Yup! Razzle is in the house! Actually–Razzle is on her merry way to Houston to visit my brother but while she was here we went to the Golden Gate Bridge, drank cappucinos in North Beach, and saw cars try to drive down Lombard Street.

And while Razzle was in town, the tempatures dropped to the 40s in SF, so I knit her this little sweater to keep her warm.

I think she appreciates that added layer.

And I hope you had a merry holiday! I did with my family–doing our Christmas on Cape Cod with seven wild nieces and nephews running around taking turns playing the most elusive of Christmas gifts–the Nintendo Wii.  

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Yeah, I decided to give it a try.

Now, I must admit that I love baking bread.  I got the bug for it when I was a kid and my Aunt Beverly used to make Parker House Rolls which 50 percent of the time would turn into little flat disks of holiday cheer and something that was brought up every Christmas with a hard heated vengence by my family. I grew up with a fear of yeast and thoughts that it is much much easier to buy bread than make it.

But in college I finally became one with breadbaking thanks to a stint at Old Sturbridge Village, where we had weekly “Baking” Days where we would spend the whole day doing nothing but usually make a more dense sandwich bread than this rustic artisian bread. But that is whole different post on its own.

So anyway, everyone has been talking about that New York Times article on no knead bread from the Sullivan bakery and I decided I just had to try it. So I did.

Here is the dough rising right next to our heating vent where it stayed for 12 hours:

And although we did receive one of those fancy La Crueset covered dishes, I used this old faithful cast iron pop with a frying pan lid to do the trick.

And here it is being tossed into the already heated through cast-iron pot:

And here are the manhattans we drank while waiting for it to do its final rising.

And here is the final product. Nice, eh?

Look at that inside! A beautiful crumb indeed! And guess what it tasted brilliant. Like fancy bread you get at upscale restaurants. I will certainly be making and eating this bread again. Oh yes!

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So, here it is–the finished Remembering Honey from Interweave Knits Spring 2001 in Debbie Bliss cotton angora.

But here’s a secret…

IT’S WAY TOO BIG! Ooof!

Ah well–and I even did a couple of checks on gauge throughout. Clearly I need to do seamless sweaters that I can try on as I make them and make the necessary changes as I go along. Sigh!

BTW, I’m not a fan of Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora. It pills like nobody’s business!

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And Sarah is going in to have a C-section this morning. And she’ll find this waiting for her when she gets home.

Made with Debbie Bliss bulky cashmerino. My own design. Very simple, but so soft and cute!

I think it would be so cute to make cardies for twins and have the colors match. And now I just found out a friend of mine is having twins, so I get to finally knit that up. Hurrah!

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Every Friday night, I’m full of such hopes! I write out a list of things that need to get done. OK, so it might be a bit on the long side, but we all have goals, right?                                           

I know I did things… I shopped for food, cleaned the kitchen, made two loaves of bread (that no-knead stuff–I’ll post pictures later), did an insane amount of laundry, made vegetable soup, went to Ikea, researched new TVs at Best Buy, seamed up a sweater, bought the needed yarn to finish another baby sweater, helped put together the new piece of furniture we bought at Ikea, and knit a sock.

And yet, the house is still a complete mess and I still haven’t written my thank you notes! Or done anything remotely Christmas related. Well, except watch some quality Rankin Bass stop animation Christmas specials. The ABC Family channel running a whole day of them and some of them, let’s just say aren’t as fabulous as the brilliant classic ”Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”. I mean look how cute Rudolf is:

In comparison to this wonky tale based on L. Frank Baum’s book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Something of a reach. But hey, it came out in the eighties.

I still don’t know what the crazy thing standing next to the young Claus is.  But the shows (even that one) turned out to be the perfect pablum to watch and fold load after load of laundry.

And it did give me the brilliant idea of going as the Snow Miser for Halloween next year along with my sweetie going as the Heat Miser. Yes, I’ve finally succumbed to couple costumes.

Knowing that these exist as Christmas tree ornaments is enough to make me spend hours on eBay trying to get a pair.

Anyway,I will have some scintillating posts soon.

With pictures!

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I know the blogosphere is suppose to be a place where we don’t normally discuss where we work or other things, but I need to come clean about some things.

