Stitching, shidduch dating and shiva calls

Yesterday (Monday) was pretty quiet, mostly just bumming around the house. Sh had plans in the city, so I stitched and cleaned and did laundry. At night I had an offer from C to go to a Matzah Ball or 2 in the city, but I had plans to go out with a friend for her birthday, which was Sunday.

We went to a kosher dairy restaurant in the Five Towns - I'd tell you which but I can't tell them apart. It ended up being 13 girls and 3 guys, all but 1 of whom I only knew through my friend. Some of them are all cliquey but Shira's really sweet and is also completely uninterested in the conversations about people I don't know, so she ended up telling me and a few other people the funniest stories about shidduch dates she'd been on.

For the record, shidduch dating is very different from normal dating. It's blind dates on crack. What happens is, you have a matchmaker, called a Shadchan (shod-chan, with the ch like in chanukah). The Shadchan finds a boy and a girl to set up on a date. She (or he) checks with each that they are interested in the date, and then if it's a go gives the guy the girl's # to call. They then go on a very PG, not even PG13, date. Depending on how religious they are, this could be a *normal* date like dinner or coffee, or it could be sitting & chatting in a hotel lobby - I kid you not. After the date is over, they each report back to the Shadchan as to how the date went. If both people tell the Shadchan they're interested, she gives the guy permission to call the girl for a second date. I'm not sure if they need to do this before the third date or not, I keep forgetting to ask Shira.

So anyways, Shira was telling us all kinds of funny stories about her shidduch dating experiences. The cute Israeli waiter kept giving us these looks. Finally he starting pitching himself to us! I don't think he's Shira's type though, not religious enough. Oh well.


Today started off really mellow, slept late, woke up & stitched on my Mirabilia Ivy. This is a pic of how far I got. Then we found out that my uncle D's father, who lives in Israel, passed away. He was sitting shiva already at his house (in Monsey) so we drove up there this afternoon to pay a shiva call. It's a schlep - at least an hour each way - & I hate watching other people drive so I brought along some yarn & my circular needles to make another felted hat. Between going and coming I got through 70% of the hat.

D is probably my favorite uncle, but his family has the strangest minhagim - even my aunt (my mom's sister) rolls her eyes sometimes. He was explaining something about when he & his family were supposed to start & finish sitting shiva... we just smiled & nodded, and were very thankful that my grandfather wasn't around to challenge their wacky minhag. My cousins were there, and very eager to tell me how they got to stay home from school to be with their dad. I stuck with them as much as possible, it was safest.

Fall fun

Today rocked! The day began with no plans beyond getting out of the house and doing "something Fall", and mission accomplished!

I woke up pretty early for a Sunday - 8ish - and did 2 hours of stitching on Ivy while watching some shows off my DVR - Gossip Girls, Big Shots, and Smallville. Gossip Girl is my guilty pleasure this TV season. I went to high school on the Upper East Side - it was NOTHING like the prep school on the show though, but I still recognize a lot of the scenery & laugh because I probably had some of those kinds of kids in my school too. Last week's episode was pretty good, they introduced a new character (Vanessa), and I'm really hoping she'll be back in future episodes.

Smallville was GREAT this week, I love seeing Lana's evil side (finally!) but we all know she's gonna get slapped by the Luthors in the end (unfortunately). Chloe is still one of my favorite characters, and this week she was still reveling in her side-kick-ness - I'm waiting for her to bust out some superpowers of her own already!

Despite all that happened in TV land, I made good progress on Ivy. I'm working on the skirt for now, figure get the *boring* parts done before moving on the torso and wings, which have prettier colors and the sparkly Kreinik threads. I'm about 1/3 done with the skirt... so about 20% through the entire project? Let's optimistically say 20% ;-)
In case you're wondering, I'm stitching this on "Denim Blue", but it looks Periwinkle or Purple IRL. I was going for something more blue but I'm still okay with this color.

