kmkat and her kneedles

Family photo fun.

Thanks to Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting for the link.

Eye candy Friday: summertime.

...and the livin' is easy. Have a great Fourth!

Let's talk... shoes.

#2 son and girlfriend were here last weekend. They told me that high-top Reeboks are back in style. Happily I still have two pairs left from the early 1990s. These are my favorites (the other pair is black),

#2 bought GF a 6-month anniversary present. She likes pink:

However, the Grnd Priz For Kool Shooz goes to #2 for these that he found at a thrift store:

Here's lookin' atcha, kid!

Eye candy Friday.

Get ready...

Get set...

GO!

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Can I get an "Awwww..."

Random Wednesday.

"I tell my sons, 'When you bring a girl home, I don't care about her family background. I don't care what colour she is, or what she wants to be... just don't bring me a girl who peers warily at her plate and says, "What's in this?".' "

  -- from passage des perles.blogspot

* * * * *
One of the duties of being a mother of a kid who lives faraway is the packing/repacking and shipping of stuff.

 

This duty also includes removing any hazmat from the shipment.

* * * * *

My newest wallpaper, featuring a hanging basket from my deck.

* * * * *

"You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment."

  -- from House of Cards / To Play the King / The Final Cut.

Awhile back I included that quote in a blog post and it got me to remembering the source, this BBC miniseries. A quick trip to the library's online catalog and the 3-CD set was on its way to my house. I watched it last week whilst recuperating from that little bout of food poisoning.

It was every bit as good as I remembered. Ian Richardson plays the most deliciously scheming, malevolent, downright evil politician one can imagine in 20th century politics. Hitler could have taken lessons from this guy. I recommend it highly to anyone looking for something to watch this summer while the TV plays reruns and other assorted crappe.

* * * * *

This business of quoting from stuff I have watched or read can have unanticipated consequences. When I said, Winter is coming, I of course had to go check my reference to be sure I had the title right. Lo and behold, I find that book 5 of the series comes out in September! Can I get a w00t?!

I am speaking of the epic The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. It is a fantasy series, but unlike many books of that genre, these have engaging, fully-developed characters. The series is great. I listened to the audio books of #1 through #4 a couple-three years ago and was completely captivated. After browsing the plotlines again at Amazon I find I need to refresh my memory before I listen/read #5. Whee! My summer listening has just been decided!

* * * * *

After knitting six pairs of woolly socks since the end of tax season, I think I am ready to move on. I still have 1-1/2 socks to finish before I can truthfully say I knit six full pairs, but still. When those little details are cleaned up I am on to other game. Summer has finally arrived here in the Great North, complete with 80° temps, humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes so thick in the evening that it is problematic to open one's mouth to inhale. The onset of those all-too-brief weeks of balmy weather has inspired me to attempt my worsted-weight bamboo version of the Summer Raglan from More Big Girl Knits.

Wish me luck.

Weekend update.

Our camping trip last weekend to the North Shore went much better than could have been expected, given the dismal weather forecast for the weekend -- rain, thunderstorms, flash flood warnings, doom/gloom, pack your bags, dude, it's the end of the world. In point of fact, it only rained one night while we were there and even then didn't start until after 10pm, so we didn't mind scattering the embers of the campfire and heading to bed to avoid getting wet.

Perhaps this, which we saw as soon as we caught sight of Lake Superior, was an omen.

It wasn't a very long rainbow, but I think it was the most vivid I have ever seen.

There had been heavy rain earlier in the week, and the many streams and rivers that flow into Lake Superior were still running full. This river was full of debris.

You can see how the guardrail was twisted away from the road and the washout that had occurred.

 

At the campsite there was tree climbing and dog napping:

 

There were nature photos galore:

The first and third are the same stump but the third is turned 90°; the second is, I think, trout lilies. They were a week or two past blooming so I only got to see the seed heads. There were hepaticas and wild strawberries and lungwort in bloom, but I got no photos of them.

There was also puking. First Maggie (once), then Matthew (many times), but the rest of us were unaffected. Whew. Perhaps they had eaten some salmonella infested tomatoes before they joined us; but they arrived on Thursday night and didn't get sick until Sunday, so who knows? They were both fine by Monday.

