Fuzzy Black Balls

I haz 'em.






A matched pair, even.






Wanna see them?








That's two super soft balls of possum-merino in black, and that long skein hanging between them is some hand-dyed superwash merino sock yarn from James in the "Highland" colorway. Or is that colourway?

Either way, the hand-dyed is James's own lovely creation, and I ordered it all from his online shop, which is right here.

More (Belated) DC Photos

I meant to go back and post pics from our Saturday trekking around to see the monuments, but I'm kind of a bad blogger these days, apparently. Anyway, we had a nice day to do it, albeit a bit on the warm side. We started out hanging with the Obamas.



For some reason, David didn't like it when I tried to nibble on his neck.



By then the Secret Service people were looking at us funny, so we went around and over to visit the National Phallic Symbol.



I'm not entirely certain why David decided to bring his rain jacket along, but it stayed tied to his waist all day. With temps up around 90F and strong sunlight filtered through hazy humidity all day, there was no way a rubberized black nylon shell was going to be a needed item. Anyway, by the time we got to the Washington Monument, they'd already handed out the last of their available tickets for the day, so we didn't get to go inside and kept on trekking around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial.



Honestly, I think that every single teabagger and every single Republican politician who blathers on about what they think the Founding Fathers wanted for this country needs to be dragged to these monuments and made to actually read what they actually said they wanted, especially this one.



After we left there, we walked the rest of the way around the Tidal Basin, where we saw a cricket game



what I'm pretty sure had to have been the last of the cherry blossoms (look at the little green cherries!)



and the FDR Memorial (which I also think the teabaggers need to go see)



Then we got to the Korean War Memorial, which David particularly wanted to visit, since his dad is a veteran of that war. All the people in red & blue shirts in the background were part of a huge group of veterans who were there for some sort of rally.



Then it was on to my favorite of all, the Lincoln Memorial. I only learned as our plane was landing that David had never visited it before. Built to look like an ancient Greek Temple, to me it is the one monument in DC that best captures the sense of Sacred Space.



Also, by that point in the day, I really appreciated being able to slip of my sandals and feel the cool marble under my feet.

Then we visited the Vietnam Memorial, followed by the World War II Memorial, by which point our energies were seriously flagging. At the WWII Memorial, too, I had to contend with the Umbrella Lady, who was oblivious to my photo-taking attempts and just would not get out of the way. So finally, I just said to hell with it and let her be the subject as she was holding court.



I must say, though, that I was quite impressed at the coordination of her outfit.

Cherchez la Femme

A mantilla is the perfect accessory for any outfit!



"

The higher the bonnet, the closer to Gah.

Good.



Much better.



And never, ever underestimate the value of a good disco nap.



p.s., If you want to see more pics from our afternoon with VUBOQ, go see his blog post about it here.

In the D.C.

I'm going to be doing a 3-day continuing ed course in Arlington, VA, starting tomorrow, so David & I decided to take a mini-vacation and spend the weekend being tourists in DC. Not much time to write, but there has been lots of walking, lots of touristing, lots of food, and lots of fun.

I'll post a few monument photos later, but today we went to the National Gallery of Art and met up with VUBOQ, who was much better at taking photos of us all than I was and who will more than likely be blogging about it in the not-so-distant future. What I will share, though, are some interesting artworks depicting the Flying Spaghetti Monster through the ages. First are two photos from an ancient Roman mural depicting a celebration known as an FSManalia.

The God Incarnate:



And a worshipper carrying a plate of spaghetti with meatballs:



And here's one of St. Francis receiving stigmata directly from FSM. Most paintings of this event actually show them coming from a giant flame in the sky, likely meant to depict FSM covered in a spicy arrabiata sauce, but in this particular image you can actually make out his noodly appendages.



And since I have to get up super-early tomorrow, I'll end this art history lesson here. More later!

Shearing Day & a Sad Weekend

Friday was shearing day, and I got home from work in time to video Spirit getting his hair did. In case you don't recall, Spirit has been featured in this here bloggie before. Remember this post? Anyway, he's a bit of a drama queen about getting shorn, as you'll see.



