Discovered something you can't do while knitting.......




OK. Honestly there are a lot of things you can't do while knitting.  (Yes, the picture is a hint but perhaps not what you think. Probably not what you think......)  Here I'm talking about watching a silent movie.  I was trying to watch Bardelys the Magnificent a silent movie from 1926 on Turner Classic Movies last night.  I have a soft spot for silent movies (and movies from the 1930's) as well.  I think because they represent a time capsule of a sort, a snap shot of what stories people wanted to tell some 80 years ago before so many of the major historical events of the 20th century had taken place.  And even with a rudimentary number of cinematic tools available, they were able to tell remarkably sophisticated stories. I also enjoy that the movies are seasoned with the fashions that were popular.  Even the French revolution-esque pieces often have a bit of flapper sneaking in. 

Anyway, I was trying to watch Bardelys the Magnificent while knitting a sock from a charted pattern.*  Charted means exactly what you would think: the pattern of stitches are represented as symbols in a chart.  Not a particularly difficult pattern but one that requires looking down at the chart periodically.  Guess what?  Unlike a movie with, oh, I don't know, dialog, there is no way to keep track of the action in a silent movie without actually looking at it.  (Yeah. Duh.)  So at one point,  Bardelys, our swashbuckling hero, was in the swooning heroine's boudoir giving her a kiss she would (presumably) never forget.  I looked down to see whether pattern says yarn over, knit 2 tog, knit or yarn over, knit, knit 2 tog and then looked up again to see our hero flat out lying in the dirt barely alive. What?  Thank goodness for the DVR so I could back up the movie about 30 seconds.  Seems I missed Bardelys, climbing out our lady's castle window, misplacing his foot on an ivy covered wall and crashing to the ground below.**  Perhaps really not such a magnificent move on Bardelys part.

After this, I tried watching and knitting for a little while longer but, well, here is the synopsis of the movie which I think explains why a switched over to House Hunters International while working on my sock.

Synopsis:
"King Louis XIII sends Chatellerault to win Roxalanne de Lavedan, hoping to keep the girl's fortune within the kingdom. When Chatellerault reports that Roxalanne is unapproachable, Bardelys, a courtier, wagers his entire estate against Chatellerault's that he will capture the girl within three months. En route, Bardelys finds a dying man and is given a miniature and some letters bearing the name Lesperon, whose identity he assumes. Finding that Lesperon is a traitor, he seeks shelter in the Lavedan estate, and though she is frightened, Roxalanne allows him to court her. Another suitor, St. Eustache, warns her that Lesperon is engaged to Mademoiselle Mersac. Bardelys is arrested for treason, but the arrival of the king saves him from execution. Roxalanne marries Chatellerault to save Bardelys' life, but Chatellerault is killed in a duel with the courtier, who is thereafter joined with his beloved."

Got  that?

*  The sock I'm working on is the Rivendell sock  by Janel Laidman and will eventually look something like this:



Only out of a different yarn and different color.....

**Actually the "special effect" used to show Bardelys' fall was quite clever.  It was a quick cut from Bardelys'  foot slipping to a shot straight down over the lady's balcony as the actor went from standing with his hands in the air to a quick straight collapse accomplished by a rapid crumpling at the knees.  It worked.  Today I'm pretty sure a green screen and stunt man would be involved.

Yes, I'm still at all things fibery...spinning, knitting, and weaving.  Here are some of my recent accomplishments...


Project #1:
   

Have I mentioned I can also crochet although I don't do it very often?  In fact I was proficient at crocheting long before knitting.  Anybody recognize this guy?  And, no, I didn't miscount his eyes -- there are supposed to be three.  He's (She's ?) Blinky , from the Simpsons, found in the not-so-fresh water near the Springfield nuclear plant.   I made him for my DDS and surprised her when we came to visit last week  (more about the reason we came to visit at the end of this post). 