When it was time to break camp Maggie kept Matthew and Andrew on task.

Best of all, there was sock knitting.

The colors are not true in the photo. The background color is more of an olive tan khaki, not as dark as it looks. That ten inches or so of yarn you see lying on my right foot is how much I have left to graft the toe of the left foot. I made the legs extra long; I hate to have cold ankles in January. That little tail is enough to graft, but I want to see exactly how the right foot comes out before I finish off the left. If the second ball -- I wound the 100 gr skein of Colinette Jitterbug into two 50 gr balls -- happens to be slightly shorter, I may finish off both toes with some solid olive green Lang Jawoll that I have in stash. The pair is stalled right now because I ran out of the olive green reinforcing yarn I am using in the heel flaps.The Jitterbug is 100% merino wool, lovely and soft, but I fear it would not wear as well as a yarn with some nylon in it, so I am reinforcing the heels, the spot that I always, always, always wear out first in my purchased socks.

I just noticed that it looks like the columns of purl stitches are wonky in the left sock. They are not, it is just the angle of the photo. I hope.

* * * * *

Back in the heady days of the '60s and '70s there was a saying that dope would get you through times of no money better than money would get you through times of no dope. Be that as it may, I prefer to think that luck will get one through any kind of hard times at all. And my sweetie is Lucky with a Capital L.

On Saturday afternoon he and I took off for a little drive and ended up at Grand Portage at the gas station/convenience store outside the Indian casino there. After we each ate a Haagen Daas ice cream bar with almonds (yum!), he asked if I wanted to watch him throw some quarters down the toilet/into the slot machines in the store. I decided I would rather go back to the parking lot and knit. By the time I had made a pit stop, gotten back out to the car, and settled myself with my knitting, Smokey was back out there, too, with $95 won from a $20 start. That's my Bear.

Eye candy Friday.

This fine fellow visited my deck one day last week.

Orioles tend to be rather shy -- or scarce -- so it was amazing to me to see this guy. He was awfully obliging to pose for me so willingly.

* * * * *

We are heading out today to go camping on the North Shore (that's the north shore of Lake Superior for those of you not of the MN/WI variety). The weather forecast is cool, rainy, possibly stormy for Friday; slightly better for Saturday; a bit better for Sunday; and totally sunny and warm for Monday. Isn't that always the way? But we will be staying until Monday so we will get to enjoy a little bit of the good weather.

If all our plans had come together properly we would be back in the Little Big Horn mountains near Buffalo, Wyoming right now. It was going to be a 150% family camping trip: Andrew's friend K, whom he met when she came to Chiapas last January for the women's encueñtro and who lives in northern California, was going to meet up with us there; and Maggie, Matthew's girlfriend, was going to come along, too. It would have been 2 weeks of knitting (for me), reading (for me and Andrew and K and Maggie), leisurely walks (for all), and hanging out together (ditto). But various bits of life got in the way and suddenly it was going to be just Smokey and I. Okay, fine, we would still have a good time.

But the long term weather forecast for northern WY did not look good -- chilly, with a side of cold -- so we decided to take our vacation here at home on a lake in northern Wisconsin, a locale that many people drive hours to reach in order that they may vacation here. This weekend camping trip is our last chance to hit the woods with our entire family plus Maggie before Andrew leaves for medical school in New York. I've stocked up on snack food:

Dried fruit, crackers, cheese, granola bars, granola, trail mix, Cheetos, corn chips... and a bottle of Herding Cats wine, product of South Africa :-) Should be a fun time...

So what am I, chopped liver?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I suppose the upside is less risk of identity theft.

* * * * *

Tornadoes and severe weather in MN and WI today, but not right here. I took a nap in the afternoon  (yay! naps!) and woke enough to hear rain and maybe some wind, but went back to sleep. The power went off for about half an hour at about 6 pm. And that was that.

#2 son called at about 6:30 to tell me he was fine. Apparently there were tornado warnings for the Eau Claire area, where he and his girlfriend are visiting her mother for the weekend. I was grateful for his thoughtfulness, although I had no idea he was in peril.

