Three Things I Am

I discovered recently, reading a fellow friend's blog I met here in blogland that I am a writer, a foodie, and a knitter.

In fact, it was the latter that first connected us. Who knew that confessions of a pre-teen knitting addiction psychosis would connect me with an LDS writer in New York?

How totally fun and random is THAT?

So in honor of the fact that I am a writer, a foodie, and a knitter, I am hereby blogging about all three:

1) I'm a writer.
Shocker, since I generally blog about that very topic. I am going to be pretty much chained to my computer because of item #1 this coming week because of my latest rewrite. My editor is brilliant. And she's right. I hate that. This should be interesting since it's also my children's spring break. I will be bribing them with pretty anything they want. Let's hope they don't read this and decide to exploit said fact.

2) I'm a foodie.
As one of the three founding sisters of the Utah Chocolate Show, also not a shocker. I'm a second generation chocoholic. Daughter #1 makes it generation #3. Since my mother is European, she started us early on the good stuff.

Here's one fun secret: I make one heck of a chocolate chip cookie. Here are my two big cookie secrets, which I will share with the world. (Seriously, people are constantly asking why my cookies aren't flat. Take notes.)

First, use real butter, not that pathetic excuse for butter that is shortening. Ick. Gross. Gag.

Second, add more flour. I don't measure flour for my cookies. Just add flour until your dough isn't sticky anymore. Add more and more and more. Add flour until the bottom of the bowl almost has crumbs in it. You should be able to handle the dough and not end up with any on your fingers.

You'll have nice, round, UN-flat cookies. I swear it!

The last thing is to use lots of chocolate chips. Forget a pathetic 1/2 cup or whatever. Sheesh. If you're going to make chocolate chip cookies, add the chocolate, people!


3) I'm a knitter.
Lately, that's been a little tough. As my blog friend, Luisa, reminded me, knitting really does relax you and "unfry" fried neurons better than even chocolate. (Truly folks, that isn't sacrilege. It's true.) So I've tried knitting at times other than bedtime, which used to be my regular knitting time. It hasn't worked very well.

I'm remembering WHY I picked bedtime to knit.

My daughters find handwork as fascinating as I did at their age. I pick up my knitting, and suddenly I have little girls swarming me. They somehow find crochet hooks and yarn and those knitting looms and sometimes even fabric and needles and thread or whatever else they can find around the house--anything that looks like handwork--and they want to make something, too. And of course they want my help with it. "What do I do next?" "Show me how?" "Is this right?"

And I plead, "PLEASE, can I just finish this row?"

So in an hour and I'm lucky to finish two or three rows of my daughter's jacket.

And then the following week she whines each morning that she doesn't have a jacket to wear to school. Yeah, well, cutie, it's you're fault, because you won't let me KNIT THE THING!

So there you have it, folks!

I'm a writer, a foodie, and a knitter!

Thanks for the blog idea, Luisa!