Holiday Table Setting Made Easy featuring Thomas Lauderdale - Pink Martini's MySpace Blog |

Holiday Table Setting Made Easy featuring Thomas Lauderdale - Pink Martini's MySpace Blog

Here is my gift to all my faithful readers (all two or three of you): a video of Thomas Lauderdale (my favorite Pink Martini pianist) teaching the world how to set the holiday table. After viewing this, I fell head over heels into the Christmas spirit.

My table is set, the tree is up, the cards are mailed, Syvart and Azania are here decorating the tree, David will arrive in 3 days and...................it's snowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Holiday blogger friends.

This Too Shall Pass

I'm in a momentary panic. At least I hope it's momentary.

I've been running around all day, getting ready for our trip to the Southwest, which starts tomorrow. Among the many details I had to attend to, I logged onto American Airlines to print our boarding passes. Guess what?????????? They can't print our passes because we don't have seat assignments, and when I tried to get seat assignments, there were no seats left!!!!! This is for a flight I booked July 22.

Deep breath. I did manage to get seats on the other three flights (two going, two coming home = 4 flights). I just haven't managed the initial flight.

Deep breath. I know it will work out. Serenity now. Deep breath. Relax. We will get seats on the airplane in the morning when we get to the airport. Deep breath. I'll be in a canyon before I know it. This momentary glitch will be the least important part of our trip.

Preparing for the Grand Tour

Once again, fortunately, I find myself getting ready for a trip!!! This time, Taylor and I are doing a grand tour of the canyon lands of the Southwest.

I've planned the trip myself. We're landing in Albuquerque NM and departing from the same. We'll be circling east to west and back again. Ten Canyons/National Parks in fifteen days. I'm wondering if I'm out of my mind, or if I'm in my mind. We're skipping all the towns that people assume we'll be going to: Sedona, Santa Fe, Taos and trying to stay off the beaten track. Looking at the map of where we're going, it will be a challenge to bail out if we get sick of beautiful scenery, bumpy roads and winding highways- the only way to get back to "start" will be to continue with the plan, or to backtrack.

Knitting friends will be wondering what the knitting project will be. At this point I don't know. Perhaps one of the UFOs that will be mindless and simple. I definitely need something for the airplane, but I don't think I'll want to miss what we're driving by and I don't see it on the jeep tour of Canyon de Chelly. For once, knitting isn't really fitting into the plan. What does this mean?

We're taking off this coming Friday morning - flight at 6 a.m. Hooray!

Eleanor Roosevelt was a Knitter

This past weekend Taylor and I visited the Hudson River Valley. We toured many of the big estates, among them the home of FDR, Frederick Church's Olana, and one of the Vanderbilt mansions. However, Eleanor Roosevelt's cottage, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park New York impressed me the most.

What I learned from visiting Val-Kill, that I didn't know before, is that Eleanor Roosevelt was a knitter!!!! Apparently this was no big secret back in the day, either. It's just one of those tasty facts that a person like me runs across and can't let go. Eleanor Roosevelt is not known for her home decorating, attention to fashion or involvement with high society. Rather, I think of her as an intelligent woman who was always involved in good deeds for the better of mankind. After all, she was a delegate to the United Nations and a member of the Commission on Human Rights. The fact that she was a knitter confirms for me the knowledge that knitters tend to be amazing people..

I first became aware of the knitting aspect during the movie in the visitor center. There she was, at least three times knitting away!!! The amazing part of this is that the commentator didn't even mention it! Once, she's knitting a sock, with FDR at her side, on the front lawn greeting visitors. Another time, Eleanor and FDR are debating something important (one can tell by the expressions on their faces), and there she is knitting something with a lace edge. Finally, in her cottage, on the footstool by her chair near the fire are a pair of knitting needles complete with red acrylic yarn and her knitting bag (I'm wondering if the knitting is hers, or if some volunteer whipped it up to add to the ambiance of the setting?)

I did a preliminary Internet search of this topic and I found that when she was first lady, every one knew about Eleanor's knitting. She was featured in magazines and she encouraged women to knit for the WWII war effort. People recognized her by the huge knitting bag that she hauled around with her, and she wasn't beyond knitting during United Nations meetings. I learned that in FDR's Presidential Library there is a cabinet of her knitting equipment (wouldn't you know I walked right by the library, exhausted from being a tourist?). Hyde Park knitting groups have had teas and knit ins celebrating the first lady's work, so this part of her is not forgotten, just not known by me, until now.

