A very special visitor!

The other day my little roof deck was honored by a very special visitor. She was in town for just a day from the tour of Spamalot. She hasn't been back in New York in ages, and I was thrilled she chose my little roof garden to visit. I'm speaking of course of Tallulah the cat. She also brought her person Francesca along with her.


I hadn't seen Francesca in ages, since she's been touring all over the US & Canada with her adorable cat. It was great to hang out on the roof, listen to some music and knit. Tallulah was busy smelling everything


And when we were visited with a Monarch butterfly (a RARE sight on our roof), she was fascinated.



Everything was fine with Tallulah finding a shady spot under the deck chair


and I settled down to do a little knitting


Life was good until Tallulah decided to crawl under the deck. Remembering what Francesca said about every moving day on the tour being a fight to get the cat out from under the bed (and our deck is a LOT bigger than a bed), I figured I'd better act fast

I went down to the apartment and fashioned this little cat toy out of a KnitPicks flexible needle
cable, some decorative stitch markers a wonderful customer gave me (thank you Patricia) and the needle end I was able to lure the cat out



Didn't get much more work done on the Lotus Blossom Tank


which is crawling along at only one and a half alien heads long. Ah well. Tomorrow is another day.

Summer's going too fast

Somehow it's already the second week of August. How the hell did that happen? The whole month of June was eaten by work, then David and I went on our FAB vacation, home, family visits NY, then off to my family reunion, and boom, somehow the summer's almost over. Okay, I've decided to try to slow time down. I've wasted the last 5 weeks angsting about what I will do with the rest of my life. I'm going to try to spend the rest of the summer not caring. I've worked almost non stop for that past 22 years. I think I can take 2 months to figure out the rest of my life.

Right now I am enjoying a Park Slope weekend after a fab family reunion. Once a year (although we missed one last year), my tiny family gets together. My brother and sister and I used to see our two cousins every year and now that we're grown, we still seem to pick up as if we just saw each other last week. It's pretty great. Usually someone has an old picture of us as kids that we are asked to recreate. Here's this years

So then we made the new generation of kids take a picture that we can make them retake when they're in their 40s


After we got back I was busy catching up with life, and tending the garden. It's looking pretty lush and dreamy in the lazy days of Aug

The Canna's are huge!

The Lantanas have spread out and made themselves at home

And, as always, one little sweet potato vine ends up a wee bit overwhelming

One unexpected site was an unexpected visitor. We have a large pot that has composed soil. Part of the compost is our old kitchen scraps which included last year's tomato seeds. You can imagine our surprise when we saw this growing out of the bottom of the pot


That's right, it's a fairly large tomato plant with flowers starting to come in. Crazy. We may be eating food grown from the seeds of last years garbage. If you can't find inspiration in that, you aren't trying

I took my Cotton Bam Boo Smock Top out of town, because it's mindless stockinette and I don't have to deal with lace.


The last couple of days I've been swatching for the Lotus Blossom Tank. I'm using the amazingly dreamy Alchemy Silk Purse. It's supposed to be 5.5 st/in on US 6. I know I knit tighter in the round, but I wanted to get a tighter gauge. I think the pattern as written is kind of shapeless. I swatched it on a US 5 and got an insane 28 stitches per 4 inch (the pattern calls for 22), I reswatched on a US 6 and got 25, a doable gauge to make it more form fitting. However, when I divide for front and back I'm going to have to go down to a US 5 to keep that gauge.

The colors are amazing and it feels SOOOO good to knit with.

Here's the back of the swatch showing the old "in the round" trick

David and I are spending the weekend enjoying all that is Park Slope. Last night we took a walk in the park. This morning we woke up early and headed up the hill to our beloved farmer's market. The light was perfect.









I wore my bamboo top so I could finally get some shots of me wearing it. David is so sneaky, except for the one posed shot, all the other shots were David sneaking in shots when I didn't notice. What a guy.






Later today (after watching the opening ceremonies on our TIVO) we bummed around 5th Ave and looked at all the shops, and then tonight we are heading over to Prospect Park to see the final concert of the summer . . . It's going too fast