My DC - Week 24

In a city full of beautiful, historic and interesting sites, it's so easy to dismiss a huge, whale of a building like this. Consuming a full block between Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues, the Department of Commerce is just massive and at first glance, pretty boring. The real story is in the details though and, each day as I walk by it, alternating between the 14th and 15th street sides, I notice little things that amuse and interest me. Here is a small collection of them.



All around the building are plaques commemorating the different organizations and offices that have at one time or another been under the auspices of the Department of Commerce. Steamboat inspection sounds kind of quaint to me.



As I always do when checking out a building, I looked up and was charmed to find that the decoration even extends to the evens of the building.



The building has 6 courtyards and as I walk by I often notice the gates. Imagine how heavy they must be. Notice the bird in the middle - an eagle maybe.



Now what about this? Here is a detail from one of the extremely large sconces that adorn most of the entries to the building. I bet thousands of people walk by them each day without noticing them at all. Take a good look. Is that an eagle over the glass pane... or is it a bat? I t looks bat like to me.



here's another large sconce from the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the building. Are those butterflies? It looks like there are a series of different butterflies. I love that and can't wait to check it out again today on my way home.



Then again, it could be that I just can't wait to go home period. Happy Friday everyone!

Yarn Families

I have a confession to make. I fell off the 10 Minutes a Day wagon about 2 weeks ago. I have a really good excuse though - I broke a toe on my right foot. I did it in classic style falling down the stairs at my house when my feet slid out from under me. Not my best moment.

Because my last foot injury wasn't that long ago I didn't waste my time going to the ER. I looked at my ugly, swollen, purple, toe and banged up foot, knew the diagnosis, and figured that I could tape two toes together as easily as anyone else could. I stayed off my feet as best I could and enjoyed a great excuse to wear my Crocs to work. The only downside was that I really couldn't spin comfortably. Thankfully I finished some stuff right before it and I'll share it with you today.

This is the last skein in a series of yarns that I'm calling my BFL Family. You can see the rest of the family members below and on the right. The fiber is 100% Blue Faced Leicester that I dyed with Cushings dyes and spun over the course of about a year. I used blue, pink, and violet. The violet broke when I dyed that fiber and that created a super effect on that batch of fiber but the real color play came from the plying. I started by plying blue with blue, then blue with violet, violet with violet and so on. That's why it's a family - everything is related.

When I started this project I envisioned it ultimately becoming a shawl and thought that Hanami would be cool. I thought that using a series of related yarns that gradually moved from dark to light would be a nice match for the asymmetry of that pattern. I've changed my mind now and I think that something simpler would let the yarn speak for itself. Perhaps a simple feather and fan pattern or an EZ Pi shawl. That could be super cool and just as simple as I want. Any suggestions?

I feel like this yarn was a real accomplishment. With each effort the spinning becomes more consistent and the results more predictable. There is one factor that still screws me up each and every time - uneven amounts of fiber on my bobbins. One always has more than the other and I have to figure out what to do with the leftovers. Sometimes though, this can be a lucky thing.

Look at this pretty stuff. This is the remainder of the pink BFL plyed with some of the leftover shiny green singles. This could be the start of another yarn family because there is atill some of the shiny green stuff left on the bobbin. I'll wait to see what other leftovers I come up with and keep plying this against leftovers until I run out. I see a scarf that has bands of each version of the shiny green - plied against itself, plied against the pink, plied against everything. How cool would that be? Suddenly I'm looking forward to leftovers. Imagine that! Thankfully my toe is feeling much better so I may be back at my wheel again really soon.

Side Effects

I'm still home alone and that's a bad thing on many levels. Aside from being rattled by the quiet and stressed by the situation I'm doing all kinds of household stuff that isn't usually my bailiwick. Normally I am breadwinner, bill payer, chef, social director, gardener and shopper for all things. Notice, there is no version of cleaning on that list. There are little elves that take out the garbage and fold the laundry (I wash it) and clean the dishes. There are no elves at home now which is no good since I failed this test.

10 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Thank goodness for our cleaning people because I'm not sure if we even own a vaccuum. (Just kidding, I'm pretty sure we own one - I just don't know where hubbo keeps it.)