The weather today was GORGEOUS - cool and sunny - and all the leaves are turning colors, so after lunch (and straightening up a bit after Sky), I took Sky to a park near our house. It's mostly woods and has a mile-long path where people take their dogs for walks off-leash. Sky is fairly well-known there, since she's pretty unique looking and usually goes to this park 6 days a week (not Saturdays). I don't usually take her, so I've gotten used to strangers and their dogs greeting Sky and either ignoring me or asking where Sky's *regular* people are. Surprisingly though, today Sky didn't have any admirers and we barely saw anyone on the paths. The park was GORGEOUS with all the turning leaves and fallen pine needles, so we kept busy looking around instead of socializing. It was my first "fall something" of the day.

My second fall something was very spur-of-the-moment... I was trying to get through to a friend to go ice skating, and just when I'd given up she called and suggested we go to Old Bethpage for the afternoon. Old Bethpage is a restoration village, basically they started out with a very old farmhouse and barn and all the farmland associated with them, and whenever they find an old (1700's or 1800's) building on Long Island that's in decent condition, instead of knocking it down they'd move it to OBVR. So now there's a whole village, and the coolest thing is that all the buildings are right from our area. My favorite buildings are the Cooper House (that's Cooper as in the Cooper Union, he was pretty cool), the original Powell farmhouse, and the workshops where people demonstrate crafts such as broom making, blacksmithing, and hat making/finishing.

One of the nicest things about OBVR is that they have something interesting going on pretty much every weekend in order to attract visitors. They have programs for St Patrick's Day in March, old fashioned baseball games in the summer, the Long Island Fair in September, Thanksgiving and Christmas themed stuff in November and December, and all with a historical, this-is-how-we-do-it-in-the-1800's slant. Today's theme was of course Halloween, and there were historically accurate talks/demonstrations in the cemetary and numerous houses, period crafts for sale, and a display of civil-war era gravestone etchings and clay molds.

Of course I forgot to bring my camera, but I plan to go back for the Thanksgiving programming in November, so I'll try to take some pictures then.

Oooh! Another nice thing about the excursion to OBVR - my friend drove, so I got to start knitting a hat! I picked up some very pretty, 100% wool yarn at AC Moore last week. You probably can't see the colors very well in the photo, but it's variegated yarn with lots of different shades of pink, all pretty soft though. I've never really felted before so this is going to be an experiment. I just hope it comes out too small instead of too big - I could always give it to my little cousins if it's small, but too big would just be weird... unless I cut it down? I'll have to see.


Tonight I picked my parents up from the airport - Sky was seriously overjoyed to see them - and then we did the family dinner thing with takeout Chinese food. Now I'm waiting for the game to be over so my Red Sox fan friend will return my phone call :-/ I'm a Yankees fan, but I've pretty much given up hope that the Rockies will come through for me. Oy, my Mets-fan friends are going to be SO annoying tomorrow if the Sox win!

Ok, off to finish the hat and root for the Rockies.

quick post - gotta run

Just a quick post...
I got my first comment Friday! Thank you sooo much Beatrice, it's nice to know that someone reads my blog... besides the google spiders that is.

So, quick update on stitching. I finished a 18-month old WIP that turned up last week while I was looking for cardboard to finish an already-completed piece... so that, plus my finish of July and nearly-finished August BC blocks meant I talked myself into a trip to my not-too-L NS. Among other things, I picked up the Kreinik, Mill Hill, and fabric components I needed to start Ivy (from Mirabilia). Of course I started that night! As of now the plan is to stitch 10 hours or more and then switch off with 10+ hours on the BC months, so hopefully I'll finish at least one of them soon!

On a non-crafty note, I went to a friend's for lunch today. She and her mom make the best Shabbat lunches, and it's always really casual and just-us-girls. Tomorrow we might go to Old Bethpage, or ice skating. I'll keep you posted!

Have a good night,

K