It's Like, Cosmic, Man.

My niece pointed me towards this, and while I wasn't quite sure I would find this sort of thing interesting, my niece is pretty cool, so I gave it a shot.

This is a video remixing parts of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Stephen Hawking's Universe series, setting it to music using autotune on their voices. It is actually really awesome! (I'm not sure what Autotune is, but just go with me.) Check it out!



KNITTING:

Everything but the grafting of the hem done on the Lace Dream shawl. I plan to undertake the grafting next Saturday or Sunday.

I cast on the Cathedral Window shawl. I'm not entirely sure I've got the right needle size. I figure I will wait until the first full pattern repeat is completed, then I'll look at it and see that I think. So far I've done the central few rows, plus half a repeat of the main motif -- at which point it starts over with the motif on row 1 through 24. I'm on 6 now, so tomorrow I should know if I'm going forward or if I'm ripping back and starting over on size 2's.

I DON'T KNOW WHY...

...this spoke to me. Except that, even as a child, I loved her so.

Prayers

Over the Rosh Hashanah holiday I mentioned to someone I know that, as I've been knitting recently, I was praying for a friend who had been ill for quite some time. This person was less taken by a man who knits than she was by a man who prays. (And this was at synagogue. Go figure.) She looked at me as if I'd just farted on her new sofa.

Is it so unusual to believe in prayer? Am I out of the mainstream, even for Jews? Is meditating on the life and health of a dear friend a sign of mental inferiority?

KNITTING

I'm approaching the end of the Lace Dream shawl. The length has reached my wingspan plus 4", so I expect I will knit another 8 inches or so and then begin the end hem. (I've not taken the time to figure out how the end hem happens. I figure I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!)

After that I will begin the Cathedral Window Shawl. I am going to knit it out of Cascade's Alpaca Lace in Amethyst -- this color way reminds me of the colors in the rose window in the Cathedral at Reims. (see the lovely picture.) I'll be using a finer yarn than the pattern and smaller needles. I will have to end up doing extra pattern repeats. I'm estimating that the edging will take me two weeks to knit.

It has not escaped my notice that extra repeats of the pattern will mean, when I get to blocking, I will have to pin out over 1,000 points on the edging. Does anyone know where I can buy T-pins by the pound? I've ordered 2 sets of blocking mats from Knitpicks. I figure they will come in handy when it comes time to block. Maybe I'll have a blocking party -- if 4 people are pinning out 1200 points, they only have to do 300 points apiece!

Does anyone want to come? Sometime next May or June? I'll make lunch?

MORE IRELAND

Knitting at the seaside.


Grafton Street - one of my favorite places in Dublin. I didn't buy much, but the street was welcoming and vital and a wonderful place to watch people.


This is the best pastry I had in Ireland...an apple tart served -- of all places -- in the tea shop at the Newgrange/Boyne Valley visitors center. I never passed up an opportunity to sit down and have a pot of tea!


I couldn't help but think of my sock knitting comrades back in the States! I now have visions of 75 knitters rushing to the interwebs looking for transparent Converse sneakers/trainers!

Norbert took this picture of me knitting at Malehide Castle. I felt very much at home, knitting there. If anyone has a castle they aren't using, let me know. I'll go and knit there.


Myfanwe and I both fell in love. We both want to go back. Now. And every day away is just a little sad.

WHAT ELSE?

The holidays have snuck up on me. I have four days to plan and prepare Rosh Hashanah dinner. My house looks like we are housing the Jodes for the summer.

How long should a generous rectangular shawl be? Really. I need to know.

[Editor's Note: Norbert fell in love with Ireland as well. I apologize for the omission. In addition, he deserves an award for being a real trouper. He is really quite pleasant to travel with. We are, as ever, eternally grateful that G-d gave us Norbert!]

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS...

... ABOUT VACATION:

These are just SOME of the pics. In no order. I'll post more if the whim strikes me.

We took a lovely hike on Howth Head. Aside from seeing Dear Sinead and Malachy, this may have been my favorite thing we did. Well, outside of the prison.

The views along the hike are breathtaking. The heather was in bloom. Those yellow flowers you see are orchids. Amazing. And then look at this:


This is Howth from the North. We hiked all the way to the end, around, then up to the summit. SOOOOOOO beautiful.

If you are ever in Sandcove, we highly recommend this pub. The BEST mushroom soup you could ever hope for. Perfect.


Rocks at the seaside at Sandycove.