It's pretty lucky for me that I have a few redeeming qualities. I can weed a mean garden. Check out this tomato in our Garden O' Apathy. It's a Princeton tomato. In the background you can see the shadow of 2 more that are nearly as ripe. Better yet, the other night I counted about a dozen tomatoes in various stages of growth and ripeness. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them. I'd love to try to make sauce. I suck at doing dishes but I cook pretty well. Does anyone have a kick-butt recipe?

Summer of Socks '08

I finished my Monkey socks last week just in time for the cutoff for the second 2 week period. These are my first pair of socks for the Summer of Socks '08 but they could easily turn out to be my only pair of finished socks for SOS08. I've just got so many things in the works that it's hard to see myself continuing to complete socks at the rate I've been maintaining recently. These are my 11th pair of socks completed this year.

I really did enjoy this pattern quite a lot. It's the Monkey pattern by Cookie A and it's super easy to memorize and yet it's got just enough going on to keep them interesting. They were a great walking around project. I kept them in the side pocket of my Haiku bag so I could pull them out easily and put them away fast if necessary.

The yarn I used was Tess Super Sock & Baby and I really enjoyed it a lot. The colors are gorgeous and saturated and so bright and crisp. As I've said before, I think that the Monkey pattern is made for yarn with stripes or, at the very least, strong variegation. I tried a pair in a yarn with softly changing colors and it was a miserable failure. In this yarn, the colors mostly blend together and even the purple doesn't really stand out too much with one notable exception - the yellow. that color gets up and declares itself loudly and I think it makes the sock work. It highlights the purple and it helps define undulation in the pattern.

These socks are kind of funny to me. Straight on they look just alike. I wasn't able to match up the stripes but on most of the sock it doesn't matter and, really, it wouldn't be noticed. There is just one spot where the fraternal nature of these socks shows up well and announces itself - the heels. I chose to do an eye of partridge heel rather than the simple heel that is specified. Other than doing 5 leg repeats rather than 7, the heel change is the only mod. The effect is really interesting. In the sock on the left, the first sock I made, the colors fell just so that the yellow turned into little dots spread out accross the whole flap. In the second sock the colors gradate from side to side and give me the impression of sun setting on the ocean. I think I like the left heel better but the idea of such an obvious fraternal edge amuses me.

These days, when I finish a project it's just as likely to head out the door or into my daughter's drawers as it is to remain with me. Not so this time - these socks are mine! I adore the feel of the yarn and the colors and pattern. Everything about these socks make me smile.

Sadly it'll be a while before I can wear my new Monkeys since it's in the high 90's here this week. Not great weather for wearing wool socks. It's not bad for knitting them though so I've started another pair of socks. The yarn this time is Fiesta Boomerang in a color called Alaska. It's a change of pace in many respects. First the colors are cooler and the yarn itself is sport weight - thicker than I usually work with for socks. This is also a return to toe up socks. Yay! Aside from all of that I am starting these socks with no pattern in mind. It's so much fun to start a pair of socks with no plan and just see where it takes you. Depending on when I finish these socks, they could be my second pair for SOS08. I wouldn't count on it though.

A Weirdly Quiet Weekend

Thank you to everyone for your healing thoughts. I wish I could say that all is well now but, unfortunately it isn't and my husband flew to NY late on Saturday to be with his father. Right now we're just praying for a miracle and giving thanks for the fact that my girls are away at camp unaware of the current drama. At a time like this, ignorance is bliss and that's the way we intend to keep it.

With my girls at camp and Bruce in NY it was weirdly quiet at home this weekend. A friend said that she was jealous and that I should enjoy the quiet but it wasn't a comfortable thing. The house felt empty, as if something was missing.

I knocked around the house doing little odds and ends but mostly I chilled out and knit. I also worked on my big crochet project. I finally received the ribbon labels and they're perfect - silver writing on a blue ribbon. I sent them and 13 finished kippot to my mom in NY and got back to work. The tally is now 16 which means that I've finished 20% of the kipppot.

A funny thing happened on Saturday. I brought my car in for work and there was a glitch that caused it to take way longer than expected so the dealership gave me a car and, with nothing else to do, I went to With Yarn in Front, the new LYS that wasn't too far away. Once there I sat and worked on more of the kippot and one of the owners recognized what I was working on. She said that someone came in asking about making kippot recently so they googled it and my blog came up. I thought that was pretty funny.

