I Still Don't Know What Croatoan Means.

We're all back from North Carolina. We didn't take our camera out that often, unfortunately, and I don't have any photos of the waves from the Nor'easter that were threatening to take the house down on our first day after we arrived at 4:00am. I would have posted about it from there, but the cable network got wet in the storm, so there was no way to get online.

Skye and I are on the beach right outside the house after eating turkey but before eating pie. The tide was coming in but the wind felt wonderful after being in the hot house all day. One of my favorite parts of the trip was going to Roanoke Island and visiting the museum and village there. The lost colony has fascinated me since we studied U.S. History in Mrs. Busco's fifth grade class.

Test Tart.

This is a test, but I think that it's going to work. If it does work, I owe Heather a huge debt of gratitude.

This is the tart that I made for mine and Stitch'n'Snitch's birthday celebration with the SnB Grrrls back in September. It's a pear tart with vanilla bean pastry cream and a Maytag blue cheese crust. The recipe is from Deer Valley's "Chocolate Snowball" dessert cookbook, and I loooove it. If this test does go through, I gotta thank all the folks who made that day so wonderful.

Meathead Unto Others.

I hate and I love the holiday season. It's a bit cliched, I know, but sincere. There's always stress involved, especially when one factors in shopping for one's spouse's eight siblings, one's own five siblings, their significant others, and all of the various offspring, including one's own--oh yeah, and parents too. It's enough to make me daydream of the BuyNothingChristmas Mennonite movement to give no gifts except those such as a promise to take someone out for a cup of coffee and conversation, or to give a back rub (these are slightly less puritanical Mennonites). Consequently, I have sworn off holiday gift knitting this year, for my own sanity. But I am really excited about Margene and Carole's Knit Unto Others, for which I already have the yarn and a pattern all lined up. The soft, bulky tomato-colored yarn comes from the Hot Lava cardigan that I made a few years ago and frogged over the weekend. (Shrugs and boleros are out of fashion, yo, hot as they once were.) The pattern is Meathead, from Larissa over at Stitchmarker. She's got a KAL going and will include photos of some of the participants' hats in her new book.

This feels like kicking off the season right. I'll be knitting the hats while flying to and from Nags Head, North Carolina for Thanksgiving. The Neefer's family rented a huge beach house on the outer banks so the whole family could get together for the first time since our own wedding eight years ago. There are cousins my kids have never met, and even though it will be chilly, I'm excited to be on the beach again. I've never dipped my toes in the Atlantic Ocean (I take that back--I did it on the European side, but still), and maybe I'll even get to knit while sitting on the beach, bundled up under the November sun. And we're all praying that there are no more tornadoes. Or hurricanes. Chances seem good.

I'm ba-aaaack.

I deleted the blog that I started at Typepad. I simply didn't have the time to figure out a photo host, although it doesn't appear as though I'm able to upload photos from Picassa the way I used to either. I want to use the little time that I have in actually blogging. I'll get it figured out. I miss blogging. I miss the conversation that blogging opened up. And I've been knitting some beautiful lace, a first for me, and that's been an interesting process as well. So here's to you if you're reading this, and here's to me writing this, and here's to beginning again.