Little Red

Ya'll know I am not a huge fan of red.  However, if there was a theme for today, it was red.  My mother was quite excited to take DD and I out to lunch at Pickity Place, which my mother had billed as the place where Elizabeth Orton Jones, the woman who wrote Little Red Riding Hood, lived and wrote the book.  And, yes, the house is red, but I haven't gotten there yet.

My mother, who had been to Pickity Place before, decided that she wanted to drive, aided by her GPS, which I had to program.  I'm a map person.  I don't want or need GPS for my car and I have never used it.  Surprisingly, it is not difficult to use, unless, of course, your mother turns the car on and off while you are doing it, which means that you will have to start over again from the beginning.  If I had one complaint to make, it is that the GPS touchscreen needs to have the alphabet laid out like the standard QWERTY keyboard.  And then there's my other complaint. . . not the fault of GPS people, but don't ask me to program something and then repeatedly turn its power off while I am sitting next to you engaged in that activity.  And then, when the GPS keeps giving you different directions than the ones you printed off the internet, don't ask me where the GPS is telling you to go.  I have no idea.

Pickity Place is about an hour away (or it should be, if you travel at an appropriate speed and don't get lost despite your map and GPS), so I thought I'd bring some knitting with me.  I finished my first Conwy sock (There it is on the left, and, yes, I know the floor is dirty.), and I thought I would start the second in the car.  I had visions of taking the ubiquitous blog photo of a sock in progress with the exotic locale in the background.  Since my Conwys are red and Pickity Place is red and the book written there was about Little Red Riding Hood, I was going to have such a theme going, yes I was.  Except that my mother's driving is not conducive to knitting and the bloody GPS kept interrupting with senseless directions while I was trying to count stitches.  Apparently, the GPS, sensing that the theme of the day was red, was not happy that we were driving a non-red car and wanted us to make several immediate right turns into trees and big rocks in order to prevent us from completing our red journey in a non-red vehicle.  I don't know, but I soldiered on, with the map, the GPS, and my mother's fast/slow driving.

After I dropped a bunch of stitches, I gave up knitting.  I don't know if I am knitting from that cursed skein of Lorna's Laces that vexed me so when I was winding it, but there was bad sock knitting mojo and I have put the sock down for the time being.  I shouldn't even call it a sock.  Really, it is just a whole lot of tangled yarn stuffed into my knitting bag right now.  It doesn't matter anyway.  It's too hot to wear wool socks today.  I wore flip flops, which are one of the few things I own that have any red on them at all.  See, I was trying!!

Pickity Place itself was lovely.  It is in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, at the end of a dirt road.  That tree is in the book, and the little addition to the left of the photo is the bedroom where the big bad wolf ate grandma.  I was going to take a photo of the bedroom after we had lunch, because there was a wooden bowl with yarn in it at the foot of the bed, but I could not get my camera out.  As I was about to do that, my mother deposited about eight pieces of candy in my hand and told me to hold her after-lunch mints while she purchased a copy of Little Red Riding Hood for DD.  And then she never took them back, so I walked around the museum/gift shop with a palm full of candy and then negotiated my way outside.  At that point, I asked my mother if she wanted her candy back and she said, "I only want one," took one, and walked away, leaving me with the rest in my palm.  I did what I had to do. . . I ate them.  It turned out they were chocolates, not mints.  Not bad.

Lunch was amazing!  I highly recommend a visit.  Pickity Place is open seven days a week for lunch only, and reservations are highly recommended.  They serve the same menu for the entire month, and there is only a selection between two entrees.  We had crackers with New England vegetable dip, hearty minestrone with pesto, spring greens with a honey lime dressing, Portuguese sweet bread with herbed butter, chicken saltimbocca with garden sage over parmesan risotto, green beans with citrus butter, and wild berry crumb bars.  DD had a children's meal, which came in a picnic basket with two homemade chocolate chip cookies and a Little Red Riding Hood card.  I can't get over how good the food was.  Interestingly, over 90% of the diners were female, and the vast majority of them were over 50 years old.  I am not sure why that is, but you should know if you go.  Men and younger people are certainly welcomed, but they are in a very small minority of diners.

It was only after lunch that I learned that I had been duped about the true nature of Pickity Place.  It turns out that Little Red Riding Hood is a German folk tale.  It was not written by a woman living in New Hampshire in a red house where I ate lunch today.  She wrote and illustrated the 1948 version of the story, which features the house prominently.  That book has been out of print for over 50 years.  I had never seen that version of it, though they had two copies in glass cases in the museum.  The only copy of the book that they sell is the one DD has in the photo, which is a new version and which uses Sturbridge Village for its visual inspiration. 

So, I was disappointed about the whole book thing, but we had a wonderful lunch and then we enjoyed the grounds, which have the spring start to some lovely gardens.  There are two other gift shops besides the one focused on the book.  The rear gift shop sells seeds and plants, mostly herbs and perennials.  The largest of the gift shops has a lot of wonderful natural products, mostly based on herbs and spices.  Many of the products sold there are from the gardens on the property, as were the herbs used in the meal (Yes, they have greenhouses.). 

I wish I'd had more time to spend in the larger gift shop, but while I was perusing, DH called me to tell me that he had called today to find out where the Beast's ashes were, as no one had called us yet to pick them up.  He was told that the Beast was being cremated today and we could pick him up tomorrow.  That was a little bit upsetting, to think that my beloved dog's corpse has been sitting around somewhere for 17 days without having been cremated.  The poor dog.  I wish I had known this was going to happen, because I would have made other arrangements.  Someone needed to watch out for my dog, and I guess I left that task in the wrong hands.  And where was St. Francis, patron said of animals?????  Well, he was at Pickity Place, being attacked by a large rabbit.  Serves him right!  He's still my favorite saint, though.

We'll see what happens tomorrow when we go to pick up the ashes.  There has been more knitting, too, which hasn't been frogged, but you'll have to wait to see that until next time.

Comments

[Danielle]

Sounds like quite the trip. Yikes! At least the food was good, right?

[Karen]

You had quite a day. Sorry to hear about Beast. We went through something similiar with Wellington, our first yorkie. He turned up after our second phone call to the vet. They have no idea where he was.

[monica]

That looks like a fun place to visit. DD is getting so big! My mother stopped driving years ago and now we get to drive her around. I'm not sure which I'd like better--her scary driving or being at her chauffer. I'm sorry about Beast's ashes. :(

[2paw]

A few weeks ago they had a blessing of animals at a village church out of town and the announcement said - "and St Francis of Assissi will be there" My word!! I think he might have been there in spirit!!