Sock Knitting Librarian

South America Day 17: A Day in Uruguay, or Meandering Through Montevideo

2011-09-01T13:05:00.000-04:00

Note from the present day: Still doing catch-up on South America; trying to clear this out so I can write about Alaska this September!

December 5, 2009

Since this is our only day in Uruguay, we decided to make the most of it. We went ashore at 11:30 or so, and this time we didn't need to use tenders - the Sun had the first spot on the dock, right at the edge of the Ciudad Vieja (the Old Town). As you can see by the Bridge Cam

we were practically parked on land.

At the end of the gangplank, someone handed us a map with a very nice walking tour which we followed to see the sites of interest. The first one was very easy to locate - we had to go right through it to get to the actual streets.

The German pocket battleship Graf Spee was scuttled in Montevideo's harbor during World War II, and a fair part of the ship is still underwater just off shore. Uruguay has been in the process of raising the wreck for several years - the thing is less than 40 yards underwater and is a hazard to navigation - and some of her salvaged parts are on display right here by the cruise ship docks. Dad was most impressed with the enormous range-finding telemeter

which is the biggest single piece of Graf Spee debris to have been salvaged. The anchor and some massive gears are also displayed:

We followed our map past the Mercado al Puerto and found a nice pedestrian mall lined with market stalls

and flea-market stands selling antiques and collectibles (I think South America has decided that all weekends are Flea Market Day).

Dad was struck by one seller's collection of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro merchandise. I think I've figured out how all those free-range South American dogs stay alive, too - one vendor had packs of dog kibble for sale. I guess you can feed them like you'd feed pigeons.

A few blocks up and over, we arrived at the Plaza Zabala, a square-block-sized park furnished with lovely benches where we parked ourselves for a few moments.

To one side of the plaza (far left, below) they were setting up either a wedding reception or some kind of floating restaurant operation:

The centerpiece of this plaza is a large statue of Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, the founder of the city of Montevideo.

As you can see, grateful Montevideans have improved the statue by personalizing it with attractive red spray paint.

We zigged and zagged on our way out of the Plaza to arrive on a long pedestrians-only street

lined with more commercial emporia than we had seen earlier, including some familiar friends.

Hey - I could get Buster's prescription kibble here!

Despite the Coke signs and fast-fooderies, this area has a real old-world feel, and the mall eventually led us to the Plaza Constitución, the oldest part of the Old Town. The cathedral is built at one corner of the Plaza, and since I love church architecture I left Dad for a few moments to go in and try to take some pictures.

Apparently I took quite a while - Dad asked me if I'd been to Mass when I came out. And to top it off, almost all of my tripodless efforts were sadly out of focus. Sigh.

Dad had plenty to amuse himself while waiting for me, though, because this Plaza too was chock-full of flea-marketeers,

plus he had a band to listen to!

By this point we were getting hungry, so we started working our way back through town. On the way we observed that Montevideo is home to some accomplished graffiti artists

with strong opinions on national economic issues.

Our lunchtime goal was the Mercado del Puerto back near the cruise ship docks. The Mercado consists of an indoor maze of lunch counters, sellers of souvenirs and local crafts, and more lunch counters, housed in a single building a city block on a side. (Okay, I exaggerate - the short end of the building is only half a city block.)

You walk in and instantly start to salivate, because you can smell this:

MEAT! This is no place for vegetarians; the entire air is pervaded with the delicious aroma of the grill. It was a bit chaotic, and very crowded - we thought the lunch rush would be over by 2 PM, but I guess not - but Dad and I thought we'd figured out the system. Would-be diners would stand behind people who looked like they were almost done, then slip onto their stools when they got off them, kinda like when you follow somebody to their car to snag their parking spot when they leave. We were waiting behind four people who were in the process of paying up, and the counterman had caught our eye so he knew we were there. Everything seemed to be good. Then the diners got up - and this Swedish tourist guy from off to the side slipped in there with two other folks in tow. Dad was so mad I thought he was going to pop them one, but since we had no language in common there seemed to be no way to address the issue.

There was no way we were starting that game again, and besides the crowds were kind of getting to us, so we decided to go back to a sidewalk restaurant we'd seen earlier - a bit more expensive but nobody would poach our seats. We were seated almost immediately by a cute little hostess

and we ordered a skewer of tenderloin to split between us. I tried to order the beef medium, but it arrived rather rare; I don't know if it was my Spanish that caused the trouble, but I gave Dad all the cooked bits and ate the others myself - I like them better that way anyhow. We were entertained during our meal by a passing street performance:

The little hostess and I chatted in my bad Spanish and her bad English: I told her la comida esta deliciosa, and asked if I could take her picture, she hugged me and said I was "beautiful person" and we parted, all mutual appreciation.

Back at the pier, we discovered an internet cafe right in the looming shadow of the Norwegian Sun,

so we delightedly spent $4 emailing John and Arlene and looking up a new sock knitting pattern for me before returning to the ship for our final evening aboard. As you might expect, we spent ages getting all packed up, and I actually succeeded in getting everything I'd need for Buenos Aires into my wheeled carry-on and my day bag; the big suitcase contains only dirty laundry. It has to be outside the cabin door before we go to bed. Sigh - tomorrow starts early.

Thamnophis Socks

2011-08-19T18:05:00.000-04:00

I just completed a new sock pattern.

Download available here

Cute Dog Videos

2011-06-28T15:48:00.000-04:00

Today I ran across two irresistible dog-containing videos. I must share!

Britain's worst sheepdog, a border collie with a phobia of sheep:

and the cutest 46 seconds I've seen all day:

tired from Matt Wiebe on Vimeo.

South America Day 16: The Last Sea Day

2011-01-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

December 4, 2009

We discovered almost too late that the Pacific Heights restaurant,

healthy by night, is a full-on waffle house at breakfast time!

They have four waffle makers going full tilt, plus giant tubs full to the brim with softened butter and whipped cream and warmed syrup with which to slather and drench your breakfast. Ah, had we found you earlier! I am getting far too used to this sort of thing.

Since the penguins were safely "in the can" I no longer felt obliged to save camera space for anything, and I spent a fair part of the day rambling around the ship filming things like the ship's library

the Observation Lounge, where I met with the little knitting group we developed,

the Sun Deck (there's finally some sun!)

and the glass elevators in the Atrium that Dad found endlessly fascinating.

I tried to film the casino,

but for some reason they made me stop. (Although one of my very favorite books, Last Call by Tim Powers, is all about Vegas, I actually have very little interest in casinos. I'm cheap, and I hate losing money far more than I'd like winning it, if I ever won any!)

Later we had a presentation from Eduardo, which was supposed to cover disembarkation procedures for day after tomorrow and what to expect in Buenos Aires. Sadly, it turned out to be very repetitive (put colored ribbons on all your luggage, match the color to your bus color, watch out for criminals, buses, ribbons, ribbons, buses) so after half an hour or so Dad and I decided we'd got the gist, and went off to get in line for dinner. It is Lobster Night in the main dining room, and since NCL is a little stingy with the crustaceans outside of the specialty restaurants, we didn't want to miss. In fact, they were still being a little stingy - my "lobster" consisted of half a small lobster tail - but there were a lot of scallops in there and they were tasty.

Nine-thirty found us at the best show we saw on the cruise: "Encore". It was a revue of songs from Broadway musicals including Hairspray, The Producers, Aida (a pair of fabulous ballet dancers complemented the song), In the Heights (an unfamiliar Latino-barrio star-crossed romance story), Wicked, Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia. The dancers and singers were a lot of fun, and they wound up with a soppy "NCL Loves You" song where employees from all the departments, including the Captain, the chefs, people from housekeeping, etc, came on stage. I spotted one of our room stewards, Ferdinand, and we all clapped till our hands were sore. The chefs got a standing ovation.

South America Day 15: Chocolate Extravaganza

2011-01-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

12/3/09

We had to turn back eventually, though Dad found one last photo op:

We were back at the bus well before all the stragglers, then almost immediately got off again to take a photo of a group of guanacos.

While admiring them I was chatting with our guide and mentioned that there was guanaco yarn available on the Web. She was extremely excited because she'd heard that there was a project to support guanaco conservation by selling yarn, but she didn't know the yarn was on the market yet. I must say that just by observation there seem to be a lot of guanacos out there, so the conservation efforts seem to be working.

The return drive was less entertaining than the drive out, mostly because the air conditioning in the bus broke. Faint cries from the soft American tourists went unheeded as the driver pushed all the buttons without effect. The blower was kaput. I slept as much as possible to get through the time faster. An hour out of Puerto Madryn they had a brainstorm: How about if we open the roof vents? (The passengers' earlier efforts to open the bus windows had been stymied by industrial sealant and impervious locking mechanisms. Hey, they warned us right on the NCL website that for Patagonian buses, working AC and microphones were the exception, not the rule!)

We were back on board the Sun in plenty of time, much to the chagrin of us thwarted penguin lovers - we could easily have had another half hour at Punta Tombo. I can't really blame our guide, though - I imagine NCL gets a bit cranky if they have to delay sailing because a tour bus isn't back yet.

We stayed up till 10:30 that night because there was a Chocolate Extravaganza in the main dining room from 10:30 to 11:30. There was a long line - we should have gone down early - but once in it was very pretty, with ice sculptures and beautifully arranged platters of delicacies everywhere. (Drat! I forgot to bring my camera.) I had to wake Dad up to come down for it, but he thought it was worth it!

South America Day 15: Penguins!

2011-01-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

12/3/09

After three hours plus of bus-time, we negotiated the last leg of out trip over a very dusty road marked "Drive Slow", which we were assured represented a vast improvement over the previous unimproved gravel road. At least now we have pavement.

We arrived at the Punta Tombo Penguin Rookery just after noon and we were told to be back on the bus by ten to one. We were a little miffed to have our penguin encounter cut so short, having paid muchos dólares to come, but what can you do? The ship sails when it sails, and we still have to drive three hours back.

We walked up a hill covered with the same kind of scrub that we'd been looking at all along, but all of a sudden I noticed that most of the bushes have holes or scrapes dug under them, and every hole contains penguins!

These are Magellanic Penguins, one of the smaller sorts (around 18" tall) with a lot of bold black-and-white striping on their heads and around their bellies and a pink circle around their red, beady eyes.

The penguins in or near the holes are usually preoccupied with tending a pair of chicks:

There's no telling if this is the mom or the dad; the two sexes take equal turns in child raising. The chicks hatched about a month ago, and from then on the parents are on an endless rotating shift: one stays with the babies and the other goes in the ocean after fish, then comes back and feeds them to the chicks (regurgitates, actually - yick!). Then they switch shifts and the other parent goes fishing. This is why tourists are restricted to the path between some white stones (visible in the upper left, below)

while the penguins have the right of way. They go back and forth to the ocean a lot!

We learned a number of interesting penguin-raising facts from our guide on the drive down.

Magellanic penguins mate for life, but it's really more like they buy a house for life and the mate just comes along with. At the age of five, they choose a nest site that's within 100 yards or so of the nest they were born in, and they come back to that same nest - and the same mate - for the next fifteen years.
If the parents die before the eggs hatch, another penguin will adopt the eggs. However, if the chicks have already hatched they are not adopted.
During chick-raising season the parents don't eat for themselves at all. They just feed the babies until the babies molt at age 6-8 months. They grow adult feathers (solid black and white, with no stripes) which lets them swim, and they're on their own.
Next, the parents molt (Analise says they are so thin by then you can see their wishbones) and when they finally grow their feathers back they go to sea and eat for three months straight. The males come ashore then (in September) and get the nests ready, while the females keep eating until October, when they come to land, mate and lay their two eggs.
You'll note that one chick is a lot larger than the other. That one hatched first and has a head start from there on; the other one is a backup chick and sooner or later it'll get crowded out of being fed at all. Only if Big Chick meets with an accident - like getting eaten by a gull or a skua

- does Little Chick get to grow up. Nature red in tooth and claw, I guess.

Adolescents between the ages of one and five come back home and hang around their parents' nest while they molt. Annalise said in February the beaches are just crammed with penguins: parents, chicks, adolescents molting - like half a million individuals. Even though there aren't that many here yet, there are still plenty!

There are also a lot of penguins who aren't tending nests. I assume these are mostly the 2-4 year olds; they don't have much to do with their time except preen,

bask,

stand around,

and practice adult behaviors:

(It's the wrong season for real mating; these two are just fooling around.)

Those wooden bridge-looking things above are elevated walkways the parks service has built for the tourists, that the penguins just scoot right under. They're a favorite hangout for the unattached, who are extremely curious and like to investigate these odd creatures who keep pointing shiny glass objects toward them. One of them got almost close enough for me to touch:

Warning: If you are at all susceptible to motion sickness you may want to skip the rest of the videos. I'm not exactly a steadicam operator.

Preening Penguin

Cheeping Chicks

I'm Following You

Fall Down Go Boom

Muleteer Socks

2010-12-28T01:08:00.000-05:00

This is my first attempt to design a sock pattern - or really to write down one of my favorite sock construction recipes. I hope it is helpful!

Linkapalooza (or, "All I seem to do is link videos anymore")

2010-12-04T23:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a great video: a paean to my favorite species, set to great music...oh yeah!

Would You, Could You Playaway?

2010-11-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

1. My library has a chance to win $10,000 from the Playaway people, who publish books on lovely little dedicated MP3 players.

2. My mad librarian friend has made a pretty funny video to express our delight with Playaways, and hopefully generate votes.

3. Please Vote For Us Here! (Each of your email addresses gets a vote!)

Knitting Friends, you must view this:

2010-11-06T22:10:00.003-04:00

in case of embedding failure click linky

Cool YouTube Find of the Day

2010-10-29T12:47:00.000-04:00

link text

Incredibly funny pug picture!

2010-10-06T22:58:00.003-04:00

Now THIS is what I want to be for Halloween! (Of course, I'd need another pug...)

see more My Food Looks Funny

This is My Life

2010-09-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

see more dog and puppy pictures

If you can't see, click here.

Calling All Cat Lovers

2010-09-11T12:14:00.001-04:00

New IKEA Ad Campaign

"Making Of" Video

Unbearable cutitude!

Silent Star Wars!

2010-08-11T17:47:00.001-04:00

Hope you enjoy today's Youtube hilarity:

As a librarian, I HAD to share this!

2010-07-24T09:41:00.004-04:00

Remember "I'm on a horse"? Well, here's one library response:

If you can't see the embedded video, click this link:

http://creativecriminals.com/tvcinemafilm/harold-lee-library-old-spice-spoof/

Winston in Triumph

2010-07-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

The other day our library had its annual Pet Show out on the back lawn. I usually go to pet everyone else's pets, but this year I brought my own: Winston!

I felt bad leaving my other dog, Buster, home - he'd have loved to come too, but he's a little bigger and has a tendency to knock little children over and lick them when they're down. Winston is a bit more portable.

We had a fabulous time. Winston has never had so much love in one day. He met other dogs,

and was petted and had his ears skritched by child

after child

and if any noses got within his range, he kissed him. (Some of his victims regretted letting him do this: his breath could be better.) Whenever he seemed to get tired of being patted, I gave the next child a piece or two of kibble from a stash in my pocket. Pugs are very food-motivated; he perked right up again!

All of my fellow librarians who could, came out to meet him. We're a very dog-loving department.

No pet who comes to the Pet Show leaves without his just reward. Winston is now officially the Best Kisser!

All photos in this post courtesy of my friend Goldiebug, who usually gets stuck being our library photographer. Thanks so much!

Why Dyers Reskein

2010-06-26T18:32:00.000-04:00

I thought my new self-striping yarns looked pretty good yesterday. I twisted them into fake skeins to photograph them, but the yarn was still really in those ultra-long loops I dyed it in. I could have left it that way but I didn't know how long it'd be before I dyed all of it, and I was concerned about potential tangling. So I dug out my old inkle loom and wound the yarn into standard-sized skeins.

Transformation!

It Is A Good Day to Dye

2010-06-25T00:31:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday Sarah and I had our first annual dyeing day. Sarah's good enough to store all our dyeing junk in her garage, so when I got up there around 11 AM I started hauling it out and setting it up like a whirlwind because I had about eight skeins of yarn I wanted to dye.

We ordered a bunch of new acid dye colors from the Dharma Trading Company so the first couple hours was consumed by making stock solutions, but by about 1:30 or 2 I was ready to begin. As it turned out, I was only able to get four skeins dyed, but I'm extremely satisfied with my results, and I was so pooped I could barely move on Sunday, so I guess I worked hard enough. (Sarah managed to dye three sweaters' worth of yarn! I don't know how she did it.)

I keep thinking I should learn to love some of the more random techniques, so I "jar-dyed" my first skein. I hadn't done this before - I picked up the technique off a Ravelry forum called "Love To Dye". You take your dry skein of yarn and stuff it in a quart size canning jar, then toss in small amounts of several colors of dye. Then you fill the jar with a mixture of vinegar and water and microwave it until the water is clear. It's pretty cool when you pour the water in and the colors *poof* into being down the sides of the jar!

Here is the resultant skein:

The yarn is Knitpicks' Bare Sock Yarn and I used little spoonfuls of Dharma's Caribbean Blue, Deep Magenta and Strawberry Red plus Jacquard's Scarlet. If I use this technique again I'm going to layer in some dye powder while I'm stuffing the yarn in the jar, since very little color migrated to the inner layers of the skein. I sort of like the white-plus-color look I got here but I'd been shooting for a red-and-purple skein. I name all my colorways even though I have no intention or ability to go into production and sell my skeins, so this one is dubbed Surprise!

The other three skeins were somewhat fiddly handpaints, so that's why they took me so long. I like knitting patterned socks in semisolid yarns, but I also LOVE knitting plain socks in self-striping yarns. I wore last year's favorite pair of hand-dyed self striping socks

clean through the heel in just under three months. (Cue sad, sad face.) This particular yarn was 100% superwash merino, and clearly I am too hard on my socks for this, which is why I'm switching back to yarns that have some nylon in them. Enter my new favorite: Sheila's Gold from Wool2dye4.com! This yarn is a blend of wool and nylon, and it's tightly plied so it looks like a string of beads when you get close enough. It's light and fluffy, and the only drawback from my perspective is that it's thinner than the sock yarns I like best, which can only be described as "beefy". I love the ones that are right on the edge of Sport, about 360 yards per 100 grams, while Sheila's Gold is listed as 400 yards to 100 grams. Still, that's why they make little needles, isn't it?