With so much time on my hands I worked on socks and I started something new. What do you think of this? I can't say too much about what it is but I can discuss the yarn. It's Katia Mississippi 3 which I've used many times before with success. It's a cotton/acrylic blend which washes well and wears well too. The colors are a concern though. I let my girls choose them and now I'm wondering if that was wise. In the store I thought that it was a strawberry red, grass green, and a lighter celery green. Now that last shade looks nearly fluorescent to me certainly not green. At turns it scares me and then I look at it again after a few more rows and I think it's not bad. At this point I'm quite a bit beyond what you see in this picture and I'm no longer certain that I trust my eyes.

My DC - Week 23

On hot, steamy, summer evenings my DC is alive with the sound of sports leagues playing on many of the grassy areas. Last night, despite the rain, we played softball on the ellipse. There is something very cool about playing in the shadow of the Washington Monument or with the White House over your shoulder. This picture shows the opposing team warming up with the Old Executive Office Building in the background.


We won and celebrated at a bar near our office. Pitchers of Bud, Blue Moon and Yuengling flowed on the firm's tab while we ate pizza and reveled in the glow of victory. It was a great night.

In the spirit of celebrating leisure pursuits in DC Here are a series of pictures I took at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival that were pre-empted last Friday. Many of the pictures I took were in the Bhutan section of the festival. I just loved the opportunity to experience a culture that was so foreign to me. This is a display of pigments that caught my eye with the dazzling array of colors.



It's to be expected that all things fiber would catch my eye. Here you see different materials that were used for dying in Bhutan and the beautifully colored yarn that they produce.



Isn't the fabric this woman is weaving gorgeous? Look at the variety of colors!



I couldn't fight the compulsion to check the wrong side of the textiles to see how it looked. See, nobody's perfect.



I would love to have stayed to watch this guy carve all day. Watching a shape or figure slowly emerge from a block of wood or other material is endlessly fascinating to me.



What talent it must take to create such a gorgeous and graceful object!



We're very worried right now because my father-in-law is in the hospital and it's not going well. Please think good thoughts for us.

Hello My Name Is...

This is my new niece who was born a week ago while I was listening to Senator Obama tell us all about how he'd like to improve things for women. She is the first child of my brother Micah and his wife Misun and her name is Manhattan Sarah. Yep, Manhattan.



Obviously the name is a little unusual and there has been a lot of discussion about it in my family. I suggested that my brother start a fund for the therapy that she'll need when she get's older. Stinkerbelle thinks that her new cousin ought to learn self defense. Nicknames have been suggested and one relative has decided that they'll just stick with the middle name. It's unlikely that her full first name will be used very often but still, the child is Manhattan from Manhattan. Can you imagine the jokes, the double takes, the looks of disbelief that she'll get?

Then again, this isn't the first child I know who is named for a borough of New York. This is Brooklyn. She's the daughter of my buddy Felicia and she's turning one this week. I thought that would be a hard name to get used to but it's really grown on me.



Anyone know a Bronx? That may be better as a boys name. What about Staten Island or Queens? What's the weirdest name you've ever heard?

M is for...

Memories!

This past weekend I took my 5th annual road trip to North Carolina to drop off one or both of my girls at camp. In the past I looked forward to the trip. My daughter's excitement at her return to the camp that she loves so much is infectious and I would get swept up in it.

This year I felt a bit of ambivalence about their departure for camp. Partly it's the money. Sending a child to sleep away camp is an expensive proposition and it becomes more so when there are 2. Part of my unease comes from recent events which have demonstrated just how fast time flies. People come and go and as DQ reached milestones in her life I am reminded on a daily basis of how she is leaving me little by little. I asked myself over and over - why would I willingly give up some of my precious time with her?



So this weekend we set out for North Carolina, just three girls in a car. As I drove we sang along with the radio, we took in the gorgeous vista and discussed friends at home and at camp. On Saturday night we stumbled upon a classic car show where we got up close and personal with some really beautiful motor vehicles. The owners of the Ford Fairlane Skyline were so charmed by my Stinkerbelle that they demonstrated how the roof goes up and down. Then we went to the drive in where we enjoyed movies under the stars with thescent of burning wood in the air. I hope that someday the memory of the things we saw on this road trip, and those before it are the kind that they'll share someday with their own children.