Pattern:  Three eyed cartoon fish by PixieKitten  (I'm assuming the vague name is so the designer doesn't run afoul of copywrite laws.  But we all know what it is.  Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge. Say no more.)
Yarn:  Red Heart in  Don't Shoot Me Orange and white

Project #2:

These socks were more of a challenge due to the number of twisted stitches and being tied to a chart. So I'm extremely pleased with the way they came out.

  

They are an Anne Hanson pattern and the pattern was just impeccably written -- well designed, clearly charted and not a single misprint.  And when I was sitting waiting for kids at various events and people asked me what I was working on I answered, "My flaming desire."  Now I honestly I thought this was hysterically funny as it is the name of the pattern but  I'm thinking most people were looking for the answer "socks".  

Pattern:  Flaming Desire by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Sock  in Into the Fire (that may get the award for longest yarn name)

Projects #3 & #4:




Little socks for DD2.
Pattern: Basic top down sock recipe
Yarn:  Knitpicks Felici in Positively Pink and Opal in light blue and light pink
Designer: DD2 picked out the yarn and the colors for the toe, heel and cuff.



Little socks for DearSon
Pattern: Basic Sock recipe
Yarn:  Knitpicks Felici in turtle
I forgot how fast it is to knit socks for people with not-quite-adult-sized feet.

Project #5  (In which I am impressed by my own cleverness)



This is a device made from the contents of the closet where-the-door-must -remain-shut-lest-its-contents-spill-out.  I had an empty Nike shoebox that when the yarn from the bobbins (aka toilet paper tubes) are threaded through the holes at edges of the box and the lid is shut, makes a great lazy kate.  (A lazy kate is a device used to hold one or more spools or bobbins in place while the yarn on them is manipulated).  That is my large Louet spindle (almost 2oz) that I use for plying.  The yarn is made from some shetland that I bought from Spunky Eclectic .   (See? Pretty clever.  I will not mention my fairly frequent bone headed maneuvers where I often flail for no apparent reason walking through doorways bruising my knuckles or elbows.  Or even the fact that I had to rip out an entire leg of a sock this morning because I forgot to switch needle sizes. The universe tends to balance things out.)

Project #6 (In progress)





These socks have knit up quite fast and have given me a chance to practice colorwork knitting one yarn in one hand English style and one yarn in the other knitting Continental style. Always fun to pick up a new skill. (One of the reasons I like knitting is there is always something new to learn.) 

Yarn:  Knitpicks Bare in Fingering weight.  Dyed dark turquoise and rainbow.
Pattern:  Spot Check by Beth Parrott from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn

I also dyed the two yarns -- the rainbow one I had to be careful when planning the colors so that no color complements were next to each other as I didn't want any sections of muddy brown  yarn if the colors ran into each other a bit.




Project #7 (In progress)


And this lovely crumpled lily pad of knitting will, one day, be a skirt.  And by the way.... Oy! Bobbles!  Actually, it should move along quite a bit faster now that I've completed the bottom of the skirt with all the bobbles.   They look really cool and I don’t mind making them but they do take some time. I think I figured 25 stitches for each and there are about 30 for each bobble row in addition to the some 300+ stitches around the bottom edge anyway. 

Pattern: Show-Off Ruffle Skirt by Kat Coyle from the book Lace Style
Yarn:  CotLin from Knitpicks in blackberry.  (I'm really enjoying knitting with this yarn -- sheds a bit but the texture is nice and I love the saturated color.)

As promised, this is why the kids and I bugged out last week.  The destruction part of our remodel began.





Our rather wonky old house had 2 narrow steep 19th century stairways that ran parallel up the center of the house from the time when it was 2 side-by-side apartments.   So now we're having those replaced by one proper sized 21st century staircase.  Not surprisingly when you do construction up the middle of your house it touches just about every room in the house.  So currently we're having a good time living around the periphery of our home.

And if any of the above blog doesn't make sense that's because everytime <hammer banging>   I start to get a <drill> complete thought together <compressor charging>   to write down some incredibly loud noise <vacuum turns on>  interrupts my thoughts ala "Harrison Bergeron " from a short story <kids turn up TV to counter background noise> by Vonnegut <workman dropped something large upstairs>.

