Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Having finished the socks, I get to pick the next project to work on. This involved looking through a bunch of books and magazines and then opening up the pie safe to look over all my yarn. It’s so tantalizing to choose to the last summer project — and to think ahead to days when I’ll want to sit outside with wool in my lap once again!

2. Tuesday night, just after work ended, my cell phone rang. It was BW, who caught me up on all the news of her summer. Then Erik IM’d me and we got to talk about what’s coming up in his life. I miss my friends from up north and it always brings bright rays of sunshine and rainbows into my life when I hear from them.

3. I made ambrosia this week. It’s very simple — just combine marshmallows, sour cream, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and coconut — but a remarkably unhealthy way to eat fruit. So instead of making it regularly, I only eat it once or twice a summer these days. Man, is it a tasty dessert!

Last night I finished my second set of socks for 2006 (and the first pair for Knittin’ Mom’s Sock-A-Month 2 knit-along). They were a pair of cotton socks for Rudi, who picked out the yarn and the pattern. I would have picked more exciting colors myself, but I figured he’s entitled to have handmade socks in whatever color he’ll wear. (I may still need to go in and tack down the gusset join, but Rudi wouldn’t put them back on last night so I could see if it was necessary.)

I liked the Cascade Fixation yarn (colorway charcoal), which has a little bit of elastic built into the yarn to give the socks some body and to keep them up over the course of a wearing. It definitely helped with the “ladders” that tend to creep into my double-pointed sock knitting.

(Please pardon the living room mess. I’m on a deadline at work and have been bringing the manuscript home with me. We’re in the process of cleaning up now.)

Dear Ruth Ann and Peter of Everlasting Herb Farm,

When we said good-bye to you at your last market in June, we didn’t realize that it was going to be a permanent thing!

Where will we get our bug spray and our soaps, our scrubs and our rubs, our wool wash and our culinary lavender now? Your products were outstanding and we really will miss them — as well as our interactions with you each week. If only we had known; we would have stocked up on everything! (Now we’ll have to decide whether our guests are herb farm product-worthy á la Elaine in Seinfeld.)

The great thing about a weekly market like Freshfarm is that you really start to grow attached to the people you see each week. You (and some of the other farmers) really helped to give this city a more personal and welcoming face as we tried to find our footing after we moved here. You helped a large, faceless city become intimate and homey. We feel as if we’ve lost a good neighbor.

On the other hand, while this is hugely disappointing to us, we hope the move and the new location bring nothing but good fortune and well wishes to you both and to your children. We aren’t sure what adventures you have planned, but may they be things that bring great pleasure.

Should you ever decide that you want to open a mail-order business, please keep us in mind as customers. And if you’re ever in town again, any of us would be happy to take you out for a beer or a coffee.

And if not, may the wind always be at your back as you journey through life.

Truly,

Your loyal customers

I think I may have cooled off finally from my trip to New York City. Although each time I leave the cool tunnel of the Burrow, I have flashbacks.

We pulled into Penn Station shortly before 11 and after briefly venturing into the heat, we opted to return to the air conditioning (although not in the stations) of the subway. We surfaced at Grand Central a short time later and walked the couple blocks to Coliseum Books, across from the New York Public Library, where Debbie Stoller was scheduled to speak. After assuring ourselves that there would not be a problem with seating, we backtracked a shopfront to Pret a Manger, a UK-based pre-made sandwich shop we fell in love with on our first trip to London. Why can’t Americans figure out how to make tasty sandwiches ahead of time and not have them taste dry and stale and gross by lunchtime?

Rudi dropped me back at the bookstore and headed off to Virgin. I unpacked my sock and waited to be amused. It didn’t take long. Debbie is as funny as her books and she passed around great samples from her crochet book for us to fondle. (It does, however, make it tough to work on picking up gusset stitches if every 45 seconds you have to put down your knitting to hand the next sample on to your row-mate.)

After the talk ended, Rudi returned and we walked across to sit in the “shade” at Bryant Park so I could try and coordinate meeting up with everyone that evening. The heat made me short-tempered, which didn’t make it easier to work out details. Eventually I resorted to the “call me later when you know what’s going on” method of handling things.

We went into the library, which while it may be the most iconic library in the world, is actually crap. Sure it looks nice. But you can’t actually handle the books. Hell, you can’t even handle the magazines without asking. I want to be able to browse. Clearly it was not designed to encourage a love of literature or literacy.

Shortly, the appeal of vaulted ceilings and marble benches wore off and we were forced to consider other means of entertaining ourselves. We contemplated a museum visit. Erik had suggested a perfectly lovely one that I couldn’t remember where it was and since there were no helpful periodicals lying around to consult… we opted for the more pedestrian but easily accessible option of a movie.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie on the 12th or so floor of a building before, but our theater was located high above Times Square. I don’t think it was merely the altitude nor the air-conditioning that made me enjoy Little Miss Sunshine so much, but it put me into a more positive frame of mind.

We hiked back to Grand Central where we waited in the food emporium for Karen and Michael’s train to arrive and for Eri to slog uptown from work. Then we hustled (at least as much hustling as can be done in 110 degree humidex) up to Radio City to get in line for An Evening with Harry, Carrie, and Garp.

The evening featured some celebrities. Whoopie Goldberg opened the evening, but she was very wooden and seemed like she needed to have brushed up a bit more before going on. Tim Robbins introduced Stephen King. Stanley Tucci introduced John Irving. Kathy Bates introduced J.K. Rowling. Soledad O’Brien orchestrated the Q&A.

Here’s the sad part:

I slept through a good portion of John Irving and Stephen King’s readings. The heat and the lack of sleep just caught up with me. (I do know that King read from a story that inspired(?) Stand by Me and that Irving read from part of A Prayer for Owen Meany.)