Sunday night we attended the back to camp gathering. As we had in past years, we heard about parents of current campers who attended when they were young. Some even met their spouse at camp. One family came all the way from Arizona! Sitting there I was amazed once again at the dedication all of these parents and children felt for the camp and how strong their good memories must be.



When we take our children to splash in the waves at the beach or to an amusement park with their cousins we are buidling memories. When we fill the house with family and friends on a holiday or when I turn up the music loud and dance with my girls in the kitchen at home I am buildIng memories. When my girls are part of the mad dash for the bunks on opening day at camp they are building memories.

This is why I don't mind the 9 hour drive home after dropping my girls off. I know that their camp has inspired many in the past and I hope that they too will return home with the kind of happy memories that they will carry with them long into the future no matter where they go. Besides, I get to enjoy the scenery along the way.

Shiny, Happy, Yarn

The pink yarn is all plied up but it still needs a bit of finishing before I can share it with you. Thankfully I do have some finished yarn to show.



This is one of 2 Spontaneous Spinning Batts that I bought from Loop earlier this year. This one is 3.7 oz. of Alpaca, wool, bamboo, mohair, tussah silk, recycled sari silk, silk noils, and angelina and the combination of fibers was a real challenge for me. I'd never spun anything so slippery before and I often found as I spun it up that I would get in a groove and then I'd hit a different part of the fiber and it would throw me off a bit.



What I loved about this batt was the lustre of the bamboo and silk. I think that they are gorgeous and I'd definitely spin them again and again. What I didn't love was the angelina. There was much more of it in this batt and I removed quite a bit but I still felt that there was too much. It really doesn't have a good hand and I think that any amount of it that I can feel is too much. When you can get such a lovely shins from silk and bamboo I see no reason to use the angelina. That's just me.



Another thing that I love about this yarn is the color. I am definitely a green person in general but I really loved the softness of the shades in this batt.

It should be no surprise that the next fiber to be spun up will include a bit of silky stuff. I am definitely on a silk kick.

Ode to a Drive In Movie

While you are reading this, I'm far from home, on an annual trek to North Carolina that is one of my favorite weekends of the year and, at the same time, one of my most melancholy. It's the weekend that I bring my daughters to camp where they will stay for nearly a month.

Dropping them off is my thing and each year I extend it and turn it into a girls only road trip and stop somewhere along the way that we've never been before. This year we sent a night in Abingdon, VA. The town is small but it's lovely and there is a lot to see but we didn't get around town as much as we thought we would. I did take them to experience something new to them... a drive in movie!


I can still remember going to the drive in as a kid. My siblings and I would be in our pjs with our pillows and blankets, sitting in the way back in our parents station wagon. The drive in had double features then too but I don't think I ever made it to the later feature. The only movie I actually remember seeing there was George Hamilton in Love At First Bite. Do you remember that one?

On Saturday night we saw Wall.E and Journey To The Center Of The Earth but the movies weren't important. The fun was in camping out on the car and relaxing under the stars while enjoying the movie. It was a warm evening and the air was full of the scent of wood burning.

The theatre we were at was recently added to the Virginia Register of Historic Places because it remains very much as it was when it opened in 1949. The little concession stand is still in the center of the field and looks very much as it must have back then and we still parked on a series of grassy berms to angle our cars to the screen. The speakers were removed long ago but the posts at each parking spot are still there. It was a little like being in a time warp.



The girls loved it and I loved being there with them. I will miss them so much when they're away but I know that they have a blast at camp and the felling that it's the best possible place they could be makes it all ok.

Obama

Late Wednesday afternoon my husband called to tell me that he had scored 2 tickets to hear Senator Obama speak in a Town Hall meeting at a school in my neighborhood. Hooray for me and DQ because we got to go see Obama speak. He was amazing!

Here is the First Lady of Virginia, Anne Holton introducing Obama. A woman who has raised three children while maintaining a successful legal career, she was a great choice to introduce him since the focus of his speech was Economic Security for America's Women.



