Smørgasbord for øyene

Lots of photos here today, since I've not been good about keeping up with posting this week. First of all, I owe a couple of tattoo photos for Scout's tattoo meme. This is the first tattoo I got, on my right ankle. As you can see, it's a Celtic knot design, and I got it just over 13 years ago in Minneapolis by Koré, when I was in my final year of vet school.



My second tattoo is one I got on my upper left arm in 1998 when I was living in North Carolina. It's a Scottish thistle design, and I knew around the time I got the first tattoo that this was what I wanted for the second one. It took me over four years of searching before I found just the right design, though. Curiously enough, Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie has a thistle tattoo in the exact same location, and hers is very similar to a 17th century woodcut that I liked and considered very strongly. Mine is one I found in a clipart book of Victorian wallpaper designs. The flower head and the leaf were separate elements, so I had to scan and Photoshop to assemble everything and color it in, then Errol at Blue Flame Tattoo in Raleigh did a bang-up job of reproducing it.



On To the Flower Show

Yesterday, David and I, along with farmsitter & good company Katherine, went to the Portland Flower Show, mostly looking to find ideas for arrangements for our wedding next year. There were a lot of vendors, many of whom had nothing to do with flowers or landscaping, and then there were companies that had set up big design displays. Those ranged from pukingly horrid:



To both horrid and creepy (This particular display was set up as a "Scottish croft" and also had the disembodied papier mâché head of what was supposed to be a Scottish Highland cow emerging from the dark, painted-on doorway of the "croft house", while a loop tape played a recording of bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" over and over and over):



To, well, veeerrryy interesting:



I wonder why the sculptor chose pink granite for that one?

There were a few decent ones, to be honest. One called "A Walk in the Scottish Countryside" (not the "croft" one), actually, was quite nice and the source of this photo, which is just what we want our wedding to look like:



We also talked to one of the vendors - a greenhouse just up the coast from us who do a lot of potted topiaries and was selling these cute little baby ferns, which may be a jumping-off point for developing table centerpieces for the reception:



Knitting Progress

After we got home last night, we ate, David dragged himself off to bed, and I sat down to groove to unlistened-to episodes of the CBC Radio 3 podcast and really rocked myself into the knitting zone, getting this far on the comfy sweater:



That's right, sleeve #2 is finished and attached, and I made the first of the raglan decreases before I dragged my own self off to bed. I may actually be able to wear this thing before the weather gets too hot.

Signs of Spring

I may have to hurry, though, because there were definite signs today that spring may not be far away.




























I finally took down our exterior holiday lights - two sets of solar-powered "icicles" - this afternoon, too, and David put them away (because he's better at it). Tolo decided that he wanted to be Daddy's Little Helper with that particular task.



I also uploaded the pattern for the cabled rib beanie to The Knitting Vault. It's really a very simple, uncomplicated pattern, but I couldn't see that anyone else had written up anything similar and I figure there are probably a few people out there who like to have it spelled out for them. Besides that, I wouldn't mind making a little bit of money from my designs, though I expect it'll only be that - a little bit. Soon I hope to sit down and write up the pattern for the cabled headband that I made my sister for her birthday.

But right now I've got some raglanning to do.