Periodically I would awaken briefly, laugh or nod at something they were saying, and then doze right back off. As John Irving left the stage, Erik leaned over and whispered, “Now’s the main act,” hoping, I think, that I would finally rally.

He needn’t have worried. I would have awoken from a dead sleep for the author of the Harry Potter books.

Rowling took the stage to the adoring screams that normally accompany a rock star. She settled into her chair and began reading the Pensieve scene from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince where Harry and Dumbledore witness Dumbledore’s visit to Tom Riddle in the orphanage. She then answered a few questions from pre-selected members of the audience.

One person wanted to know whom (other than Harry) she would bring to life of her characters. Hagrid, she responded, because she thought all of us could use a Hagrid in real life.

Others were angling for insights into the final book of the series. Aunt Petunia has secrets we don’t know about, Rowling admitted. And, to the crushing disappointment of many in the room (sorry, Mum), Dumbledore really is dead. I believe “He won’t be pulling a Gandalf” were her exact words.

The other two authors returned to join Rowling on the stage and they each answered a few more questions, including one to Rowling from Salman Rushdie and his son.

And then it was over. We chatted briefly upstairs as we waited for the crowds below us to dissipate and then descended to the heat and humidity outside. Eri scooted off to catch a train down to her Nan’s in Newark. Rudi returned inside to find his wallet, which had accidentally been left behind. And then the rest of us trekked back towards Grand Central, ate a quick bite, and then put Karen and Michael on their train back to Connecticut.

Erik, Rudi, and I headed toward Brooklyn, where we were greeted by the already cooling house of Erik’s mom, who was kindly letting us stay there in her absence and who had asked a neighbor to come over and turn on the a/c. (Poor Erik was not so lucky, as his a/c was down for the second night in a row and his bedroom thermometer read a balmy 95 degrees. (He packed up his things for the next day and joined us back at his mom’s.)) But Erik did take us down to a pier near his house where you could see the Verrazano Bridge, Manhatten, Staten Island, and the Statue of Liberty through the haze. It was lovely.

The next day we slept in, had lunch with Eri at a sushi place by her office (I had an asparagus roll and a kampyo roll featuring a Japanese vegetable the waitress said was a type of squash), met up with Erik to return the keys at a Starbucks in Midtown, checked with Amtrak’s 1-800 line to learn that our train was late, and then ended up missing our train when it was on time after all. Oops.

Amtrak was lovely and booked us onto a slightly later train and we were home by 10, tired but happy we’d gone north to see our friends and a couple of really cool authors.

Rudi and I decided to mosey out into the heat today for a local neighborhood’s Dog Days of Summer sale.

We explored a few shops along U Street we hadn’t been in before and stopped at Love Café for discounted cupcakes (Rudi opted for hazlenut frosting on a chocolate cupcake, while I went for the adventurous lime frosting on vanilla).

We turned down 14th Street to explore more parts of the sale. Rudi found a record shop hidden under some stairs. I visited a new vet that was just opening up and brought home some food samples and cat treats.

We next stopped at the local gardening shop, where we bought some saucers to go under a couple pots we had as well as a larger pot for our tomatoes to go into.

Finally, we ended up at a pet store (the kind that sells stuff for your pet as opposed to the kind that sells pets), where we picked up some new toys for the cats — soft balls for Della (who doesn’t appreciate them as much in the Burrow as she did in Connecticut where she liked to chase them down the stairs before bringing them back up to you to throw again), some nubby bouncy balls, and some plastic springs.

The toys were met with delight by the cats. But after Rudi left to go do some shopping and my back was turned at the computer, Della descended from the top of the dresser, went digging in my bag, and surfaced with the cat treats. Apparently she felt that I was holding out on the good stuff!

What could I do in the face of such undaunted ingenuity? I promptly parceled out the whole bag of treats amongst the three cats, who then tottered off to their own preferred spots to sleep off a delicious snack.

In the last four days we’ve seen two movies. Both of them were good, but in vastly different ways.

The movie we saw tonight was Wordplay, a documentary that looks at the hold that crossword puzzles (particularly those published by The New York Times) hold over Americans. The first half of the movie specifically examines the paper’s crossword puzzle — its editor (Wil Shortz, who majored in word puzzles in college), its constructors, its devotees — and it’s a fascinating glimpse into geek culture. (It’s worth noting that The Indigo Girls, Bill Clinton, and Jon Stewart are all fans.) The second half focuses on the annual crossword tournament held in Stamford, Conn., and a half dozen people who are competing for the number one slot. As with any competition, someone will go home happy and others will be devastated by their defeat. If you enjoy games or words, you’ll get a kick out of this film.

Earlier this week, we escaped the New York City heat by watching Little Miss Sunshine. The all-star cast features Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Alan Arkin, and Toni Collette (as well as Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin) as a typical, dysfunctional modern family who finds out that the daughter (Breslin) has won the last-minute shot at beauty pageant two states away. Unable to afford the cost of plane tickets on such short notice, they pack the whole family into their VW van and head to Southern California. Along the way, there are the typical (and atypical) infighting and misadventures that accompany any family vacation. I won’t spoil what happens by going into any more detail, but let’s just say that the movie will likely end up high on my year-end list of favorite movies. As the final credits were rolling, I thought to myself that it’s odd, but that “quirky” seems to be the highest compliment I can pay to a movie or book these days. Maybe it’s because it seems that it’s that much harder to be quirky these days. Or maybe it’s because I am quirky. But when the credits were over and the lights came back up, Rudi turned to me and said, “What a great movie! I just loved how quirky they all were!” So I guess I’m not alone.