Prior to dyeing day I wound three long skeins, about 25-30 feet around. I tied them in a bunch of places, chained them up like a warp to keep them from tangling, and soaked them over Friday night. I wanted the socks to end up with two highly contrasting ~1/2 inch stripes sort of like Dorrie the Little Witch's stockings, or maybe Pippi Longstockings. I dyed half of each skein solid black and then painted the other half in a variegated colorway.

Here's the first one:

I love, love, love the pale apricots and pinks and yellows I used on the colored half of this skein. They remind me of Valentine's Day cookies or petit fours or tea cakes. The black half of the skein is actually black-brown because the dye stock I used had been in storage for a year and the color sort of went off. It fortuitously works out, though - I think of it as devil's food cake and that goes with the tea cake/petit four thing. The colorway names for this set of yarns come from book titles (I'm getting my librarian geek on), so this skein became Sympathy for the Devil.

I mixed new black dye stock for the other two skeins, so they have true black as their dark half. For There's Something About St. Tropez,

I used Dharma's Caribbean Blue and Jacquard's Sun Yellow. The skein really makes me think of ocean waves and beaches.

The last skein is my favorite, though. I called it Vampire Kisses,

and it's got all the rich juicy reds I love.

Now I have a terrible problem: I can't decide which one to knit first! I think I'll put them in a bag and pick one at random: that's the only way to be fair!

What a DAY!

2010-05-30T19:11:00.000-04:00

Today my friend Sarah and I met up with my other friend Chrissy and her family at the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster. This is the 15th annual show, but today is the first time I've gone. We had a fabulous time!

There are getting to be a lot of these fiber shows around - I'm not sure if there are more these days because knitting, spinning, etc. are getting more popular, or if I'm just noticing them because now I knit (and I've dabbled in spinning although I kicked the habit some years ago.) This show had a competition for handspun skeins of yarn, and for fleeces, and a sheep auction.

They also had VENDORS. Four barns full of vendors.

I went in with a certain budget in mind, and I came within fifteen dollars of staying inside it. I feel pretty proud of myself! Oddly enough I did not come home with a bunch of sock yarn; there were some really pretty skeins of it there but I ended up not buying any. What I did buy was two enormous skeins of worsted weight Corriedale from Briar Rose Fibers - enough for a sweater - in a lovely hand-dyed purple-and-goldy-brown combo. I'm going to make an Every Way Wrap, although I am going to change the cable section to something else because cabling? Not my favorite. Love the look, hate to do.

Now, I forgot my camera (KICKING MYSELF), but interesting sights included

* an entire wall of Createvely Dyed yarn - they had an ENORMOUS display.

* A number of adorable alpacas, all newly sheared, so their wooly heads looked like big lollipops on skinny curved sticks. A couple of them didn't mind being patted, although alpacas generally are shy and don't really like petting.

* An adventurous sheep who slipped his leash and ran off through the crowd. He was a black sheep, and maybe he felt he had to live up to it, but he (or she - I really couldn't tell; he was in swift motion) eluded one set of would-be captors by leaping five feet in the air and landing well beyond them. Then the idiot animal dashed into one of the vendor barns and was causing great consternation in there when somebody closed the sliding door we were watching through. I heard later that the sheep was caught and returned to captivity so someone must have grabbed it before it escaped to the other end of the barn. It strikes me that there is a reason Scripture refers to humankind as sheep a lot, and it isn't a compliment.

* An enormous ram being auctioned. I'm not that expert in sheep anatomy, but no way was that an udder.

* Some very cute sheep waiting for auction, who liked having their ears skritched. My skin liked their lanolin, too!

By the time we had seen all this I was tired and hungry and a bit fried by the sun - Chrissy (the well prepared Mom) had given me some sunscreen, but it was HOT today. Our group was too big to keep together; we kept peeling off and meeting back up with one another, but by early in the afternoon everyone was done. As in, stick a fork in me - I'm done!

We all went our separate ways. Sarah and I ate a late lunch at Matsos, a Wooster eatery we'd often gone to in our college days, and then we drove slowly up through campus toward home.

That's when it got weird. We stopped in the street in front of Wagner Hall, our old dorm where we roomed together, and were reminiscing about college, and then I went to pull away. I had the horrible sensation that something was wrong with the car, and there was this sort of suck-WHUMP sound. Turns out that I'd stopped the car with the left rear tire right on a big, gross road patch and when I went to drive off it pulled right out of the street and went with us. Naturally it couldn't fit through the wheel well, and there we were, gooped tight.

Sarah ran across the street where there was some decorative stonework, to try to find a flint hand-axe to scrape the tar off. She made some progress with the scraper but soon ended up pulling at it with her hands. I tried, too, and soon I was even further be-tarred than she was; I had it thickly plastered all over both hands, including over most of my fingertips and nails. Giving up on sanitation, I just pulled the worst of the goop off and dumped it back in the pothole it came from.

Now what could I do? I had to drive us out of there, but if I even touched my steering wheel, I was never letting go again. I probably should have looked for sand or dust - that's what Sarah did - but I had the bright idea of layering the tar with grass so I could touch my steering wheel without adhering to it. Green furry paws is what I ended up with, and to add insult to injury they were still tacky. I gripped the steering wheel around some paper and drove gingerly northward.

We decided to try the Speedway gas station on the North end of Wooster, hoping that they'd have some kind of solvent. At first they sprayed us with some kind of scrubbing-bubble cleanser, which helped a tiny bit, but it wasn't looking good. Then Sarah, who is still working in chemistry and who therefore has a more recent grasp of solubility and solvents than I do, had a brain wave and grabbed a bottle of fuel-injector cleaner, which worked like a DREAM! I have hands again!

For the rest of the evening I refuse to do anything more strenuous than push the button on the remote control. I deserve some rest, after my day of rest!

Ah, the exciting life!

2010-05-18T16:30:00.002-04:00

People think of libraries as peaceful, sleepy places where nothing much happens.

Hah.

There I was, about 12:30 this afternoon, peacefully eating my lunch and playing Sudoku on the web, when a loud voice rang out from the PA: “Everybody please evacuate the library immediately!”

Well, we have regular fire drills so we knew what to do: starting from the back of the library we swept all the patrons before us, out the front door, and chivvied them over to the far end of the parking lot. It was cold, and drizzling, and everyone hoped against hope that some kid had just pulled the fire alarm and they’d allow us back in shortly.

Then we noticed the fire department had the street cordoned off. Someone told us there was a bomb scare: a suspicious package had been found at the gas station on the corner, and we should all to go home for an hour!

I figured it’d turn out to be a false alarm – Stow is a pretty small target, after all – so I went peacefully home and took my dogs for a walk. Sure enough, an hour later my boss called to tell me I had to come back to work. But still nobody knew what had really happened.

Turns out that the whole center of town was paralyzed by a duct taped box of used kids’ toys!

More Puggy Humor

2010-04-28T19:35:00.002-04:00

Click through to view, if necessary!

moar funny pictures

I love my department!

2010-04-28T12:44:00.000-04:00

I work with some great people at my library. For example: one of my colleagues thought we needed a little morale booster. So she ordered us some custom M&Ms!

Ref rules? We rock? No, Barbara - YOU rock! (I think it worked!)

The pitter patter of little feet...er...paws

2010-04-27T12:46:00.004-04:00

It's high time I announced an addition to my family!

He's been seen before, briefly, but this post is entirely about my newest baby: Winston!

I've been looking for a new dog since I lost my beloved Stormy in 2008; some of you were with me during the Great Princess Debacle of 2009. Late last fall I applied to Ohio Pug Rescue and in late January I got Winston!

He had a sad story: Winston was in the pound, where he'd been taken after being picked up as a stray. I don't know if his original owners were feeding him caramels or what, but he had such advanced periodontal disease that the pound had classed him as "unadoptable". Pug Rescue pulled him out of the pound in September and spent the rest of the year getting his teeth back in shape - the remaining teeth, that is; his foster mom was calling him "Gumby"!

(I renamed him for obvious reasons.)

Of course, this sad story has ended happy. He's well embedded here.

Like most pugs, he likes it best on the sofa, and good luck keeping him off it, though he learned pretty quickly that he's not supposed to go on the love seat. He's a veteran snuggler, cuddling beside me while I watch TV and knit, helping me type on my laptop, and keeping me warm at night. (During the last cold snap he developed a new tendency to go under the covers, which I think is hilarious.) He snores and snorts, and when he sleeps with his head on my leg he sort of whistles through his nose. I also think this is hilarious. There may be something wrong with me.

Despite these respiratory issues, Winston is quite active, and likes to go on long brisk walks with me and Buster.

Of course, the first month or so there was easily 14" of snow on the ground. Winston has about an 8" ground clearance. That was fun.

He's also a big sweet kisser.

Green

2010-04-19T18:18:00.000-04:00

If you can't see the video, click here.

An Embarrassment of Riches

2010-04-18T00:35:00.000-04:00

Oh dear. As if I didn't have enough things to do...

I'm taking a quick break from South America to celebrate - or wallow in - nostalgia. School Library Journal recently conducted a poll which resulted in a list of the "Top 100 Children's Books". Now, nobody agrees completely with these Top 100 lists; I use them as reminders of things I loved and suggestions of things to look into.

The list is below. It turns out that I've read 53 of the 100 (thanks to my Teen Librarian friend Christina who has handed me some of the more recent entries on the list). I feel pretty good about that. But now I'm working my way through the book descriptions on the SLJ blog and my to-read list is getting pretty long. As is my to-re-read list. Now all I have to do is learn to read and sleep at the same time!

#1 Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
#2 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
#3 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
#4 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
#5 From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
#6 Holes by Louis Sachar
#7 The Giver by Lois Lowry
#8 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
#9 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
#10 The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
#11 The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
#12 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
#13 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#14 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
#15 Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
#16 Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
#17 Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
#18 Matilda by Roald Dahl
#19 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
#20 Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
#21 Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riodan
#22 The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
#23 Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#24 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
#25 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
#26 Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
#27 A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett
#28 Winnie-the Pooh by A.A. Milne
#29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland /Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
#30 The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
#31 Half Magic by Edward Eager
#32 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
#33 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#34 Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
#35 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire JK Rowling
#36 Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
#37 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
#38 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
#39 When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
#40 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
#41 The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
#42 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#43 Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary
#44 Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
#45 The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
#46 Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
#47 Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
#48 The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
#49 Frindle by Andrew Clements
#50 Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
#51 The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright
#52 The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
#53 Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
#54 The BFG by Roald Dahl
#55 The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
#56 Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
#57 Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
#58 The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
#59 Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
#60 The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
#61 Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
#62 The Secret of the Old Clock (The Nancy Drew mysteries) by Caroline Keene
#63 Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
#64 A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck
#65 Ballet Shoes by Noah Streatfeild
#66 Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
#67 Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville
#68 Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
#69 The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
#70 Betsy Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
#71 A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
#72 My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
#73 My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
#74 The Borrowers by Mary Norton
#75 Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
#76 Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
#77 City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
#78 Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
#79 All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
#80 The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
#81 Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
#82 The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
#83 The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
#84 Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
#85 On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#86 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
#87 The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
#88 The High King by Lloyd Alexander
#89 Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary
#90 Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
#91 Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
#92 Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
#93 Caddie Woodlawn by C. R. Brink
#94 Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
#95 Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
#96 The Witches by Roald Dahl
#97: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
#98 Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
#99 The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
#100 The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Joy

2010-04-04T23:03:00.004-04:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Yes!

(image thanks to http://freechristimages.org)

Happy Easter, Everybody!

Okay, my mind is now officially blown

2010-03-11T22:42:00.001-05:00

I was wondering why it seemed that life was accelerating on me, faster than my ability to keep up.

Now I know.

In Which This Blog Dabbles in Art History

2010-03-11T20:13:00.010-05:00

Did you ever have an itch you couldn’t scratch? A “the word is RIGHT on the tip of my tongue” moment? I call them input/output errors. Yeah. Try being like that for four years.

I have a taste for the religious art of the middle ages and Renaissance – undoubtedly a legacy from my long years in the SCA. Awhile back I found an image I really liked, and I borrowed it from the Internet – I had this program that would turn any digital image into a jigsaw puzzle you could do on your computer – but I neglected to write down the artist’s name, or the name of the image either. And since you just copied and pasted the picture into the puzzle program, I didn’t even have an actual digital image on my computer!

So ever since then, I’ve been trying to remember who painted it, since I keep talking about it and I want my victims to be able to see what it looks like!

Now, I figured I remembered enough distinctive things about this painting that I should be able to find it using Google-fu. I knew:

1. It was a painting of the Crucifixion.
2. I’m not a learned art historian, but I’ve done a lot of looking and I can recognize some of the major national styles. My painting was definitely in the Flemish or German style - not Italian at all! Also, it used linear perspective, so it could have been painted no earlier than the early to mid 1400s.
3. The painting – and here’s the unique thing – was set inside the nave of a church. The cross is planted right there on the black-and-white tile, and stretches up until it almost touches the vaulted ceiling.
4. The reason I find this painting so powerful is this: way in the back of the church, you can see a priest celebrating the Mass. He is elevating the Host at the moment of consecration, tying together the sacrifice of the Cross and the sacrifice of the Mass.

You’d think that would be enough detail, but you try looking at all the images you get when you Google “Flemish crucifixion”! Adding phrases like “inside a church” didn’t help at all – I just got a lot of photos taken inside churches.

Of course I wasn’t thinking about my painting and searching for it all the time. I’d forget about it for months and then something would recall it to my mind, or I’d start describing it to somebody, and the hole in my memory would start to itch again.

The reason I’ve told this whole long story is that today, I FOUND IT AGAIN! I was complaining about how I couldn’t find this painting when a colleague suggested I should look through Sister Wendy’s book 1000 Masterpieces that we have in our reference collection. Seemed like a good idea, so this afternoon between answering patrons’ questions I leafed through the book. I should have leafed in reverse order, because I found my painter in the Vs. He is Rogier van der Weyden and my painting is the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece:

I need to share my feeling of utter triumph that I was able, through my vast librarian skills (my painting wasn’t even IN Sister Wendy’s book – I just recognized the style and tried Googling the artist’s name), to come up with the information. If I’d ever seen the side panels I’d probably have found it quicker, since they depict the other six sacraments and that might have given me a hint as to the name. But still!

I confess that part of my motivation in posting this is so that I can never lose it again. As long as my blog shall endure, I have my painting at my fingertips!

Knitting Olympics

2010-02-28T01:21:00.002-05:00

This is the first year I have competed in the Knitting Olympics. This is because, last time the Winter Olympics rolled around I wasn't yet a knitter! Ah, me - it seems like just a moment ago. When I had money, instead of a stash.

I am proud to say I have finished my project with hours to spare:

Gorgeous, isn't it? It's a christening gift for my new godson, Gabriel (he's being baptized in about eleven hours.) I finished the bind off about twenty six hours ago and blocked it last night. Now, before you chide me about leaving things to the last moment, I would have been done earlier. Let the following picture essay tell the tale:
At the start, picture an innocent ball of yarn. (No photo taken because I didn't know I'd need one...)

Because I just finished watching the LOST Season 6 Premiere

2010-02-03T00:08:00.001-05:00

Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

And another one

2009-12-23T22:49:00.002-05:00

This one is from Christina:

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T11:15:00.000-05:00

I hope this brings a smile to your lips as it did to mine! Hat tip to Now Norma Knits!

I'm Famous!

2009-12-15T15:17:00.003-05:00

To see me in my film debut (I play "Mean Librarian") click below!

South America Day 15: In which we see wildlife

2009-12-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

Penguins today, but first sea lions: I was up early and went out on the balcony to look at the bay, and out of the water popped a sea lion head! He came up several times but I was totally unable to get a photo.

We went up to the Garden Cafe but it was too full. We ended up on deck at the Great Outdoor Cafe - it was pleasant in the sun. We scarfed down rolls, sausage and melon as fast as possible then scurried to the Stardust Lounge to wait.

We waited nervously because of being turned away from the Falklands, but I guess Argentina isn't so picky - we were eventually given our identifying stickers. They needed them because there are five buses worth of people going on our tour to the Punta Tombo penguin rookery alone! One of the ship's tour-coordinators, Olga, was telling us the rules, which boil down to not bothering the penguins, and she was really funny. For one thing, she's a Russian, and she sort of had that Boris Badenov syntax going, plus whenever she talked about the penguins she called them Pingwins. She'd say things like, "Don't worry to seeing every pingwin. Dey're EVERYVERE."

Once we had our stickers we were freed to...wait in an endless line, which snaked all through Deck 6, down the stairs in the Atrium and out to the gangplanks. The bottleneck was explained once we saw the gangplanks - they were sloping at about a 45 degree angle!

The young and agile descended without trouble, but most folks went down agonizingly slowly.

Once on our bus, we waited for ages to get off the pier and then drove through Puerto Madryn. [By the way, Puerto Madryn is not a very Spanish sounding name. There's a good reason for that - the town was named by Welsh immigrants who settled in Patagonia in 1865. The nearest big town to here is called Trelew! Apparently there are still between 1500 and 5000 Welsh speakers in Argentina today.] In any case, when we reached its outskirts,

we lost half an hour to an idiot governmental checkpoint. Once we were finally on the road, we rejoiced!

Too soon. Maybe 20 minutes later we pulled over for a bathroom break. I also think this is where they picked up our box lunches, or maybe pulled them out of the boot. Shortly after returning to the road the guide, Amalia? Analise? passed out the lunch boxes and one bottle of water each. The lunches were extremely generous (a chicken sandwich six inches across?!) and we decided we'd be fools to try to eat it all while trapped on a bus. I did manage to finish the dessert, something like a Spanish Ding-Dong only much higher class. It had dulce de leche in it!