Newgrange -- a Neolithic passage tomb in the Boyne Valley. Very, very cool.

The Boyne River. The water was high, and the river spirited.

The Hills of Tara. Note: The hills of Tara are active sheep pastures.

A statue of St. Patrick at the Hills of Tara.

And such a lovely view from Tara.

Dublin Castle

The castle garden:

The throne room.

Malahide Castle. (Which was in the Talbot family for over 800 years!)


Christ Church Cathedral:


Myfanwe and Nortbert at the water portion of the Guinness Storehouse tour.

I loved the name of this shop, but never got in to look for knoba for our diningroom sideboard.

This place is only open from 10 am to 1 pm, weekdays. And I was never walking by when it was open. I would have loved a keepsake tin or baking pan!

IT TAKES A VILLAGE!

...to knit a shawl!

SO, my friend, Cheri, needs some knitting help. Knitting MATH help. And, really, when maths rears it's ugly head, I become that simpering Barbie Doll from the 1980's, whispering in my breathiest baby doll voice, "Math is hard!"

Could you please read the comments to this post and see if you can come up with the answer? I tried, but the answer I came up with -- Eskimo Pie -- didn't sound right to me.

The winner gets a gold star!

[note: edited to include the link. I am such a doofus sometimes!]

Gobsmacked.

It has just occurred to me that I need to have the Lace Dream shawl done in 40 days. I still have 36 inches left to knit, plus hemming the bottom edge and blocking.

Of course, I've been working 11 to 12 hour days since we got back from vacation! But if I knit one inch a day, I can finish the shawl on time. I should be able to do this. Breaking it down into daily segments makes it seem less daunting.

IRELAND. Part One of Many!

Let’s see. Where should I begin? I guess I should start at the beginning. A very good place to start...

Day 1 – which is really day 1 and 2, but we are just going to call it day 1 .The flight to Dublin was awful. None of us slept for more than 5 minutes. I sat next to an obviously troubled older woman with a jerky husband. He complained loudly that the light above him wouldn’t turn off. He kept complaining, even after they offered to move them to two seats elsewhere in the plane. But no, they stayed where they were. Mrs. JerkyMan divided her time between a) commenting on my knitting and saying – at least 100 times – that she only knit wash clothes and only knit them out of “crochet cotton”, as well as giving me a price history for the price of crochet cotton at Wallmart stores in Virginia over the last 10 years; b) leaning over he tray table and whimpering and/or sobbing; and c) twitching in her sleep – especially when her feet were touching mine. (She twitched so actively, if we’d wrapped her in copper we could have generated electricity.)

Our first day in Dublin was exciting, but exhausting. Our hotel – the Ballsbridge Towers, one of the D4 hotels -- was lovely, and our accommodations were definitely first class. Both Myfanwe and I have live in (several) apartments that were smaller! Our suite had a living room and a dining room! (That sat 8, no less!) And a kitchenette. And 3 – count ‘em – THREE flat-screen televisions! We even had a television in the master bath! We LOVED the bathrooms. Norbert had his own, and ours had a great shower and a spectacular soaking tub (with said television). I didn't think we'd use the tub at first, but you'd be surprised how many times we used it. (Our feet hurt a LOT over the week!) The pics don’t really do the hotel room justice, as we always seemed to explode crap all over the room the minute we walked in, but it we certainly couldn’t have asked for more or better or more comfortable. (Myfanwe loved the duvet so much, I think she will miss it most of all!)

Sunday night we were supposed to meet my friend Sinead and her partner, Malachy, for a pint a bite, but along about 4:00 I called and asked if we could reschedule for the next night. I only did this when Myfanwe and I had both fallen asleep at the National Museum of Decorative Arts. (An excellent museum, BTW. Norbert loved the arms and armor exhibit.) We both fell asleep so soundly that, when we woke up, neither of us had a good idea of how long we’d been asleep. Sinead was kind enough to reschedule, and we went home to the hotel where we had every intention of ordering a pizza from D4Pizza in the hotel. Instead, we all passed out. Norbert with his clothes on. End of Day 1.