So my getaway to the Hudson River Valley was most productive. I ate amazing food, enjoyed the country life and learned a tiny bit about one of our first ladies. Having seen her modest cottage and learned about her love of gardening and knitting I find I want to know her. I've started reading her autobiography and hope to eventually know a lot more about her.

Gloves and Mittens Are My New Socks

I'm in love. In love with mittens and gloves, gloves and mittens.

I used to make socks for quick projects. They are easy to take with, they work up quickly, feel wonderful on the feet and most often fit just right. However, people don't usually appreciate hand knit socks on another person because unless you're a knitter you're not looking at people's feet. Another down side, is if I wear them a lot they tend to develop holes and I never get around to repairing them even though I know how.

Well - the answer to this, for me, is knitting items for hands!!! I just finished my Bird in Hand Mittens (one of the mittens that is) and I enjoyed every minute of the process. I can't wait for the first cold day so I can wear them (assuming the partner joins the first mitten).

Can you find the bird? He's in there.

The gloves: before and after embellishment. The first glove was knit the first week of the sprained ankle and coinsided with the death of Michael Jackson. How fitting. I finally finished the second one, and eventually added some decoration to get away from the hand knit white wool gardening glove effect. I think I will actually wear these, and they feel good on the hands.

Now I'm moving on to the Anemoi Mittens that I had to rip out earlier. I bought some Dale Baby Ull that has the proper gauge. We're leaving town shortly, for the Hudson River Valley, so I'll do the knit, knit, knit on my Summer Shell in the car, and save the Anemoi for relaxing at the Inn. Can't wait.

Bird in Hand

It's best to have a bird in the hand, and in this case I have two birds in my hands: a perfect pattern to match my yarn. Yesterday I started these mittens and I am so happy with them. They've got a picot hem, which you can't see since I haven't done the hemming. They have an amazing braid stitch, which was a little tricky. The braid borders the two sections of flowers and leaves. And best of all - the gauge is correct. Sasquatch won't get to wear these babies. As far as my birds in the bush (the yarn I need for the vintage glove patterns), I plan to search for the perfect yarn for them while I'm in Washington DC the next few days. I love my local yarn shop, but a good old fashioned yarn shop crawl (is this an old fashioned concept? I don't think so) will give me a purpose while Taylor is actually having a purpose to be in DC - work.

I've got the names and addresses of a few shops in the area and plan to take my time exploring. I will actually have time to crawl from shop to shop because I'm doing something else, rather dramatic. I'm not taking my computer - no Face Book and no Blogging and no E Mail for 2 full days. It's kind of like giving up coffee.

In the meantime, I haven't forgotten the summer shell. I even plan to work on it in the car. But my enthusiasm has waned. It's just plain straight knitting. No fetching braids, or knitted in vines or birds. Just knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit.......................You see my problem. I do want to wear it though, so I'm just going to have to buckle down and knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit..................

Hand Work

I don't know what's brought it on, but I've got gloves and mittens on my mind. I finally finished my white woolen gloves and I really enjoyed the process. These particular gloves look a little like garden gloves to me, so I'm hoping that washing and blocking will spiff them up, and I'm considering adding some embellishments. I'll post the embellishments when I actually do them. Something for the reader to look forward to.

I enjoyed the glove process so much, that I've found a few great vintage glove patterns with cables that I'm going to make next. However, I'm home at the moment and don't have the right yarn, but I've got some yarn that I bought at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival last spring, so I'm going to move into mittens.

I have admired Eunny Jang's Anemoi Mittens for a long time and last night seemed like a good time to start them.

My Anemoi Mitten is so over. I spent a few happy hours with one of them, last night and this morning. It has that wonderful tubular cast on that I raved about. It also has this wonderful corrigated rib that I had never done before. Unfortunately, I started knitting it in DK instead of fingering so it will, as it is, fit Sasquatch. Therefore, I took its photo to remember how much I love it and ripped.

I've still got mittens on my mind, and I've got this particular yarn Snow Star Farm yarn, so I turned to the actual pattern that I bought to go with this yarn. It's a more standard Norwegian mitten, but it doesn't t have the free flow feel that I love in the Anemoi. My memory kicked in, and I recalled that I've had Kate Gilbert's Bird in Hand Mittens in my queue for a while. When I checked the needed yarn I discovered that the guage required is exactly what I was getting for my Anemoi Mitten. What luck!!!! Thanks to Ravelry and Pal Pal I got the pattern in about 5 minutes and I'm going to start as soon as I finish this post.

Anemoi, I still love you, and when I find the perfect fingering yarn, you will once again be on my needles.