OK, back by popular demand (Or at least because I enjoy writing about it) the last installment of our family vacation from this year. 

First did I mention? It was hot.  Ridiculously hot.  Fry an egg on the sidewalk hot.  Move really slowly lest one melt kind of hot.



And this trip also marks the first time out for our GPS.  Most of the time it was helpful even if we set "Sue" (or whatever form of vanilla Anglo name was American English choice) into occasional fits of "recalculating" when we took off in a direction she hadn't specified.  Like I said most of the time helpful, but I was a little concerned when I noticed the altitude at which "Sue" thought we were traveling:



Really?  78 feet below sea level?  Apparently our minivan can do a James Bond-esque metamorphosis into a sub.

We also took care of a couple of other prerequisite summer vacation activities while we were still in Virginia.



Afternoon at a beach and miniature golf.  DearSon was this excited every time he got the ball in the hole.

We also spent an afternoon at the  Virginia Air and Space museum, partly because it was way too hot to be doing any significant activities outside.  The museum was nearly empty..kind of weird having a whole museum nearly to ourselves. 


(See. No one else around......)



The small print says "Mars Base Beta. 147 days without an Accident."    Well, DD#1 and I couldn't let that go by without comment.



That my friends is an piece of Mars.  An actual piece of flippin' Mars.   Are you impressed?  I was.  It landed here as an asteroid millions of years ago when something large (the display board under the exhibit was a little vague here) ran into Mars and knocked a biggish chunk off and sent it hurling to Earth.  So here sits -- A piece of Mars in an exhibit, under glass in Virginia.  That's just cool. 



And how often does one get to hug a gas giant?  (No comments from the peanut gallery, please.)

So the last leg of our journey took us to Baltimore, where, not surprisingly, it was still stupid hot.   So our activities there were largely inside ones. 

Baltimore has a very cool science center  with new exhibits about dinosaurs (Who doesn't love a good dinosaur exhibit?) and earth science (Who doesn't love a good earth science exhibit? No that was not a rhetorical question.)


Apparently that behemoth was wandering about Maryland millions of years ago.



The interactive tilt table showing a multitude of maps got the award for most creative use of technology.



And yes we all had to try out the "bed of nails".  (Sing it with me now ..."They're creepy and they're kooky.  Mysterious and spooky.")

The National Aquarium also got two thumbs up.  (Hey, DearSister and DearBrother, that's the owner of the tooth mom had.     (Megalodon   -- basically an enormous shark.)



And my dear DD#2, why are you looking so excited??







Yup, we stopped at the location of her very favorite TV show, Ace of Cakes .  (No, we didn't see anyone but it looks just like it does on TV.  <Obvious statement of the day>

The Charm City Cakes neighborhood is very bohemian chic being a college neighborhood for Johns Hopkins.  We ate at my favorite restaurant of the trip: Paper Moon Diner



Not a restaurant that could be easily missed.

The decor was

eclectic, to say the least.

The wall of tiny plasic babies was....

unique.

But my favorite had to be...

 
the collection of Star Trek pez.   Awesome.  Oh, and the food and service were excellent too.  (Click on the website if you have a chance -- also fun and clever.)

And that my friends and family, wraps the family vacation.  There has been much knitting, spinning and weaving but that is for another day. 

OK....Family Vacation: Part 2. Williamsburg, VA, which is, of course known for historical recreation of Williamsburg circa 1770. 



And DearSon in this faux felt tricorn hat made in China kind of sums up the whole historical Williamsburg experience... rather contrived but fun. 



