Just to show you that I am not kidding about

the hills...


These are the steps up from Broadway to 187th and Fort Washington. I have learned how to avoid these... you go to the subway station just off Broadway at 184th street, even with Sienna you can walk in and take the elevator up to Fort Washington Ave. You never have to go through the turnstile.
Because I will tell you, these steps are KILLER and there are a lot of them.
If you climb the stairs, you then have to walk up the hill some more to get to Cabrini Boulevard.














Then you walk up some more to get to the top of the Cabrini hill. After you get to the top of this part, it is all downhill to get to my place and to the river.

And I STILL don't have great legs... WHY, I ask you? Must be because of the elevator at step one ...... sigh.

my continuing obsession with the subway

Anyone who has read this blog over the past several months knows that I have a continuing obsession with subway art and signage.









I was in the 42nd street station on the A line last week, and found several different art pieces. This was really fun. It is called "Losing My Marbles" and it rolls around the corner wall and up the tunnel.


According to the artist's online resume, "it is a glass mosaic mural project, consisting of 5 walls, approximately 90 ft. by 9 ft. in total."

This is just one of the marbles close up.. They are really fun, I would probaly rank them second so far behind the Circus at 34th Street.

here is the info listed and an inadvertent self-portrait

Look! We have knitting! Actually, we have Finished Knitting. These were a fun knit and the result is great!









They are







Snow on Cedars from Anne Hanson and they knit up beautifully. I, of course, made a small change. I knit them on 2 circulars instead of double points. At first this was a tiny bit hairy, but once I got all of needle one on one circular and needles 2 and 3 on the second with a marker between them, everything went along swimmingly.


The yarn is one of the Raven Clan yarns. Alas it was wound into balls, by me, a while ago and the ball band went somewhere . ... the same place those socks go, I guess. I THINK it is Thraven, but I am just not sure. It is GORGEOUS though and it knits like a dream. I never have a problem with Blue Moon yarn.

As for the hand? I knew she would come in ummmm "handy" at some point. and she shows off the stitches so well.. In spite of only showing you one, there ARE two. Finished Knitting!!

Wall art

I went wandering this weekend and ended up on Columbus and 77th. There I saw this. . does it look like Woody Allen to you?

've been busy

I've been baking bread.

Let's start by saying that I used to have some reknown as a bread baker. I loved kneading, I loved rising and I loved baking and eating. I made bread at the drop of a hat. But that was the problem. You couldn't REALLY bake bread at the drop of a hat. You had to be prepared to spend a lot of time waiting and kneading and waiting some more. If you weren't willing or able to do that you had day old bread which was, generally, better than day old bread from the store, but still ...it was day old bread.

Today I made this! I invested about 5 minutes yesterday, waited a couple of hours during which I did nothing, left the house, wandered about with Sienna and knitted. Then I spent 10 seconds stuffing it into the refrigerator where it stayed overnight. It would have gone in faster, but I had to move the corn from the farmers' market.

Today, I spent 3 minutes making it into a loaf, 40 minutes letting it sit and letting the oven preheat and 30 minutes smelling the amazing smell of baking bread. The result is wonderful. The crust is crunchy without being so hard as to be tough. The middle is wonderful and the texture, as you can see (I cut it for you!), is great.

I have had this book for a while and I just kept putting it off. No more!! In the same Do It NOW project that gave me the boo boo on my finger, I did it and I will do it again. This may mean I have to walk further and more often, and I am experimenting with smaller loaves but it it worth it.

Isn't it gorgeious? I wish you could taste it.

I boo booed my finger..

and it makes it hard to type. I am only posting this because:

a) It is the finger that hits the "a" key and gets used a lot more than I would have thought

b) I did it doing home repairs

c) I should NOT do home repairs before coffee but I am trying to "just DO it" when I think of it, not waiting til I have to do it.

d) the home repairs were on the toilet seat

e) it was sliding around a bit and needed to be tightened and that is a SIMPLE job

f) see 'c' and repeat it several times

g)I am rethinking Just DO IT

h) I will survive and am able to sit up and take nourishment for those who might be worried.

August in New York

Usually people leave New York City to the tourists in August. Too hot, too sultry, too sweaty. But this year, August has been glorious. Cool, lovely weather, no crowds and a seat at some lovely restaurants.

Last weekend was Casa Mono. I wish I could wow you with pictures of the food, but I was so busy eating it and loving it that I forgot to take a single picture. Casa Mono is a NY Times 2 star Spanish Restaurant near Gramercy Park. It describes itself as "Mario Batali's Spanish taverna with a New York sensibility." It was SOOO good. We sat at the bar and watched them cook everything and it was a great experience.. yum.

