Keeping Warm

Manhattan apartments are usually so overheated that I wear sleeveless dress all winter long.When I’m home I will wear a cotton or silk cardigan and only put on wool when I am leaving the house.

 

It’s really chilly out today and our boiler wasn’t working. It was so chilly in the house that I even wore warm clothing in the house.

 

I’m wearing a wool skirt I had made last winter  out of fabric I had developed a mad crush on. I am wearing a long sleeved shirt and a wool sweater.  I feel very nostalgic for my formative years in New England during the oil embargo where one wore a minimum of three layers  indoors.

Perhaps it was  the indoor temperature of my youth. or perhaps it was that my son was talking about tuna noodle pea casserole as it if was some wonderful exotic dish… But I made one after not having made one since  perhaps the winter I was 18.

I did make this iconic dish not with canned mushroom soup but with a from scratch white sauce and dried shitake mushrooms. I no longer own a deep dish casserole dish. Both of the ones I had owned broke before my oldest was out of diapers. I have not missed the lack of a casserole dish in the intervening 24 years..until today. I decided to make due with a Pyrex 9 x13 pan  known in  my childhood as a kugel pan.

 

I also baked some pita.Here is a before shot.

 

This is the after.

 

The cold weather activities were not limited to cooking and dressing.

 

This is being made for someone I love on #50 needles.

 

I feel a little guilty doing extra curricular craft activities when there is work that is coming due.

 

I had a delicious meeting last night with kid # 3 of a family. I had made a tallit for each of his older siblings. I’m touched that the family came back to work with me again.

 

As a third child myself I loved working with him. He is keenly aware of budget and is completely ready to drop an idea if it seems overly extravagant.  When I pose two choices to him “ I can do this a more complicated way or a simpler way’  he always chooses the simpler way. He is also a completely out of the box thinker. The tallit in some ways is the most challenging one intellectually that I have ever worked on. It’s full of deep ideas and wonderfully abstract concepts. I’m sure you will see the progress here.

 

And alas, my trusty camera is dying.  I can only take photos in selfie mode. A new camera is on order.