Iceland Travelogue

This is long and picture-heavy, but it only begins to touch on everything we saw and did on our too-short visit. I hope you enjoy it, and people who want to see more photos can go to my Flickr photo set here.

Day One

Our flight from Boston was a 4.5 hour redeye that landed us in Reykjavík at 6:40AM GMT, which means that to us it was still 1:40AM. On top of that, Iceland is at the far western edge of the GMT zone, so sunrise wasn't until about 8AM. This is what it looked like when we got on the shuttle bus to the hotel.



We planned ahead for this, though, and decided to spend our first day at the Blue Lagoon spa. We stayed at Icelandair's Hotel Loftleiðir, which is a bit out of the way by the municipal airport. This was the view from our window when we checked in:



We didn't have to wait too long to catch the bus out to the Blue Lagoon, though, where this was the view:



Despite the snow and temperatures around 24F/4.4C, the water was blissfully warm. There's a geothermal power plant next to the spa, and it's water from there that's piped in to keep the lagoon at a constant temperature. Then there are the steam baths and the sauna and the waterfall. Ah, the waterfall! Hot water crashing down as a sort of natural (well, semi-natural) neck and shoulder massage.

After we were properly wrung out and relaxed, we headed back to the hotel, then into the city for a bit of a wander and to find some dinner. The hotel put on an excellent breakfast buffet, so we generally filled up on that in the morning, which helped keep our meal expenses down. That evening, we went to Grænn Kostur, which is a small vegetarian restaurant tucked away off one of the main shopping streets. Very tasty and not too bad for Reykjavík pricewise.

Day Two

Even though we booked a "build your own" package, Icelandair included a horse ride on the lava fields. David's allergic and has always recoiled in horror at the thought of getting on a horse, but he said this time that he wouldn't pass it up if it was already included. I hadn't been on a horse in over 20 years myself, but I got a nice older gelding named Hrafn (Raven).



Hrafn new his job well, so I could pretty much give him his head and let him do his thing. David's horse, Raggi, on the other hand, was the laggard of the bunch, so I got behind them after we stopped for a brief break to help make sure they kept up. The ride was beautiful, but the wind was biting as all hell, so I was glad to have my new mittens and my qiviuk cowl.



After we got back to the hotel, we headed downtown to one of the municipal pools, which are all geothermal with hottur peittur (hot "pots", or tubs) and steam baths, to freshen up a bit before going to the inaugural open house for Knitting Iceland. If you have even the slightest interest in visiting Iceland, I highly recommend checking out Ragga's tours. More about that later, but she's phenomenal.

Afterward, we grabbed a bit of food at a local supermarket (Did I mention how expensive stuff is?) and headed back to the hotel to eat a quick bite and get changed. I had told David I planned a surprise for that evening and had managed to keep him from figuring out until we got there that I'd gotten us tickets to that evening's symphony performance. It was nice to see the mix of ages attending, plus lots of people in gorgeous lopapeysa, and the performance was just perfect - a very nice cap to a great day.

Day Three

While David slept in, I found Ragga on Facebook. We had talked a bit the day before about doing a half-day knitting tour with her. In practically no time at all, she threw us together a really nice afternoon outing. I'll save details for the next post, but I can't say enough about what a nice day she made of it.

At the end of the afternoon, she dropped us off in town at Nuðluskálin (Noodle Bowl), which we'd seen looking for Grænn Kostur a couple days earlier and which happens to belong to friends of hers. Again, it was a really good meal at a relatively cheap price, though this was where I got my first hint that Icelanders don't really do spicy food.

Day Four

Saturday was the day we signed for an all-day Golden Circle tour, which makes a loop through some important areas in Icelandic history, as well as to some of the major natural features within ready driving distance of Reykjavík. The sun had just come up as we left the city, and Esja looked lovely.



We also got to see a good bit of the Icelandic countryside.





And we eventually worked our way out to Gullfoss.



Before backtracking a bit to Haukadalur to see the geysers. Geysir himself, the one all the others are named for, is currently a steaming hillock, but Strokkur still erupts every few minutes, and I was able to get this shot of the steam bubble just before it erupted.



From there it was on to Þingvellir, where the North American and Eurasian continental plates are slowly pulling away from one another and where the Icelandic parliament, the Alþingi, used to convene. Along the way, we passed by the first first permanent school building in the country, built alongside the small basin lake Laugarvatn.