Smokey called shortly after from work to tell me about the tornado that touched down in Hugo, a far-flung northern suburb of St. Paul; a 2-year-old boy was killed, his older brother was critically injured, and 20 people were unaccounted for. Yikes.

#1 son is in Chillicothe, Illinois for an outdoor rock festival that he is attending with a very good friend from college whose family lives there. Chillicothe is in northwestern Illinois, which may be in the path of the storms. But I am NOT a worrier, so I am NOT worrying about him. He is driving his friend back to law school in St. Louis tomorrow so I won't see him again until Tuesday.

So I am doing what all good knitters do when their families abandon them.

• Give thanks to the Knitting Goddesses.
• Have a beer.
• Knit while listening to an audio book.
• Knit while watching a DVD.
• Knit while meditating on my good fortune.
• Eat chocolate without sharing.
• Read knitting blogs.
• Finish the current pair of socks on OTN.
• Think about what to cast on next.
• Do NOT make dinner.
• Compare stash yarn to patterns; ponder same.
• Wind yarn into a delightful center-pull ball (Brooks Farm Acero, mmmmmm!)(The second link is to Ravelry; the color I have is the same as the second skein on the left, the one in mimknits' stash)(I have two skeins of that color and one of a similar color that has some deep blue in it; all acquired from Norma when she destashed at New Year's)(I am now all a-quiver to cast for something from this gorgeous stuff, never mind the 3 or 4 other projects currently OTN.)

I think I may need some input on a project I am contemplating. Pictures and words tomorrow. If I get out of bed soon enough :-)

Eye candy Friday.

My great-nephew.

What is most remarkable to me is how much he looks like every other child in the family, from his grandfather's brothers and sisters in 1950s black and white photos to his cousins in Kodachromes in the 1980s and 2000s. Family ties are stronger than we know.

Eye candy Friday, the humorous edition.

We used to watch this show every week. We saw the original British show, then the American version. All fourteen episodes. (My TV-watching has been the kiss of death for more than one series -- Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure. The latter had been running for several seasons, then I discovered it. Bam! Canceled.)

Smokey had a crush on Theora (we always thought her character's name was Fiona; it sure sounded like Fiona). I liked Edison/Max myself. Smokey now has a Max Headroom kid's sleeping bag that he unzips and throws over his side of the bed when he gets cold.

RIP, Max. We loved ye.

Let us speak of tote bags.

I love tote bags. If I could travel easily with just tote bags, I'd do it. In fact, whenever I go somewhere, whether for an hour or a week, the endeavor always involves one or more tote bags. There are tote bags everywhere in my life. Here is just one pile.

There are library-themed tote bags:

 

That last one is adorned with this button, which I love:

I have knitting-themed tote bags:

The button on the Knitty bag (this is my favorite bag because it is deeper that any of the others, plus it has handles long enough for it to work as a shoulder bag):

It is not really such a great button, but I was so delighted to find a knitting button at an anarchist book store that I had to buy it plus the little one next to it, in commemoration of Andrew being arrested at the Republic national convention in New York in 2004. Yep, that's my boy.

Some bags are travel souvenirs. I bought the one on the left, below, in Chinatown in New York City when I accompanied Matthew's high school drama group on their 2004 trip to see Lion King and Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, and the sock bag on the right at Purl Soho when we went to NYC for Andrew's graduation last spring.

The Chinatown bag works best as a bag for smallish projects because the handles are probably not sturdy enough for hard wear. It is currently transporting a pair of socks and a pair of fingerless gloves, both WIPs coming soon to a blog near you.

This messenger bag came home with me from the Madrid airport on the way home from South Africa.

It also caused me to be the target of some very pointed questions from Homeland Security at JFK. "Why does this bag test positive for explosive materials, ma'm?" "I have no idea, sir."

Then Customs started in on me about all the biltong I had in my suitcase. But that is a story for another day. Today we are discussing tote bags.

Some commemorate places and events gone by.