I'm more than willing to entertain submissions for captions of  this shot.  My submission is "OK. Now who has the chamber pot?".  Actually they are supposed to be an angry mob upset that the King's representative in Virginia, the Governor, took the black powder from the town's magazine.  As you wander through town there are  vignettes with costumed actors depicting various conversations that could have taken place relating to political events of the time.   Actually given the heat and the milling crowds (Why is it when you get to a certain threshold of numbers, people mill?) , the actors did a marvelous job. DH and I visited when we were first married, yes a long ago, and to the historical society's credit, they now confront the fact that Virginia was a slave owning state and a great many of the residents of Williamsburg heard the talk of liberty but knew that it did not apply to them. 



And, of course, if there is fiber to be found, I'll find it.  This woman was doing a great job of explaining spinning and the fibers that would have been available to the colonists.  One that figured as a near miracle fiber to them, that they would have been agog that we can't grow here today is hemp.  Just barely visible behind her left shoulder is a great wheel.  I had never seen anyone use a great wheel (or walking wheel) so it was quite interesting to see her spinning cotton on it. 



Full scale recreation of the Governor's Palace.  The was original finished in 1722 but like so many early buildings burned to the ground in 1781.  (Not that all early buildings burned to the ground in 1781 in particular...just that many of them burned.  Darned English language and its tendency to encourage misplaced modifiers.)
 
Behind the Governor's Palace was this...


A human sized maze!  Way too much fun! Yes that's me DD#1, DD#2 and DearSon there in the middle.



And here is a watering jar that we played with for probably way too long. (It was hot. We kept our pleasures simple.)  It waters from the bottom rather than dumping water out the top.  Clever!


And what do kids do with a full sized bronze statue that is too hot to actually touch.



Bunny ears and a little help with his latest manuscript.  Hope TJ would understand.  I understand he had lots of kids so hopefully he would.  (That's Thomas Jefferson to those of us not in the know.)

Are you still there?  Have I hit the maximum limit of vacation pictures for a blog?   Well, there will be a part 3 for Baltimore. 

I love vacations!  I love spending time with my family.  I love going new places, seeing new things and being surprised by new experiences.  I love learning new things.  So this year's excursion was to Williamsburg, VA and Baltimore, MD.  We try to make the travel part of the adventure so before we even arrived in Williamsburg, we made a few stops.  OK, we're also not afraid to try the  dangerously kitsch.   So our first stop was Clyde Peeling's Reptiland.  (No, not "Reptile Land".  One word.  "Reptiland"  Sounds way more legitimate that way.)  Yes, one of those places you see advertised on bill boards hours before you actually arrive then see after you've passed it saying "If you turn around now!  Reptiland is only 10 minutes in the other direction!". 

So without further ado...


I was pleasantly surprised at how modern and clean the facilities were and how expertly the animals we presented.  It's not a large zoo but the niche they have developed for themselves they do very well.   They had the expected large alligators and tortoises but also had one building of smaller reptiles including snake neck turtles (look exactly like you would expect and, quite frankly, a little bizarre), all manner of pit vipers and poisonous dart frog (pretty but deadly).  They also had the prerequisite "touch the animals" show:


"Hmmmm. Feels like a handbag." 
(Just kidding, of course, DD#1 would never say that.  Just my humor.)



DD#2 and I in the butterfly house. 





And who doesn't like taking pictures of butterflies? They're colorful and usually stay put long enough to frame a nice shot.



And here's a true rarity.  The one and only picture on vacation with all of us in it. 

Next stop Land of Little Horses in Gettysburg, PA.  What can I say?  It was unrelentingly kitsch and there were little horses.  The kids though it was great fun and the counting horse was impressive.  And who doesn't love an animal show that features dogs pulling chow wagons, trained pigs, a "unicorn" (yes, I said unicorn) and a disco ball?



Here is one of the little horses.  Clearly DD#2 is a bit startled by the feeling of horse lips. 



Which one is the real plastic oversized prospector????



I took this picture because DearSon's hair was exactly the same shade as the sheep's wool.  (Here's a quesion.  Why exactly were the 3 small sheep behind 7 foot high chain link fencing?) 

On to Williamsburg in the next post. 

For your viewing pleasure, the colors of early summer....


