I can’t say that this kind of thing goes on in Portland. There’s the pickathon…but it looks like a “younger” festival. Different from one that has been going on each year, every year for the last 40 some-odd years.
Just something to think about.
Friday was mostly real estate day. We grabbed some coffee on the way to a doctor’s appointment.
In the waiting room of the doctor’s office, I knit on the socks of sucktion and we catch up with mum while dad gets checked out by various doctors (dad sees doctors regularly since he’s got a heart condition and is on several medications).
After the doctor’s offce we start our real estate day. We drove through Arlington, Watertown, Newton, Somerville and Brighton. We stop at a few houses from the book and others from dad’s own real estate searches. We have lunch at the Halfway Cafe which is really a bar that serves food and I order a steak and cheese sub. Why not? I’m on vacation. More driving around after (which is good for me since I get to work on the socks of suction some more) and eventually we head to the house in Winchester to drop off the first of the bags that represent the me and m's migration. M thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of our checked luggage option and haul some of our less essential housewares to the east coast. This would involve less shipping when we start the serious packing in a few months. My husband is nothing if not brilliant.
* * *
A few days later…
Well folks, it is nearly a month after I went on this trip and though I enjoyed myself, there was nothing that took place that warrants blogging a freaking month after the fact. So I present to you instead, a photo-essay of my trip to New England (I wish I had taken more photos):
Like father like son…most of my vacation time seemed to be spent hanging out with these two bozos lovely men while they surfed/played solitaire.
Can you see why I feel no guilt for doing this:
during my vacation with my in-laws?
We spent only about two days at the beach 
Jake and Sam playing in the sand
Left to right: Mum testing out the cold, cold water, Auntie Ann and sister-in-law K enjoying the sunshine, Mum deciding that she's had enough of the cold water.
Yes. It was very, very bright.
[The following has been edited to protect the innocent. 1)I don’t need y’all ogling my husband’s sexy physique. That’s my job. 2) Cousin Todd is a freaking PRIEST. So quit with the drooling and ogling janet and stacey!]
M looking out at the cold, cold water. Cousin Rachel (mother of Jake and Sam) sitting and relaxing.
M and cousin Todd cavorting in the cold, cold water. I think Todd was trying to convince M that he should go in. I think Todd didn’t realize how strong the current was as it tugged on his shorts to hang lower and lower and lower…
Mum and dad's cottage in New Hampshire.
Sister-in-law C having a beer and sharing stories with Great Uncle Jim (a.k.a. The Big Ragu).
Mum cooking up a 4th of July dinner. And a photo of the rice and an incredibly green drink.
The Wentworth-by-the-Sea is the hotel/country club where the wedding took place. Some of the guests stayed there and others mooched off of their room cards. Here we are lounging on the front deck, drinking cocktails and enjoying the summer afternoon. Left to right: Dad watching his wife and the bellhop unload the car, Dad and Uncle Ralph enjoying a cigar, m and Dad enjoying Uncle Ralph’s stories.
Waiting for the wedding ceremony to begin.
Dad and Mum in a rare moment of seriousness.
The lovely bride Carolyn with her handsome husband and all-around good guy Jeff.
Cousin Carolyn dancing with her father Uncle Tom.
Great-Cousin Larry Reynolds with Dad. He’s the Larry Reynolds of Irish fiddling fame. A retired carpenter, Larry spends 4-5 nights a week playing at pubs in Boston. He’s a local legend and nicer man you couldn’t meet. He shook my hand firmly at the end of the evening and told me that it was a pleasure meeting me and that I was “a stump of a woman.” I took it as a compliment, though I still do not know exactly what it means.
Left to right: Great Cousin Mary Reynolds, Phyllis Reynolds (wife of Larry), Great Cousin Larry Reynolds (a little cut off).
Left to right: Great Cousin Larry Reynolds, Carolyn, Dad.
M chatting with Cousin Sean.
Frye Doe (or Fried Dough). I had to do it. The bright neon signs along the beach were calling to me. It was 11:30 at night, after the wedding, after a few beers, just before bed and it needed to be done. I couldn’t finish the whole thing (it was huge! and greasy! and so disgusting but good!) but I’m glad I had it.
Random shot of my nightstand at the cottage. I wanted to show the tissue box and indicate how much I used. That was a fresh box that I cracked open when we arrived. And I was the only one using this tissue box. Damn. I hate my sinuses.
