Field Trips

Masala Dosa!

The Hubbo and I love to do 1 day field trips, and this weekend we did 2 of them. It really felt as if we were on vacation for those days. Friday, we went to Nyack, which is a little town on the Hudson River. We were there a number of years ago and were not impressed. I suspect that we didn't really explore enough, but this time we just loved it. Nice yarn shop (nope, I didn't buy. Like I need yarn!), lots of restaurants, pretty shops, the whole works.

From there we went on to a local Christmas Tree Shop. For those of you unfamiliar with the CTS, it started out as a little shop on Cape Cod, then expanded into a bunch of little shops, and then finally became the mecca for all things inexpensive, seasonal, and necessary for one's happiness. Where else can you find really pretty paper napkins at a cheap price? And stuff. More stuff than you can imagine. Nope, no Christmas trees, but lots of goodies like different plastic laundry baskets, cheapy china, great food bargains. I bought a bunch of napkins in autumn prints, and of course the best ginger cookies around, Anna's Ginger Cookies!

And then we ended up having supper at a dosa house not far from home. Dosas are these marvelous Indian pancakes filled with a spicy potato mixture. They are huge! We loved it so much that we went back on Sunday with DD#1, ate more dosa and then had uttapam. We were in serious Indian pancake heaven.

Part of the fun of the dosa house was the TV program. Bollywood MTV, with Tamil subtitles. As if we can read Tamil. We can't read Sanskrit either. But the music and the dancing were so infectious that it didn't matter.

And then on Saturday, we trained into the city to the Rubin Museum, which features Himalayan art. Wow! And afterward, walked back to Penn Station via 6th Ave, which had a multi-block street fair going on. Such fun.

And as a topper to a grand weekend, the Benster, Little Lili and their dad came out to visit on Sunday, and were joined by DD#1. It was so much fun!

Projects finished and in the works: Sorry, knitters, I'm still in this major crochet mode. I actually finished another crocheted scarf, and of course, promptly began another one. This is a serious sickness without a cure, I'm afraid.

My green crochet scarf. This is the most mindless, delightful fabric, easy and pleasant to do.




Here is the brand-new red scarf. Those neat little vertical ridges are done with post stitches, which I learned how to do. Easy, much easier than the instructions would have you believe.



Yet another ripple scarf.




A bit of progress on my granny ripple blankie.



pendie - I used to think so too, plus the bad old 1970's crochet was really ugly, so I ignored it from high school on. and nobody used doilies, so that was that. Then my sister, the evil enabler, started crocheting a few years ago, and she sort of got me into it.

What I love about making scarves is that they are fairly quick, take one skein of sock yarn, and give a lot of charm for not too much work. Plus they are very portable. I crochet on the train, sometimes in the car, when waiting for the movie to start, in front of the TV, etc, etc, so easy and portability are high on my list.

I'm going to post some of the crochet patterns as I go along. They are all in the public domain, and are so basic that I don't want to charge for them. And here's the best thing: you don't have to commit to making an afghan or blankie!

itsJUSTme - Nah, I think you should buy yarn whenever you wish if you can afford it. I do worry about folks who buy when money is tight because they feel they will never see that yarn again. So that's why my answer: there's always more yarn.

Me, on the other hand, live in yarn craziness. I have so much of it, and can't bear to part with my favorites either. One of these years, I'm going to destash!

Scrabblequeen - Tee hee.

KV - We're lucky that we have 2 places where we can get dosa. Just writing this makes me want one!