Backyard roses...



Side yard tiger lilies....


Front yard pileated woodpecker...  (We only see only of these once every couple of years.  It actually made quite the mess out of the front tree.)


Spindle spun shetland in pomegranate fromSpunky Eclectic .


My first wool woven project using Knit picks palette as the warp and my own handspun singles in romney in the pansy colorway from Spunky Eclectic.  (Yes, I've added to my post-apocalyptic skill set by adding weaving to my list of abilities) I'll blog about my loom very soon.


Lots of colors!  Navajo plied superwash BFL from (not surprisingly) Spunky Eclectic.


Two ply Norwegian wool from (now predictably) Spunky Eclectic.  I had never spun this type of sheep wool before and totally enjoyed it.  I was calling it an "al dente" wool but apparently the proper spinning phrase is to say  it has a "crisp hand". 


Romney singles from Sandy Long at Genesee Valley Handspinning Guild. 

I have not one, but two pictures that land solidly in this category. 



Can you tell what those are toasting over an open fire? 
Yes, Peeps ! 
And, oh, are they much better toasted than "raw".  I know I'm not the only one with stale peeps lurking in their pantry because the neighbors all produced their own supply of Peeps for this neighborhood cookout.  We were supposed to be making s'mores but these were way better.  Let's just say the oddly colored sugar on the outside of the Peeps (they come in quite unnatural colors of dayglow yellow, lack-of-oxygen blue, and pepto pink), caramelizes into a wonderful creme brulee type crust around a soft sweet marshmallow interior.  Yum. Although a little disturbing on two counts.  First toasting cute little Peeps is a bit like biting the head of chocolate Easter bunnies. And secondly because you have to make sure to skewer the little critters up the long way from bottom to ears otherwise the weight of the Peep makes them fall off the stick as they melt.

OK...pictures number 2:


Distubring but not sure about the tasty thing....  We saw him her this dancing along Transit Rd in Lockport, NY on Mother's Day.  Him Her It was quite a jazzy little dancer.

And here is picture just for grins:



No wonder they're closed.  Clearly they don't know if they're coming or going. 

(Back to my regularly scheduled knitting blog for the next entry.)

One thing you most definitely do not ignore is a precocious 5 year old passing by with a screwdriver saying "Lefty loosey, righty tighty."  One does not finish what one was doing.  One immediately jumps up to see what is destined to be imminently  disassembled.  (Answer: Desk clock that had stopped working. Yes, supervision was in order.)

And yes, I did say 5 year-old.  DearSon turned 5!  I can't believe it  -- wasn't it only yesterday I nursed him to sleep snuggled up in my arms?  Now, he's a 5 year-old Jedi extraordinaire.



And also a knitter extraordinaire:



There's a picture that warms a knitting mom's heart.  Not only is he good with the Lefty-loosey rhyme, but he can recite "In through the front.  Around the back.  Pull through the loop and off jumps Jack."  (In case you're not familiar with that one, this rhyme encodes all the moves required to make a knit stitch.)


I can now also reveal a couple of projects that I was working on in secret for gifts.  The first was a Mother's Day gift for my MIL, lovely mitts for a lovely lady.



Pattern:  Victorian Sampler Fingerless Gloves by Kerin Dimeler-Laurence
Yarn:  Knit Pick Shine Sport (Cotton and Rayon)
Mods:  My MIL has very petite hands so I dropped an entire lace repeat for the cuff and only picked up 26 stitches around.  The remainder of the mitts I knit according to dimensions in Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.  Also added a thumb. Top detail is  yo k1 then k next row and bind-off purlwise.

And also my spinning guild had a fiber exchange where we were to spin and then knit/crochet a cowl for the original owner of the fiber.  (Kind of weird spinning a fiber that the actual content is a mystery.  Might have had some mohair in it???)  Here's the fiber DD#1 and I received.  I especially liked the rainbow-like color change with blue as ever-present the background color. 




I can just get 4oz of singles on my regular sized bobbins. 



