This is the Hindu god Ganesh. He is the remover of all obstacles. He recently sat stageside for the Arangetram of Hemangi, Poorvi, and Sachi. Arangetram is a Tamil language word. Its earliest written reference is in a third-century book titled “Silappadikaram” by Prince Ilango Adigal; it roughly translates to “Ascending the Stage”. The Arangetram is the graduation concert for young dancers completing their training in classical South Indian temple dance known as Bharata Natyam. These three young ladies have completed their dance studies and over the next few days, I will be featuring some of my favorite images from their wonderful performance.

We recently visited Green Restaurant at 2240 North Scottsdale Road where the menu is strictly vegan. The little restaurant nestled into the corner of a nondescript strip mall is easy to miss. The atmosphere is casual, maybe you can glean that from the old Volkswagen Beetle doors lined up along the wall pictured above. The food is healthy and inexpensive, not bad, but not great either. Caroline had the apricot miso noodles, but we couldn’t quite taste the miso or find the apricots, it tasted a bit too much of simple sweet and sour. I had the coconut curry vegetables with crispy tofu. The curry tasted of generic pre-mixed uninspired curry mix, the coconut milk if it was there was not to be tasted, matter of fact the meal was too dry for my liking. One thing that was fantastic was the chili thyme fries. When they told us their chili was made with TVP (textured vegetable protein), I immediately wanted to pass, but they insisted this stuff was really good and they weren’t kidding. Our main dishes were only about $6.00 each and the fries were $2.95 I believe.

I bought Caroline a gift as she has been getting more and more interested in knitting and I’m getting tired of running her to the craft store 10 minutes before closing so she can get the new size of “Bamboo” needle she requires. Over at Arizona Knitting & Needlepoint, a friendly sales girl explained why bamboo wasn’t the best choice for knitting here in Arizona – the bamboo dries and frays, and then proceeded to show me the knitting kit from Denise. Turns out this is convenient for traveling, is cheaper than buying a complete set of needles made of hardwood or bamboo, and makes some tricks possible by attaching different needle sizes to the cable – I can’t tell you more about this as I am not a knitter, but this is supposed to be very cool to those in the know.

Yesterday at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market we met Lisa Takata who was selling handspun yarn.  She had made a pastel blue and orange yarn that caught Caroline’s eye and so in addition to our bags of fresh veggies we were leaving with a skein of yarn that would become a narrow scarf later in the week. In less than two weeks, Caroline and I leave for Harveyville, Kansas where Caroline will be taking a three and a half-day class to learn to spin and dye herself while I wander around the Great Plains taking photographs.