My favorite scarf.

How kind is this?  One of Austin's new street style blogs -- The Style Co-Op -- stopped me outside of Quack's on Friday to take my picture.  Two cute girls, Sandhya and Amy, run the blog, and Amy also writes pixiespace, a regular smile source for me.

This is probably my favorite scarf that I own, have ever owned. If I could, I think I would wear it every single day.  I wish I could tell you some good story behind it, like, I was all alone in Paris, destitute and penniless, for reasons unknown, but it was hard -- very hard -- on that one winter night, ruminating over the terrible forces that reduced me to this state, with nothing to eat, nay, nowhere to sleep.  When all of a sudden, walking through a nighttime Parisian market, an old woman, a vendor, touched by my fragile livelihood, seized this scarf from her stand, ran out and wrapped it around my shoulders. "Go," she said, "take this garment. It warmed my late mother once, on just such a night."  It was all very surprising, her gesture and also her fluid English, but I humbly accepted the gift and strode to the Eiffel Tower, full of questions but also full of hope.  And I laid down in the soft grass, nothing to my name accept my person and now, this scarf, and for once, so little felt like so much.  So very much. I wrapped this scarf around me like a blanket, and when I awoke the next morning, the blinding sunlight held unforeseen promise.  Beckoning me forth to an unsullied and, dare I say it, bright future.

*  *  *

But actually. I bought that scarf at Urban Outfitters.

So that was Friday, when this picture was snapped, and a lot has happened in between then.  I got my hair did.  Still red, just bright bright bright. I made a new header for the blog, along with some mustache buttons for the categories.  I really think I just need to shell out for a professional to make me a damn template already, because my own, quite limited, site design skills have gone about as far as they can go here.

If you are a website designer, holla at your girl. I like birds and mustaches.  Let's make a deal?

ALSO.  After the tremendous suggestions you all provided in our book discussion on Thursday, I ordered some titles.  As I wait for them to arrive at my doorstep, I picked up one I had lying around the house: The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: A Secret History of Food, by the brilliant Sallie Tisdale.  And it is fabulous!  I am in book heaven again.  The way she writes is so rich.  It's not funny, the way some of the other food memoirs I've read have been funny, but I do feel like I'm getting a solid writer's education here.  Especially in how to describe food.  Because if there is anything Sallie Tisdale can do, it's turn out one hell of a culinary description.

Finally -- Thanksgiving is almost upon us?  Wha-ha-ha?  That totally snuck up on me.  I think I've been so focused on the Bleet-Up that I've had blinders on to other important dates, such as, I don't know, the survival of my European ancestors?

Which reminds me.  What's your favorite Thanksgiving food?   I enjoy all things squash and starch, which means: Pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, plain baked sweet potatoes, stuffed acorn squash, etc.  Mmm.  So comforting.

For a friend's party on Thursday, I'm going to try making a pumpkin cocktail, with thin pumpkin puree, cognac, cream, nutmeg, and a cinnamon stick.  I think I'm going to get ingredients and experiment today.

UPDATED: Amy from The Style Co-Op / pixiespace just wrote to say hi, and I had to post the picture she included.

Love!