 

Clockwise from upper left, a bag from the Minneapolis public school my kids went to and loved; a Marshall Field bag I inherited from my MIL, who lived in Chicago most of her life; a Macy's bag I have no remembrance of acquiring; and three souvenirs from past tax conferences, aka knitting retreats with CPE credit.

Arghhh! The electricity just flickered -- it happens frequently in the *summer* -- and I lost about half this post because I had forgotten to click on Save for rather a long time. Crap. Retyping...

I try very hard to remember to keep these in my car to avoid having to use plastic or paper grocery bags:

Just last week the mail carrier brought me these to help in that endeavor:

But why am I boring you all with an exhaustive recount
of my vast inventory of tote bags? I told you all that so I could show you this, my latest treasure-toter:

It was handmade in Guatemala and is my belated Christmas present from Andrew. The flowered section is hand-embroidered:

Beautiful. Now, what to carry in it?

Raccoons, Macs, and socks

We were entertained one night this week by this fellow. Smokey spotted him while he (Smokey, not the raccoon) was watching the evening news.

Mr. Raccoon had been bathing himself while nestled in the crotch of the tree, but when I came out onto the deck to photograph him he decided he needed to come down.

How does a raccoon come down from a tree? Very carefully.

* * * * *

Andrew found out that he could increase his loan for med school enough to cover a new computer. His old one, a $795 Averatec laptop from Sam's Club, had barely made it through four years of college. This time he wanted a good one. 250GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, screen the size of a soccer field -- he got what he wanted.

He set it up with the dual boot option so he could also run Windows, which is necessary to play several of his video games. $9.27 to a Guatemalan street vendor scored him this:

which is Windows XP Professional en español. That $9.27 also got him MS Office 97, Windows Vista, and a blank-looking CD that the vendor called el crack and which is supposed to keep Vista working after 30 days. He will only use the XP. Piracy is apparently alive and well.

* * * * *

On a more legitimate note:

I cast on this sock Tuesday evening and knit barely an inch that night. On Wednesday I took it with me to the finance committee meeting and knit most of the leg. I have since turned the heel, knit the foot, and I'm currently decreasing for the toe (which is red; these are fun socks). I'll finish it this afternoon.

Now the kicker: I'm actually knitting these on US #0 needles.

I know, I said that life was too short to knit on zeros. This yarn (Online something or other) is what inspired me. I don't remember exactly where I got it but I'm pretty sure I must have won it because I don't remember buying it. It has been sitting next to my desk since early last winter. (Sitting there because I was too lazy to put it away in the sock yarn box at the bottom of my Tower o' Rubbermaid.) I would look at it and try to figure out how best to knit socks from it fast. My plans were to double-strand it with black. Or turquoise. Or white. Or all three, in stripes.

But last weekend I found myself thinking about knitting it on zeros and adding contrasting heels and toes and cuff. Smokey laughed at me when I said I was excited to try it.

But excitement makes the knitting go faster. I have never knit a  sock this fast, ever. Given the ridiculous weather we are having (40 degrees at the moment), it is possible I may be able to wear them before true spring gets here. 

Three little words.

Phi Beta Kappa.

Oh, and Metallica, too.

(I promise to stop babbling about #1 now.)

G is for glad.

#1 son is returning from his Chiapan adventure today. w00t! It will be good to have him home for a few weeks until he heads off to NYC to start med school in June.

Gotta go. I washed all his bedding but it is still in the laundry room. TTFN!

Random Wednesday.

F is also for famous, which is how I am feeling right now. Check out my picture, right next to Dale-Harriet's, over at Franklin's post about his Yellow Dog photo shoot.

* * * * *

We got some snow yesterday. This is around the corner and up the block from my house.

 

It was several inches of heavy, wet snow that made all the trees and bushes very pretty.

Some people are just too darned conscientious for their own good. These folks had already shoveled their sidewalk by 8 a.m. Don't they know it's gonna melt almost immediately? Or at least by June?

 

Across the street, Linus was looking a little... bedraggled.

 

Downtown, we have people to take care of these things. Wouldn't want anyone to get their Ferragamos wet.

  

Don't you love how I take pictures through the windshield? While driving. Not to worry; I didn't hit anything. Yet.