He discussed the need for better policies on sick time (no less than 7 days for every worker) and allowing parents to attend school events for their children. Assistance for families to pay for day care and for school tuition were discussed but he also focused on helping people care for aging parents.

There was a question and answer portion of the program and I appreciated the way that it was handled. The questions were chosen at random and not prescreened. The only direction that he gave is that he would alternate answering queries from men and women. The subjects ran from his recent votes on legislation related to the administrations wiretapping policy, to encouraging writing programs, to improving our relations with the rest of the world. He answered all of them completely and clearly.



One of the big thrills was that this Town Hall meeting took place in the gym at DQ's school. What a kick to see him in such an incredibly familiar place! There were lots of young people there - some new voters and some, like DQ, who won't vote for many years to come. I have no doubt that when Obama is elected all of these kids will look back on the day and feel like they were a part of something great.



The only thing about the day that made me a little sad was that, although other local politicians had representatives there giving away bumper stickers and signs and stuff, the only Obama stuff there was for sale. The materialism was a little off-putting. Three dollars for a button or a bumper sticker seemed a little high. The day was still great though.

Go Obama!

O-pportunity

A really cool opportunity arose late yesterday so I don't have a real post today. As my boss said when I asked her for today off at the very last minute I'm being "a part of history". I'll tell you all about and , with any luck, I'll have pictures too. I hope that you like the pretty distraction.

Ply Till You Can't Ply Anymore

I love blogland. Sometimes you need another pair of eyes to help you see what's in front of you and thanks to the comments yesterday I realized that the Sour Grapes handspun will be perfect for one of the cowl patterns I have on my to-do list. I don't have any cowls but they seem like such a practical alternative to scarves and I've wanted one for a while.

I was feeling so good that I went home last night, put up a load of laundry and sat down to ply the last 2 bobbins from my recent spinning frenzy. At first I was feeling really good because this stuff is really even and it's coming out exactly as I had hoped it would. I was looking for something nice and thin and this looks like a pretty consistent sport to fingering to my eye.

I plied and plied and plied and then I looked down at the bobbins and saw that I'd hardly made a dent at all. So I kept at it and after a bit over an hour this is what the bobbins looked like. Clearly there is quite a bit of plying still ahead of me. It has never ever taken me this long to ply my yarn before and I'm very curious to see what the yardage will be. Certainly it'll be a lot - 400-500 yards maybe.

I finally had to admit that this was not a job for one sitting and give up for the night. I settled in to watch Hell's Kitchen but instead of working on a kippah, one of the 3 pairs of socks, the lace shawl or any of the other projects on the needles, I cast on for something new. I am both fickle and horribly afflicted with startitis.

This is the start of the Round or Pinwheel Baby Blanket and it will be a gift for one of the four babies that are expected in my family over the next few months. That's quite a lot of baby knitting and for most of them the sex won't be revealed until they arrive so it's a lot of unisex baby knitting.


The yarn is Katia Mexico and it was part of the haul I brought home from my recent trip to Canada. I don't think that I ever mentioned it but even though the trip was brief I managed to find the time to stop at Knit-Knackers in Ottawa. I also got a bunch of spinning fiber, a few balls of bamboo/merino and a bag of Debbie Bliss Cotton DK. All of the yarn was on sale and there were bulk discounts too.

Balanced At Last

I didn't spin at all last night. I was too busy fondling my new yarn. This stuff is soft.

I wish that I could write the kind of posts where I'd tell you all about how I created a particular skein of yarn but I can't because usually I just spin it up according to what feels good and hope that it doesn't look like a mess when I'm finished. I've taken classes and read magazines and I think that my spinnning has improved but it's a slow process because my skull is just a bit on the thick side and things take a while to sink in and all the number stuff - that never makes a dent. Recently I've seen a lot of discussion about wet finishing and how a little bit of abuse during the finishing process can be a good thing. Much of the discussion has been technical but the bit about using both hot and cold baths and a bit of agitation caught my attention so I tried it withth is skein and the result is a soft, squishy, and very pleasing yarn.



This fiber is a color called Sour Grapes from Spunky Eclectic which I spun over the past 2 weeks using a modified long draw. Since I learned the long draw last December it's become very comfortable. While I was spinning the singles I could swear that it all looked really nice and even but looking at the finished yarn I'm not so sure. I suspect that the finishing may have affected it a bit.