When not eating, I watched the passing landscape like a hawk, looking for guanacos. I love guanacos - they are one of several South American camel-like critters, related to alpacas and llamas. Guanacos have coats that are supposed to be softer than cashmere - I wanted to find some yarn, but no luck. However, I did see several little family clusters of guanacos:

The land is mostly covered with scrub brush - low growing, water conserving, dusty sage green. This part of Argentina is in the rain shadow of the Andes and gets maybe 8 inches of rain a year; hence the roads, the sheep and probably the guanacos are dusty too.

It was maybe 40 miles on the map from Puerto Madryn to Punta Tomba but it took at least three hours to get there. We went the opposite of a straight line!

South America Day 14: The Southern Cross

2009-12-02T23:23:00.000-05:00

We are slowly proceeding toward Puerto Madryn in Argentina, through moderate seas and strong winds. It's another lazy day at sea. I think it's Wednesday.

10:35 PM:

Dad and I indulged a desire to see the Southern Cross. For days he's been asking anyone from the Southern hemisphere what it looked like and where to find it in the sky, but no dice. Finally he got out his compass - yes, he carries one, are you surprised? - and he figured out approximately where South is. We went up on the Sun Deck and located what seems to be the right constellation - about the right height above the horizon, in the Milky Way (according to the Encyclopedia this is correct) - it's good enough for me. This:

is more or less what we were looking at (except the red lines!)

Since we were out in the middle of the Atlantic at the time, there was none of that light pollution you get in the suburbs - the only competition the stars had was from the ship's own lights. I think cruise ships should offer a Star-Watching Night where they leave out the uppermost deck's chaise lounges after dark and turn off all possible ships lights for an hour or so. I bet there would be a lot of takers!

We tried for awhile to find the Southern Cross again from our balcony. Dad finally looked at the waves and realized our cabin was looking North at the time. Oops!

South America Day 13: Plague Ship

2009-12-01T18:04:00.001-05:00

I was up bright and early, showered and breakfasted and ready for the Falklands! I've been looking forward to today since we planned this trip, because the Falklands are cool.

1. Their money has penguins on it. I plan to collect some.

2. The islands are populated by about 2500 people and about 500,000 sheep. I want some of that wool!

Dad gave me a brilliant idea: I went to the Shore Excursion desk to see if anyone had cancelled the Rockhopper Penguin tour. Rockhopper Penguins are jaunty, petite penguins

Photo : © Samuel Blanc / www.sblanc.com

Photo : © Samuel Blanc / www.sblanc.com

who - as their name implies - hop around over rocks, crags, etc. on their windblown islands. Back home in Ohio when we were planning the trip, the price for the Rockhopper tour seemed a bit steep, but it seems much more reasonable today for some reason.

In any case, I checked with the desk, which wasn't open. I located a crew member, who sent me to the Stardust Lounge to wait and see if someone failed to show up - maybe I could get in on standby. The call for the penguin tour was for 8:45. I was there at around 8:15. I watched my odds shorten as the room slowly filled up, with passengers claiming their numbered tender tickets. At 9:15, there were six no-shows for the Rockhoppers! At 9:20 - sinking heart - all six wandered in. Drat and blast!

Disappointed, I went off to find Dad and located him hanging around the Atrium. We figured we'd just get tender tickets and go walk around the town, take in the landscape, have tea in a tea shop, etc. Then...

The captain came on the loudspeaker with an announcement: The Falkland Islands decline to let us land, due to the ongoing epidemic of gastroenteritis on board. I can't really blame them for not wanting to suffer through it - it was pretty nasty - but they are sacrificing about $40,000 in port fees not to mention all the ca$h we were planning to drop on tours, souvenirs, etc. Our only option was to put back out to sea, taking our contagion with us, and sail - slowly! - in the direction of Argentina, two days hence. We have become the Flying Dutchman.

These:

represent our closest approach to the Falkland Islands. See those tiny, little black specks on the beaches? D'you think they could be penguins?

South America Day 12: A Lazy Day At Sea

2009-11-30T16:11:00.001-05:00

We were up bright and early at 6:00 AM, despite the fact that Dad started sneezing last night. (We're going to try to thwart his incipient cold with Sudafed and Zicam.) Last night elves decorated the whole ship for Christmas:

We got to the Garden Cafe just before the rush and secured a good position to see when we round Cape Horn. We're able to feel the motion of the waves again after three days in the smooth water of the straits and channels, but it's really nothing much. Nothing like Thanksgiving Day!

It was pretty awesome rounding Cape Horn,

although it was COLD on deck! The ship's position, 55 degrees 59.31 minutes South, and 067 degrees 22.91 minutes West, is probably the farthest south Dad and I will ever get

unless we ever go to Antarctica proper. I would LOVE to do that - Dad, not so much.

When we returned to our cabin, we found that we could still see Cape Horn:

On top of the cape we could see signs of human habitation - I think they said it was a radio transmitter of some kind?

It turns out we are sailing a 3/4 circle around the Cape before heading northeast on a beeline for the Falklands. We'll be quite far from the coast today - I think the older maps said "Here Be Dragons" on this part.

The rest of the day passed quietly. In the bulletin for today they announced a knitters circle in the Observation Lounge, so I went and met a half dozen nice fellow knitters. Then I lunched alone with my book - heaven! - and returned to the cabin for a nap. Dad and I dined with Betty and John from Dallas and went to a flute concert in the Stardust Lounge.

Tomorrow, the Falklands!

South America Day 11: The Southernmost City in the World, According To Argentina

2009-11-30T12:38:00.000-05:00

November 29, 2009

We docked at Ushuaia at noon - there's a real dock here, too, so no riding in tenders this time!

We just went on down to deck 3, stepped ashore, and walked toward land with the Sun looming over us:

There was quite a walk to shore, the dock being very long, and there was a lot to see, including mountains,

fellow tourists (I volunteered to take a picture of these two together)

more mountains

and a pretty little town with its back to the mountains.

The streets were steep, and the buildings well designed to shed the snow:

Winter here must be entertaining. We found another internet cafe and checked email, then wandered the quaint streets,

enjoyed a penguin mural,

and posed for pictures in front of stuff.

The weather was chilly, breezy and bright, but not cold. It made me all cheerful.

We picked up some postcards, scribbled on them and posted them to ourselves so they'd be postmarked Ushuaia; this is the southernmost post office we'll have access to. The folks that sprung for the $2400 optional tour to Antarctica get to mail their postcards from the southernmost post office there is (actually it's just a postal drop, but they'll still have Antarctica postmarks if their postcards arrive at all.)

Back in our stateroom I discovered that we had a really nice view of Ushuaia tucked up between the water and the rock:

South America Day 11: Brr, It's Cold!

2009-11-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

November 29, 2009

Today we're halfway through our cruise. I can't believe it's been a whole week since Valparaiso! We are halfway up the Beagle Channel now and heading for Ushuaia, Argentina this afternoon.

We got up extremely early and went immediately to the Garden Cafe to snag a table. We'll be passing by a group of five glaciers on the port side of the Beagle Channel at around 6 AM, and I wanted a place to sit indoors rather than shivering on the fantail between glaciers.

When we neared the glaciers, the cruise director came on the loudspeaker to tell us the details about each one as we approached it, at which point everyone dashed outside and snapped photos madly. We successfully scored a table the perfect distance from the door to the poop deck: far enough to be out of the draft but close enough to dash over and not miss any good photo ops. We had a good time identifying geological features like this hanging valley:

There are four glaciers along the north side of the Beagle Channel: the Italia, Francia, Alemania and Romanche. To be perfectly honest, I didn't annotate my photographs, and I haven't been able to find a detailed map of "Glacier Alley" in my Googling, so I'm not perfectly sure which is which, but I believe the order given above is the order in which we passed them. What I do know for sure is that they are pretty cool to look at (pun! Didya see the pun?!)

Our first glacier:

You can tell this glacier is receding rather than growing because it doesn't reach all the way to the waterline.

The second one we passed was wider and much flatter:

Neither of these showed as much glacial blue color I was anticipating, but the next ones did:

This last is my favorite (the color is more intense in real life).

Even after passing the Avenue of the Glaciers (the "hifalutin" name for Glacier Alley), the scenery through which we moseyed on our way to Ushuaia was spectacular. This is one gorgeous (if bleak) part of the world.

Why, yes, we are having fun!

South America Day 10: La Ciudad de los Muertos

2009-11-28T18:02:00.000-05:00

November 28, 2009

I walked on, following the map, another ten or twelve blocks, where I arrived at the cemetery. Yes, that's right, the cemetery - it's one of Punta Arenas's main attractions. Trust me!

It doesn't look like much from outside

but inside that long, blank wall is a serene space that resembles an admittedly eccentric neighborhood

more than a graveyard. (The neighbors are just very quiet, I guess.)

I walked up and down the paths of the pretty little necropolis

enjoying the absurd and beautiful mausolea

as well as the landscaping, which featured some tormented topiary cypresses:

They are so odd looking that I can't decide what they remind me of - upside down ice cream cones? Karst mountains like the ones we saw in China? Dunce caps?

This cross with an anchor at its base

marks the grave of one Captain Adolfo Andresen,

a whaling captain who was the first to bring the Chilean flag to Antarctica. He was accompanied on his travels by a lady named Wilhelmine Schroeder, who was the first woman to live in the Antarctic. The signage doesn't specify the relationship between these two intrepid explorers, but I like to think they were great and good friends.

Once I was done enjoying the city of the dead, I walked back to where I'd left Daddy, passing some typically understated Chilean political discourse on the way:

We returned to the ship and returned to our grueling routine of resting, before dining at Las Ramblas, the little tapas restaurant on Deck 12. I could happily make a meal of appetizers anytime, so I was delighted. We ate with Pat and Tony, and stayed together trading stories until 9 PM, when they deserted us to snag front-row seats for tonight's show. At that point, we chose to retire, since we have a very early day tomorrow: We finally get to see glaciers!

South America Day 10: The Southernmost City in the World, According to Chile

2009-11-28T10:46:00.000-05:00

When we awoke we had already arrived at Punta Arenas, well up inside the Strait of Magellan. For some odd reason the ship wasn't anchored; it just kept shuffling back and forth along the center of the harbor.

There's a lot of sky out today!

Dad and I aren't going on an official tour; we just planned to walk around the town and see what it's like. About midmorning we moseyed down to the Deck 7 casino to get tickets to ride the tenders ashore. On the way down, we heard an announcement: "The crew will be having an emergency practice drill." When we arrived at the casino there were no employees in sight! We assumed they were off doing their drill, but fortunately a fellow passenger came by and clued us in. It turned out that you don't need tender tickets after the first rush, which had already left. We just needed to go down to Deck 3 and wait our turn.

The water felt way choppier in the little lifeboat than on our big old cruise ship. We chugged in a long way, and they let us out right in front of a little tourist welcome center. Delightfully, there was an internet cafe right in there; we instantly logged on like addicts looking for a fix. (If we'd gone farther into town we might have found a better rate than the $2-per-30-minute rate here, but the price is so much cheaper than what it costs on the boat that it seemed very reasonable!) We spent maybe 45 minutes reconnecting with the world.

Next, we muddled our way through customs inspection, where we got in line right after an enormous shipful of tourists, toting all their luggage and arriving in the country for the first time. At last we were through, and loose in Chile for what, now that I think of it, is our last day here.

Punta Arenas bills itself as "the most Austral city in the world" - aka the farthest south. This is one of those debatable points - it's certainly the largest city anywhere near this far south - their population is more than 130,000, and the next bigger city is almost 500 miles farther north. On the other hand, Ushuaia (in Argentina) is over a hundred miles farther south, but it only has 64,000 inhabitants. It's a definitional question.

Punta Arenas is one of those thin cities like Valparaiso, sandwiched between the coast and the hills. A statue of Bernardo O'Higgins

waved us inward and upward as we climbed a steepish sidewalk to the main street. The architecture has a frontier flavor,

but I guess they live in the 20th century too: I spotted the logo of a familiar security company on one house:

(We use ADT at our library too.)

A lady at the visitors' center had given us a map with some of the local attractions marked on it, so we walked six blocks to the east and arrived at the charming town square

whose centerpiece is a large statue of Ferdinand Magellan:

Notice the shiny foot of the able seaman sitting crosslegged on the lower part of the pedestal? Apparently the thing to do is to kiss it. I declined.

There was a curios/handicrafts/flea market set up on tables around the square; I wandered among them but didn't buy anything. Instead, I kept a lookout for the town dogs. Punta Arenas, like Santiago, is well populated with genial Chilean free-range dogs. They are friendly and sociable, and assume they are welcome anywhere including right under one's feet.

I don't know any of these folks, but the point is, neither does that dog! I saw one dog sleeping beside the curb, all four paws up on the curb and his head lolling in the gutter. I asked him, "Are you alive?" Turned out he was. I saw another, very pretty one, and said "Perro! Perro!" ("Dog! Dog!") to him. He opened his eyes, tucked up a front paw and showed me belly. I patted it - what else could I do?

Dad's knee has been bothering him, so we grabbed a sandwich at the "Downtown Cafe"

to give him a chance to rest it. After a little more walking he was still in some discomfort, so he elected to wait on a sunny bench while I walked on to see more of the town. The bench he selected was right on a corner where they were holding a tiny political rally, so he could listen to the music and watch the speakers exhorting the crowd (all 12 or so of them).

Blogging from the End of the World

2009-11-28T09:07:00.001-05:00

Realtime posting - how very odd!

This morning the Norwegian Sun pulled into Punta Arenas, billed by Chile as ¨the Southernmost City in the World¨. (Tomorrow we dock at Ushuaia, billed by Argentina as ¨the Southernmost City in the World¨ - guess which city is where?) We boarded our lifeboat (cruise ships use their lifeboats as tenders to ferry passengers in to shore) and spilled onshore, directly into an internet cafe! Soon we will detatch the umbilical cord and head into the city to shop, sightsee (if we can find some sights) and perhaps dine. It´s a rough old life...

South America Day 9: A Day in Shorthand

2009-11-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

Today Black Friday: Every time Dad turns on TV, all advertising shilling for door-busters, all news anchors discussing economic status of Xmas shopping season. Fortunately, all moot - shopping done before departure.

Very rough seas this morning - waves 10 feet plus. While walking down corridors, ship shifts beneath feet resulting in wall contact; similar exhiliration to drunkenness without metabolic consequences. Giggled a lot on way to breakfast.

In library after breakfast, failed to find bird book to research mysterious birds seen last night but succeeded in locating crossword and Sudoku. Dad still helping a lot with latter. Lazed morning away in napping and puzzling (really, this life is so hard to take.)

Dad enjoying plotting route on South American Explorer map. Have come 891 nautical miles from Puerto Chacabuco as of today! Entered Strait of Magellan by midmorning. Always pictured Strait of Magellan as wild seas wracked by violent storms (influence of youthful reading choices no doubt). Reality is quiet, chill, bleak:

(note tiny, forlorn sign of human existence: red/white channel marker? lighthouse? on lowest rock.)

Really respect early sailors' courage: 1) Is summer here now; this is best possible weather; sometimes not as nice! 2) No depth sensors, proximity alarms; archipelago islands not all above water, some lurk just below surface ready to savage fragile wooden hulls.

Am enjoying self; like it cold!

Spanish lesson today covered "port visiting" words, phrases: restaurant ordering, taxis, etc.

Running late to all meals today and found dining rooms very crowded at lunch, especially Garden Cafe. Seems to be favorite hangout for passengers in tomblike internal cabins: warm, well lit, tables and soft chairs for card players, readers, plus food and coffee always available. In warmer climate, probably deck chairs serve purpose, but Patagonia incompatible with deckside lounging.

Lines too long there, Seven Seas Restaurant, Pacific Heights. Getting cranky going up, down elevators when hungry, seeking quick meal. Dad had moment of inspiration: One restaurant for sure will not have a line! Right, too:

Great Outdoor Grill, barely screened from Patagonian winds, deserted; servers behind counter shivering in parkas. Perfect! Ate delicious burgers and fries, although public health hysteria meant was forbidden to dispense own ketchup; held out bun for gloved server to squirt. Even better, didn't have to eat out on deck; snagged table inside while getting drinks!

Since tables at premium, gregarious Dad invited Brazilian gentleman to share ours. (He was travelling with friend, but friend was at art auction. At sea?) Although linguistic overlap minimal, had nice time chatting, and were moments of actual communication. Doesn't seem too thrilled over Brazil getting next summer Olympics. Lives in Bahia, but originally from Rio; indicated was much corruption there.

Afternoon similarly energetic as morning. Did, for once, get exercise: took half-hour constitutional around Promenade Deck.

Heckuva wind on stern!

At dinner, German couple at next table told us we would be passing southernmost tip of continental land mass shortly. Finished meal, ran to get cameras, ran to Promenade Deck

to capture experience. Glad I did, even though very cold and windy. [BTW, is still much land south of here but is all islands, archipelago. Tierra del Fuego not actually attached to South America.]

Nights getting pretty short. Still light out at 10:21 PM although sun set half hour before, and tomorrow sunrise is at 5:30 AM. Still 800 miles north of Antarctic Circle, though, so not quite Midnight Sun.

South America Day 8: Pinin' for the Fjords

2009-11-26T21:09:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving Day

I slept like a baby last night, rocked by the waves in my little nest of a bed. There's kind of a hollow in the mattress and I curl up in there all cozy. We woke up late, and barely made it to breakfast.

This is a sea day, and the sea is a little eerie. We are cruising around the fjords of the Chilean Archipelago (all the little islandy bits along the coast) and we will duck into the Strait of Magellan later on.

The deeper in the fjords we go the stiller the water is. The ocean surface is like glass and the clouds are so low they hover over the water like steam:

Our library recently bought a cute little Flip Video camera and I took it out on the balcony last night and this morning:

Today has been a really lazy day for us.We alternated between informal Spanish lessons in the Windjammer Bar, various meals (belly up to the trough, boys!), naps and puzzles. As the day progressed the weather became steadily more dramatic and our balcony was not exactly welcoming,

but I kept going out there to feel the wind and the waves. In a sort of meta moment, Dad photographed me photographing the ocean. Now if only someone had photographed him....