I wasn't around to see the sheepies get clipped, since they were done first thing that morning, but I did catch up with them to get their thoughts on it all. It's funny to see how much more forward Angus is than Shaun-Fergus these days, when the reverse was true before I castrated them.



Unfortunately, the weekend ended on a sad note. Mizzen, one of Paula & Wendy's maiden girls, died rather unexpectedly Sunday noon. She was bloated and colicky on Saturday but had seemed to improve. Then yesterday morning she deteriorated rapidly. We were concerned that perhaps she had suffered a fluke bowel torsion during shearing, but the post-mortem exam, I'm told, showed no such thing and no explanatory lesions.

Then tonight our friends Kit & Sue called me about their dog Alex, who we knew had terminal cancer of the liver. He was going downhill rapidly, so I headed over to their house near midnight to help him on his way. Mercifully, he passed on his own. Also mercifully, I managed not to hit any of the two porcupines, one raccoon, one opossum, and one deer who were in or alongside the road on the short drive to their house and back.

And with that, I think it's about time for bed.

What I Did on My Spring Break

Well, it wasn't actually a break, but last week I headed down to North Carolina for a three-day Public Health Leadership class, which kicks off my next graduate certificate program and which will all go toward my ultimate plan of a Master of Public Health. The course itself was phenomenal and gave me some useful insight into how I interact with others and tools to improve my communication skills. Even better, though, was that I got to visit with my sister and two youngest nieces, whom I don't see nearly often enough.

The course was over on Friday, and I stayed the weekend just to get in more visiting time. On Saturday, we drove down to Wilmington, where an aunt and a few cousins live, and went to the beach with two of the cousins (and spouse, and girlfriend, and kids). I understand that back at home there was precipitation, some of it of the frozen variety, but I'll confess that I didn't feel guilty. Not one bit.

The Time, He Fly

How in the world have two weeks gone by since my last post? It's not exactly as though nothing's happened. I had a birthday, I worked, I've been knitting some (albeit slowly). I think it's mostly that there's been a lot of same old, same old of late and not so much that's blogworthy. Unless, of course, you want to read all about the giant mountain of dirty clothes I schlepped over to the local launderette because first our dryer exploded and now David's trying to get the laundry room tiled and keeps running into snags.

It's not the first time I've been there, as we've had laundry woes before and I did take a few washed loads over last month to dry. I even took some photos on that trip which I do think are quite nice.



Today I took a couple of photos here at home that I thought would be of interest. First there's this year's garlic crop. There's one bulb from last year's harvest left, so I'll be glad when these are ready for harvest.



And here's some proof of knitting, though I didn't do anything on it today. It's my own modernized version of a ca. 1942 Red Heart pattern (4" waistband? I don't think so.) that I'm thinking to write up. I've been pacing myself, though, so that I don't put too much strain on my wrists & arms with the cables. I'm very pleased with how it's knitting up.



And I think that pretty well sums things up.

Garden 2010

Working a ton lately, including a day shift tomorrow, so this is just a brief popping-my-head-in-to-say-hello post. I wanted to share a couple pics of the first seedlings I'm starting for this year's garden. I built a small "grow op" in the cellar with a seed tray heat mat, a fluorescent fixture with full spectrum (2800K) bulbs, and Mylar sheeting to reflect the light as evenly as possible. First up are the peas - crowder peas & butterpeas, to be specific.



The butterpeas are in the background and crowder peas in front. These are both very southern crops, and lifelong favorites of mine. I tried growing both by direct sowing them last year, since our southern exposure and proximity to the ocean puts us firmly in USDA Zone 6, with the front of the house even being functionally a Zone 7 microclimate. They did okay, even with all the rain, but they just never had time to produce adequately, so I'm hoping starting them indoors & early will make a big difference. So far so good.

Next up are my brandywine tomatoes, which are just sprouting.