* * * * *

Observed at the office:

 

* * * * *

Last week I bought some daffodils from the the Cancer Society to brighten up my cube.

 

Knowing how fast they open, I thought it would be fun to photograph them every hour and make a blog post about it.

 

 

Hmm. It's a slow game.

 

Not a lot happening.

 

Okay, I guess they are opening. A little.

 

Ya wanna see the high-tech tripod I devised so I'd always get the same angle on the shot?

 

Upside-down glass on top of a pile of notepads, camera on top of the glass. Yeah, I know. I'm a genius.

 

Jumping ahead...

   

   

Did you notice how I put the digital clock in there now, so you can tell that an hour has elapsed? Genius, I tell you.

   

   

Yeah, I was getting bored, too. They seemed to be going pretty much directly from barely open to... dead.

 

* * * * *

Matthew's joke. (You have to imagine him saying these things)

 

"So, what's happenin'? Where's the action tonight?"

(scuffle, scuffle, whisper, whisper)

 

"Police! You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say..." etc.

Random Wednesday.

It's the first week of February, ergo, I am wearing my CPA green eyeshade once again. The people I work with tell me that it is a mixed blessing to see me again every year. They very kindly say it is good to have me back, but it also makes it officially Busy Season. Ouch.

* * * * *

Andrew's laptop. Tell us what you really think, Andrew.

* * * * * * * * * *

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Not quite as well-educated as I thunk:

Your English Skills:

Vocabulary: 100% Grammar: 80% Punctuation: 80% Spelling: 60%

Thanks to Cursing Mama for the link. And thank FSM for spell-check.

* * * * * * * * *

The dog blanket that Amy asked me to knit for the Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary has been my mindless knitting since I finished the preemie caps. An unexpected benefit of the Mason-Dixon ballband dishcloth pattern as interpreted in double-stranded acrylic is that the resulting objet d'knit is thick and squishy, just like a cushion. Perfect for a pooch's nap.

When finished it will be ~30" square; it's about half done now. Smokey has remarked that our dogs each need a blanket like that. To paraphrase EZ the Great, another opportunity to do more of our favorite hobby.

* * * * * * * * * *

He's gone.

Andrew flew out 6 am Sunday morning. He was here for three weeks, a week longer than originally planned because he caught a cold and wanted to recover and he was enjoying himself here and he didn't need to get back right away; so he gave up a week of sightseeing in Mexico to spend the time with us instead. Say it with me now: awwwww.

I've told you about our visit to Chicago to visit his aunt and uncle. He also spoke at the local library about the Zapatistas and Chiapas and what he is doing there. The total of nearly 20 people was a very good turnout for our little library.

He will be in Chiapas until mid-April, then home -- or possibly traveling to see friends around the US and the world -- until June, when he goes back to New York to start med [summer] school.

When Andrew was in Chiapas, eating beans and tortillas and on special days rice, he lost a pound every 64 hours for 2-1/2 months. As part of our parental obligation we fed him well while he was home.

Vegetarians, look away. This photo even grosses me out.

From the left, that's three New York strip steaks, four T-bones, and six Porterhouses. Smokey hit a sale on steak at the grocery store, this was all <$6/pound.

Here's how a couple of the Porterhouses looked when grilled.

He said that one of the steaks was at least the equivalent of the amount of meat in the average Chiapan's diet in an entire year. Yeah, we totally used his being home as an excuse to eat huge steaks.

Part of the fun of having steak is that Andrew always makes a huge production out of feeding the fatty scraps to the dogs. They have to work for their treats. First, they must wait politely.

Sometimes he teases the dogs by offering the treat to a cat. Cats, being the cautious types they are, sniff it all over just to be sure we haven't nurtured them and raised them and housed them and paid the vet bills and snuggled them and cleaned their litter boxes all these years just to use this opportunity to poison them.

Bear is an old, old dog. All she has to do to get her treat is to say please. Lucy, however, is required to dance on her hind legs for 10+ seconds and s-t-r-e-t-c-h to get her morsel.

* * * * *

I'll leave you with some of the funny things people said to Andrew in Chiapas.