Over the weekend I got out 2 big buckets, had DH fill one with hot water and the other with cold and I went to town. First I dunked the skein in the hot bath. I let it soak and I agitated it for a few minutes before pulling it out and putting it in the cold bath. I repeated this 3 or 4 times before removing it, beating it and hanging it to dry without a weight.



Hanging the skein and not needing a weight was a kick because that's never happened before. In the past, my plying has been really tight and far from balanced and they yarn has been pleasing. I really love the neat and tidy look of a tightly plied yarn but the kinkiness I could do without.

So now I have a 200 yard skein of beautiful soft yarn in search of a purpose. A hat maybe?

Feet!

We had a pretty quiet holiday weekend. It's actually the last time that we'll all be home together until the very end of the summer so we tried to savor it and enjoy it a little more. Of course there were still errands to run but we tried to squeeze in some family time. Why is it so hard to do that at home? Even in the confines of my small house the 4 of us tend to scatter to the 4 winds. DQ hides out in her room with her music on texting her friends as fast as she can or with her nose buried in a book. Stinkerbelle immerses herself in her collection of Legos and hubbo can never watch enough sports.

Yesterday, our desire for family time led us to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival where we all found stuff to entertain us. I'll show more of what we saw on Friday - today the focus is on feet.

We started in the Texas area where we arrived just in time for Stinkerbelle to try her hand at stomping grapes at an exhibit on Texas wines. These weren't actually going to be used to make wine but my messy little Stinko enjoyed herself very much.


We found a focus on feet in the Bhutan area too. They had a man there demonstrating boot making. Aren't those white ones gorgeous? Look at the embroidery on them. The white ones are for celebrations and special events but you can also see another, less fancy pair of boots laying on the table.


Stinkerbelle was offered the opportunity to try them on. She said that they were really comfortable and she had a lot of fun trying them on. These are everyday boots and the man there said that people in Bhutan make them for themselves and that they can last from 3 days to 3 weeks depending on how much walking the person does. Can you imagine having to make yourself a new pair of shoes that often?



My focus on footwear naturally extends to socks and I even finished a sock this weekend. This is the twisted stitch cable motif that I chose to run up the back of my Widdershins. The yarn has a lot of interest so I left the rest of the sock plain but I needed a little fun and this is quick, easy and fits perfectly. I think it would be really great on a solid sock and I may try it again sometime.

This week, in addition to sharing more about the Folklife Festival, I have 2 finished handspun yarns and, possibly more on the way. This should be a really good week!

A Monkey For Me

I do not have a finished pair of socks for the Summer of socks yet and I'm perfectly ok with that. I'm enjoying the process of working on all of my current projects and seeing so many things making visible progress makes me feel really accomplished.



This is the first sock in my second pair of Monkey's. These are all mine! The yarn is Tess Designer in colors that are really not "me" at all and yet I love these socks so much. In the evening, when I knit on these socks while waiting for a ride home, they catch the light and seem to glow a little bit like a sunset in the Carribean.

Still Growing

This has been one of the rainiest seasons in recent memory and, while rain isn't a lot of fun, it's been great for the growth of stuff both inside and out. A great example is my cantaloupe plants. Look at how they've spread out. Can you see all of the blossoms on there? There are easily a dozen on there and I'm the only one in the house who will eat them. Maybe I'll set Stinky up with a fruit stand or I can give them away as parting gifts to anyone who visits my house. I wonder how many melons we'd have to sell to buy another wheel. Maybe I'll settle for a bit more yarn.

Blossoms by themselves don't mean much but we've had many visitors in the garden this summer - like this little guy. The bees are loving my little garden and they are there every single day checking to see if they missed anything new. Chances are good that we'll have an abundant harvest this year.
Look at the peppers growing. It's weird because most of them are like the one one on the left - teeny, tiny.


Not all of the growth is taking place in the garden. My Alpine Shawl is growing too. Here it is pinned out a little bit on one of the mats I got last year for blocking. This is the first time I tried them out at all. I think they'll work really well.



I try to do a repeat or 2 each night but it's been fighting with the wheel, the kippot and socks for my attention. Slowly but surely all of the projects in progress are moving along and it's possible that I'll get them all done on time.