Þingvellir is at the edge of a large lake, Þingvallavatn.



If you look at the far side of the lake in that photo, you can see a black band where the valley is literally sinking as the two tectonic plates pull apart. The only other place on earth where this can be seen is in the Rift Valley in Africa. This is what the rift looks like at Þingvellir:



Way down below this huge crack in the earth, at the site where the Alþingi used to convene, is the Icelandic president's summer cottage, along with a small chapel and cemetery.







That I could walk right up to it and not be locked up and shipped off somewhere to be tortured speaks volumes.

Day Five

Our penultimate day was on Sunday, so most shops were closed. The weather was warming up, but we decided to venture out into the rain showers and do a bit of wandering to see some parts of the city we hadn't really explored. We started by climbing Öskjuhlið, which was right across the street from our hotel, to see Perlan up close.



As the highest point in the city proper, it was a good vantage point to get views of the entire city, including Hallgrímskirkja, which towers over the downtown area.



Then we hopped on the bus to downtown and wandered over to the Kirkjugarður, or old cemetery, to take some photos, because I love the look of grave markers in the snow. I took this photo just because it was a beautiful stone and looked nice with the snow mounded on top. Turns out Teitur Finnbogason was Iceland's first ever veterinarian (dýralæknir)!



After that we walked over to Hallgrímskirkja and headed up to take some photos from the top of the bell tower, after I talked with the woman in the church gift shop about the baby blanket she was crocheting. This shot is of the area we'd just come from. The patch of trees in the upper left is Kirkjugarður. The clear spot just below that is Tjörnin, at the right side of which is the Raðhús, or City Hall.



From there, we headed back to the bus station and caught a bus out into the eastern suburbs. I mentioned before that our hotel gave us free passes on request to visit local geothermal swimming pool complexes (sundlaugar), since their own pool area is under renovation at the moment. We took advantage of them and tried out a few different pools. Our Sunday choice was Árbæjarlaug. The water slide was closed and it was anything but sunny, but sitting in an outdoor hot tub while snow squalls blew through was nothing short of heavenly.

After we were sufficiently blissed out, and as the pool was nearing closing time, we hopped the bus back to downtown and had dinner at a Nepalese restaurant, Kitchen-Eldhús, which was phenomenal. As I often do at Indian restaurants, though, I asked for some chili sauce on the side and they didn't have any. This prompted a conversation with the owner about Icelandic palates and the difficulties he went through when they first opened in understanding that when an Icelander said "hot", they really meant slightly hotter than mild.

They did scare up some lime-chili pickle mix for me, though, and David and I practically had to roll ourselves out the door, we were so stuffed. They were one of the pricier places we ate, but importing foods common to the Indian subcontinent is not cheap, and for the area they were pretty reasonable. They were also very much worth it, and I'd absolutely recommend them for a nice evening out.

Day Six

For our final day, we decided once again to head to the Blue Lagoon. Unlike the first day, the winds had shifted around and it was blowing a proper gale. Half the time we were there, the pounding waterfall was actually blowing backward. Still, the steam rooms were nice and hot and the lagoon itself still warm, and we made the most of it. Of course, after days of snow and biting cold, Iceland all of a sudden looked like this:





I didn't feel cheated, though, because I decided long before then that I was definitely going to go back. And if I ever win the lottery, moving there (or at least buying a nice pièd-a-terre in Reykjavík) is high on my list of things to do now. So steamed out one final time, we hopped the bus back to the airport and, reluctantly, headed home.

Iceland Observations

We’re on the plane home from Iceland as I’m writing this, and I’ve been thinking about how best to tell y’all about our little vacation. I may have mentioned that this was the first time David and I have ever taken a vacation that wasn’t tagged onto either one of my conferences or a family visit. It most definitely did not disappoint. In fact, if someone were to offer me a good enough job in Reykjavík right now, I’d jump at the chance to live there, at least for a while.

I think that the best way to break this down for blogging purposes is to do it as three separate posts. For this one, I’m going to make some general observations about Reykjavík and Iceland more generally in bullet format. Then I’ll do more of a travelogue, and then finally the yarn pr0n - best for last, of course.

• · The Reykjavík capital area is comparable in size to the Portland (Maine, of course) metro area, so it’s a small enough city that it’s really easy to keep bumping into the same people over and over. More on that later.