We got gussied up in our fancy clothes and went early to Thanksgiving Dinner at the Four Seasons, where they served a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner. For the first time, we were seated with several other couples (two American and one from Montreal) to fill the table. We had a nice, lively conversation, and enjoyed our dinner, although I missed carving our own turkey and getting just the parts I like best.

Dessert was unsurpassable: a caramelized apple tart, with the apple slices delicately arranged on a circle of puff pastry, topped with a dab of cinnamon ice cream, and the whole thing drowned in crème anglaise. I bet I can recreate this...Must try!

I could barely keep my eyes open till 10 PM, but I woke several times in the night as the water became much rougher - we are swinging out into the Pacific as we prepare to enter the Strait of Magellan tomorrow. Every time I looked out I saw a type of beautiful bird I'd never seen before soaring and dipping above the waves. They're white on the bottom with a brown-black outline all the way around. On top, they looked like they had four white spots across their shoulders, sort of like this:

Turns out they are Cape Petrels. Up close, the white spots are more like patches or splashes:

A much better photographer than me (dfaulder, on Flikr, via Wikimedia Commons) took that photo.

South America Day 7: In which we miss the bus, both literally and metaphorically

2009-11-25T17:37:00.000-05:00

November 25, 2009

Well, you knew it couldn't last. The wild hilarity of the first part of the tour was too good to be true.

Nikolas had given us about ten minutes for our shopping expedition. We spent awhile fooling around with the Monkey Puzzle tree, then strolled along the street looking in shop windows. I spotted yarn in one, but Dad was getting anxious about catching our bus, so we hurried along to where we'd been dropped off.

Now, each bus had a number on the front door (ours was #25), but other than the front door the buses were all identical. We looked for Nikolas but couldn't see him. We did see a line of numbered buses, but no #25 was visible. One of the buses was just pulling away as we ran up! Aaaaggghh! We were worried it was our bus.

The guide on the next bus (#23) had us board and ride along with them. She found us seats and was very nice, but as we returned to Puerto Chacabuco, my fuming anger gradually changed to dread; I had the sinking feeling maybe we had jumped the gun, and it turned out to be true. We were the ones who'd abandoned our proper bus to wait for us in vain.

Ten or twenty minutes later, our bus arrived with a worried Nikolas on board. Why did you get on the other bus, he asked? We apologized profusely for our error and tipped him heavily, and everything was OK again. We did suggest to the tour company that they put numbers on the backs of the buses too, though!

The rest of the evening was spent in dining at the Four Seasons, attending a reasonably funny comedy/magic show in the Starlight Lounge, and retreating to our cabin to fall unconscious by 10:30. All this fun just tires me out!

South America Day 7: Puzzlin'

2009-11-25T14:46:00.000-05:00

On the way back to the coast we stopped for a shopping opportunity in the teeming metropolis of Aisen:

This used to be a shipping town, but its harbor was lost to silt about 20 years ago. The population is shrinking a bit as a consequence. This hasn't stopped the political campaigning, which is still intense:

One placard we saw from the bus was actually larger than the house it was leaning against!

The shopping available in Aisen was not inspiring, but I was delighted to find a monkey puzzle tree that I could look at up close.

This is the national tree of Chile, and it is a very primitive tree - a "living fossil". We drove past a couple back in Santiago but we couldn't get in close to see the bizarre leaves:

They're a couple inches long, stiff and sharp like daggers:

They got their name because "it would puzzle a monkey to climb it"!

South America Day 7: ¿Río grande? ¡No! ¡Río pequeño!

2009-11-25T13:40:00.000-05:00

[Every now and then I have to throw some Spanish in. If it bothers you, try babelfish.yahoo.com!]

The farthest point of our bus trip was the Río Simpson Nature Preserve:

We had a pleasant ten-minute walk down to a smallish river (the Río Simpson, I would guess)

and along a little path past labeled examples of the local flora.

Sadly I found no Monkey Puzzle trees, but their highlight is one of those huge tree trunks where they've dated the rings and noted important events:

This tree was apparently here when Francis Drake sailed by, although it's too young to have been there for Magellan.

South America Day 7: The Splendors of Puerto Chacabuco

2009-11-25T12:41:00.001-05:00

All this morning we'd been cruising farther inland along the waterway that leads up to Puerto Chacabuco. (The map shows Puerto Aisen, but that harbor is farther up the waterway and we were told it had silted up. Puerto Chacabuco is on the same inlet, and it's now the main shipping port from the Aisen district.)

The scenery became more interesting and dramatic, with islands cropping up out of the water,

and we're beginning to see snow on the higher peaks. The weather was downright chilly, but we got occasional flashes of sun, which "dressed up" the mountains for us:

Note the tiny little ships on the left: these are big mountains! Dad found the abandoned hulk below fascinating. It looks like it's been there for a very long time indeed. Wonder what its story is?

Also, I cannot begin to imagine how the people who live here:

manage - I come from Ohio where there is flat land to build and farm on! None of this farming-at-45-degrees business!

Right after lunch we packed up our essentials and boarded the lifeboat-tender. The ship loomed overhead

as we motored to the shore. We debarked

and admired the lavish waterfront district:

I think I'm glad we booked a tour. As we boarded the inevitable bus for "Puerto Chacabuco and Surroundings" , we met our guide Nikolas.

Tourism isn't big enough here for there to be full-time professional guides; Nikolas is a 21-year-old college student home for the summer. (After all, the college kids usually know English.) He informed us that he was single.

In 2-3 minutes we had driven out of the Puerto Chacabuco Metro Area (population 1400) and reached the countryside, which was gorgeous to look at but inhospitable for farming. Imagine trying to plow this:

I don't think so. Local agriculture mostly consists of running cattle and sheep on the flat bits in between the rocky outcrops.

Waaaant woooool! (This is the cry of the rare "Wool Zombie".)

South America Day 7: Lazy Morning

2009-11-25T10:53:00.000-05:00

November 25, 2009

We breakfasted at the Four Seasons again today. Dad said he went to the Garden Cafe yesterday and it was a zoo - he ended up having to eat outside. We're going to take advantage of our perks!

This morning we did some more ship exploration. Deck 7, known as the International Deck, houses the Sun Club Casino:

Unfortunately, it was closed today (these photos were taken later). The casino's only open when the ship is in international waters and we are a long way inland at the moment. This part of Chile's coast is denticulated with zillions of little channels and waterways, and we are way up inside one today.

Personally I don't get the appeal of the slots or the tables, but fortunately there were still the shops! Just aft of the casino is the Galleria; there you could buy necessities (there was a brisk trade in sweatshirts as we got farther south, and closer to the Antarctic), souvenirs

and luxuries.

We had fun poking around but didn't buy anything. Instead we grabbed today's puzzles in the library and returned to our stateroom where right in the middle of puzzling I suddenly rolled over and fell asleep. I guess I'm still recovering.

South America Day 6: A Dad's Eye View of Puerto Montt

2009-11-24T19:42:00.000-05:00

Although I got my nonrefundable tour price refunded due to my quarantine, Dad didn't. He went forth bravely on the tour alone, and took lots of photos for me.

Puerto Montt is a long way south of Valparaiso; we must have been really booking yesterday. The view from the ship showed a pretty, green shore, but there were ominous clouds in the sky.

There are no port facilities large enough for the Norwegian Sun to dock, so Dad and I watched from our balcony while they lowered the lifeboats to use as tenders. This is kind of practical when you think about it; they might as well get some use out of the things even when there isn't an emergency, and when they get used frequently you know they are in good working order. I like efficiency!

Bye, Dad!

When he got to shore, Dad quickly boarded his bus, but due to technical difficulties with the bus microphone he ended up just waiting around for a long time. When they finally got going, the ominous clouds were becoming even more threatening,

and by the time they arrived at the Osorno Volcano, its Fuji-like peak was lost in the clouds.

(By the way, the Chileans maintain that Mount Fuji looks like Osorno, not the other way around.) It was still pretty to look at, though.

The bus then headed around the lake toward the volcano itself. They stopped at the highly picturesque Petrohue Falls. Here is the view just upstream of the falls area:

The water is a truly gorgeous blue - is this because it's glacial snowmelt? The river doesn't look that impressive though... until you realize that the tiny fleck of orange toward the middle is a boat with two or three people in it. I'm either impressed or distressed by the intrepidity of those people in the little boat; this is what they are heading towards:

That's a lot of white water! The top photo, with Osorno in the background, is my favorite though.

The next stop was to be the caldera of the volcano right next to Osorno, a peak over 8000 feet high. Unfortunately, about that time Mother Nature made good on her earlier threats

and cut loose with the rain. The illegible sign marks the 7000-foot altitude, approximately, but at that point the guide asked if they really wanted to see a volcano in the rain, or just head off to the restaurant. Zeal for adventure was not present on this bus: most everybody wimped out and voted for food.

After a pleasant meal, they returned to the waterside back in Puerto Montt. While waiting for the tender, Dad saw the first piece of evidence that he was in llama country:

A local entrepreneur had decked his llama out in a little red hat and for a thousand pesos or so he would take your picture with it. Dad didn't really want to be photographed with it all that much, but he knew I would appreciate it!

South America Day 6: Quarantine

2009-11-24T16:12:00.000-05:00

November 24, 2009

Today was pretty boring for little old me. I'm still recovering from my bout of acute gastroenteritis, although I feel much better, but I'm officially quarantined for twenty four hours from onset. So I bid Dad farewell for his tour and settled into bed.

I napped, knit on my sock, and called Room Service for some Jell-O and toast, then I surfed the TV channels to try to see if there was anything worthwhile. They have FOX News, CNN, and some movies over a closed-circuit channel but not movies that really appealed. Also the TV is really small and awkwardly located; I developed a crick in my neck fairly rapidly. So I went back to knitting. And napping.

Take my advice: never get sick away from your DVD player!

South America Day 5: In which we draw a merciful veil over the details of subsequent events

2009-11-23T17:04:00.000-05:00

Dad's birthday, evening

It's a good thing Dad had someone besides me to eat his birthday dinner with.

I woke up from my nap suffering from acute gastric distress, only willing to rise from my bed of pain to perform certain necessary actions in the wee bathroom that was mercifully close.

I made Dad leave me to go to the Grand Circle Cocktail Hour in the Observation Lounge, and go to dinner with Pat and Tony as planned. Then I called the doctor's office on board and they sent up Brian the Irish Nurse. I would have appreciated his adorable accent more if I had been in better health overall. Part of his routine was to ask me to fill out a form stating what I'd eaten recently and where, and the moment he saw the Crowne Plaza Santiago on my paper he said I didn't need to fill out any more.

Apparently there are eight or ten other folks from our group prostrated with the same symptoms, and the likeliest culprit is yesterday's breakfast buffet. I'm very glad Dad and I got the Hepatitis A vaccine last year!

Darling Brian told me to order a pitcher of water from Room Service and make half-strength Gatorade with the packet of mix he left me. Then he gave me a lovely injection that stopped half my trouble (and some Immodeum to stop the other half). The injection knocked me straight out, which was just fine with me.

South America Day 5: A Very Special Day

2009-11-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

As soon as Dad opened his eyes, I wished him Happy Birthday! Today he turns 70-mumble!

We had a busy day planned, starting right from breakfast. We've discovered a nice perk: as balcony stateroom passengers we have the exclusive privilege of eating breakfast in the Four Seasons Restaurant, one of the two main dining rooms. They check your card as you enter, to make sure that you are one of the fortunate, and no riffraff from steerage gets in. The hoi polloi are forced to jockey for position in the Garden Cafe or the Seven Seas Restaurant (the other big dining room on the main deck).

After breakfast (one could order pancakes, waffles and so on, but we contented ourselves with the buffet) we went back to the Stardust Lounge on Deck 6 to hear a talk on upcoming shore excursions. The only shore excursions we pre-booked were a penguin viewing expedition and Dad's tour on the history of the Graf Spee on our one day in Uruguay.

On our path to the Lounge, we passed through the Dazzles Nightclub where a large group of passengers were hearing a lecture in German on some unidentifiable subject. We also encountered the Library:

Of course, I had to investigate it out of professional interest. Their book collection is sort of random, but I found a good Terry Pratchett title to check out, since I'm trying to conserve the books I brought. They also give us a daily crossword and Sudoku so that'll keep us busy. Past the room with the shelves, there are three smaller rooms that are used as card rooms/gathering spaces unless someone reserves them.

Shortly after we arrived in the theater, a cruise line employee came on stage and began describing the available tours. He was interesting and motivational enough to induce us to go stand in a 45-minute line in the lobby to sign up for two new shore excursions. For tomorrow at Puerto Montt we registered for "Nature At Its Best". (I tried to sell Dad on a zip-line adventure in the forest canopy at the Osorno Volcano, but no dice.) This tour will take us inland by bus, where we will be able to view the Osorno Volcano from a picturesque distance (they say it looks like Mount Fuji!), then see the Petrohue Falls and eat lunch in a restaurant in Ensenada. They also promised us shopping in the resort town of Puerto Varos.

For the following day at Puerto Chacabuco we definitely needed to take a tour. According to the NCL guy, the town's biggest attraction is the salmon cannery, so just walking around town is not super enticing. (Why are we stopping here then? Oh yeah, this is where the fjords kind of get started.) So we booked the "Puerto Chacabuco and Surroundings" tour: ride a bus around the area, see the Andes, see the river gorges and a small local nature preserve. Low key but better than the cannery!

The next order of the day was to be a nap (hey, it's Dad's birthday - he should be able to do anything he wants!) but we spent so long in the line that we changed the itinerary to lunch in the Garden Cafe. We ate with a nice couple, Tony and Pat

and made plans to meet them for dinner tonight in the Four Seasons. It's Dress Up Night, and the menu features steak and lobster. Seems appropriate that they laid that on for Dad, no?

When we arrived back in our cabin we saw this:

A month ago I made secret arrangements with NCL for a Birthday Package for Dad. The cabin stewards put up the balloons and streamers when they made up the room, and Dad got his very own Happy Birthday cake:

He was delighted. If someone had told him, he reflected, that he'd be spending his 7_th birthday on a cruise ship off the coast of Chile, he would never have believed them. It's funny how things work out!

We both even managed to eat some cake before our nap attack.

South America Day 4: Sun and Wind

2009-11-22T16:33:00.000-05:00

After lifeboat drill, Dad and I began to explore the ship. We started at the Sun Deck at the very top, where we watched the ship pull out of port. We had some great views of the tugs in the harbor

as well as what Dad decided was the entire Chilean Naval Force:

That funky canopy in some of the shots is the tent that covers the Great Outdoor Grill, one of the Norwegian Sun's many restaurants. In the lovely warm sun, the tables were crowded with people grabbing a snack and a drink while watching our departure.

The view from the ship also gave us a nice perspective on Valparaiso itself:

You can really see how steeply the city slopes up. They tell us that the locals don't have cars here; they go up and down the hills on these funiculars instead.

After we bade farewell to the land, we moved down to the next deck, the Sports Deck. This is where things got interesting. We started at the aft (back) end of the Sports Deck which consists of a bunch of restaurants (we stuck our heads in all of them) plus a golf-driving net, a shuffleboard court, a basketball court, etc.

All these sports courts are of course open to the air, and there is a big open walkway looking out over the pool deck below along each side of the ship.

When we started to cross to the forward part of the deck, we were astonished by the wind! Apparently the harbor had been sheltering us; the water was glassy smooth. Mere minutes after leaving the harbor, we were leaning so hard into the wind that we looked like mountain climbers, and the deck hands were putting away lounge chairs and tables as fast as they could. A side table got away from one of them and blew in our direction, barely missing us. I have to admit, I was giggling a bit with exhilaration, but it was a little intimidating. Only the plastic windows kept us from feeling like we'd be blown overboard!

The Pool Deck on the next level was easier to cross because it's floored with some kind of non-slippery wood. There are two pools - only one is filled at the moment - and four hot tubs under the central canopy.

I've heard that some ships have a retractable roof over the pool, but the Sun's a bit older and the pools are open to the air. Despite this, there always seems to be someone poaching themselves in the hot tub at least, whenever I look!

At the front end of the Pool Deck we came upon the Garden Cafe Restaurant

and stopped exploring in favor of eating some supper, after which we went back to our stateroom:

(When we first arrived they had the beds arranged as one queen-size but the room attendants fixed that right away.) We have it pretty darn nice - Dad popped for a balcony stateroom so we have big glass doors

(lots of natural light!) and a little outdoor sanctum of our very own:

By this point we were pretty pooped, so we sacked out early. The ship rocked me to sleep like a little baby!

South America Day 4: Always the rebel...

2009-11-22T13:39:00.000-05:00

Before we watched all the way through the instructions, the life drill siren started to go off. (I didn't realize it at the time, but we must have been about the last group to board.) We made our way through the still-confusing corridors to our lifeboat station:

I didn't know we weren't allowed to photograph the lifeboat drill! (That pesky video hadn't gotten to that point yet! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

They yelled at me.

South America Day 4: Up the Gangway

2009-11-22T12:52:00.001-05:00

Right on schedule, our bus dropped us at Norwegian Cruise Line's part of the dock. We all filed into a big waiting room where we were efficiently divvied up into groups of about twenty to present our passports and fill out some paperwork that included a public health form. Everyone's very concerned about H1N1 flu at the moment, and when I acknowledged that I have some respiratory symptoms (much reduced: Cold-Eeze works!) and that some of my coworkers had actually had the swine flu, I was pulled aside for special screening as a potential health hazard. They took my temperature and said that it was up a bit and that I should take it easy the first couple of days, but they let me go through.

We shuttle-bused over to where the Norwegian Sun was docked in all her glory, and I climbed the gangway for my first ocean voyage!

The ship's staff sure have this down to a science: right at the door we were faced with a large hand-sanitizer dispenser (I'd love to have the Purell concession here), and then we were photographed and sent off down the corridor and over to the main restaurant. In the restaurant, we were directed to find the P table (our last name begins with P) and get our ship cards. These are the room key-cards and also our IDs for the ship. They also function as credit cards in a way: we all gave our credit cards to the staffers, who took an imprint. We can charge things on our ship cards and at the end of the cruise they'll put the charges on our credit cards. Very efficient.