I Navajo plied my singles to preserve the color order and knit The Celtic





(The lighting was a bit dim for these pictures due to a few cruddy overcast days and if I used the flash, the cables were completely washed out.)

Pattern: Celtic Cable Neck Warmer by Lindsay Henricks
Yarn: My handspun for a guild member.
Mods: None. Although if I knit this again I will go down a needle size or two for the ribbing on the end so it doesn't flair quite so much.

And lastly...finally this weekend I can put in my gardens!  Everyone is queued up and waiting for an escort out of doors.

1.  Double points if you know what Cinco de Mayo actually celebrates -- nope, not Mexican Independence Day.  That's in September.  It celebrates the victory by the Mexican army over the French in 1862.  Begs the question why, but honestly so do a lot of invasions.   

2.  "This pring is wah-tach-ed to my toy. If the pring comes off, it is un-wah-tach-ed.  If it comes off wapidwee, it's care-wee."  This is my 4-year old interpretation the inner workings of the toy below. (Yes, admittedly kind of a weird looking toy.)  Although I completely understood him, I realize his some of his statements need to come with a bit of a translation as his speech moves between a tendency to drop leading s's to keeping the Shakespearean tradition of pronouncing the "ed" at the end of the word as a separate syllable. So we have "This spring is attached to my toy.  If the spring comes off, it is unattached.  If it comes off rapidly, that's scary."  Verwy imple.




3.  I've knit a couple of items from my own handspun yarn which does make it doubly satisfying. Here are some socks 'cause you can't have too many handknit socks.




Pattern:  Basic top-down socks
Fiber: BFL from Amy at Spunky Eclectic  - Lovely soft sheep breed  (The BFL not Amy.  Although I'm sure Amy is lovely, she's definitely not a sheep.)
Yarn:  247 yards of my 327 total

And I'm particulary proud of this as I had the design in my head, found a basic template in The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd and customized the pattern to get what I had envisioned. 

 

Pattern:  Vest - basic dimensions from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns
Fiber:  Wool and Llama from StoneEdge Fibers.  I know the shepherd as she goes the same spinning guild which is very cool.  I feel very connected to the fiber, yarn and vest -- very Zen.
Yarn: Two ply with one ply white and the other fawn.  Used less than 300 yards.  

4. If any of this entry doesn't make sense it's because DearSon talked to me non-stop for the hour I was typing. Literally.  Talk about multi-tasking.  The general gist was: Where is the big paper? (Next to the couch), Where are the markers? (In the playroom.) Why does the red marker write brown? (Wrong lid) How do you spell "Halloween"?  How do you spell "Midnight"? (I'm good at multi-taking but it is difficult to type and spell a completely different word at the same time.) How do you write a "D"? (A line with a big belly.) What's the day before Halloween?  (October 30th) How do you make a care-wee "H"? (Make the lines wiggly.)  "Mommy Loooooook!!!!!",  What's cotton candy? (Candy made of sugar.)  "Not cotton?" (No.) Where is the wooden fish? (I don't know), What is care-wee? (Ghosts?) , "Mommy looooook!!!!!"  Do you like my ghost drawing? (Yes.) Are light sabers care-wee? (No.  I was corrected.  Yes they are.)  Do all light  sabers have red buttons? (Yes?), "Mommy looooook!!!!!"  When can I have a Halloween party? ( This last one at least explains the theme of the questions.....Except for the wooden fish one.) 

5.  And finally, spring has sprung in western NY.  And by finally, I mean that it snowed giant fluffy flakes for several hours a week ago.  Then two days later, it was 80.  What?!  I took the plunge and put away all the wool hats, gloves, scarves, cowls and mittens.  (OK, I left out a pair of mitts for everyone, just in case it gets chilly again.  'Cause I just know that it will.)  So the following is brought to you by spring in my front garden.










(Yes, I have a garden gnome.  Yes, I think he's cute.  No, I do not talk to him. Well, maybe sometimes. Yes, I know.)

