This Perfect Day

I meant to post this yesterday but was too tired after having such a beautiful but busy day. It started with me getting my eyebrows waxed - always a good, clean feeling. But the fact that my Beauty Brands appointment was at 8:00 a.m. got me out of the house early on a Saturday when I usually spend time mulling around for a few hours and killing most of the morning.

Next stop was to pick up my Mom and visit our favorite yarn haunt, the Studio which I visited to pay for my bus trip to Chicago next month. While there, we ran into Carol who was picking up some lovely shawl yarn. Most of the folks in my yarn group have officially been bitten by the shawl bug. We're thinking shawls, shawls, shawls, let me tell ya! So we sat down at the big wooden knitter's gathering table and studied the shawl patterns. We picked out at least 10 that we'd like to make. We were just in a shawl admiring trance. Even my Mom who normally only knits socks started getting the glaze in her eyes.

While in said hynotic state, I was smitten by the beauty of a new display at the front of the store. Prominently displayed, along with sea shells and fishing net etc, was this lovely new (to me) yarn manfactured by Handmaiden and called "Sea Silk" - oh my gosh, it is lovely both to the eye and to the touch. . The photo I took here in my dimly lit living room doesn't do the yarn justice. If you go to their website, you can get a better idea of the true colors - and the colorway I bought is called "Midnight" and is shades of purple, navy, bronze - I can't even describe it, but very pretty and amazingly soft. You can go to the Handmaiden website and see a more accurate photo of this yummy yarn! This is destined to become a shawl as well. From what I figure, a medium sized shawl would require 2 hanks with each having approximately 440 yards.

My Mom and I spent two delicious hours in the The Studio and while there, we met a couple of other interesting people who were shopping around and admiring the same yarn and patterns we were. Linda, I also hope that you will consider joining us for Stitches, not to enable you or anything, but I hope you sign up and ride the bus with us. We will have a blast.

While there, we met another lady, who I think works part-time in the Studio, who not only enabled me in my shawl envy, but also broke my resolve not to buy more yarn books for a while. The book, NO SHEEP FOR YOU by Amy R. Singer, is packed full of patterns I actually want to make - really. Not just luke warm, but I wish I could just drop everything and knit several things, especially the lovely Tuscany shawl on page 50 of the book. I want to make that one in bright red. By the way, I now have so many "to be knit" shawl patterns that I am making an official shawl notebook.

When my Mom and I finally pulled overselves away from The Studio, we went to lunch at my favorite restaurant called "Andres." It's a Suisse restaurant that Mom introduced me to at the tender age of 10. Though I love eating out, no other restaurant even comes CLOSE to this place. We used to go eat there every single Saturday while growing up. It was a mother-daughter ritual. Consequently, the place is seeped in fond memories. No matter how much I change all these years, Andres hasn't. It is a Suisse chateau interior and exterior, the amora of the fresh pastries, gourmet cuisine and lovely charming setting just puts me in nirvana immediately. They have the best, freshest tasting iced tea anywhere, and on a hot summer day like yesterday, I drank several glasses of tea, enjoyed my favorite Quiche Lorraine. We ended the meal with a Glacier, the most delicious pastry and a longstanding favorite of mine. It was worth every calorie.


In the afternoon, I left the Plaza and went back home to make dinner for a friend of ours. We made chicken on the grill, served with a big salad and sauteed squash and onions. Yum!

We ended the evening by watching an excellent move called "Flags of Our Fathers" directed by Clint Eastwood and it's the story behind the famous photo of the five World War II soldiers who are raising the American flag on the mountaintop in Japan. It's really a thought-provoking movie.

While watching it, I had a chance to work more on my current Work In Progress called "Pretty Raglan Tee" from Nashua Handknits in the yarn "Cilantro." The color is Milk Chocolate. So far, I've been working for about 3 weeks on the back. Since it's lace, it isn't fast - and let's face it, I'm just NOT a fast knitter. Here is what I have done so far. If I work on it much today, I might complete the back.