Once we'd been propelled through the system, we made our way to our stateroom where we explored briefly, locating our life vests in the closet, and then collapsed. We turned on the TV because we'd been told to watch the "ship channel" for instructions on the forthcoming lifeboat drill. Not soon enough....

South America Day 4: Valparaiso, Briefly

2009-11-22T12:03:00.001-05:00

An hour's drive later, we arrived at Valparaiso through a landscape that became more and more reminiscent of the African savannah:

When we got nearer to the coast, though, it shifted to a more tropical style. These

are the first non-cultivated palm trees we saw in Chile. It's warm enough here for them to just grow.

Valparaiso is a coastal city built on a long strip of land between the last mountain range and the Pacific. Houses are built on steep hillsides - this is sort of a back view, and the land drops sharply on the other side, down to the ocean.

Our itinerary listed a "Valparaiso city tour" for today, but in practice this meant we got to drive around the center of town in the bus. We had an appointment to keep at the dock, and nobody was willing to miss it! I was glad to get a look at this pretty city, though. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco, both because of the hills

(well, one big hill, I guess) and also because of the locals' taste for pastel paint jobs:

The election season is in full swing here,

but apparently what Valparaisans (?) really like on a Sunday afternoon is a good flea market! As we drove down one long avenue we saw the mother of all flea markets.

It went on

and on

and on! Sadly, there was no time to go peruse any of the goods. Rearing right up out of the middle of the mile-long market was this monument to the (once-major) copper industry ("Biggest dang wire I ever saw, Mabel!"):

Working our way in the general direction of the water, we came to a large plaza (the Plaza Sotomayor). On one side of the plaza there is a large monument

to "los Héroes Navales" - the naval heroes of "War of the Pacific" between 1879 and 1883. (Bet you never knew there was a War of the Pacific before the one in 1945 - I sure didn't. Travel helps me remember the USA isn't the whole entire world.) Facing the monument is the Naval Building:

We were wondering why there appeared to be a pile of shipping containers dumped in front of a building of national importance - this plaza is hardly a loading dock. It turns out that every year they construct a stage made out of shipping containers and put on a two week art festival with plays, movies and music.

If I understood the online program correctly most of the shows have a 1000-peso entrance fee, which sounds bad until you remember there's about 500 pesos to the dollar.

South America Day 4: By Bus to the Coast

2009-11-22T10:57:00.001-05:00

This morning the Crowne Plaza Hotel gave our group its own breakfast buffet in one of the ballrooms; I think yesterday we broke their restaurant. It worked out OK; the buffet had cereal, juice, and plenty of bready things to eat, plus the same eggs and fruit that we had had yesterday. It's a beautiful clear morning: on the way back to our room after breakfast I got a photo where you can finally see the Andes:

We boarded the Blue Bus at 10:05 on the dot (Eduardo posted a schedule) and set out on the drive to Valparaiso, going up and down over the ridges of mountains between Santiago and the coast - and at one point directly through one! (Tunnels are fun.) Patricia told us she wants to eventually live in one of the little valleys to the west of Santiago; you can buy a one-hectare parcel of land (the minimum size) for about $8000, which is affordable for many Chileans.

Once we reached the second valley west of Santiago, we started to see vineyards.

Wine is a huge industry in Chile, since grapevines grow best on hillsides with poor soil, and well, Chile has lots of those! We passed the only organic vineyard in Chile, where they plant the vines in alternating rows with flowers that act as natural pesticides. Every vineyard, however, has some roses planted along the road and between some blocks of the grapevines.

They started doing this on the theory that insect pests would go to the sweet roses rather than the grapevines, but now it's an old and beloved tradition.

We pulled off the highway at "Las Lagonillas" - the little lakes, I think - and drove half an hour more to our lunch destination, a sort of farm with a restaurant and an arena for rodeo shows. (The Chilean cowboys, we were firmly told, are called huasos, never gauchos! Gauchos are in Argentina!) The daughter of the owner met us on her beautiful horse

and guided us up a slight hill toward the restaurant. Before we even got close, servers with platters of tasty empanadas and pisco sours descended on us, so we wouldn't get too hungry walking the remaining hundred yards to the restaurant.

The restaurant had a rustic flavor, with exposed beams, a sand/gravel floor, and a generally Southwestern feel. Which now that I think of it is appropriate: Chile is about as far south and west as you can get on this continent!

Lunch featured delicious braised beef served with mashed potatoes, a sort of antipasto plate

and strawberries and cream for dessert. When we had finished, we went outside (it was hot in the restaurant) and strolled around the grounds. We saw the rodeo-show ring,

admired the horses

and other local wildlife

and enjoyed the flowers.

Before returning to our bus, the ladies' room called to me, but it turns out I wasn't the only one it was calling to! There was a ridiculous line and the buses were anxious to leave. Since the men's room wasn't occupied, one of the men started ushering ladies into it, blocking any males from entering whenever a lady was present. A very gallant gentleman!

South America Day 3: Evening

2009-11-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009; 8 PM

Since it's Saturday and we're leaving for the coast early tomorrow morning, I asked Eduardo if there was a church within walking distance where I could go to Mass. He recommended against going back to the Cathedral because although it's not far from our hotel, some of the neighborhoods in between are not so nice.

Instead, he suggested the Iglesia de San Francisco. It's just down the street from the Crowne Plaza, straight down the Avenida de Bernardo O'Higgins (that name still kills me.) The walk only took about 20 or 25 minutes, so I got there very early. That was OK - it let me admire the church.

(I forgot my camera, so thank you, Wikimedia Commons!)

This is the oldest building still standing in Chile. It dates from the colonial era, having been established by the Franciscans in 1575, and it's still owned and run by the Franciscan Order. It's stood through all the earthquakes since then, although according to its Wikipedia page the tower has fallen down and been rebuilt a number of times.

The interior is beautiful and serene, divided lengthwise into thirds:

(photos are from that panorama site I found before; click for bigger.) The central nave faces the main altar, behind a marble altar rail; in the chancel walls you can see irregular stonework where repairs have been made over the years. The seats at the sides of the chancel are called "stalls"; they are where the friars would sit during Mass.

There is a beautiful coffered ceiling, with a dome

admitting light right over the main altar.

The floorboards are laid in a chevron pattern and there are old-fashioned wooden pews with fixed kneelers. Halfway down the nave there is a lovely pulpit designed for preaching in the days before PA systems. There's a gold sunburst on the pulpit's little roof, and you can't quite see it but there is a golden dove hovering there, symbolizing the Holy Spirit.

Noting all these details while listening to the chant piped in over the PA system made the half hour I waited go pretty fast. The priest was a Franciscan, of course, and I could follow the order of the Mass pretty well despite my near complete lack of Spanish language skills. "La paz de Dios" to you all!

South America Day 3: Afternoon

2009-11-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009

Since lunch was on our own, we asked some of the local guides where we could eat. They recommended a sandwich shop a block away, called "Fuente Alemana" or "The German Fountain".

There's a strong German influence in Chile - lots of German immigrants - but there was no wienerschnitzel on the menu. Instead we ordered the "lomita plata" (sp?) which turned out to be a pork and avocado sandwich. Tasty, but big! Dad's Spanish studies paid off - he ordered his cerveza all by himself, although neither of us understand the various beer options available. He settled for pointing at a random bottle among the choices displayed above the counter.

Then we moseyed around the corner to the little grocery store from last night. We stocked up on bottled water and bought some little cans of palm honey - "miel de palma" - as souvenirs. This stuff made the same way as maple syrup, but using palm tree sap. We figured they'd exemplify the traditional Chilean sweet tooth.

After lunch Dad went on a partially-successful quest for postage stamps and postcards, while I boarded the Optional Excursion bus and drove off to the Pueblito Los Dominicos. This was a fun way to spend the afternoon! The Pueblito is a handicraft village - sort of a Chilean Yankee Peddler with a permanent address in what once was a Dominican monastery. It's out in the country, surrounded by gorgeous mountains:

Once you get inside you can wander around twisty little pathways with quaint little shops on every side.

I saw leatherworkers, some decorative ironwork and pottery, folk art

and several shops selling wool and alpaca garments, woven and knitted. I was on a hunt for yarn - lana (actually that's wool, but the shopkeepers told me it meant yarn) - and I was eventually successful! I brought home some pink alpaca souvenir yarn:

There were lovely flowers and plantings,

and some of the shop doorways were decoratively accessorized by cats:

There was also a large cage filled with various fowls, presumably for sale.

Just as I spotted this guy

I heard a girl behind me exclaim, "¡Mírelo!" to her friend. I actually understood: "Look at it!" (I was proud of myself because usually I can't understand anything people say - they talk too fast for me.)

After I had explored enough, I found a bench and watched people. Three kids were playing with weighted streamers they'd bought from one of the vendors:

until one of them got stuck in a tree. (the streamer things, not the kids!)

Gradually the rest of the group came back together, and we got one further treat: our guide Patricio (no, not Patricia; this one's a guy) got us a local specialty: a drink called Mote con Huesillo, made with stewed barley and peach juice, with a dried peach soaking in it. It was tasty and refreshing!

Blogging from Santiago

2009-11-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

It will be awhile before the Trip Report for my current travel comes to these pages, but I wish to announce that I am running true to form. Three days into my Chilean vacation, I have purchased yarn. Only 50 grams of souvenir alpaca (somewhere around fingering weight, dyed a variegated pink) though, so my luggage will not become overweight. (Though I may; tomorrow we board the cruise ship and I´ve heard what those are like!) See you all in a few weeks!

South America Day 3: Back to the Streets

2009-11-21T12:29:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009, early afternoon

Our city tour concluded with a drive through the older residential areas of the city. We passed the ballet theater:

(I kind of love the idea of there being a ballet about Zorro), and more churches, including one built by the Jesuits:

(that's their motto above the door) and the Basílica de Los Sacramentinos:

whose design is inspired by - not to say ripped off from - Sacre Coeur in Paris.

This trip is educational: I'm learning stuff! For instance, one of our fellow travelers speaks fluent Spanish - she was born in Spain and taught Spanish for many years. She explained some of the sights to us, like this statue:

It commemorates a man called Ercilla whom none of us had ever heard of. Turns out he was a soldier during the conquest of Chile, and he wrote an epic poem, La Araucana, about the wars with the Mapucho Indians, aka the Araucanians. It's sort of the Chilean national poem. He had great respect for the native peoples and since he was in the wars himself his poem is treated as accurate history. So that's kind of neat!

The base of this statue

carries the name of the Batalla de el Roble, so I assume it depicts Bernardo O'Higgins, who led that battle in 1813 or so. I don't remember if I mentioned Bernardo before: he was basically Chile's George Washington, but with a funnier name. Poor Bernardo - he was a big independence fighter, served as Supreme Dictator of Chile (great title!) after they won freedom from Spain, and then he was exiled and never got to return to his beloved Chile - and all I can think about is his wildly incongruous name.

South America Day 3: The Plaza de Armas

2009-11-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009

A couple blocks away, we stopped again at the Plaza de Armas, the center of the original Spanish settlement back in the 1540s. As you would expect by the date, the square contains some of the older buildings in Santiago, though due to periodic urban renewal by earthquake, few original buildings remain. Dad decided to stay on the bus for this stop, but I got off because I was looking forward to seeing the beautiful cathedral, built in 1745. The first thing that met my eyes was this:

Patricia tells us it represents the broken-ness of the indigenous Mapucho Indian culture. It's in the best tradition of Public Art, bought for the public because it's good for them.

There's a lot more to look at in the square, fortunately! It's getting late enough in the morning that some of the locals are up and about; it looks like they're setting up a combination art festival and flea market in the plaza today:

The tourist population is rising

and some adventurous window washers are working on the building next to the cathedral.

(There's not enough money in this world.)

It's really starting to warm up, too; people are finding places to relax and rest a bit.,

and so are the dogs!

We were given time to walk around the square, admiring the buildings. An enormous poster covered the facade of the Correo Central (the post office building):

advertising a free concert by Mahani Teave. I'd never heard of her, but she is a native of Easter Island who became a noted pianist -and talk about a small world: she got her Masters at the Cleveland Institute of Music! Too bad we didn't have time to attend.

The cathedral was beautiful inside, with baroque paintings,

richly decorated ceilings

and side altars

and two enormous pulpits:

They look a wee bit ostentatious, but they did have a purpose: in the days before PA systems a speaker could be heard much better from an elevated point, and the little "roofs" helped reflect sound farther. I had a marvelous time appreciating it all!

The crypt church (underground, directly below the sanctuary) presented a striking contrast:

I think the sixties have a lot to answer for. Since when is deliberate ugliness the equivalent of artistry?

Although the cathedral is open to tourists all day, it is very much an active church. Priests were hearing confessions (two confessionals, no waiting!)

and we couldn't go in one of the side chapels because a Mass had just begun. (It was packed.) A second side chapel was open for prayer, and I have to include the picture despite its poor focus to show off the amazing Jesuit-made silver altar furnishings:

There was also a touch of pure tackiness: a large statue of the Virgin Mary with a halo consisting of lightbulbs. I couldn't bear to take its picture.

South America Day 3: Constitution Square, Personal History

2009-11-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009

On the way to our next stop we drove past the National Library (or la Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, if you prefer):

(I had to photograph it out of professional loyalty).
Also la Bolsa de Comercio - the stock market:

I always like flatiron buildings. We soon arrived at Constitution Square,

home of the Presidential Palace.

We were informed that the Presidents just work there; if I understood correctly, they continue to live in their private homes rather than an official residence. The square is festive with flags

and civilized by the presence of mounted police

not to mention palace guards

and military personnel. The square was also home to a large and roving population of dogs!

Apparently this is common in South America - I have never in my life seen such a numerous and reasonably well-fed floating canine population. At home I would have been nervous, and I would have expected them to form packs, root through garbage, attack people for their sack lunches, and generally be a nuisance. Here, they just hang around, relax,

stretch,

and solicit occasional pats from the military:

They are obviously a regular and accepted part of the surroundings; they seem to know they are tolerated. I gave this fellow

a pat because he was just so sweet. Also he reminds me of Buster (I miss him!)
Facing the palace, the square features several large bronze(?) statues in dramatic postures:

Presidents Allende (a Socialist) and Frei (a far more conservative Christian Democrat) are represented. No Pinochet, though.

Patricia told us that political divisions still run very deep in Chile. Many families are divided on political lines and are torn apart. Among her own uncles and aunts she has one set who were prominent Socialists under Allende and another uncle who was a high ranking officer under Pinochet.

During the Pinochet coup d'etat (when Patricia was about eleven years old) many families denounced their socialist members, who were then disappeared. Patricia's Army uncle sent tanks to the Socialist uncle's house: but not to arrest them; to protect them. Family above ideology. It was quite emotional for her to talk about; she started to tear up. I was so glad she told us this story - it made that part of history personal for me in a new way.

South America Day 3: The Streets of Santiago

2009-11-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2009

Today was our City Tour, in the Blue Bus (we were Blues in Egypt too; I wonder if this is mere coincidence...) Our guide is Patricia:

That's pronounced Pa-TREE-see-ah, which I think is pretty. She chatted with us as we drove through Santiago's modern residential district on our way to our first stop. Along the drive, we passed by this street:

I was a bit surprised that Chile would name a street in memory of the September 11 terrorist attacks; Patricia explained that actually Chile has a prior claim on that date. Turns out September 11, 1973 was the date General Pinochet overthrew President Allende and took over the government. About which, more later.

Things I learned along the way:

1. There is a presidential election in Chile in a couple of weeks - December 13, to be exact. Chile has a freewheeling attitude toward election posters:

The posters were just everywhere. In contrast to our stereotyped red, white and blue, Chile feels free to use the entire spectrum:

2. Chilean drugstores

can and will sell you a lot of things that we in America can get by prescription only. Almost anything but narcotics and opiates. Patricia says that Chileans are all hypochondriacs.

3. It is not "earthquake season" here right now. Chile is a very geologically active country, due to the Nazca Plate's ongoing conflict with the South American Plate. (Just remember what my geology professor always told us: Subduction leads to orogeny!) However, according to Patricia, there's kind of a cycle of years when earthquakes are more common and years when they're less common. Right this minute is a "less common" time. This, we think, is good news!

South America Day 3: Lapis Lazuli (Long?)

2009-11-21T09:27:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2010; ~9:30 AM

Our first stop was (*sigh*) a Unique Shopping Opportunity.

At least this one was fun though. Faba specializes in lapis lazuli - not just jewelry but also inlaid statuary and objets d'art.

For those who are not gemstone-savvy, lapis is a lovely deep blue colored stone - ground lapis lazuli was the basis for the wildly expensive "ultramarine blue" pigment used to paint Mary's mantle in medieval Christian art:

It was wildly expensive because 1) it had to be imported from a distant (and hostile) source overseas (ultramarine literally means beyond the sea), 2) it took a lot of processing, and 3) it resists fading very well. In some medieval paintings Mary's blue mantle is the only thing that still has color! (I knew this part from my medieval hobbyist days.)

Apparently Chile and Afghanistan are the two main sources of lapis lazuli. The main difference is that Afghani lapis often has veins of gold pyrite running through it while Chilean lapis has veins of white calcite instead. You can see them here:

(click for bigger.) I had fun browsing, although the Chilean-peso-to-dollar exchange rate (500 pesos to the dollar) made the prices look even more outrageous than they probably were. I was also grateful that the store had a water dispenser since they weren't selling bottled water on the bus as we have gotten accustomed to. I became a two-fisted drinker:

Some of our bus-mates wandered off to a clothing store nearby

but they had to content themselves with window-shopping: in Chile, nothing really opens before 10 or 11 AM, especially on a Saturday. Faba opened early, just for us!