• · If you don’t believe me about how small a city it is, just look at this:





• · Despite the fact that Icelandic delicacies are heavy on such wonders as svið, sviðasulta, hákarl, puffin, and whale, it actually wasn’t too terribly hard to find vegetarian fare, at least of the ovolacto variety.



• · Food is pretty expensive there. So are clothes. Wool, on the other hand, is not.



• The lopapeysa (lopi sweater) is probably the closest thing to a national costume that's currently and commonly used in any developed country these days. Seriously, people were wearing them everywhere. It's a beautiful thing to behold.



• · Whenever I told Icelanders how much snow we got this winter and how cold winters typically get where we live, they always looked slightly horrified.



• · Icelanders are so used to the snow melting within a day or two that they seem never to have gotten the concept of shoveling sidewalks. So naturally, we happen to get there just in time for a cold snap after a snowstorm.



• · Icelanders, in our experience, are really nice people.



• · They do not, however, know from spicy food. I asked for “Thai hot” at a noodle restaurant and got mildly piquant. At the Nepalese restaurant where we ate last night, they told us that they stopped keeping chili sauce on hand because nobody ever asked for it, and that they had really had to adjust their spice levels during their first few months open. They did come up with a good lime-chili pickle mix, though.



• · Icelanders do, however, love to spend time in the municipal swimming pools, which are geothermally heated, have steam baths and saunas and wonderful “hot pots”, and are relatively inexpensive (We got free passes from our hotel).



• · One Icelandic woman I spoke to told me they have a saying that all the problems of life are solved in a hot tub. I told her I couldn’t think of a better place for it.



• Sitting in a hot tub during a snow squall is also pretty damned special.
  



• · I’m kind of sorry that Maine doesn’t have any volcanic activity, because I would totally put a geothermal hot tub in my back yard.



• · This is one that really surprised me: Iceland is every bit as much a car culture as the US. I think this is part of what made it feel really familiar. I told David at one point, “It’s like a weird alternate version of the US, where everyone speaks elvish.”



• · Reykjavík’s bus service is actually a semi-decent way to get around if you don’t have a car or a tight schedule, but the drivers don’t stop if you don’t flag them down. Even if you’re clearly waiting in the bus shelter and they’re the only line that goes past that particular stop.



• · The Icelandic language is really lovely – trilling and wispy at the same time – and I could listen to it all day long. I expect it probably helps to speak it if you pretend you’re Orlando Bloom and/or Cate Blanchett. Or Björk, of course.



• · I am pretty firmly in the No camp when it comes to licorice, but I tried the Icelandic version and, while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d ever truly convert, I’m at least likely to try it again.



• · After skyr, I think caramel buttermilk may just be one of Iceland’s best contributions to the culinary world.



• · In the 6 days we were there, Iceland gained about 22 minutes of daylight.



• · It’s possible to wander around outside the Icelandic president’s summer cottage and not be shot, shooed away, or questioned.





• · I already miss it.

March Hare

Tuesday night a young guy showed up with this wrapped up in a hoodie.



It's a snowshoe hare, which is the predominant leporid species around these parts, though still not seen very frequently. This one is already starting to transition from winter to summer coat. She (He? I didn't really look) had apparently been hit by car and was a bit dazed but had no obvious major injuries. The trouble with bunnies is that they often don't do well in captive situations, even when they're being well cared for.

Still, this one seemed well enough to warrant trying to save, so I made a stop by the Center for Wildlife on my way home. As I've said many times over, they're good folks and if anyone can get this little hare hopping again, they're the ones to do it.

And as I've also said before, it does cost them money to take care of all the critters, so if you do happen to have $5 or $10 to spare, click the donation button on their site. Think of it as giving up a visit or two to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. Donating to the animals is good for your health!

Stash Sale for Lee Ann

And if you're looking for an option for fattening something that won't be bad for your health, Norma is helping dear friend Lee Ann sell off her stash. Details are over on Norma's blog, but I will say this: Lee Ann has excellent taste in fiber. Even though I really, really don't need any of it, I've put in a couple of bids. It's lovely stuff, and I can't think of a better reason to plump up my stash.



UPDATE:

I found out this morning that the hare was euthanized after he took a sudden turn for the worse and started showing neurological signs. Their suspicion is that he most likely had a parasitic infection that spread to his brain.

