BALLO at 9 am – with Ms Anderson’s Ulrica.  Interestingly, i think that the Tosca is a repeat.

Metropolitan Opera Radio Performances on Sirius
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 6:00 AM 

Puccini: Manon Lescaut
12/10/1949-Giuseppe Antonicelli; Dorothy Kirsten, Jussi Björling, Giuseppe Valdengo, Salvatore Baccaloni, Thomas Hayward

9:00 AM  Verdi: Un Ballo in Maschera
12/10/1955-Dimitri Mitropoulos; Zinka Milanov, Roberta Peters, Marian Anderson, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Calvin Marsh, Giorgio Tozzi

12:00 PM  Puccini: Tosca
4/16/1994-Christian Badea; Maria Guleghina, Luciano Pavarotti, James Morris

3:00 PM  Wagner: Lohengrin
4/11/1953-Fritz Stiedry; Eleanor Steber, Margaret Harshaw, Brian Sullivan, Sigurd Björling, Dezsö Ernster

7:30 PM  Puccini: Madama Butterfly (LIVE FROM THE MET)
Fisch; Gallardo-Domas, Zifchak, Giordani, Croft

I have joined a bunch of KALs recently – the Ariann and the RED Sweater Kals both are served by my Red Ariann (!).  And it is going fine – I am up to the last increase – and will probably knit a few more inches (i like long sweaters).  But the other one is the ZImmermania KAL and so of course … a new WIP is born.

I was all excited to design a sweater for my younger nephew (two and a  HALF) … i studied the EZ books and decided to use EPS as the base.  Probably will steek the sleeves.  His current best sweater is 11.5 across, so thats 23 around right?

On Friday, started out with a simple stockinette body and seed stitch border – but my gauge was way off.  So a visit to the frog pond for that.  Oh, I am using some EBAY stash – Lambs Pride Wool in gorgeous Bright Blue (if it looks familiar yes, it is the same as the shrug (which is STILL drying – i thought the low humidity and chilly weather would make it faster but its now three days!) anyway, so i have a few skeins left over and its a great blue – not baby blue or pale or anything like that.

So Saturday night, back to my (new) design notepad – and decided i was bored with plain st stitch so i would use some of my fav cables (celtic braid and XOs).   Recalculated with new K based on the gauge of the st stitch (foreshadowing!) and blithely cast on for border (Seed St) with 10% of K.  Then increased the requisite number of stitches in the set up row and merrily i went with the cables – after a bunch of time, look to see about 6 inches; but hmm, looks a little narrow – but the other one looked fine and was three inches too big.  so off to bed.

Later on Sunday afternoon – after some chores, etc took out the sweater and the measuring tape (glad i didnt do this Sat night!).

and ….

OPPS.  NINE INCHES!  WTF happened!  (remember i need at least 11.5)

BIG sigh as I remember reading in , probably, Janet Szabo’s blog or newsletter TWISTS AND TURNS  that cables pull IN the knitting fabric – oh dear. well at least its a smallish sweater. *

so back to the Frog pond we go [hey, its getting too chilly for this!]

To soothe my distress – a fit, er BIT of baking always helps.

Whole Wheat Scones with blueberries (from Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book )

And then, last night, after much time with the Calc program on my computer and TRIPLE checking numbers AND the NEW CABLE GAUGE, cast on for a new K-10% for the border of seed stitch and worked the cables – and this time there is a section of seed stitch on either side of the “Phoney Seams”.

*[ahem, i realize i should have swatched – but well…. oh, well, i dont have an excuse.just sheer silliness i guess ]

See schedule below – the Rigoletto was FABULOUS – Guden cystal clear with Tucker and Warren stupendous!  Of course the “money” opera today is at 3 pm.

6 am  Verdi: Rigoletto 12/18/51-Alberto Erede; Hilde Güden, Jean Madeira, Richard Tucker, Leonard Warren

 9 AM Beethoven: Fidelio 1/6/2001-James Levine; Karita Mattila, Hei-Kyung Hong, Ben Heppner, Sergei Leiferkus, René Pape

12 PM  Verdi: Falstaff 4/6/2002-James Levine; Marina Mescheriakova, Camilla Tilling, Susanne Mentzer, Stephanie Blythe, Gregory Turay, Bryn Terfel, Dwayne Croft

3 PM  Wagner: Die Walküre 2/24/1968  Berislav Klobucar; Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Christa Ludwig, Jon Vickers

7:30 PM  Gounod: Faust (LIVE FROM THE MET)  de Billy; Swenson, Deshayes, Vargas, Hakala, Abdrazakov

check out Franklin’s Homage to Barbara Walker (and if you haven’t read his blog before, prepare yourself for much enjoyment – remember i warned you!)

The Panopticon: Homage.