If you look closely at the picture above you should recognize a tv star ... if you are a slave to tv. (ok Jenni, this one is for you ... name him)

It was the second Saturday where streets were closed to cars as an experiment. I went wandering down Park Avenue and into the Farmer's Market at Union Square.

The market was so tempting, the peaches are in and while they do not rival Georgia/South Carolina peaches, they are good. The peppers are in season too, and I love it when you can get a little sampler of all the colors.

August in NY has no big sparklers, but the weather this year is the best and we are having some great sunsets up here above the GWB.. SO, lest you think I have forgotten to look out the window lately.. an August sunset.

I am often watching the Olympics

and for those of you in the US, watching on NBC, I need to ask a question that entertained Blogless Nicki and I yesterday.....

Bob Costa's hair..........???????? Toupee or the worst of haircuts???????

I have lived here for 10 months..

This is Cabrini Boulevard. I walk up it just about every day. The buildings on the left are the famous Castle Village Coops. They are pretty high end. No pets on the grass etc. Of course they also were the ones that had the retaining wall that fell onto the West side highway several years ago and there are still numerous lawsuits pending on both sides. BUT I DIGRESS!
The trees on Cabrini Boulevard have LABELS!!
I guess you can improve your horticultural IQ while walking up the street.
After 9 months I just noticed!
There are many different types of trees on the street...
From all over the world

But some people add labels of their own.......

Romeo had a visitor.........

Today, Romeo discovered that he had a visitor outside the studio.

It took a while for the company to notice that Romeo was there.

















He spent some time giving Romeo the "eye".
Things were looking promising. Romeo was getting excited and making little ack ack noises in delight.

Extending the hand of friendship ...or something.

They communed through the window for about 3 minutes.. then the pigeon decided that enough was enough and hopped off the window to eat bugs on the ground.


Fun was had by all involved.

Petanque -- New York Style

Across from the Kinokunya bookstore is Bryant Park, the back of the NY Public Library. At the 6th Avenue side of the park you will find this:
The day that I was there, there were 2 areas where the game was being played nonstop. This was at 2 in the afternoon, and at least one of the players was a young man in a suit and tie obviously taking a break from work.
There were some experienced players and some having the rules explained as they went along.
Some of the calls were tight
Others not so much

And the players in THIS game were a true New York assortment of characters..

The saga of socks

These socks were the Jacobean pattern socks that were from a Yahoo group. I have been knitting socks for eons, and I thought that this time I would use a different pattern from the one in my head. Well........back to my head for the next ones. I had one sock completed for a couple of months and could not seem to finish the second. Time for surgery. I should have taken a picture, but forgot. I had the second sock to a reasonable length, but 2 full pattern repeats short of sock 1, so I took the scissors to sock 1. You can't unravel a sewn bind off, so I just cut it off, unravelled it down to the same number of pattern repeats as sock 2.
and finished them both off. Voila!! a pair of socks. They are in Bambolaine which has 25% natural bamboo mixed with the wool. It is described as soft, but I beg to differ, and after washing it is the same as before. I think that played a bigger part in the semifroggo than the boring pattern, but now they are done and I will have more socks for winter and I CAN START ANOTHER PAIR WITH WOOL I LIKE!!!

The "Other" work area

Gill did such a great job of showing ALL of her work area that I thought I better improve on the What I see when I work post.

Behind my back, Romeo sleeps with HIS back to this kind of work, because he is NOT interested in computers, Clementine, however, gets into this computer stuff
She watches the screen when there are items of interest, like Manny Ramirez being traded from the Boston Red Sox to the west coast...Hooray, out of our hair with your hair, Manny.
This is how it generally looks, my scanner and printer are on the left and it is generally this messy.





Further to the left is the other half of the bookshelf with Rocky the Flying Squirrel right next to my pear monoprint ..... unframed still. Most of the first shelf of books are knitting books, and above that are my graphic novels and some art books. (You didn't think even THIS part was ALL about computers, did you?)



Looking to the right is the stack of paper that equals Gill's stack. Weren't computers supposed to move us into a paperless society? When does THAT happen??? Far to the right are my old cameras and my photos... something to look at so I don't get too wrapped up in the computer screen..

Ok, where are YOU working today???? or yesterday or where will you be working tomorrow?

What do you see from the place where you work?

I love looking at other people's "places" ... so I am curious. What do you see from the place where you would say you do most of your work? I have 2 places, staring at the computer screen that puts some food on the table, and the studio table where I hope to eventually spend more time.

SO, this is the studio table view, with and without the "supervisor" who watches every move. That is the Hudson River out there, the bridge is off to the left a little bit.

Where do YOU work? Post a pic on your blog and link to it from the comments, I'd love to see it...

Also, if I turn away from the studio table, this is what is going on behind me...