I found out in the course of dropping off this barred owl that had been hit by car last night and had a broken wing. Hopefully this one will fare better, but I'm told they have had considerably more owls than normal this season because of the unusually deep snowpack. Rodents are only surfacing where there has been signicant melting of the snow, which is primarily along roads. So if you are on the fence about donating something to them, they still really, really need it.

Belated Blogiversary

For some reason I thought it was today, but I missed it by 3 days, apparently. Anyway, this little blog is now five years old and ready to go off to kindergarten. Or something.

Today, on what I thought was my blogiversary, I hung out at Spa with a bunch of people whose company I enjoyed. And I didn't take a single photo. What I did do was finish off the gusset, turn the heel and knit up the heel flap on the second of a pair of socks I desperately want to get finished before we leave for Iceland. I finished the first one while waiting for Stephen Fry to receive an award from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and give a talk (at Harvard, as one would expect) last Tuesday night.*

No photos of the socks yet, since the pair isn't finished, but they're toe up with Sherman Short Row toes, arch shaping à la Oliver (Rav link), and a Widdershins-style heel. I do believe this may be THE sock formula for my feet. At least the first one seems about as close to perfect as I've ever come.

The yarn is merino/possum/silk sock yarn that I got from James. He's now sold off his remaining stock of this yarn, but I managed to snag a couple more pairs' worth from him on clearance. It is so soft that Danielle decided she had to stuff the first sock down her shirt. So now I can say my foot has touched her breast, which is about as rare a statement as it is odd, I believe.

Aside from that, I've also been getting my photographic equipment in order for Iceland. Remember this little camera I picked up a couple of years ago in Montréal?



Well, being plastic and lightweight, I figured it'd be the perfect option for doing some film photography, so I've been stocking up on no-longer-produced 620 film spools on eBay. I dropped the first test rolls off for developing on my way to Spa today, so I'll find out soon what I might be able to expect from it. Meanwhile, these might give you some idea of the type of images that are possible.

Also, I'm taking my digital camera and have been working on my finishing skills using GIMP. Even as a grad student, Adobe Creative Suite would cost me $300. GIMP's $0 pricetag trumps that easily, and it works really well. I've been going back through some of my India photos and have reworked some that I didn't feel had captured what I saw as nicely as I'd hoped. The results have been much nicer.







Since that trip, I've also managed to track down an open source program that can convert Nikon's raw image format into one that can be manipulated by GIMP. That has also greatly improved my overall image quality and capabilities, so I hope to have some very nice shots to share from the Land of Fire and Ice.




*Mr. Fry did not disappoint in his talk and my respect for him is now even greater than I thought possible. This young woman, however, nearly stole the show when she sang this very song to him during the Q&A session afterward. I do believe he blushed.

Og Fleiri Vettlingar!

I just finished up the létt-lopi mittens and couldn't wait to get a pic posted here. I'm really pleased with how these turned out, and you can see the cuffs of the handspun poking out of them. Now I'll have three layers of thick, squishy wool between my hands and the elements.

I could have done these with just two colors, but in the end, I'm fine with how the patterning turned out. The back-of-hand pattern is actually from a Selbu children's stocking pattern. I did the palms in a very basic diamond lattice pattern and diverged from traditional Selbu patterning by putting the thumb gusset on the side. Since these were made specifically to go over the handspun mittens, though, I didn't have an option. It was really easy to do, though, and the very simple speckled patterning is warm without floats to snag on.

The Nasty Ass Honey Badger

Unless you work with a bunch of foul-mouthed degenerates like I do, this may be NSFW. It is high-larious, though.

Vettlingar!

In four weeks, David and I are actually going off on a short vacation that has no other agenda than vacation. Typically our travel involves work or family obligations, but not this time. And our destination? The land of the Viking sagas: Iceland.

I love visiting out-of-the-way places, and Iceland's always been in there on the list, but the devalued króna and some particularly good off-season package deals finally made it a viable possibility. David, as usual, was skeptical, but the prospect of spending 6 days somewhere with tons of geothermal hot springs was a huge selling point.