South America Day 2: In Which Nothing Much Happens Either

2009-11-20T17:06:00.000-05:00

November 20, 2010

It was pretty cool watching the plane try to find a flat place to land in Santiago. If your South American geography is as shaky as mine was, check out this relief map (Thanks, Wikimedia Commons). Chile's the long skinny one down the left hand side, and Santiago is tucked in a nice valley between the coastal range and the Andes (the high mountains on the right). What that means is that the pilot needed a certain precision and...panache...to get us landed properly.

Inside the airport, we stood in line for a long time waiting to pay our $130 Reciprocity Fee. Apparently we charge Chileans $130 to get a visa for the US, so they charge us the same amount to enter their country. Then we went through Customs, where I had to declare a Snickers bar as an "agricultural product". (I could sort of understand this, since there are actual peanuts in there. If it had been a Twinkie, I think I'd have felt I was perjuring myself.)

Outside the airport, we caught a glimpse of the Andes

on our way to the bus that took us to our hotel, where we were held captive in a ballroom without luggage or a meal for the next six hours as our room keys trickled in at glacial speeds. We gradually figured out what happened:

The Santiago Airport had apparently been victim of a wildcat air traffic controller strike that morning. I guess I feel grateful they came out to land our plane! Of course, this meant that no flights were leaving Santiago this morning; therefore, none of last night's guests were willing to leave their comfy hotel rooms until the last possible second; therefore Housekeeping couldn't get into the rooms until after noon; therefore, we couldn't check into our rooms for a much needed NAP until - well, it ended up being around 2 PM.

To his credit, Eduardo (our GCT Program Director) arranged for coffee, tea, juice, and some little trays of cookies to give our caffeine levels and blood sugar a boost and stave off actual physical violence. Dad just zoned out, and I had my book and my knitting so I was OK. I also wandered the ballroom and located a couple of other knitters with whom I exchanged shop talk.

Part of the problem, as well, is that this group is just enormous. I thought Egypt was bad with four buses worth of vacationers, and China was great at just one bus-worth. But this is the first time in years that Grand Circle has done ocean cruises, and I guess they just kept selling tickets as long as people kept buying them. There are about 200 in this group, and there's just Eduardo with a couple of assistants on the other end. This was not his favorite day, I think - he got chewed out a lot.

When we got our room at 2, I fell unconscious on the bed. Poor Dad was stuck awake waiting for our luggage that had the alarm clock in it, since he was afraid if he fell asleep we'd miss the briefing and Orientation Walk at 4:30. Note to self: next time, the alarm clock goes in the carry on bags!

Dad skipped the Orientation Walk, but I went on it and made mental notes while Piedad, our guide, showed us useful locations nearby: a currency exchange (actually in the same building as the hotel, couldn't be more convenient), an ATM, a little grocery store that sells bottled water for cheap, a good sandwich shop, the subway. Our hotel (the Crowne Plaza Santiago) is in a great location.

Right after this we boarded a fleet of buses, crossed over the Mapucho River

and drove to a restaurant halfway up San Cristobal Hill, a huge hill overlooking Santiago. (There's a 22-meter-tall statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on top of this hill, which just tickles my little Catholic soul. You can see it from all over the city. View gorgeous photo panoramas here!) We ate a tasty meal of salmon, I think, pâté, curried soup, and a millefiore cake of phyllo dough layered with orange syrup (yum - but oh so sweet! Apparently South Americans have an even worse sweet tooth that we do.) While we ate, we were serenaded by a mariachi duo:

After dinner, we were given some time to wander around the hilltop admiring the local flora

and the view over the city.

I also got in trouble wandering too high on the hill; a staff member shooed me down, saying "No es seguro!" I actually understood he was saying it wasn't safe.

We went over to the grocery store after they brought us back to the hotel, to pick up bottled water. It's Friday night, and guys were in the store buying baskets full of wine and other booze; it seemed pretty cheap if I understood the currency conversion. Dad and I didn't need alcohol to fall right asleep, though!

South America Day 1: In Which Nothing Much Happens

2009-11-18T13:38:00.000-05:00

November 19, 1009

This trip is starting slow, eh? And today is starting even slower, since we don't fly out till 8 PM!

Dad let me sleep to a miraculous 8:45 AM, and then greeted me with the news that Atlanta's air traffic computers died early this morning. I sometimes give Dad a hard time about the whole "fly down a day early" thing, but he really deserves the credit this time: it's a darn good thing he didn't listen to me and book a flight from Ohio this morning. It would be nerve racking at best and disastrous at worst. Dad's such a sweetheart, he only rubbed it in a little bit.

Even looking out the window of an airport hotel, Miami has a certain appeal to this Ohio girl:

It's a glorious day, sunny and warm, and we have the whole day to kill before going to the airport for our evening flight. If my head cold and sore throat wasn't kicking into high gear, I'd have begged Dad to check our luggage and take me to the beach. As it was, after we had to surrender the room at noon, we just camped out in the lobby like upscale homeless people. The hotel had a business center with Internet computers, so we did a little last minute Christmas shopping on Amazon, lounged on the comfy sofa, napped, knit - started relaxing, in fact.

At 4 PM Dad got us on the airport shuttle and we breezed through security and landed smack in the food court where we ate dinner. At our gate we began making the acquaintance of our fellow Grand Circle travelers, identified by their name badges, GCT-logo-emblazoned carry-ons and jackets, etc. They seem like a nice interesting bunch of folks, though so far I am again the baby.

We're flying on LAN, a Chile-based airline I had never heard of before, and it was really nice. They've retrofitted all the seats with little entertainment screens on the back of the seat in front of you, with a wide selection of movies, TV shows and audio. Also a flight map, which kept Daddy happy! He kept it on almost all the way down. It was a little tight...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I watched Julie and Julia, then fell asleep for a couple of hours, only to have the flight crew wake us up for breakfast! Bad flight crew!

South America Day 0: On the Road Again

2009-11-18T07:07:00.000-05:00

I'm finally going to start blogging up the South America trip from last fall. Following my earlier pattern I'll let the posts post on today's current date, but will put the date the events happened at the top of the post. Once a post's been up a month or so I'll move it back to its "native date". Have fun reading!

November 18, 2009; 7 AM

Dad and I are at it again: we're getting ready to board our plane. Not the plane to Santiago, oh no. This plane goes to Miami, where we will catch the plane to Santiago. About 28 hours later. That's right - we're going down a day early. Dad always prefers this, especially in a season (like NOVEMBER in OHIO) where there are potential weather delays. Better to take an extra day off work than risk missing the boat - literally!

As it turns out, the weather today is lovely - ridiculous, even. It was over 60 degrees out when my friend Christina picked us up for the trip to the airport (Thanks, Christina!) We were massively early for our flight so we breezed through Security without challenge and settled down in some conveniently placed chairs: right in front of the departure gate board and about five yards from the pastry/coffee shop. Our gate wasn't posted yet, but I figured no problem - they had hours, right?

Two hours of knitting (me) and newspaper reading (Dad) later, there still was no gate posted for our flight. Getting a little nervous - we should be boarding soon! - I did a walkaround and found our mystery gate, which by this time was staffed - by the same dude who'd checked in our baggage earlier. I guess he wears lots of hats. If he's the pilot, I'm getting off! I rescued Dad and the rest of our co-passengers who were milling around the departures board.

One of our fellow passengers is traveling with four little peach-faced lovebirds. She has them in a homemade carrier that looks like a two-story clear acrylic shoebox. It was rather entertaining watching them go through Security.

Once they decided to tell us where our gate was, our travel to Miami via Atlanta was uneventful, if dull. I got a chance to do my half-hour walk in the Atlanta concourse, which is a ridiculous half-mile long. I only needed two circuits to fill my time. Ominously, I'm beginning to notice cold symptoms - this is a bad sign, but I will try to nuke them with Cold-Eez.

Unable to resist, again!

2009-11-06T10:10:00.002-05:00

Click here for fun!

Life with Conehead

2009-11-05T00:22:00.003-05:00

My poor Buster had some surgery last week. To be specific, he suffered the "most unkindest cut of all." (My male readers have just crossed their legs unconsciously...) [No, he wasn't neutered before. I adopted him as an adult, so it wasn't going to change his behavior which was fine anyway, and since he never goes outside off his leash I knew he wasn't fathering any puppies. I just never got around to it. But he has these little tumors that the vet thinks are testosterone sensitive, so removing the testosterone may make them shrink. I hope it works!]

Anyway, the silver lining here is Buster's increased entertainment value. Or as I now call him, "Conehead". Here he is in his Henry XIII outfit:

It wasn't so funny the first night though. He wasn't very good at maneuvering with the collar on yet, so the whole night went like this:
Soft sleeping sounds from the bed.
*THUD* from Buster ramming his collar into the door frame.
"Buster! Shut up and lie down!" from the bed.
More sleep sounds.
*THUD* - this time he's whacked into the wall itself.
Wailing. "Buster! Settle!" Sound of pillow and blanket being pulled over head.
Repeat until dawn.

What I find impressive is his ingenuity - he managed to come down with the Cone of Silence directly over his food bowl so he could eat!

Packing Lite

2009-11-04T23:16:00.002-05:00

Dad and I are in the final phases of preparing to go on our cruise to South America. We'll be gone for three weeks, the same length of time as China, but the packing is giving me major challenges. The big problem is that we really need clothes for three separate seasons.

We're flying from Miami to Santiago, Chile, where we will stay for several days. It's late Spring there so the temps are in the upper 70s to low 80s, which I'm looking forward to since we had 38 degrees and sleet today. Next, we board the Norwegian Sun and head south along the coast, stopping in at various ports and ending up cruising through the Patagonian Fjords looking at glaciers. (By the way, did you know Chile had glaciers? Fjords? I didn't think so.) Logic indicates that glacier viewing should probably not be done in capri pants, don't you think? We go right around Cape Horn at our southernmost, and even their summer temperatures don't break 60 very often; overnight lows are around 40. Then we head back North again into warm weather and end up with several days in Buenos Aires, back in the 80s. So I need to pack clothes for every temperature from 85 to 40 degrees, in one suitcase (50 pound maximum) and one carry on (max weight 18 measly pounds)!

This is where I'm at so far:

Wish me luck!

Can... Not... Resist... the... Funny

2009-11-01T18:45:00.001-05:00

The Joy of Sox

2009-10-06T22:10:00.006-04:00

Well, not too long ago I posted that I was chugging merrily along on my Classic Lines Cardi. Shortly after that blithe remark I discovered the terrible fact that somewhere along the line I suffered a major gauge blunder wherein I am getting too many stitches to the inch and waaay too many rows to the inch. This sleeve:

should taper smoothly all along its length instead of changing angle 2/3 of the way up where I finished the increases. I didn't realize this at the time though, and went right ahead with the body; the result is that all the waist shaping ended up in the first six inches of the sweater instead of, I don't know, following the contour of hip-->waist-->bust. I'm disgusted with it and have stuffed it in the bottom of its project bag and banished it from my sight until I get over my mad.

This left me free to return to my first love: socks. In a rush of productivity I finished the green Diagonal Lace Socks, though I won't have a picture until I get together with my friend Sarah next weekend; I am through trying to photograph my own feet until I learn to use the timer on my camera! Now I'm done with those, however, I couldn't decide between two skeins of my hand-dyed yarn so I cast on both.

First is a skein of "Platinum Sock" from Wool2Dye4. This yarn is a tight-twisted wool/nylon blend that feels very smooth and almost hard. The bright white color of the base yarn let me dye it with very pale colors:

The pattern I picked is "Escher Socks" from Knitting Socks With Handpainted Yarn, although I changed the construction to toe-up and am also changing the heel. So I guess it's 'inspired by' the Escher Socks pattern!

In their current unstretched state these socks look pretty much like plain ribbing, but when on the foot the'll have an interesting, kind of honeycombed look. I love the soft, broad stripes I'm getting.

The other sock gets its interest from color rather than pattern. It's an utterly plain top-down stockinette sock with a picot-hemmed cuff:

but it couldn't be brighter without my needing sunglasses to work on it! I dyed this yarn last year and I call it "Popsicle" for obvious reasons. I'm through the heel flap on the first sock but I'm saving the leg of the second sock for this weekend. I'm going to a conference on Eucharistic theology in the Eastern Church on Friday and Saturday, and I plan to knit to keep my hands busy so I can stay awake while listening to the speakers. (Hey, cut me some slack - I'll have worked all day on Friday before driving up to Cleveland!) Hence the need for a project I can knit without looking at more than once every five minutes or so. Voila! Popsicle Socks!

By the way, I had an amusing time posing and photographing yarn in my burning bush and my pot of chives:

Flash That Stash

2009-10-06T15:39:00.006-04:00

I had so much fun a few weeks ago arranging all my lace yarn into a color wheel and taking its picture that I decided to do the same thing with my sock yarn. Now that's a really scary proposition - I am fond of lace yarn (think chocolate) but addicted to sock yarn (think cocaine).

I have this afternoon off, so I hauled the sock yarn storage boxes all downstairs, went out on the lawn and started playing. The arrangement was quite challenging - does this yarn that has blue, brown and purple belong in Blue, Brown, Purple or Multi? Is this one a red brown or a brown red? This is the kind of thing that makes most guys I know go completely bonkers; it's a good thing the main man in my life has four feet and a tail.

Well, here it is in all its glory:

66 pairs of socks' worth of yarn. At my current rate of knitting, that represents a steady 5.5 years of work. I think of it as a form of insurance against economic downturns!

My new favorite phrase

2009-10-05T23:06:00.003-04:00

I'm listening to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma on my iPod as Buster and I take our daily constitutional. (Yay, Audible.com!) I'm in chapter 19, on hunting for mushrooms. In it, Pollan remarks that many popular pastimes and hobbies consist of 'playing at satisfying our creaturely needs' and notes his own fondness for gardening, using my new favorite phrase. So now I'll steal it for myself and go around describing knitting as

"my atavism of choice"!

Movie Reviews: Juno

2009-10-04T12:32:00.009-04:00

I must be one of the last three people in the USA who hadn't seen Juno - it was an indie hit when it came out in 2007. It'd been on my list pretty much since it came out, too, and even in my Netflix queue. However, if you could see that queue you'd see how heavily tilted towards TV-on-DVD it is, and most days given the choice I'd way rather watch two episodes of commercial-free TV than a 90-minute movie. So Juno kept getting shuffled farther and farther down the list.

So last week I was talking about movies with a library patron and she asked about Juno. I told her what the general consensus had been - it got like a 93% positive score on the Tomatometer at RottenTomatoes.com - but I had to say I hadn't seen it myself. So I checked out a copy.

Last night I finally got around to watching it. In fact, I watched it twice through, plus all the Bonus Features except the commentary track (that's my plan for tonight). [Actually, this is one of the reasons I don't watch movies that often. Rather than a single 90-minute commitment I usually end up watching them more than once, especially if there's a commentary track, which I am a sucker for. So the darn things suck up three or four hours minimum and that's hard to fit into my overcrowded schedule.]

Without saying too much about it for the other two people who haven't seen the movie yet, it is about a teen pregnancy, and it certainly earned its PG-13 via crude language and crude verbal imagery. But I really loved the wit and spark of the script, and the characters were overwhelmingly sympathetic and believable (though they had the usual movie-character ability to think of and say things in the quirky, interesting and funny way I can only rarely manage in real life). A couple of times I thought they were going to take it in a very very very bad direction, but they didn't go there.

As a Catholic, it would be a mistake to describe Juno as a "pro-life" movie. That makes it sound like a message picture and that's definitely not the case. But it shows Juno, having made one bad decision (well, a couple), proceed to make several very good ones, and I love the way 1) Juno never for a minute thinks that at sixteen she's ready to be a mom, and neither do the people around her and 2) the way adoption actually gets positive press. This is a topic rather dear to my own heart, so yay Juno!

The three main actresses, Ellen Page as Juno, Jennifer Garner as Vanessa and Allison Janney as Bren, are all wonderful. Ellen Page carries the movie, of course, but Bren gets some marvelous lines. As for Jennifer Garner, because she's playing a rather uptight character her face looks severe in most of her scenes. Then the couple of times she throws a full-on smile at the camera, whoa Jackie! you just about fall over with the beauty of it.

Not for the easily offended, but I loved this movie. Read real reviews at rogerebert.com and decentfilms.com! Oh, and on the insightful Church of the Masses blog too!

Favorites Week Goes Political

2009-09-24T17:56:00.005-04:00

In honor of Banned Book Week (September 26−October 3, 2009), I give you my favorite Banned Books:

Other Banned or Challenged Favorites include:

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Mind you, not all these were actually banned, but they've at least been challenged somewhere.

Linkadink Continues

2009-09-23T18:20:00.004-04:00

Tonight, I'm going over to Dad's to help him study for his biology exam.

Dad is taking very good advantage of Kent State University's policy that community members over a certain age can audit KSU classes for free as long as the professor says OK. Last year he studied Geology and this year it's Physics (Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe) and Biology (Biological Diversity). The Seven Ideas class is no problem what with his physics degree and all, but the bio course is a majors course and they're throwing a lot of unfamiliar vocab at him. He's doing very well, but it always helps to study with someone!

Your treat for today wins in the following category: All-Time Best Commercial for an Australian Beer. Enjoy!

Not a lot to say...

2009-09-22T18:16:00.006-04:00

I don't seem to have much to say this week. This is because:

1. The Diagonal Lace socks are slowly growing, but they look about the same as before,

2. The Classic Stripes Cardigan is slowly growing, with both sleeves done, but now I'm on the body and the rounds are reeeeeallllly looooooong, and

3. A lot of my time has been taken up by a Super Secret Project (not knitting, for once) for my Dad's birthday. Naturally, since he reads this blog occasionally, I can't post about it yet!

Since I have no good knitting to give you, I will do the best I can. This week has just been declared "Favorites Week". Here is the winner in the category Favorite LOLdog with a Wool Tie-in. Click through to view the entire photo (serves me right for picking a blog template with narrow columns...)

see more dog and puppy pictures

Hope you enjoy the linkorama!

Bloggin' from the DX

2009-09-19T20:22:00.006-04:00

Coming to you live from the fourth annual Dessert Extravaganza at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library!