To sum up: New England is beautiful. My in-laws are nice (though tiring after spending day and night with them for 11 days straight). All in all, still a place I want to and am looking forward to moving to.
We celebrated our blessed union with dinner at a fancy-schmancy restaurant in Beverly Hills and a walk in Manhattan Beach after. Dinner was delicious though we were both a little uncomfortable at the restaurant. For a famous and fancy restaurant, the main dining area reminded me of an upscale food court at a high end mall. We had fairly crappy seating squeezed in between two couples that had us annoyed and jealous by turns.
Despite this and our over enthusiastic server, we had a delightful time. I mean, when you get to spend your evening dining with a great looking guy who is also a charming conversationalist how can you go wrong?
I thought about h and how she likes to recognize events in life (birthdays, the ringing in of the new year, anniversaries…). I can hear her asking: What did you learn from this last year? What do you hope for in the upcoming year?
I thought about this in reference to our marriage and here’s what I think:
Hm…I could say more. I could go on and on and extoll the virtues of being married to this guy. (There are many.) I could make you jealous by saying how he’s great because he always does the laundry. (Always. And the groceries too.) I could talk about how he’s wonderful and loving and makes me want to be a better person. (No easy task. Remember who he’s living with.) But I think I need to say no more than this:
Happy anniversary babe.
I love half day Fridays. You feel like you got some work done, then you get to go home and have the whole day ahead of you to get your personal life in order.
So I went to work and put in my requisite amount of hours. Then I had lunch with my friend StacyM. I forget that stace doesn’t like to be photographed. Here I am going to protect her rights and post a photo that doesn’t really show her face.
The other one I took is really cute, but since she seemed to be reluctant about being photographed, I’ll just post this one. Stace, shoot me an email and okay posting the other pic, woud’ya? Trust me, you look great in it.
Stacy and I had lunch at Chipotle and coffee at Peet’s (technically I had coffee at Peet’s), and we sniffed the jars of their tea selection and chatted and got caught up.
Then I went to the other yarn store (there are two in Beverly Hills within walking distance of my office. This would be dangerous except that I don’t like either of the owners and have only patronized their business in times of extreme duress. That’s right. Yarn emergencies. Like today.) to buy some knitting needles for a project in progress. I’ve only been in four yarn stores since I started up this knitting thing. Each time has been less than desirable with the exception of the one in New Hampshire from my last trip back east. The lady there was nice. She chatted with me in a friendly non-threatening way. She didn’t make me feel like she was watching to see if I would shoplift (okay, so maybe carrying an oversized bag that I dig in and out of isn’t such a good idea when in a cramped messy yarn store), she was genuinely helpful and even gave me her copy of a pattern for a cardigan. Her yarn was way overpriced and the selection wasn’t that great, but hey personality goes a long way. I’d go back and shop there again.
Anyways. I got through the other yarn store with minimal damage and only two disparaging remarks thrown my way (and the expected “May I help you?” loaded with the underlying meaning of “May I follow you around my store with my eyes on your hands like a hawk to make sure that you don’t steal any of my high-priced wool since people your age with belly button piercings are not to be trusted.” Believe me, I am not just being paranoid. She did follow me around, she did notice my belly button and remark on it. She did think that I was going to shoplift.).
I went home to be with my husband and the cats. The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur. M did paperwork (cough, cough. Sorted through his coupons.). Here he is saving money so fast that he is just a blur.
I feel like this is my homage to lomos. I wish I had a decent camera.
Here’s what he looks like in real time:
Truly he is thrilled. Do not let this crappy photo convince you otherwise.
Then I putzied around the house, not quite ready to be serious about anything. So I photographed my cats. I think you would all be alarmed at how often this takes place in my life and how numerous the photos are, of really, the same things over and over again. Cats in general are not interesting photography subjects, even my little fuzzy darlings. But, well, you know…I am the crazy cat lady around here.
Ocha stretching and being long.
Next. My montage of pekoe shots.
For some reason, I like to make him sniff my hand or feet. Kind of breaks things up you know?
Okay, okay, I need to move along before I embarass myself any further. I never claimed that my life was interesting.