Anyway, visiting Iceland in early March meant one thing, in particular: a reason to knit some new mittens. I have some Létt-Lopi one of our former techs brought me from a trip there a couple of years ago, so those will (hopefully) become nice, thick Nordic-patterned outer mittens. I started on them tonight, but I think they need to be frogged so I can make the cuff looser. I wanted something a little softer for an inner layer, though, so I decided that would be a good project for some of my own handspun that had been sitting around for a few years now.



The wool is the lambswool from a border leicester cross that I got at NH Sheep & Wool (The Year of the Deluge), and I absolutely love how these turned out. While my spinning could have been more even, it all worked nicely in the finished fabric, which is squishy and very cozy. And I do believe this is the first real project I've ever completed using my own handspun. No pattern for these. As I often do, I made it up as I went along. The cuffs are baby cable rib for a little extra warmth, and the thumb gussets are placed on the side so that they'll go on either hand.

The other advantage to using stash? It helps free up space for all the really, really cheap Icelandic yarn I anticipate buying. In fact, I did a major cleanup and destashing this past weekend. This trip wasn't the sole reason, as it was very badly needed, but it may well have given slightly greater urgency to the task.

As it was, I managed to empty out a huge box that had been at the bottom of a huger pile of stuff, untouched since I moved in over 5 years ago. That, in turn, freed up space along the wall for some of the bins I'd been storing under my bed. So now there's an empty bin under the bed and space to fit more bins. And since I have more non-yarn bins that need to be gone through and that I may well be able to free up, I'm foreseeing a distinct possibility of a yarn frenzy up near the Arctic Circle in the very near future.

Snow Days

I seem to have lost my blogging voice of late, or maybe I've just got too little worth saying. There has definitely been a bit too much dull regularity around here of late. And everyone already knows we've had a lot of this:



That photo was taken at the home of my friends Shawn & Chris. I stayed with them Tuesday night in anticipation of the latest storm, since they live much, much closer to my workplace than I do. As it turned out, the storm wasn't quite as dire as predicted and I likely could have gone home. Since I don't see my friends nearly often enough, though, it was nice to have the chance to catch up a little bit.

Meanwhile, I noticed the night before that that the sweater Tuck was wearing had chafed him pretty badly on one of his legs, and since I was already planning not to head home and didn't have an alternative for him to wear, I figured I need to knit him up a new, non-chafing sweater toute de suite. Fortunately, I had some Berkshire Bulky from Webs that I'd gotten to try out a pattern idea and decided I could spare a ball to keep him warm. In the end, I needed just a smidge more than one ball to finish, but the end product certainly works well.



He was so sleepy, it was all he could do to hold his head up. Clearly, being a model is hard work.

First FO!

Okay, I finished it two nights ago, but I didn't manage to snap a photo until just before I left for work Monday and only just got around to posting it here. This is the hat to go with the fingerless gloves I made for my mom. It's a double layer, so it's extra plush and should keep her extra warm. The design, including tassel, was discussed and approved, and I'm quite pleased at how it turned out.

The holidays were low-key, not least because of my work schedule, but they seemed to go by awfully quickly. I worked Xmoose Eve, but I had the rest of the weekend off, so we went to my parents and had a nice, albeit brief, visit. David had gotten me tickets to a Boston Pops concert for Boxing Day, but the Nor'easter that blew through put the kibosh on that. Instead, we'll be going to see Mr. Lockhart and Company sometime in the spring.

The other big deal gift he gave me was a Kindle! Which I have very, very much been enjoying. At Mush's suggestion, I set up Calibre e-book management software on David's computer, as it has a built-in server to be able to manage collections remotely. I'm using it primarily to download syndication feeds from a few different international newspapers plus The New Yorker without paying subscription fees. There is definitely some content I don't get access to, particularly with the latter, but I get whatever they've already got available for free online - which is pretty much everything really worth reading - just by accessing the server and downloading. For FREE!

Back on the Wagon

It likely comes as no surprise that the holidays shot my weight and diet management all to hell. Anyway, with the new year, it's time to ride that particular pony again, and Messrs. S & H over at Cocky & Rude are having their second annual weight loss competition. Last year I was only unofficially competing, since I had already started my weight loss program well before they started theirs.

This year I signed on for realz, and the competition starts tomorrow. They required that everyone send in a "before" photo, so I submitted the most recent one I have. You can see I've got my work cut out for me.

A Few Things

Thing the First:

I recently received a care package from India.



