New York Vol. 3: open-mouthed

Ok, these people look normal. That's Lizzie, my high school buddy, with my nephew, John. He's now standing and crawling and singing (with help from Grandpa) and is exceedingly cute. This was his quilt, in case you're keeping track.

I'm not sure what he and my mom are doing in this picture, but it's the same thing Snoopy's doing in the next one...and Meade is doing in the following one. Hmm. Sorry, guys, couldn't resist!

New York Vol. 2 (aka I Ate New York)

Like Rrufus before him, Snoopy enjoys his morning walk with my dad to pick up breakfast from the Starlite Diner. I went with them a few of the days I was home (not every day...although it was tempting!)

Oooh...the anticipation!

Sigh. In order to replicate this in the UK, I need: streaky bacon, American cheese, and a soft kaiser roll. Not going to happen. Definitely worth the trip, though!

This was the inaugural self-portrait on my new S95 (thank you David Pogue...seriously, he wrote a love letter on his blog). I need to sort out the winking feature (so cool!) and this one would have been improved by a fill-in flash. Oh well. Emily and I look fab anyway. In case you can't see, her dress is a vintage-bicycle print (white on navy). I *nearly* stole it from her. I only restrained myself because she would have had a hard time finishing out the work day in only her underwear. Apparently it's Anthropologie from last year and cannot be purchased anymore for love nor money.

She works close to to the Time Warner Center, so we went up to Landmarc for lunch. At her suggestion I had the nicoise salad. HOLY MOLY it was awesome.

After lunch, I strolled across town to meet up with The International Book Group That Doesn't Read. I can't believe we've been not-reading together for almost 10 years. WHAT?! (Another self-portrait, hence the slightly-off-center poses.)

The day after, I had a meeting on Long Island for work, so we made plans to meet up with my mom's high school friend and her husband for lunch. (Bonus: she's Gnomemade's mom and the recipient of this amazing quilt, which I can attest is even more amazing in person.)

Yes, that's another self-portrait, but we all needed to be in the picture!

Jane made the most fab lunch - I think the best way to describe it was Emphatically American. The pasta salad was, I think, an amalgamation of a back-of-the-pasta-box recipe with some other additions. It was delish: chicken, broccoli, oranges (!?), flaked almonds, bowtie pasta, and honey mustard dressing. Honestly, not a combination I would have ever thought of, but we'll definitely be making it. Future visitors, be warned.

She also made devilled eggs, which I hadn't had in years. My grandma used to make them all the time and I should make them more - they're one of my favorite foods. My grandma always used dry mustard powder, but Jane used grainy mustard, and it really gave them a good zing. These where the only two left. Ahem. Not that I ate 4 (or 5) or anything. Nope. Nothing like that.

See? I really did eat New York (and it was delicious).

New York Vol. 1

Sorry for the blogging break - I went to New York! For Two Whole Weeks. It was really great - now that I have an amazing team working for me at the office, it meant that I could really relax while on vacation and not completely dread coming back to a mountain of unanswered emails. Hooray!

My brother's birthday was 3 days before I arrived. So, I brought him this London Underground cycling jersey. He LOVED it. It'll be handy, you know, for him to be able to find the nearest Tube station while he's riding his bike in New York. Oh, wait, never mind. Anyway, it's still cool.

My parents gave me an early birthday present. SO shiny. And immediately appropriated by the assembled Toys as their iPad. Hmm.

The morning after we arrived, I had arranged a trip down to Trinity Wall Street to ring the bells with them. We had an obligatory photo-op in Grand Central.

And then on to the ringing. The upshot: I need to work harder at my striking! I rang plain hunt on 9 with their band and their striking was flawless. Mine? Lumpy bumpy oops crash. Hmmm. Must try harder. A great tip from one of the band was to stand behind someone and pretend to strike their bell, listen to where they pull it, and compare that sound to where I would have pulled it. Definitely going to work on that.

After the epic bell-ringing session, we went to Chinatown. The place we'd aimed for was closed, so we went around the corner to my brother's favorite place, Nice Green Bo Restaurant. Instead of ordering main courses, since we were planning for dim sum, we ordered a selection of noodles and dumplings from their appetisers. The soup dumplings were amazing (as usual), and the rest of the dumplings were all super-delish, too. My great-aunt Ruthie (below) was slightly mystified by the whole thing, but we all chalked it up to an Excellent New York Experience.

Here we are, after lunch. Yes, that bag is full of leftover dumplings. And yes, they were just as good the following day.

And then, because my mom is now an Angry Birds uber-fan, we had to take this picture. Teehee!

Wet Bank Holiday Weekend

Well, it's England. In August. And we just had the August Bank Holiday weekend. Therefore, it rained. Between the showers, we visited Melford Hall (and met the original Jemima Puddleduck). Gorgeous countryside, but we still like Kentwell better.

I also went to Walsham le Willows' annual open gardens day. Again, with the rain. Between the showers, I got some great pictures.

