shining egg

a different kind of love

i will confess here that i do not love this holiday.  i want to love this holiday, but i just plain don't.  

here are some things that i do love instead:

this.

and these.  (do you think i have spring on my mind?)

all of the light reflecting off the snow and making my house bright.

this collaboration.  it makes me feel like i'm in a gallery, somehow.

martha's home collection.  available on monday.

the olympics.

baking cookies with my children.

this show at eyebuzz gallery.

blair's quilt.

the fact that we're half way through february, which means that march is only 14 days away.

this cake.  which i've made over and over again and which i'm making for dessert tonight.

. . . . . . . .

also.  i'm late in mentioning two important things.

the first: we have three very special guests at habit this month.  i hope you'll visit.

and the second: i'm honored to have six small paintings hanging in the enormous tiny art show 7 at nahcotta gallery this month.  i'm blown away to be in such good company.

. . . . . . . .

wishing you some chocolate today.  and lots of love everyday.

a little bit of knitting

we had close to 20 new inches of snow yesterday, along with hurricane force winds.  our electricity went off again (it's back now, thankfully), and school is closed until tuesday.  we were supposed to be in florida visiting grandparents this weekend, but clearly we're not.  and really, it's all good.  we're home.  we're safe.  we're warm.  we're healthy.  we're together.  we've had plenty of cinnamon buns.  we have a guy coming on monday with a generator.  it's all really really really good.

i love this hunkering down.  i love spending long lazy days together.  i love that my kids have the time to untangle themselves from all of the have-tos of their daily lives and get to just be without the need to be anywhere or do anything.  i love the same for me.  for all of us.  it's a gift, these days.  

anyway, i hope i haven't made too much of this knitting business.  it's just a little cowl, but i love it.  

unless you've been reading this blog for a loooong time, you likely don't know that i knit.  but i do.  sort of.  i'm a super boring knitter - i like projects that don't require me to pay a whole lot of attention so that i can knit while i do other things.  i especially like to knit on car trips, during movies, and while waiting - for children or doctors or meetings.  not to mention the fact that some months i knit, other months i don't.

i've been knitting this cowl for the better part of an age, but i finished it last week and i've hardly taken it off.  it's the delores park cowl, which i originally found via shari.  i used malabrigo (my favorite yarn ever) chunky in indigo (such a stunning color).  the pattern calls for a single skein, and i was just a bit short so i eliminated one row as the pattern suggested.

the saddest part of this snowstorm is that our mail service has been suspended, which means that the yarn i ordered to knit another cowl hasn't yet arrived.  the delay has given me just enough time to think that maybe - just maybe - i'd like to knit a larger cowl next time.  if you have a suggestion for a pattern for a larger cowl, would you let me know?

more?

i know i promised knitting today. but i also promised my kids that if school was cancelled again i'd make more cinnamon rolls.  school was cancelled, and so i did.

with frosting this time.

and since i promised a snow-check on the finished-object photo.  there's more cinnamon rolls here today, too.

2 things i forgot to mention about the recipe.  the first: i had no whole milk.  the grocery stores had no whole milk.  the grocery stores had no milk at all.  or eggs or produce or meat in advance of last week's storm.  but my friend naomi had half-and-half, so i used a combination of 2% milk and half-and-half in place of the whole milk and i'd do it again.  and the second: the recipe calls for spraying your pan with non-stick cooking spray, but i smeared my pan with salty butter - because really, at that point, why not?

12-20 inches of fresh snow is predicted to fall here in the next 30 hours.  as long as the electricity (read: heat) stays on, i'm loving it.  

knitting will have to wait until tomorrow.

(oh.  and the wine cork you all noticed in the last post?  that was from the pot-roast we were cooking at the same time.  10am is a bit too early for me to start drinking wine, even during a blizzard!)

carry on

(you won't mind, will you, if i just pick right up here as though i hadn't been gone for the last six weeks?  because that's what i intend to do.)

i made cinnamon rolls.  on saturday.  in the middle of a blizzard.

they've been on my list for as long as i can remember, and i keep putting them off - thinking that cinnamon rolls are an enormous undertaking.  turns out i was wrong - making them is as simple as simple can be.  i used smitten kitchen's recipe (which is an adaptation of molly's recipe, so it's no surprise that i loved it.).  i was going to use sarah's recipe - i hear it's really good - but i decided it might not be the best idea to make a recipe that calls for 5 pounds of flour while we were stuck inside for three days.

anyway, i would have taken a picture of the finished rolls too, except that right after they came out of the oven, our electricity went out.  so we packed the un-glazed rolls (and the slow-cooking grass-fed pot roast) into the all-wheel-drive vehicle and headed over to my mom's for the night.  where we promptly devoured every last one, and the pot-roast too.  but since, there's no school here today and more snow predicted for tomorrow, i suspect i'll be making the cinnamon rolls again this week and i'll give you a rain-check (or snow-check!) on that finished-product photo.

tomorrow, knitting.  for real.