The way they do this in India is that the cardboard box is stitched up inside a fabric bag, which is then sewn up and sealed with sealing wax.



Inside was a small container of ground-with-mortar-and-pestle chai spices and a couple of boxes of delicious Indian tea, which I have been enjoying.

Thing the second:

I recently got to work knitting up some yak/cormo yarn my mom bought at Rhinebeck last year from the folks at Bijou Basin. She decided she'd like some fingerless gloves, so she could keep her fingertips free for her photography, and a hat. I found the glove-in-progress very amusing once it was bristling with needles.



When I finished the first one, Tolo graciously offered to model it for me.



I have since finished the pair, and I handed them off to my mom last night. For the hat, I have enough yarn that I can make it double thickness for the winter.

Thing the third:

We finally put up our tree tonight.



After the Great Monkey Massacre of Aught-Nine, I think we were a bit reluctant. It wouldn't have seemed like the holidays, though, without it. This year, it's back on top of the dog crate and has been lashed down with four holding points to minimize the potential for major crashes. I'm not entirely convinced Cougar won't kill this one, too, though.

This Old (Drafty) House, or Implements of Mass Destruction

Because I had the day off and because I've been trying to do some of the weatherizing our little house so desperately needs, I spent Tuesday putting insulation in our attic spaces. I use the plural because the kitchen was attached later and has an attic space that is a) only accessible through the rotting louvre on the outside, and b) is completely unconnected from the main attic space. I had spent little to no time exploring either prior - thanks to their relative inaccessibility and my not insubstantial claustrophobia - so I wasn't entirely certain what to expect.

The kitchen space was fairly straightforward. There were some lengths of R-11 fiberglass that had been tossed up there some years back but never laid in properly, and once I did put them all in place, there were still areas that were completely uninsulated. So I laid in some R-30 on top of that, and plan to go back and put in more to make sure that we have R-60 or better in that space. I'm still fairly certain that the walls (which are sided on the interior with hardboard - basically heavy duty cardboard) are completely uninsulated, but that will have to be a task for another day - likely when we can gut the entire room and sort it out properly.

The main attic space was a very different story, and I learned a bit about how the house must have been constructed. First of all, it's a crawlspace, in a very, very literal sense. And despite my attempts to get rid of the worst of the cobwebs, I found myself dragging myself around through them on my belly for much of the afternoon. Second of all, the access hatch is too small to push a roll of insulation through. It's barely enough to fit myself through, which caused no end of anxiety every time my arm or leg got wedged just the wrong way.

So to get the insulation in, I had to open each roll, begin feeding the batting up into the attic, then shove myself past it, climb in, and pull the rest of the roll up after me before feeding it to where it needed to go. And let me just say that, under those conditions, it does not matter if you're working in a space that is, at best, in the mid-50s F. You will get hot and very, very, very sweaty. That extra 88¢ I spent per roll for the "Comfort Touch" sheathing? So. Worth. It.

I had known that the roofline had been raised in the rear of the house at some point. What I didn't realize until I hauled myself up into the Cobweb Factory was that only the tiniest of access holes had been cut into the old roof. Not only that, it appears that the area over the bathroom was originally a shed dormer, with the roofline elevation extended over the remaining length at some later date.

So over one whole room upstairs, there is exactly zero access. Zilch. And while there had been an attempt at some point to blow in insulation over the rest of the attic space, there was no real effort, it seems, to make sure that it was evenly distributed. Or even moderately adequate. Which it very much is not, on either count.

Anyway, suffice to say that I didn't get everything insulated. Yet. But it did prompt me to do some looking around and to get the advice of a butch dyke friend who knows from power tools. And now I am the proud owner of this beauty:



And as much as it reminds me of the alien weaponry in the movie District 9, it's really a heavy duty 12 amp (contractor grade) Hitachi reciprocating saw. My friend suggested it because it has an award-winning anti-vibration feature, which gave me quite a laugh, seeing as Hitachi is also known for this.

So at some point in the next week, I intend to crawl back up in the attic and perform a bit of deconstruction so that I can get the rest of the house insulated properly. And then I think Hitachi (Does it need a proper name, do you think?) and I will target the laundry sink, which really needs to come out and become a garden prep sink.

Festival of Lights

It is now the second night of Hannukah, and in honor of the season, I thought I would offer up this...erm...gem?...from the batshit crazy unbelievably soused inimitable mind of Sandra Lee.