And when it wasn't raining, I was snacking. Lunch: leftover spinach, sauteed, with melted blue cheese on a panini. YUM.

Chocolate cake

We made chocolate cake for John's dad's birthday. It was all gone the next day. That's it, really.

Went to London; rode BorisBikes; met a witch

Husband spent all weekend sailing (with EAST), so I betook myself to London on the train for a Grand Day Out. I booked my ticked last Wednesday, so it turned out that the cheapest advance single to go in was actually first class (first was £22, standard was £24). First class was great - so quiet and chill, with HUGE seats. Definitely worth the advance commitment.

When I got to London, I had intended to take the Circle Line around to Embankment for my London Walk. However, TFL had other plans. Circle Line, closed all day. Lovely. So I set off to find a Boris Bike station, you know, just to check things out.

For the grand price of £1 for the day's access and £1 every time I went over 30 mins on one particular bike (I think I spent a total of £2), it was excellent. Bike lanes everywhere, lots of cyclists, very courteous cars (it was a Saturday), and the wind in my hair. WHEEE! This was my lovely little bike, right after I parked her at Embankment station. Thanks, Boris!

Because of all my exercising, I was thirsty when I got to Embankment. So I went into Starbucks and ordered an iced passion tea. Apparently this is now an off-menu item - they use the passion tea blend for making mango-passion smoothies but aren't really supposed to feed it to the punters. Nevermind...it was delicious.

And I drank it, sitting in the park on these chairs, arranged neatly.

And then I met a real live witch (I met a few at Colby, so it wasn't all that scary), who took us on a walking tour.

Past Cleopatra's Needle. Thank you, British explorers, for bringing all SORTS of random crap back from far corners of the world. I mean, really. A postcard is cool. Maybe a magnet. A 60-foot obelisk kind of takes up a lot of room in your suitcase. But, whatev.

Found a room that if I owned I would probably never leave (top floor, please):

And then had very yummy beef udon at Misato. Not as good as the one I had in Cambridge back in March, but not bad at all. Oh, and when we took James to Cambridge last weekend to introduce him into the cult of the Brisket Udon, they told us that the half-empty restaurant had "no room." SO disappointed, especially since the vegetarian place we went to afterwards was resoundingly and virtuously healthy-tasting (read, not doing THAT again...) and all the more disappointing when contrasted with the imagined Udon.

After my noodles, I braved the rain, went to Liberty (sigh), noodled around Oxford circus, grabbed another Boris Bike, got REALLY lost in Finsbury, found my way again (thank you helpful cyclists in London taking pity on what they thought was a very lost American tourist), dropped off my Boris Bike, bought some very excellent VivoBarefoot shoes (on sale for £28!), and subsided onto my (pre-booked) train home.

Things I learned:
-once you leave the protection of a witch, it's going to start raining
-if you leave your brolly at home, it will rain in London. <-I should really know this by now
-taking a Boris Bike around the roundabout at Trafalgar Square is probably not a good idea
-the Boris Bikes need a real HEAVE to get them out of their docks
-booking National Express train tickets in advance is much cheaper than getting them on the day
-biking is very good exercise
-getting lost makes you bike further, which is also good exercise

And there you have it.

Things I Love Thursday!

If you've ever been to summer camp, check out these bracelet tutorials on the Purl Bee. Hello, 1996! I made these but never seemed to be able to figure out the "diamond" pattern - I may have to make another one, you know, just in case.

I also love (except I'm still breaking them in cause I have freaky feet) my new Clarks.

Homemade pizza (with spinach, sundried tomatoes, from-scratch tomato sauce, and feta). Best Husband Ever.

Selvedge magazine:

And Uniball Eye Micro pens. Just inky enough with not too blobby of a line.

I am Ingrid (well, not really)

It was time for some new glasses. Because, well, it was.

I had been admiring Joanna Goddard's glasses, as pictured here, and Ingrid Michaelson's glasses, here.

So I went to Specsavers (I know!) and got these. LOVE them. Also, feeling very pleased with myself because they were the cheapest pair in the store. £25 frames, £40 for the lenses. I think that might be my karma from the 2-pairs-ago expensive disaster coming back around.

Speaking of Ms. Ingrid, I can also play The Chain on my new guitar (no, it's not a hard song, and no, I'm not a good guitarist) while singing along. Oh clever me.

Other favorite thing of the moment: nectarines, halved, with a little bit of butter and a sprinkling of sugar, under the broiler for 5 minutes, with ice cream. Do we maybe think this is why my skinny pants didn't fit this morning? Umm...

Walmart and me

After chatting to my brother about fabric for his New York Rangers quilt, I decided to google to see if there are any other quilters out there with design ideas.

At which point, I saw this:

See? There's Walmart, then there's me, then there's Amazon. Wait, what? I'm above Amazon in search results? I think that means I need to get quilting.