You may recall that I lost all my tomatoes last year to late blight, thanks to the incessant rain. I'd grown brandywines the year before and am convinced it's the ultimate fresh tomato for flavor. Buying tomatoes from the supermarket is nothing short of an act of desperation for me, so having to pull up all my plants and throw them away last year was traumatic and sad. Hopefully we won't have a repeat this year, but by getting them started now, I'm hedging my bets that I can harvest at least some if this does turn out to be another blighted year.

In the same flat as the brandywines but not yet germinated are more artichokes. Since we have a bit much sustained cold for them to overwinter here, I'm starting new seeds, which I'm remembering are a bit slow to germinate. We should have enough chill yet to come that I can set them out in near-freezing weather to fool them into thinking they've gone through a winter, as they're biennials that don't set blooms (the chokes are actually flower buds) until their second year.

I was dismayed when the artichoke seed arrived to see that the variety had been patented, information that was not provided on the website, or I wouldn't have bought them. I am generally opposed to patenting plant varieties, since a) I see it as an affrontery to nature to try to patent a living organism based on its genetics, and b) the patent means that nobody can legally propagate or collect seeds from the plant without obtaining permission from (which generally means paying a licensing fee to) the patent holder, which I find repugnant. Of course, having seeds in hand, I decided I was better off making use of them and planted them despite my ethical objections.

Hopefully they won't taste bitter as a result.

Jamie Oliver at TED

Ch-ch-changes

Remember the Japanese pattern book sweater I modeled way back in this post? Well, I put it on yesterday to wear to work and as I was driving, I noticed for the umpteenth time how short the sleeves were.



This, of course, was even after I had made adaptations to the pattern (written in one size) to fit my considerably larger Western frame. Apparently, I must be part gibbon.

Anyway, I just happened to have some leftovers of the same yarn with me, so I decided to go about lengthening the sleeves a bit. Because the sleeves were knat cuff-up, I couldn't just ravel them, and the seaming made snipping and unzipping the end a poor option. So I decided that I should just pick up stitches from the long-tail cast-on, which is exactly what I did.



The first round after I picked up stitches might have done better as a purl round, since I ended up with a band separating two sections of garter stitch. Still, though, I think that it would have had a bit too heavy a look as a solid band of garter, and the band serves to break that up nicely and looks like a design element, too. More importantly, the sleeves are now long enough.



I also made the neck band wider to match the waist band. As I recall, I deliberately left it a bit narrower, but I ended up feeling like the neck was a bit too open. My picking up of stitches turned out to be much less noticeable there, as it was a cast-off edge that I hadn't done as a sewn cast-off (my usual) and I did a purl round immediately after knitting up stitches. In all, a fairly quick and easy fix, and I'm pleased with the results.

Sprung

I can't believe how early spring has arrived this year. This was the scene in front of the house this morning.

An Early Spring

When I got home this morning (by which I mean Saturday), I looked to see if the reticulated irises were peeking through the ground yet. Nada.

By the time I slept a few hours, though, and went back outside in the afternoon, they had magically appeared. This first crocus was also pushing up:



The iris is always the first blossom of the spring in my beds and has come up a little earlier each year, but last year it didn't blossom until March 15. I was in India at the time, but I had David watching for it and he sent me a pic. This year, the daffodils are leafing out and already have flower buds, and my Florentine tulips are leafed out nicely, though I haven't noticed flower buds yet. The Dutch & Siberian irises and daylilies are also putting up leaves already.

The reason for the early start this year is, of course, the lack of snow cover, which is not entirely a good thign, in my book. Still, I can't change it, so I'm just going to go with it. Tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day, so I intend to spend it doing yardwork and cleaning out those beds.

Teh Cute

I indulged myself just a wee bit with my tax refund and got a Flip UltraHD video camera - for cheap from Amazon, so I was still being all bargain-conscious. Anyway, this is one of the main reasons I wanted one. Good quality Tuck videos! This is also my first time playing around with annotations on YouTube.

I'm pretty sure this bone came from his foster mom, Shannan. Of all his toys, this one is his absolute favorite, but a couple of minutes is usually about the maximum interest he can sustain at any given time.