Um, are those marshmallows kosher?

Gobble Gobble

I hope everyone had a great Tofurkey Day. It was the first Thanksgiving in a while that actually fell on my off week, so I didn't have to work, nor was I coming off of an overnight the night before. As per our usual custom, we had dinner with Wendy and Paula at Wendy's dad's house.

I was asked to bake the pumpkin pie, so I did that and also baked sweet potato pie, in keeping with family tradition. In fact, I had enough filling for two of each. Which one do you think I've been having for breakfast and which for dinner? David made a cornbread and seitan dressing, which is his standard. He's an excellent cook, but Thanksgiving is about the only time these days that he ever does so, largely leaving that up to me.

In other news, I ran the Seacoast Half Marathon two weeks ago. Or, more appropriately, I hobbled it. I knew it wasn't going to be a good race, because I just hadn't been able to keep up my training since the Portland Half in October and I'd been having iliotibial band issues. The ITB pain got bad enough that by midway I was down to a walking pace. I did finish, though. Lee Ann, formerly of Fuzzy Logic Knits, came down from Montréal to run it with me, and we figured out that my walk pace was the same as her light jog pace, so it worked out well and I had wonderful company.

I still plan to continue running, but it's going to take me a while to work out the ITB issues, and I've not been pushing myself since the race. On Thanksgiving Day, though, I did decide I needed a pre-dinner caloric burn and walked the length of our road and back (a teeny bit shy of 10K). At our end of the road there's an apple tree right at the intersection in a little triangle of grass. I managed to find a good armload of late windfall apples that were still in decent condition, so I brought them back with me as a little treat for the sheepies. They were very thankful.

Aside from that, there's been some knitting, but on a gift exchange project. I've also been slowly processing Angus's lamb fleece to get it ready for spinning. He's getting a ton of grey in his fleece now, which is quite exciting. Come next year, he should spin up into a lovely heathery yarn, which will go well with Shaun-Fergus's mooskit, also heathery.

Yesterday was spent doing mountains of laundry and putting up plastic on the windows for the winter. We've talked about it before but never followed through, so I'm hoping that it will save us a bit on heating bills until we can get all the windows replaced. Right now we're looking at replacing our cracked oil boiler with a high efficiency propane one. The fuel costs are currently more for propane, but we'd be able to free up the chimney for wood heat, which we could hopefully get in place within the next year or two, and we could also put in a propane cookstove. Such is our fast-paced, jet-setting lifestyle.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream?

So I've decided to embark on a little experiment. Anyone who knows me or has read this blog for any length of time knows that my sleep schedule is absolutely verkacht, which is a Really Bad Thing, particularly where all of my neuropathic issues are concerned. Or when I drive home after the 15-hour shift that turned into 18 hours.

Anyway, I've been considering polyphasic sleep schedules for quite a while. Certainly biphasic sleep, at a minimum, was well known in the pre-industrial world, and there's at least anecdotal evidence that it's quite doable. And, let's face it, I've been essentially living a bi- to polyphasic sleep schedule for years now.

Considering the problem and my general state of feeling tired most of the time, though, I've realized that my polyphasic sleep has not been regular. Not one little bit. So after reading up on the Everyman sleep schedule and with some encouragement from Mush, I think I've sorted out a variation that can work for my crazy schedule.

The plan is to get a core 4.5 hour block of sleep in the morning, then 20 minute naps at about 4PM, 1AM, and 5AM. The 4PM to 1AM stretch is a good bit longer than the recommended no-more-than-6 hour interval between naps, but it's the most workable solution I could think of that I could maintain during my regular work schedule. The nature of emergency work, of course, is that you never know what to expect, but the first half of my shift is almost always the busiest and I can typically find 20 minutes to spare in the post-midnight half. I'm hoping that my body will say, "A semblance of regularity? I'll take it!"

In Other News

The other day I dug Angus's lamb fleece (from last year) out of the shed and scoured it. Now I'm in the process of combing, then carding it. The combing is to get out as much of the vegetable matter as possible before carding the fiber into rolags. Also, the shearer made a lot of second cuts, and I'd prefer not to have a lot of neps in the yarn. At any rate, I've got a bag that's filling up with rolags and am looking forward to moving on to the spinning process.