The Christmas continues here in Mid-City. Cookie baking proceeds apace and much knitting is taking place. All things are as they ought to be this time of year. The other day, I had gingerbread snowflakes for breakfast! Here’s Miss Laura constructing her famous Christmas Thingums which are a sort of pinwheel cookie made from chocolate chips, walnuts, coconut, sweetened condensed milk and some sort of magic potion all wrapped up in layers of phyllo pastry. After they’re baked, she slices them and tops them with a mixture of cream cheese and marshmallow fluff. She’s a demon.
My life is quite a bit different this year; I find I have the time to participate in a whole range of really fun Christmas stuff. I do enjoy being a “Plus-1”! I was Bubba’s Plus-1 at a swanky uptown Christmas party last weekend. It felt a little tacky to be taking a bunch of photos, so there are none. Suffice to say that there was a sumptuous feast involved, including an oyster bar outside. The chargrilled oysters were, in a word, perfection and I ate tons of them. Then, since it was still early when we left, we went Christmas caroling on Frenchmen Street with these beautiful ladies:
These are New Orleans own Pfister Sisters who annually lead the Washington Square Christmas Caroling event in Fabourg Marigny (among many other fabulous gigs around town). This year, it was rather cold so the event was moved indoors to the Maison on Frenchmen. We had enormous fun, singing lustily and swilling Irish coffee. This fellow was in fine voice and knew all the words to the carols without consulting the handy-dandy lyric sheet. Impressive, Bubba!
I was also fortunate to be Miss Laura’s Plus-1 at the annual Coop’s Place Christmas Party which was held this year at Bao & Noodle on Chartres. You know if the Cooperman’s are involved, the food’s going to be great and this was no exception. A seemingly endless chain of yummy Asian small plate food–dumplings, braised vegetables, noodles, pork bellies– appeared in rounds.
Though much of my knitting lately has been KUN (Knitting of an Undisclosed Nature), I still manage to have a good bit of fun. The Tipsy Knitters, our New Orleans knitting group, is continually growing and changing and we’re having a blast with it! It seems we meet a new person with cool knitting and great ideas every Wednesday and it’s non-stop fun. This week, I finished a little pair of mittens made with my guilty pleasure yarn, KnitPicks Felici Worsted. I’m pretty happy with the way the thumb worked out. When I get 15 minutes to rub together, I’ll write this pattern up. It’s super simple, but it’s great for self-striping yarns and stitch patterns such as mosaic that really depend upon a constant stitch count. These are for my little niece, Rowan, so they’re called Rowan’s Mittens 🙂
Miss Laura completed a sweet little bonnet-style hat for niece, Ava. I’m impressed with the pretty join she managed!
I hope your holiday season is passing as sweetly as mine! Love,