Every year, our Library Foundation sponsors an event known as the Dessert Extravaganza, or DX for short. It's their big annual fundraiser, and it is a gala event by any standards.

Right now I'm sitting behind the desk watching the crowds of attendees swirling around. There are two areas of concentration: the dessert tables and the silent auction tables.

For the auction, we get donations of gift baskets, fitness memberships, tandem bicycles and a diamond necklace (this year's necklace is a beautiful pink tourmaline surrounded by small diamonds, set in silver? platinum?) among many other things and people use their ticket numbers as bid numbers for the auction. These things are donated by businesses, mostly, but also some private individuals.

As for the desserts, we had about seventeen local restaurants participate this year, bringing sample size servings of ice cream, tiramisu, cupcakes, French Toast cookies (Thank you, Susie Biscotti!) and (YUM!) chocolate bread pudding from Moe's. (I got freed from my duties as a ticket seller long enough to make a pass through the fields of bounty and nibbled on many yummy objects, though not as many as I would like (but probably more than I should).

My boss seems to have won the bidding the tray of cookies from Susie Biscotti - I'm jealous, but I have a feeling she'll share. And she picked up a book because she needs more of those.

I'll try to add a couple of photos to this post over the next day or so,
(ETA: Here's one!)

but that will have to wait until they go up on the library's Flickr page. Final bidding is about to commence: Must go!

The Missionary of Zenni Optical

2009-09-15T13:22:00.011-04:00

I recently developed a need for prescription eyewear. Now that's not surprising at my age of forty-mumble, but it was a concern to me given that I'm watching my pennies like so many these days. I was very concerned with the potential cost of glasses since the eye doctor recommended lineless bifocals and I know they are expen$ive!

After my eye exam, I did some research (like a good little librarian) and came up with this article from the Chicago Tribune a couple of years ago. It mentioned that good prices could be had from online glasses vendors when time wasn't an issue, and it mentioned one vendor in particular, Zenni Optical. I decided to give them a try.

Let me tell you, I am now the Missionary of Zenni Optical. I could not be happier with my glasses.

I dug out my prescription from the eye doctor and tried to interpret it. On the Zenni Optical site they have a nice page telling you how to take your basic prescription and calculate the correct lenses to order for various specialized types of glasses. Naturally I set up an Excel spreadsheet to do the math for me! Since their base price for a pair of single-vision lenses is a whopping eight dollars, I decided to go hog wild. I ordered:

A pair of single vision reading glasses and a pair of single vision computer glasses, both with the same half-rim frame, eight bucks each:

I color coded them so I can tell them apart: the readers are green and the computer glasses are pink.

I decided to get the bifocals too. According to the website, the lineless kind are sometimes not that great when your overall prescription is weak (my eyes aren't all that bad). It turns out that often the "useful" part of the lens is pretty small and you spend all day tilting your head around to get the good bit in front of whatever you're trying to look at. I decided to try conventional lined bifocals. And anyhow those are about $12 cheaper. With the leftover money I splurged on some fancier frames:

Even with the frame upgrade, that pair only ran me $46.

Just for yuks, I added a pair of prescription sunglasses (distance prescription only) with some $8 purple frames. The sunglass tint added all of $4.95. So I got four pairs of prescription eyeglasses, including bifocals and sunglasses, for... wait for it...

$80.85. Including shipping. From somewhere in the Far East where they are made. (Which, to be fair, took about three weeks. If you need your glasses in a more timely fashion, this is not your store.)

One caveat. Make sure you have the eye doc write down your pupillary distance or you'll end up like me. I didn't know to request this, and my eye doc's office says they don't measure it. That's why I found myself staring past a friend's head while she held a ruler across the bridge of my nose! She apparently did a good job, since my glasses aren't giving me headaches.

Now, I wouldn't presume to tell anyone what kind of decisions to make with their own personal eyeballs. I only note that everyone I tell this story to winces, sucks air through their teeth, and tells me how much they spent on whatever glasses they themselves are wearing at the time. And those numbers are remarkably different!

Edited to add: Click here to download a Zenni calculator in Excel. Made by me; all errors mine; use at your own risk!

The Annual Pilgrimage

2009-09-12T20:56:00.012-04:00

Today I performed a quasi-religious observance which has great significance to my family: the annual pilgrimage to Michigan State University to attend a fall football game. Since everybody but me in my immediate family is a green-blooded Spartan [heck, Mom and Dad were married in the college chapel 50 years ago last month], MSU holds a central place among us. For years, Mom and Dad met up every year with some of their classmates to attend a game, and my MSU-grad brother started joining them at some point. The year before Mom died, they invited me to join the party and since then I've really enjoyed continuing the tradition.

Dad and I started off Friday and drove up to the Cleveland Airport where my brother flew in at 8 AM. We picked him up and drove off toward East Lansing, talking eighteen to the dozen the whole way.

These weekends have a set program, and the first part is to spend an afternoon wandering around the MSU campus. We met up with some of John's friends on Friday evening for dinner nearby, and then retired early. (Well, at least Dad and I did.)

Game Day is the real heart of the weekend. We always stay at Kellog Center, the hotel affiliated with the business school on campus, so the day commenced with breakfast at the State Room restaurant in the hotel, where we were joined by two dear family friends, Gail and Ken. Gail was one of Mom's bridesmaids!

Today's game started at noon, so soon after breakfast we began moseying over to Spartan Stadium.

The scenic walk used to pass by a large more-or-less vacant field; this year a new baseball stadium

had popped up there like a mushroom.

Our first stop inside the stadium is always the Varsity Club:

Dad is a proud member,

and he loves being able to get his guests in there. (They used to stamp our hands when he brought us in, but after last year - we were here the week they had the hurricane, and our stamps simply washed off - now they strap hospital-style bracelets on those persons who are authorized to enter.) The club consists of a large room

with an enormous big-screen TV (to watch the game in case of inclement weather) and many photos of past varsity lettermen and women. I found one particular photo: (click for bigger!)

and a nice gentleman offered to take our picture in front of it:

Then it was time to clamber up to our seats. We were in the nosebleed region, up in the corner of one end zone, but at least we weren't in the truly dizzying upper deck. We had a splendid view of the field, and almost immediately the pregame band show began. Central Michigan brought their band, who marched and played for awhile, and then the Spartan Marching Band took the field!

They were preceded by flag bearers carrying flags for all (riddle me this) eleven Big 10 teams and the highly flexible drum major:

Here they're playing the Fight Song, of course! Next, the student section wrapped its arms around each other's shoulders and swayed as the Alma Mater, "Shadows" was played,

and then Sparty ran onto the field and commenced to mugging and riling up the fans!

Note the burly flag bearers behind him waving five-yard square M, S or U flags! I bet those guys pray for light winds.

You know, even though I didn't go here, I get into all this traditional nostalgia.

The game itself finally commenced (they had a good crowd today!)

wherein downs were touched, goals were kicked, passes were completed (or sometimes not), fumbles were recovered (or sometimes not) and smiles were smiled.

Before we knew it, it was halftime and the band came back out

to perform much fancy marching, this time accompanied by flag girls! They even did a combined number, "Swing, Swing, Swing", with the CMU band:

It was terrific, and things only got better as my favorite part of halftime arrived.

Zeke the Frisbee Dog was as game as any half, quarter or full back, and if not as wide as the human receivers, he had at least as good a pass completion rate!

As the third quarter began, I took some time to enjoy interesting sights adjacent to the field rather than on it, including the TV camera on an enormous dolly

and the lovely view of Beaumont Tower beyond the edge of the stadium

This fella is as much a campus icon as the tower:

I've seen him at every single home game I've attended (and even, if I remember correctly, some of the away games as well). John and I spent some time wondering if the green dye he paints on his skin has had a permanent effect - is he green on Mondays? - and we think there's documentary fodder in unofficial mascots like this guy.

The game was close, but MSU was ahead with eight seconds to go:

Unfortunately, due to a combination of penalties (Tchah!) and some wildcard plays on the part of CMU, the Spartans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory five seconds later:

Even so, we had a great afternoon, and the weather was idyllic (as if, John observed, in apology for last year.)

After a marvelous dinner at the State Room, John went to hang out with some more of his friends at a local establishment selling adult beverages. Dad and I retired to our hotel room, he to watch two football games simultaneously (Minnesota vs the Air Force Academy and Ohio State vs USC) and I to write this post!

Biker Chick

2009-09-10T12:13:00.001-04:00

I had a lovely treat the Friday before Labor Day weekend: I got to see my cousin Sandy and her husband Jack. They live on the far side of Chicago, and we don't get out there too often - especially now that my brother's moved out of the state.

Luckily, Sandy's brother and sister still live in western New York. This means that every so often they pass this way on one end or other of a trip, and sometimes they have time to stop and visit with us.

This time they were traveling by road. Specifically, they were on their Harley!

They actually each own one, but this trip they shared, with Sandy riding pillion. They have the look right, didn't they?

We all went out to breakfast and had a great time talking up a storm - it took forever to eat because our mouths were so busy doing other things - and then headed back to Dad's for more chatting until they had to pack up and leave. They were on the homeward leg of their trip and needed to be in Illinois by the end of the day. As they loaded up the saddlebags on the motorcycle I plucked up my courage and asked for a ride. As all enthusiasts, Jack was glad to comply!

I borrowed Sandy's helmet and off we went, making a big loop of five miles or so and returning to Dad's house ten or fifteen minutes later, triumphant:

I had a blast, though I'm not saving up for my own yet or anything. Sadly, a few minutes later they headed on their way (though they stopped off quickly at my place to meet Buster.) Hopefully it won't be five years before the next time I see them!

Oh, to heck with it!

2009-09-08T20:12:00.007-04:00

Alternative Titles: Diana Goes Over the Brink or Yarn Binge.

Yarn diet my eye.

Around the middle of last week, I realized I needed to pick up a couple of insurance skeins of the Knitpicks lace yarns I bought last spring. I was planning some largeish shawls and I didn't want to run out.

I placed a small order after midnight Wednesday night. When I got up Thursday morning, I discovered that Knitpicks had declared a lace yarn sale. Naturally I called them to get the discount applied to my order from seven hours previously (I couldn't change the order because they were already packing it for shipping! Those folks must really need their warehouse space back). Then I realized I needed to get one or two extra skeins. Then...I can't really remember. All I know is that I found myself sprawled on the sofa with my laptop on my lap, my credit card clutched in my hand, and a vaguely dirty feeling.

Barely 48 hours later, the yarn was here. I unpacked it and fondled it. Then I decided to play!

I hauled out all my lace yarn and made a color wheel out on the porch. (Note: this does not even include the lace yarn that's being knit into my Classic Lines Cardigan, nor the two shawls (turquoise and red-brown) that are already on the needles.) Voila:

As I calculate it, I have enough yarn there for sixteen shawls. That's a lotta shawls! The new ones are Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in Cha Cha Heather (the orange one at eleven o'clock) and Dill Heather (the dark green at around eight). I bought a few more skeins in colors I had already so I didn't have to worry about having enough yarn for various projects. [What I will end up with, I can already predict, is some kind of Frankenshawl made out of multiple orphan skeins. Or maybe a lot of small scarves, fichus and/or headbands.]

It amuses me to analyze my color preferences. I note strong concentrations in:

Pink (a kettle-dyed wool, a strongly variegated alpaca/silk blend, and a coral pink wool) augmented by Red (that hand-dyed wool from last month)

Green (a light yellow green kettle-dyed wool, a bright yellow green mohair/silk blend, a dull, brownish yellow green mohair/silk blend and a dark yellow green alpaca. Apparently the only greens I like are yellow greens.)

Blue (deep turquoise wool, heathered blue wool, and variegated blue alpaca/silk)

and, inexplicably, three separate shawls' worth of red-brown yarn

not counting the Icarus shawl. That's four red-brown shawls! What was I thinking?!

Yellow is entirely absent, and purple is represented only by a grayish-lavender alpaca and a strongly variegated alpaca/silk that adulturates the purple with tons of turquoise and fuchsia.

What does all this mean?

1. 1970s appliance colors still rule!

2. I don't really pay much attention to the actual clothing in my wardrobe when planning these little projects.

3. I think I knit a lot faster than I actually knit!

I was enjoying my new purchases, but I convinced myself that this was just an aberration. That I had had a little binge, like eating a whole pint of Haagen-Dasz in one sitting, but that I could pick myself up and get back on the wagon. But the Universe held up a mirror to me, revealing the truth about my character: a box came for me in the mail today. It contained my latest from Sundara: Toasted Orange Over Pistachio sock yarn which I utterly adore.

Maybe it's time to accept myself for who I am?

Fireworks in My Backyard

2009-09-05T21:59:00.010-04:00

So there I was, peacefully cooking myself a quesadilla for dinner and watching Dr. Who on DVD. (You mean you don't eat dinner at 9:15 PM? You mean you don't lose two hours down a black hole every time you sit down at your computer "just for a second" to check your email or Facebook or something after getting home from work?) Anyway, there I was, when...

BOOM!!

Outside, about half a mile from my driveway, the City of Stow was putting on a Labor Day fireworks display! It caught me by surprise, since I'm not really very good at keeping up with the local news.

I moved my frying pan off the burner, turned off the stove, went to the garage door, fell over Buster who was most uncharacteristically trying to go out the door from behind which those booming noises were coming, put Buster's leash on him, went out to the garage, fell over Buster's leash, since he decided that his previous desire to go out with me was dangerously unwise, put Buster back in the house, went out alone and watched some fireworks, remembered my camera has a fireworks setting, ran back in to get it, fell over Buster who was hovering by the garage door, ran outside and watched the rest of the show while trying to take some pictures. Buster appears to have spent the remainder of his time behind the sofa.

My wee camera did its best, though I really need a tripod for this sort of thing. The display was really gorgeous, with lots of shimmery ones, lots of big crysanthemums, and lots of those packed shaped charges that are so fashionable just now. Thanks, Stow!

The Scent of Melancholy

2009-09-05T12:13:00.003-04:00

There's a smell in the air that always spells Autumn to me. I have no idea what it is, and nobody I've described it to can make anything of my description.

I always notice it around the time of year the kids go back to school. It's a dry, dusty smell that catches in the back of my throat. I don't think it has anything to do with furnaces, because they're not turned on yet. (Heck, a lot of places are still running the AC, though this has been a delightfully cool summer in my neck of the woods.) It can't have anything to do with fall leaves, either - those have their own distinctive odor that's all tied in with the sound they make when you crunch your way through them, and anyways at this point they're still on the trees.

When I smell this smell, I find myself remembering things. I smelled that smell the day I picked up the field mouse in the schoolyard in fourth grade or so, and it bit me (naturally.) Dad's still mad that the school never called him and Mom to tell them their daughter got bitten by a wild animal. I picked it up in the first place because I loved all furry things so much that I had no sense whatsoever; I'm much happier now as a dog owner, but Mom's asthma forbade that in my youth.

I smelled it the day my folks left me at Wooster for my freshman year of college - I distinctly remember catching a whiff on the stairs to the basement laundry room. The smell used to be so strongly associated with that leavetaking, going-back-to-college time that I would get teary with homesickness whenever I smelled it - I'm a little teary now, remembering, though the effect isn't strong any longer.

Maybe it has something to do with the cold nights and warm days. Maybe it's the smell of the soil in its last rush of fertility, before the harvest and the fallow winter. I wonder why this smell affects me this way, especially given that autumn is my absolute favorite season, but I can only think of it as the scent of melancholy.

image by hirekatsu at stock.xchng

Gold Star for Froggin'

2009-08-30T01:48:00.002-04:00

The Diagonal Lace socks

are in trouble again; I pulled them back too far last time so when I turned the heel the foot was too short. Also, when I tried them on it became clear that there was a "going over my heel" issue beginning to make itself felt.

Well, it's only knitting. To save time by checking first, I knit the other sock 1/2 inch longer, with a correspondingly larger gusset to make them possible to pull on when full length, then turned the heel and knit the flap. It worked very well but I am four stitches over my count on the back of the leg. I think I'll just decrease them away over the next two rounds. I'm so totally winging these socks that it'll be a marvel if they are foot-shaped by the end of this!

Also, if you note the time stamp on this post you'll see why I'm not as coherent as I normally am! I seem to be constitutionally incapable of leaving such a "clean-up" project till morning. It was 1:48 AM when I finally finished winding the yarn back on to the ball!

Furloughed

2009-08-28T12:24:00.003-04:00

My library, in an effort not to go bankrupt, is saving money by being closed today (and one Friday a month for at least the rest of the year). So I am home "on unpaid furlough".

Now, there are very definitely worse things! They could have cut my pay without my getting a day off out of the deal! So I want to share with you what a librarian does on furlough:

1. She sleeps late!
2. She noodles around on her computer,
3. She tempts herself (again) by surfing yarn websites but is a good girl,
4. She plays with her dog,
5. She bakes a pie,
6. She watches a bunch of mindless TV while knitting (FUN!) and
7. She has dinner at a good friend's house.

So it's a pretty good day, all told!

I leave you with an utterly charming Youtube video (hat tip: Mark Shea, "Catholic and Enjoying It"):

Close to the precipice

2009-08-23T23:32:00.004-04:00

Why, oh why did I ever think I could hold out six full months on a yarn diet?

I have yarn.

It's just that I also love yarn.

And even though I am trying not to let myself buy yarn, I can't help going off to look at yarn.

It's the Internet's fault, really. If it weren't for the Web I wouldn't hear about all these glorious yarns, and then I wouldn't develop a hankering for them that amounts to physical pain, and even if I did, say by seeing some yummy yarn my friends are knitting, I wouldn't be able to buy any because a lot of the yarns I am yearning for aren't carried at either of the two (very good) LYSs (that's Local Yarn Stores) I go to.

I'll tell you how sad this is: I've been wanting to try Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Socks that Rock sock yarn because I have seen many knitters' pretty pictures of it. Last night I went to their site and spent I don't know how much time poring over the photos. I went on Ravelry to see how the various colors I liked knitted up. I clicked buttons to put yarn in my shopping cart. I filled out the purchase forms all the way to where you have to put in your credit card number before I took hold of myself and wrenched myself away from the computer screen.