I work at CNET Networks. Where James Kim used to work as a senior editor at CNET.com. Since Wednesday the whole company has been going through so much. My heart goes out to his family and friends. James and his family have touched the hearts of people around the world.

I also work in the public relations department next to my co-worker and friend Sarah who was contacted by James’ boss, Lindsey, last Tuesday about his disappearance. James had Monday off and so no one thought or knew he was missing until days into his ordeal.  Lindsey and Sarah did an amazing job working with the press and putting pressure on them to pull together search and rescue crews. Sarah also handled the PR for the Kim family and worked so closely with them and James’ friends. I’m so proud of her. She and Lindsey kept a high level of professionalism throughout it all to keep the story in the news so it would get rescuers out there and people looking for James. But they both worked with him and saw him as a friend. I can’t imagine how tough this whole ordeal was for them.

We all had our hopes up and that is why yesterday’s news hit everyone at the company so hard. The floors were so quiet. And then the sniffles, the crying–in elevators, in the stairwells, red eyes. Napkins from past lunches used as tissues. People gathered in offices. “How could somethng like that happen to one of us?”

At CNET, we cover the news and since I’m in PR, when I see a news-crew outside of the building, I would usually get excited–thinking that there was a great story or PR opptys–last week, it just filled me with dread. We found out around lunch time–just when people were leaving the building–only to be accosted by the press asking for thoughts on James’ death.

I’m really proud of CNET Networks as a company for helping its people through this whole ordeal. The execs made sure that no one went home alone that night. Within minutes of hearing about his death, we, as a company met and were offered grief counseling on the spot. It was mandatory for the dozens of people who work with him. Even people who didn’t work directly with him are feeling it. He was one of us.  We write about the news–we aren’t the news. Why? We have so many young parents here. We all could relate. Who hasn’t taken a wrong turn? Who doesn’t love their family?

And the phone calls. We are getting calls from so many people. One newspaper reporter called another PR person here and just cried on the phone. Another person called and said they were so angry at James for leaving the car.

But there is a silver lining as many people do like to point out. Kati and the girls are alive. I know that this alone was the most important thing for James. He loved his family. It’s a simple as that.

But we at CNET also want to help people grieve. We know your pain. We are all in pain on this one. And we created a page that is running on all of our Websites on James. Please go to www.cnet.com and read a beautiful piece on him.

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Well, it was grand. Except I got sick the first four days of our trip. Had to go out and buy a freaking box of tissues. And we slept a lot. Like 10 hours a night. I couldn’t keep my head up past 9:00PM. 

We rented a little casa in San Franscisco (or you can see it under its original name–San Pancho) a little seaside village 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta. We chose it because it was less than a four hour plane ride from the Bay Area to someplace tropical. Not as touristy as Sayulita–San Francisco was more rustic which added to its charm.

Our house had its own pool that looked out on the ocean. Pretty nice, huh?

Because of the nasty cold, I spent most of my time knitting and reading books, like the one about the woman who cooked her way through Julia Child’s cookbook and had some wonderful epiphanies along the way. Gotta support the blooks!

And Eric spent most of his time making me fresh orange juice.

And showed off his fancy new wedding band.

And we both watched a lot of beautiful sunsets.

On the last day, it rained and I spent the final hours of our honeymoon staring at the simply beautiful pattern the raindrops made on the pool’s water surface. Just perfect. Really.

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Forgive me for being so busy with wedding aftermath and work, but I do have some fun posts coming up, like:

- a proper post about the whole wedding

- the honeymoon

- knitting from the honeymoon (I finished the sleeves for Remembering Honey, and knit a pair of socks. And started a scarf out of the most gorgeous purple silk yarn)

- Baby sweater update–Eek! I need to get cracking–four babies coming up soon!

- My first sweater for my husband. Anyone know how much yarn I would need to buy for a 47″ chest sweater in a chunky yarn? I have no clue even where to start!

- Razzle!

Hopefully that will get you all checking back in shortly. Yeah! More later!

- Leslie

PS: Our wedding cake was made by my friend Krista Markell. Spectacular, no? And it tasted AMAZING! People took second servings of it even!

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