England is not an island

Betsy Transatlantically had this very entertaining (and informative!) video on her blog today. Yay for expats.

Review: Tangled (and a new camera bag)

Now that James is older, he no longer demands to see The Latest Disney Movie as soon as it comes out. Especially if it centers on a princess. So it's not terribly surprising that we missed Tangled in the theatres.

I rented it last night, on Sam's recommendation (I had been going for a silly romantic comedy or something), and we both loved it. Good two-level comedy, great Disney songs (with melodies that reminded me a little bit of Les Mis, for some reason), fab animal sidekicks, properly bad baddies, and a very useful frying pan.

If, like me, you live under a rock and haven't seen it yet, go for it!

I'm going to be in NY next month, and want to bring the SLR with me. I've been looking for a camera bag for a while, with several criteria: 

1. Does not scream I AM CARRYING AN EXPENSIVE CAMERA!

2. Is not fugly.

3. Does not cost $300. (I've seen some excellent bags on pinterest but they are way out of my budget.)

4. Is not heavy.

5. Can also fit my wallet, phone, keys, kindle/book, and Burt's Bees.

Ta da! I've found it! The Lowepro Exchange messenger bag. It fits all the criteria above, was only £20 on Amazon, AND it fits my knitting as well as everything else. Some of the reviewers were worried about the lack of padding - it's not SUPER-thick padding, but then again I'm going to try to avoid dropping it from a height. It also doesn't have a zip (only buckles) for the main compartment, so I might not want to take it with me to a pickpocket hot-spot. I thought it might be too boxy, from the video on the Lowepro website, but it's fairly skinny considering the size of camera inside. I even managed to tuck it (including camera) into my bike panniers for a ride to Needham Market.

Hooray!

Mini-Manu, started

I've started in on Gabi's Mini Manu (design by Kate Davies) a few weeks ago. I LOVE the color of the yarn (the blue is a provisional cast-on but I thought it looked really cute with the green. More updates soon. The general goal is to finish it in time to take it with me to NY next month. Hmm. More knitting, less blogging? Or maybe work will hire me a minion to do my work for me while I knit all day?

Ravelled, here.

Oh, and have you guys heard about Lotta Jansdotter's new fabric line? SO excellent. Must de-stash and make some quilts so that there's plenty of room for this when it comes out!

Cheesecake

Last week, I had a hankering for cheesecake. John didn't eat cheesecake for years (mostly because of the whole lactose-intolerant thing), but since we found Lactofree cream cheese, there's nothing between us and amazing cheesecake.

I saw the recipe for Berry Shortbread Cheesecake in the August Good Food, and had to make it. My only quibble is that they made it in a loaf tin, rather than in a loose-bottomed pie pan. I have NO idea how they got it out of the loaf tin looking like it does on the website. Mine came out, er, in a blob. Looks lovely with raspberries on the top and tasted delicious, but a 0/10 for presentation. Did I miss something? I lined the tin with parchment paper and everything...

The fruit at the supermarket (and from our back yard, thank you, raspberries) has been delicious. I love the "ripen at home" peaches and nectarines. YUM. With blueberries. And icing sugar. Because John accidentally topped up the sugar bowl with icing sugar, so now it's a silly half-and-half mix that we need to use up before we can start over. Poor me.

Coming down with something?

Achy, tired, and generally blah.

Remedy: husband cooked dinner, poured me some ginger ale, and tucked me in with the quilt, my bears, and my laptop. Oh, and the latest LLBean and Boden catalogues, this month's BBC Good Food, and my library books. Could be worse.

And because I can't post without a picture, here's some gooseberry crumble, from last week. YUM.

Initial design: NY Rangers Heritage Jersey quilt

My brother doesn't really like stuff - he is a fan of fairly spartan living. After he saw pictures of the Tufted Tweets quilt, he asked if I would make him a quilt. Wait, you want a quilt? Like pieces of fabric sewn together that will sit on your couch? You're sure? Ok, then.

I asked if he had any particular designs in mind, and he said that he'd like a NY Rangers quilt. Specifically, one inspired by their new Heritage Jersey. Thank you, google image search. I looked around online and unlike the NBA, MLB, and NCAA, the NHL do NOT license fabric. Ok, fine. I also checked Flickr and the interwebs in general and there don't seem to be many (any?) Rangers quilts out there.

This is the design I've come up with:

My brother is a huge bike geek, so when I found this fabric on Spoonflower, I was pretty excited. I'm going to use it for the red stripe at the bottom, and possibly some of the applique. I'm definitely going to use it on the back, as well.

The plan is to find a few different blues (possibly in a super-fun adventure to Purl Soho when I'm in NYC in September), and then applique the NEW YORK onto the quilt. I hope he likes it. I haven't decided what to use for the binding yet - white (will it get too dirty?), more red, a blue and red stripe, or some other colour entirely.

Oh, and John has been making cinnamon raisin bread. Yummy.