Do you wear your hair like that because of your religion?

(On seeing a jet plane way up high in the sky) Where is that plane going? Is it going to Mexico [City]?

How fast do planes walk?

(He asked one of his students if he knew what snow was.) Sure, you buy it at the stand in Ocosiningo. It comes in strawberry and orange and mango.

One of the books in the school referred to ice. The students asked what ice was, and Andrew was at a loss to explain it in terms they could understand. Subtropical climate, no electricity, no freezers.

So he is bringing back these pictures -- ice, frozen lake, snow, pontoon boat*, dock.

 

* I told him to tell them that this is the simplest, cheapest, most bare-bones pontoon boat one can find in the US, to which he added, It still cost $2000. That will blow their minds.

Catching up, vol. 3: The Art Institute of Chicago.

On Saturday Maggie and Matthew and Andrew and I took the train into Chicago to go to the Art Institute.

The Metra is an electric train, but Maggie and Matthew insisted it wasn't nearly as nice as the [new] light rail transit in Minneapolis. I didn't care. I love a man in uniform.

I don't know if it is evident in these photos, but it was exquisitely cold, about zero degrees F. That's minus 18 degrees Celsius for you Canadians. Brrrr.

 

We split up as soon as we checked our coats and agreed to meet again at 5 pm when the museum closed. Ready, set, go!

I remembered this painting from my last visit to the Institute in 2003.

It is a land/seascape by Cezanne and was my favorite painting on that last visit. But I remember the vivid and unearthily beautiful blue sea as occupying a larger portion of the canvas and being a greener blue. And I remember the painting as being larger than it was this time. Either Cezanne did more than one version of the painting, which is entirely possible, or my memory has magnified its qualities, also entirely possible.

I stood, transfixed, in front of it for several minutes last time. It is difficult to see it in my photograph, but the blue of the sea is a sort of heathery teal color (is that a knitterly description or what?). I fell in love with the color. Then I read the plaque next to the painting, which said that (paraphrasing from memory) the true subject of the painting is the color of the sea. I felt like had just gotten an A on an art history essay.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a famous painting by Georges Seurat that had never particularly appealed to me, but there was bench in front of it and my feet hurt, so I contemplated it for a few minutes.

I noticed a couple things. First, although the scene should be full of movement -- children playing, dogs leaping, people strolling -- it really isn't. Everything looks perfectly static and posed. Weird.

Second, for some reason known only to the artist and his muse, he painted a red and blue sort of pointillist frame around the edge of the canvas.

 

I say again. Weird.

I loved both of these...

 

...the one on the left for the way it works with its shadow and the one on the right for... I don't know why. Maybe I think he needs socks.

Does this look like a sheep's head to you? It doesn't look like a sheep's head to me; it looks more like a cow's head. Any sheep experts out there?

 

These guys looked straight out of a Monty Python sketch. Or maybe Labyrinth.

I was fascinated by the way these textures and shapes were depicted in marble.

Sometimes life imitates art. Andrew didn't know I was sitting quietly in the corner of the sculpture gallery, knitting and resting my feet.

I found that I seem to be captivated by early  paintings by Piet Mondrian, an artist whose major works never caught my fancy. Who knew?

I like the funny tracery of the bare branches against the sky. One can see the beginnings of the artist's fascination with rectilinear geometry. I remember studying the colors in some of his early paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and thinking how nice those colors would look in a sweater.

Back when I was an art history major in college I took a class in ancient Chinese art because I liked Oriental art and really enjoyed that professor. It turned out that ancient Chinese art is 100% about bronze ritual vessels, ding (tripod cauldron) and gui (bowl) and fanding (rectangular cauldron). The two best collections in the world are the Pillsbury collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art and another collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. That means that, by necessity, the collection in the Art Institute of Chicago is second-rate.

I concur. Although my eyes lit upon these once-so-familiar shapes as though they were long-lost family members, I gradually became disenchanted with the pieces. They just weren't as perfectly made, as intricately inscribed, as balanced, as the ones we studied. Second rate.

This was the best of the bunch.

These made me cringe. Especially the fourth one. Ewwww.