Knitting. Let's see. This isn't limited to Day 1, but I'll cover my knitting stuff all at once. I took three projects, and I knit on all three. On the way there I mostly knit on the Koigu scarf I'm knitting for myself. Stockinette can be terribly boring, after a while. But I put about 2.5 feet behind me. I also got half a repeat or so knit on the Lace Dream shawl. And I -- drum roll please -- finished the Ishbel I was knitting for Myfanwe. (Only just barely. I finished casting off in the air somewhere east of Wawa, Ontario on the flight home.) I went to a lovely shop, This is Knit, while in Dublin. -- see the pic, above . I didn't purchase anything, but I had a lovely time looking and talking to the staff.

Places I knit: Dublin Castle, Malaheide Castle, Kilmainom Gaol, on the train, on the bus, at the Guiness Storehouse, a couple of museums, a cemetary, Trinity College, seaside at Dun Laoghaire and at Sandycove.

FINALLY!

We leave for Ireland tomorrow!

Our bags are packed -- for the most part. I still have to decide which knitting project to take with me. I have the Lace Dream shawl on the needles, the Ishbel I'm knitting for Myfanwe, and a scarf I'm knitting for myself out of Koigu KPPPM in #P710. (I loved the yarn in a skein, bought it, then hated it once it was wound into a ball. But now that it is on the needles, knitting up, I'm completely in love with it.) I don't normally knit for myself, but I really do love the way this looks knit.

Anyway, in the morning we will do some last minute tidying -- Lil Myfanwe and Gale are staying with the kitty -- and then leave for synagogue for a bat mitzvah. We'll leave the bat mitzvah 15 minutes early to meet our ride to the airport. And from there? Dublin, Ireland!

I'll post pictures when I can. Until them, here is a topic to discuss in the comments: I wish President Obama would say the following in public: "Sarah Palin is a liar. If you believe her, you deserve to be lied to. Don't ask me to comment on Sarah Palin again. I don't have time for lightweights -- we have serious problems and we need serious minds. And that ain't Sarah."

Omaha!

IT'S NOT JUST FOR STEAKS ANYMORE!

Norbert's best friend from camp, Woodrow, was called to the Torah as a bar mitvah this morning, and Norbert was invited. While I love a good bar mitzvah luncheon as much as anyone, normally this wouldn't be anything to blog about. Except that Woodrow lives in Omaha, Nebraska, which is several blocks from beautiful Hyde Park, Chicago.

I want to have something to counter with when Norbert comes home from therapy and says I never cared for him. So I immediately said, "Great! I'd love to drive to Omaha! This will be fun!"

Mapquest says that Omaha is 7 hours, 52 minutes from our doorstep. And it is. As long as you can hold your water for 7:52, it might even be a minute or two more than you need. But no more. If you are middle-aged, have had a child, or worry about deep tissue thrombosis, it takes 9 hours.

I would venture, though, that it was well worth the drive.

In addition to two synagogue services -- no camera allowed -- a dinner last night and a luncheon this afternoon, we took a little walk on the Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge. See below.


The Kerry Bridge spans the Missouri River between Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. It's a pretty cool bridge. I don't know that I have ever seen a curved suspension bridge.

We walked to Iowa and back.


After the bridge, we went looking for a Starbucks on the way back to the hotel. Myfanwe was feeling a need. And we came upon a Starbucks in a lovely retail development -- lots of lovely shops clustered together. Myfanwe, bless her, suggested I drive around the shops to see if there was a yarn shop. And there was.

The shop is called String of Purls. And it might well be the most beautiful, comfortable, spacious yarn shop I have ever set foot into. This is just one room.


The owners and staff are incredibly nice women. They obviously love what they do, and they do it well. The shop, for lack of a better description, is sort of a Palace of Yarn. I could easily have spent an entire afternoon there. Everyone was so genuinely nice. If you are ever in Omaha, do yourself a favor and put String of Purl on your itinerary. You won't be sorry.

Don't ask me why I photographed this scarf. The best reason I can come up with is that I loved the whimsy. And I wondered how they made the i-cord off the edge of the scarf. It was pretty cool. I think I'd put some bells at the ends.

I have had a really good week at work. I feel like I'm getting back to my normal work again. (Which I really, really like.) My office no longer looks like the place used paper goes to die.

Blogging may be a rarity the next two weeks. Monday through Friday will, I imagine, be working hard at work, then coming home to get packed for Ireland. (And we will need to tidy up the house -- Li'l Myfanwe and Gale are house sitting for us.) I'll try to blog from Ireland, but I don't know how good the connection to the interwebs will be at the hotel. If the connection isn't good, or if we are having such a wickedly good time that I can't pause for a mo to block, I promise lots of pictures and a travelogue when we return.