How the heck did it get to be mid-April??  It really only seems like days since the last blog, but it has been weeks.  I know it's been a while because my blog posting toolbar has completely changed since I last used it.  There's now a sigma up there on the tool bar -- I wonder what that is.  Um, hold on a second, I have to go and click on it to see what it does......Oh.  Ok.  That button "inserts a symbol" -- I wonder how they picked sigma to represent every other symbol available.  Huh?

So what has been up here....

There was a trip to Toronto to take in King Tut at the Ontario Art Museum.   (Did you catch the alliteration in that last sentence? What fun!) 



It was an amazing exhibit and one I had wanted to see ever since it first came through North America when I was 10.  It just blew my mind that we were looking at objects that were made 5000 years ago.  I think with all of our modern technology we're tempted to look on people who lived so long ago as "primitive" but clearly they were skilled  and sophitocated artisans that contemplated many of the big questions that every generation asks:  Where did we come from?  What is our purpose here?  And, of course.  How do I make the guy who is paying for this happy?  (There was a scultpture of a pharaoh showning him as a realistic human and others showing him as his god-persona, religious, cultural  and political leader of a united Egypt.  As there were far more sculptures of the latter, there's not a big leap to guess which was preferred.)

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures inside the museum so here we all are climbing on a Henry Moore scupture outside.


Thank you to the kind passerby who offered to take our picture.  It's nice to have proof that we were all actually there together. Although, you know there's always just a moment when I hand my camera to a stranger that I wonder if his next move is going to be say "OK, on 'three' smile.  One. Two." and then he sprints in the opposite direction with it.

There was a large collection of my favorite Candian artists, the Group of Seven andEmily Carr ,  Canadian landscape painters from the 1920s.
            
DD#1's interpretation                                                                        Emily Carr:  Red Cedar


Toronto is a great city to visit and I feel very lucky that we live with in a few hours of a world class city.  Here's a shot out our hotel window.


Can you see how many construction cranes fill the horizon?! 



Here's my prefunctory Artsy Urban Shot.


   

And although it was chilly, it was plenty warm enough to walk around some of the neighborhoods.  One of my very favorite is the Kennsington Market neighborhood.  And two of my favorite places in that neighborhood are the Market Bakery (I fall down very hard for pastry.) and Cheese Magic (What's not to like about cheese?).

So after a brief week home, we turned around again and made for Auntie Colleen's and Uncle Rob's house for Easter because as  DD#2 says, "It's a tradition".  Or rather "It's a TRADITION." with capital letters as in something you do not mess with. 


There were lots of Easter traditions, with a lower case "t", to be had.   The official posed Easter picture.  (Yes, we took about 15 posed pictures and  this was the only one that turned out without someone having a odd expression on their face.)


 The ever popular Easter egg hunt.


Dyeing eggs.  I particulartly like DD#2 spotted egg.


And though this has nothing to do with a Easter tradition, the similarity in hair styles between DearSon and the stuffed dog makes me laugh.

And, of course there has been knitting and spinning.

I (finally) finished this Lopi sweater.  I've been working on this one on and off for a year and finally decided during the cold snap in February that I would actually finish it.

 

Pattern: Britt a woman's traditional Icelandic Lopi sweater
Yarn: Reynolds Lopi
Mods:  I made the arms 5 inches longer than stated in the pattern!  What the?!  Do Icelandic people have particularly short arms?  Or should  I just come to the conclusion that mine are freakishly long?

There were socks for my DH:


Pattern:  Basic sock recipe
Yarn:  Yarn that I spun from roving I bought from a shepherd in our Handspinning Guild.  Lovely soft, lofty chain-plied heavy worsted weight.

And from my own "I'm a nerdy knitter" files:


Pattern:  Star Trek Insignia washcloths
The difference in sizes is due to the fact that I knit the green one continental and the purple one English style.  Adding to the nerdiness of these, I was doing an experiement to see what gauge differences would result from a different knitting techniques.