But I triumphed! I did NOT buy the yarn! However, since I registered with their system I now have a "permanent shopping cart" - in other words, that yarn will just stay in there taunting me until I manually take it out.

Or buy it.

In November.

83 To Go

2009-08-19T19:02:00.004-04:00

Today's blog theme is "Post Titles Inspired by Songs". Ten points to the person who recognizes the song this post title comes from - leave me a comment with your guess! (No prizes, sorry - just bragging rights.)

The title sort of reflects my feelings about my unfinished knitting objects. I got a pair of socks off my needles over the weekend - yay me!! But I still feel like I have an awful lot of things going on.

The socks I finished were the Garter Rib Socks in Knitpicks Palette:

I really like how they turned out. (By the way, your neighbor kind of looks at you funny if you say to her, "Carol - could you do me a favor? Take a picture of my feet!") The socks feel comfortable enough even with the aggressively non-merino yarn, but I've only been able to keep them on for a few minutes (long enough to take a picture) because it got HOT here this week. On the assumption that once Fall comes I'll be comfy in the socks all day, I definitely plan to buy me some more of this yarn.

Sadly the Diagonal Lace Socks are making negative progress; according to the pattern I should have started knitting the gusset when the sock was 3 inches shy of my foot length and I knit it till it was an inch too long. So they had a little dip in the frog pond and they're shorter now! I'll start gusseting soon. By the way, if you can arrange things so as not to have to rip back an inch of lace, that is almost certainly the direction your life should take. It's a real bugger getting it back on the needles with all its little yos and ssks intact.

By the way, I was a little confused about how the pattern will work once I get up to the leg itself, so I emailed the designer and she got back to me within twelve hours with the nicest note explaining, essentially, "that's the way they're supposed to be". So Wendy Johnson gets props from me today.

On the Sweater front, I can no longer knit on my Ivory Pinwheel Sweater due to the current sweltering weather referenced above - the thing is just too big and cozy to put on my lap at the moment. However, I cast on for the first sleeve of my Classic Lines Cardi! I'm really excited about this sweater, which will be my first raglan sweater; I hope it looks good when it's done. The fabric is nice and soft and squooshy, and the color pattern where you add in a contrast strand every sixth row creates a powerful pull to do "just one more repeat". I think I'll get a lot done on this.

Signing off; gotta go knit!

"C" Is for Cookie

2009-08-19T09:57:00.003-04:00

"C" is for Cookie that's good enough for me,
"C" is for cookie that's good enough for me,
"C" is for cookie that's good enough for me,
Oh! cookie, cookie, cookie starts with "C"!

Wish me luck, friends - I'm entering a blog contest. I may win cookies from this gal, and oh do they look good!

Blog contest sponsored by she shoots sheep shots!

On The Needles

2009-08-06T12:33:00.000-04:00

I'm getting a little overcommitted with projects right at the moment.

The thing that's currently getting the most face time is my Sundara sock project:

The colorway is "Basil over Buttercup", a rich shaded yellow-green that I adore. I actually started a project with this yarn back in May, using a slip-stitch pattern to give the impression of snake scales. I loved the way the pattern looked but it was a major pain in the patootie because (1) there was an awful lot of stitch manipulation going on, which was hard because (2) I knit tight, so (3) the instep was working up way shorter than the sole so (4) I was trying to figure out how to fix it with short rows which (5) made it so darn hard to figure out that (6) I frogged them.

The current pattern is a lot more cooperative. It's Wendy Johnson's Diagonal Lace Socks, available free on her website or in her (marvelous) book Socks from the Toe Up. I rejiggered the pattern a little to go with my desired 58-stitch circumference,

and I'm almost ready for the heels but I'm holding off a little because I'm not sure if I want to add Wooly Nylon as reinforcement. The Sundara Sock yarn is 100% superwash merino, and I'm worried that I might wear out the heels if I don't reinforce a bit. But then I'll have to go buy the Wooly Nylon and I haven't had the time.

(I haven't given up on the slip stitch snake scale thing, by the way - I'm going to give it another try using a 2- or 2.25-mm sole needle and a 2.75- or 3-mm instep needle, and see if that gives me something workable.)

Then I have my Mini-Mochi Coriolis socks, which I have no picture of because I'm mad at them. The yarn is the stuff I won last fall, and the colors are really great, but the yarn not so much. This is not a criticism of Crystal Palace, the manufacturer - it's because the yarn is from the first-ever batch they made and there were some problems that only came to light after people'd been working with it awhile. The version they're making now has a tighter twist and is a little more stable.

My problem is that I made a small error in calculating where to start the gusset increases (Cat Bordhi's patterns require more math than some) and I'm ready for the heel but the sock is 1/2 inch too short still. If this were ordinary yarn I'd just pull it back and have a re-do, but the Mini-Mochi is a single ply and this first-batch stuff is quite lightly spun. Because of the direction I wind my yarn around my fingers, I'm already "un-spinning" it a bit and I've had breaks. NO WAY am I going to get away with frogging back three inches and re-knitting. So I'm trying to brainstorm another option. When these socks are back in my good graces, I'll take their picture and post it.

Thirdly, I have my Garter Rib Socks in Knitpicks Palette:

This was an experiment to see if I liked this yarn for socks, because if I do, I'll have cheap sock-knitting fun forever. The yarn runs a whopping $1.99 to $2.19 per ball (two needed per pair of socks) and oh my holy wow, I just clicked in there to give you the link and they've added a whole whack of new gorgeous colors. The yarn isn't particularly soft and it's 100% feltable wool so I'll have to hand-wash but at less than $4.50 for a pair of socks worth of yarn I'll take it. I swatched a bunch of stitch patterns in the Iris Heather yarn I'm using, and most of them failed to read well against the heathery yarn.

I ended up with classic Garter Rib a la Charlene Schurch and I like it a lot. I'm past the heel on both of these so it's home free.

Also, because I appear to be truly insane, I wound off the "Pink Granite" yarn from dyeing day

because I think I'll have time to knit those socks soon.

Then there's the shawls. I have two on the needles, one in the swatch stage, and about 15 in my head. Knitpicks is my friend here; they supply almost all of my shawl yarn. Here's the Swallowtail Shawl in Knitpicks Shimmer (a lovely smooth alpaca/silk blend in a colorway called "Turquoise Splendor"),

and the Icarus Shawl in the same yarn (colorway "Spice")

(Remember that lace doesn't look its best till after blocking; these are both going to be pretty, I promise!) The shawl in the swatching stage is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Stonington Shawl. It's a rework of a traditional Shetland shawl to permit it to be knit all in one piece. Actually it's more than a swatch I'm knitting; I'm making a mini shawl so I can learn all the techniques I'll need. Once I have it down I'll start the real shawl, either with Knitpicks Shadow (100% laceweight merino wool) in Jewels

or with my hand-dyed laceweight merino from last month's dyeing day - it looked like this:

but now it looks like this:

because I overdyed it. In either case, I have barely enough yarn for the project so I'm a little bit nervous. I think my plan is to take this shawl to South America as vacation knitting. (Dad and I are going to Chile and Argentina in November/December.)

Then there are the sweaters: I am involved with two at the moment. First (because it's really on the needles) is the Ivory Pinwheel Sweater,

based on Elann.com's free Lara Pinwheel Sweater with Crocheted Edges, but using totally different yarn: some of the 8.5 tons of Caron One Pound that I bought years ago. This project has been kind of hibernating for the past few months but I hauled it out the other day because Dad and I went in for our eye exams, and this was a project I was sure I could work on even when my eyes were dilated! It needs to be about one more inch across, then I can put the arm stitches on holders and crank on it.

The last sweater exists only as this swatch:

It's Knitpicks' Classic Lines Cardigan, which is knitted with two strands of lace yarn held together. I'm using their kettle-dyed Shadow yarn in "Soot". Then, every six rows you add in a third yarn to make the irregular stripes. I tried two different ones in the swatch:

the top half used Shimmer in "Lip Gloss" and the bottom half was kettle-dyed Shadow in "Begonia". I preferred the hotter pinks and stronger variegations of the Shimmer, so that's what I'm using. This will be my first steeked sweater (or steeked anything) so I practiced on the swatch. Here's my crocheted steek, cut open:

It wasn't all that scary, really (she says). The problem is that I desperately want to take this sweater - as a sweater, not as a project - on that trip this fall. Looks like I have my work cut out for me!

Stash Enhancement Experience

2009-07-31T12:47:00.003-04:00

I love to share photos of my delicious yarn. This one is another skein of Sundara's hand-dye, preordered months ago:

It's a delicious soft orangey-pinky-yellowy skein called "Tuscan Rose over Lemon". I take it out and pet it several times a day.

China is back where it belongs

2009-07-31T12:29:00.003-04:00

Dear Readers, who have patiently stayed with me for the past year-and-a-month while I wrote up the happenings of Dad's and my trip to China:

1. Thank you! I hope you had fun!

2. I'm done now. It's all written up.

Therefore,

3. I've moved the entries back to the real dates when each one occurred. If you want to read them in order, click here and just keep clicking "Newer Post" at the bottom of each post until you get tired!

The Fruits of our Labours

2009-07-23T11:14:00.016-04:00

My friend Sarah and I are Craft Buddies. She's the one who started me knitting and crocheting, and has made determined efforts to get me into beading which I have mostly resisted except for a mild earring addiction. (Really, you have to love a gal who, after you tell her you don't need another craft, gives you a box of yarn and four sizes of knitting needles for Christmas!)
The other problem with crafts is that, like gateway drugs, one leads to another. Hence, our mutual love of knitting and all things yarny has led us to adventures in dyeing our own yarns.

A couple times each summer we get together over at her house (she has an enclosed deck that is an ideal outdoor workspace) and have a Dyeing Day. It usually starts around 10:30 AM and continues till it's too dark to see.

Actually, before dyeing day even starts there's a lot of prep work. First you order yarn and dye if necessary (we had dyes left from last year so we don't have to buy more for a while.) I get most of my undyed yarn from either knitpicks.com, elann.com (a yummy DK-weight cashmere blend, now apparently discontinued - a national tragedy) or wool2dye4.com. All of these outlets sell very nice, soft undyed wool and wool-blend yarn. Since I'm all about the sock, I usually get fingering weight.

The yarn mostly comes wound in skeins, but if you are doing something special you may need to rewind it. For example, this

is how I wound a skein to dye self-striping sock yarn. The path around the lamps and door handle (and around the old sleeping dog in the shadows back there) is about 40 feet, which gave me a repeating stripe pattern about three inches tall on the finished socks.

The day before dyeing we set all the yarn to soak in big cauldrons of water. The superwash yarns wet pretty easily, but some of the non-superwash wools take forever to soak through! If we had added synthrapol to the soak water it would have wetted faster, I believe.

On Dyeing Day, we set out our stock solutions

(we use Jacquard acid dyes, 1/2 tsp dye powder to one cup hot tap water, or 1 tsp in the case of black.) You dye the fiber, then set the dye by spraying with vinegar and heating the dyed yarn. Mostly we microwave it.

We are scientists - both of us have Chemistry degrees from the College of Wooster - so we are very precise in our measurements. We also dyed samples of yarn with each color to use for planning our final skeins. We are very anal.

This past Saturday I managed to dye 16 skeins of yarn, and Sarah did - let me think - five, eight, ten: Ten skeins of yarn and one sock blank, plus several yards of silk ribbon. That's one busy day, let me tell you!

I don't have pictures of hers, but here are some of mine:

Two skeins of Knitpicks' Bare laceweight merino, kettle dyed with Jacquard "Scarlet" plus a little Russet and Black for intensity. This didn't come out the way I planned at all; I wanted an intense red color with slight color-on-color variation but I couldn't stir the dye bath to even out the color because the yarn wanted to felt so easily. The skeins are moderately felted even so; I'm going to very gently wind them into balls and see what I think of the result. I'd really like the variegated pink I ended up with if it weren't that back in April I bought yarn for three other pink shawls. We'll see - maybe I really need four!

A set of four gorgeous tone-on-tone brown skeins in Elann's Superwash Merino and Cashmere Sock Yarn. This yarn was a little pricey but it feels unbelievable. I really hope they start selling it again. I handpainted all four skeins at the same time, using different dilutions of our brown stock solution, but each skein came out a little different.

One skein of Wool2Dye4 Surino, a sportweight Suri Alpaca/Merino blend. This one was handpainted in shades of Burgundy and Chestnut - I like how they look together and several people have complimented me on the color of this skein. This one may be a hat and/or a pair of mittens. Or maybe mittens and a headband at least - I have 327 yards, so we'll see how far it goes.

Two skeins of Elann's merino wool-Seacell blend, wound off and reskeined with two strands held together, dyed in denim blues. I painted half the skein and just threw dye randomly at the other half for a speckled effect. I love the cream with this blue! The blue itself is Jacquard's Sky Blue plus a little black.

The next four skeins are attempts at rescuing previously dyed yarn that I didn't like. I overdyed them to produce colors I would hopefully like better. Successes first:

Here's the original skein, which was intended to be a "fall leaf" colorway, but which had way too much blechy yellow.

The same yarn overdyed with a couple dippings in dilute black. I love the richness of the color. I did the same thing last year with this skein:

which started out an obnoxious orange-and-fuchsia combo and ended up looking like gourmet raisins.

Here's the second:

The original skein was dip dyed in pink and yellow ocher. The pink is too strong and the yellow too dull for me here. I overdyed it with diluted brown followed by several dips in dilute scarlet and ended up with this

which I like much better.

Thirdly, there's this:

Another dip-dyed skein in Turquoise and Hot Fuchsia. I did that a lot last year, but it turns out I don't really like the ones that are dip dyed in just two colors. They don't have enough interest for me. For this one, I used a sprayer filled with dilute Midnight Blue plus a little black and sprayed varying amounts on about two thirds of the skein. Here's what I ended up with:

I really like the shading you can get with the sprayer; I'm going to try it for more things next time.

My last overdyeing experiment was an attempt to get more olive green into this skein:

Here's the result:

I consider this last one to be kind of a failure, but other people keep telling me they like it, so maybe it'll grow on me. Most of the overdyed skeins are Knitpicks' Bare "Essential" (now renamed Stroll) - 75% merino, 25% nylon, but the last is Wool2Dye4's Socks2Dye4 100% merino yarn.

I tried another kettle-dye skein. At least this one was superwash so I could poke it around without fear - it's also that Socks2Dye4 yarn.

I think I've decided that kettle-dyeing is not for me. I am too much of a control freak to like the randomness.

The rest of my skeins are experiments in pale pastels. I dyed a lot of really intense colors last time and the overdyes tend to be dark, so I wanted some light things for balance. I'm really pleased with these!

Pale pink, gray and natural. The base is Wool2Dye4's Platinum Sock, a very bright white nylon/merino blend.

Neapolitan sock yarn, good enough to eat! This yarn base is brand new: Wool2Dye4's "Sheila's Sock". It's a very tightly-twisted superwash merino; due to the twist I think it'll wear well even without nylon. The next one is the same yarn base:

an ultra-pale dip dye in Hot Fuchsia, Pumpkin Orange, Lilac and Golden Yellow.

The last one uses Knitpicks' Bare "Imagination" (merino wool, nylon and alpaca) as its base:

I'm calling it Peach Sorbet - I have a lot of ice-creamy colors this year. It's really fuzzy and soft and I adore it.

I mentioned sock blanks earlier. While I don't have photos of this year's sock blank, I have some we dyed last year.

The rainbow one is Sarah's; the zig zag and the pond-scum stripes are mine. I already finished socks from the zig zag; here they are:

Sock blanks give you the same amount of yarn as Knitpicks' skeins of Bare Essential, but they use a knitting machine to produce a flat which you dye and then unravel to make your socks. The flats are double stranded, too, so you automatically get matching socks!

SAVE OHIO LIBRARIES

2009-06-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

DEADLINE: MONDAY, JUNE 29

This post is not about Knitting or Travel. It's about my real life. If you don't live in Ohio, you may not care about this post; if you do, please read it and, if you will, act on it.

I've worked for ten years at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library in Stow, OH. We're a small stand-alone library, but even with our small size we provide excellent service to our community.

This week we received news that Governor Strickland proposes to cut library funding drastically - more than $200 MILLION over the next two years. This would force many libraries to close.

I urge anyone who has a stake in Ohio's libraries to contact your state senators and state reps and urge them to vote against this cut, which strikes hardest at the Ohioans in most need. If you can help, please do.

Here is a link to my library's press release and contact forms for the reps.

Here is a link to where you can find out who your state senator is and who your state representative is, if you don't know.

And here is the letter I wrote to Governor Strickland. He didn't get to see it in its full glory; his contact form only gives you 1000 characters so I had to trim it a lot. However, I think somebody should see it!

Dear Governor Strickland,

I am writing on behalf of Ohio Libraries to ask you to reconsider the severe library funding cuts you have proposed for the next biennium budget. Ohio’s libraries have been enduring a steady decrease in state funding over the past decade, and we have coped with this change very well – to the extent that Ohio’s libraries are still the best in the nation. However, no organization is equipped to cope with a 50% drop in income, and the proposed budget would devastate the library system, forcing many closures and losses of service.

Ohio libraries preferentially serve the sector of our population who need the most help: job seekers, our children, especially students, and our senior citizens. I am employed at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library in Stow, Ohio, and our small library alone sends outreach librarians to day care facilities, senior citizen homes and homebound individuals to bring these people materials they need as well as human contact. We teach 15 to 20 computer classes per month, helping jobless Ohio workers upgrade their technical skills to improve their chances of finding employment, and enabling formerly computer-illiterate people to navigate the Web well enough to accomplish many necessary tasks. (Such as filing for unemployment benefits.) We assist students on everything from locating summer reading books to solving algebra equations to filling out FAFSA forms online, and we proctor college exams for the students taking classes online.

Ohio needs a balanced budget. But she also needs her library system to continue to function. I urge you to find another solution for the best interests of Ohio’s citizens.

Diana Parker