Though it’s been unbelievably warm lately. I am that girl with piles of wool on her lap at any given moment. More specifically, I’ve been knitting a lot lately:
Though blurry, the socks of suction are complete (this is the only photo I have of them)and now reside happily on janet’s feet (or at least they would ‘cept it’s freaking triple-digit temperature here and only a crazy person would be wearing wool socks in an un-airconditioned apartment). Photo to follow as, er…cooler temperatures warrant.
After the success of finishing my learning socks (aka: the socks of suction) I completed a belated birthday gift that took several false tries to get going. Here’s attempt number three:
Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me during the making of cute pink socks #1 or #2. I am not the smartest of knitters. I had to abandon the above project when I was almost done with one sock. Abandoning here means unraveling the whole blessed thing. Argh. Cute though, aren’t they? But as socks go, they did not function well. For many reasons. And I am all about form+function.
The cute pink socks went through one more transformation before becoming these:
These would be the completed cute pink socks version #4.5. I had to rework the leg part because my husband (cough), I mean my fit-model complained that the cuff was too snug to pull the socks on past the heels. I unraveled the legs back to just above the heel and did some math. There was graph paper involved. And more than one night of falling asleep thinking about numbers divisible by 4 and the cabling pattern and something called “calf-shaping.” But it was worth it. It was a good learning experience and hopefully a welcome gift despite the insufferable summer temperatures.
I have two more on-going, no-deadline socks in my knitting bag. Sock number one is the first half of a pair of really pretty socks from the Knitting Vintage Socks book by Nancy Bush.
(Hard to see in this photo, but here is the sock I am working on in a different color yarn. I’ll post a photo when I remember to take one.) Here it is:
The orange strings are my ghetto stitch-markers. My co-worker thinks that I should design a sweater with intentional orange fringe-y things. I’ll think about it.
I get the strangest reactions about that book. When people see that in my bag or on my lap, they usually respond with: What? No way! How is such a book possible??
Which only speaks of their limited imaginations as far as I’m concerned. Why shouldn’t there be a book on knitting vintage socks?? I mean, duh. These are fun socks to knit, pretty pattern, interesting idea for a re-inforced heel (though quite dull and slow-going to knit through). I’m intrigued to see how the foot and toes work out. This sock pattern was started and ripped and started about 5 or 6 times over. It’s my learning curve.
For some reason all this ripping and restarting doesn’t faze me. I just kind of zen out over it and go through the motions over and over again. It’s kind of like a pleasant problem solving game that keeps me obsessed entertained for days hours on end. Not everyone is made for this. Every time I tell m about ripping back another almost complete sock, he looks pained. The man breaks out into a sweat when he sees me ripping madly through row after row of mistakes that took days hours upon hours to create. Knitting is not for everyone.
Sock number two in my knitting bag has yet to be started. Here’s the yarn that I intend to use for it:
Also from the Knitting Vintage Socks book, I am going to knit a pair for my dad-in-law. Photo to follow when I have cast on. Here’s a blurry photo from the book of the finished sock (for the love of god, I hate my digital camera!):
I have some vague notion of a goal to knit all the socks in the book while simultaneously outfitting the feet of everyone I know. I have a long road trip ahead of me early this fall. Might as well keep me entertained.
Socks are a nice portable project. I’ll probably always have one going on without a deadline. But my next deadline driven project is a sweater-jacket-cardigan thing I wanted to knit for my mum-in-law. I want it to be red and I want it to have some sort of Aran-Celtic-Fisherman motif going on. I considered designing something on my own. But just didn’t want to fight so hard. I found this in the nick of time:
It’s even the same-ish color. I got the pattern here and was pleased to see that the original was knit up in a knitpicks yarn which is great since they have such good prices for their yarn.
And because I just couldn’t help myself, I considered re-writing the pattern as I read it last night. You know, just to make it a little more personal, just because I wasn’t sure if I liked the back of the cardi to be so simple, just because I am that kind of person. But I thought it over (calculating the number of days I have between now and the birthday) and decided that I would just knit it as the pattern was written. It’s my first cardigan after all (it’s my first non-sock, non-rectanguloid project) so perhaps I shouldn’t be so ambitious. Big lie. If I didn’t have a deadline looming over my head, if I was knitting this for me or m (i.e., someone who is readily available for measuring and trying-on) I would be sitting hunched over a calculator and graph paper for the next few weeks days muttering: bring it on, cable pattern. I can take you.
But we are more mature than that. We make smart decisions. We lie when we have to.
