Exploring the Mountain

Before heading to Mom’s to terrify myself with the fire fans, I stopped by Jen and Andrew’s new house. They closed a week or so ago, and have been settling in. The house is set midway up a mountain, which means a very steep driveway, and what looks to be an interesting but not terribly accessible forest. Jen and I took the dogs up the mountain, exploring the new property. It is incredibly steep. Dee Dee, of course, is a well-seasoned hiker and bounded ahead. Nora was more hindered by the pricker bushes and ended up wandering back down the mountain and into the neighbor’s garage. Ever the neighborhood politician.
What a view. I can’t wait to see how it changes with the seasons. Jen and Andrew have an absolutely beautiful house, I’m very happy for the two of them.

rainbows on the ground, anxious look on my face

We have a performance coming up. With fire fans. Which I’ve practiced with on fire a total of three times. Yeah, I’m more than a little anxious about this. The tough thing is that it is difficult to practice privately with them on fire. Despite my performance history and the fact that I’m in a dance troupe that, well, performs, I’m actually incredibly shy. And hate Hate HATE being watched while I do something I’m anxious about. Add to the fact that when I hold the fans my mind totally goes blank and all my dance auto-pilot moves seem to escape me… very tough to practice.

I was planning on heading to NJ last weekend to celebrate Tom’s birthday and see Jen & Andrew’s new place. The snow & ice put that plan on hold, but thankfully so. When I got the news early this week that we’d be performing, I knew I had to practice, on fire, in as much solitary as one can practice fire. What better place to wave fans of flame in the air than the sticks of Jersey? I got some fuel (lamp oil), and asked my Mom if she’d help. All we needed was some duvetyne and we’d be set. After some back-and-forthing of schedules, I finally managed to get some from Chip- awesome. He gave me some great pieces that are perfect. Too small to really use on set, just right for putting out flames. (Chip, once again, you’re my hero!) Meanwhile, Mom borrowed a bag of it from the prop-shop. I really consider myself lucky to have so many friends and family members who are resourceful!

fire fingers

Mom and I ventured outside, with a fair amount of trepidation. I think she was really worried that she’d have to put out big flames, and concerned about doing her job as safety well. After lighting up in the backyard, we both took a look at all the leaves by my feet and decided moving to the driveway would be a much smarter idea. So move we did, and I waved the fans around, not quite sure what to do, and still absolutely terrified of spinning them. A few burns later, once we were both much calmer, Mom started helping me with dance form, and soon I was spinning… not quite like a pro, but not nearly as scared as before. Arms out in dance posture, elbows bent. Shoulders back. Don’t lean forward into the flames, stand up straight. Don’t look at the fans. Shoulders back. Arms out.  I dropped them many times, but Mom never had to rush forward with her duvetyne. Tom got anxious about the trees, but the whole practice proceeded without incident. I even lit up the fire fingers… amazing how they are so tame in comparison! Smaller wicks, sure…. but the whole idea of not having to spin them and not worrying about dropping makes them easy-peasy next to the fans!

Oh, and the birthday dinner that was re-scheduled? Not too shabby! We went to Riley and Jake’s, a recently re-opened spot near their house. Much better than the decor would lead you to believe!

Mom's seared tuna salad

warmest sweater in the world

I was rummaging through the bottom of Chris’ closet trying to help him find his cowboy boots. The boots were later discovered in the bottom of a bag. But in the closet- Hello wooliness! Its huge, at least on me. Frankly, I think it would be too big on him, too. When I found it, he said “You’re totally going to steal that, aren’t you?” Which of course I took as permission. I’ve been wearing it all weekend, and feeling like quite the ski bunny. Its a lovely bulky knit. Grey base with a white and dark green snowflake pattern across the chest and upper arms. The tag says its from “C.C.H. Imports” 100% virgen wool (yes it is spelled that way) and despite the Nordic theme, it was “handknit with love in Ecuador.” Chris has no idea where he got it. Its definitely warm, but a little itchy and I keep finding little bits of straw to pull out. I love the snowflake, and took it on as another stranded-knit challenge. To the scrap bag!

stolen sweater snowflake

Using up the last of a green/brown variegated yarn I had, combined with the metallic Noro that Mom and I unraveled (from this VNA find, also used in this) seemed like a good plan. I ran out of the green just at the end of the pattern, without enough for the three row border. The Noro, despite its sparkle, blends in a little too well to the green for my liking. The snowflake is pretty hard to see. I think it will be okay in the craziness that is the blanket, though, so I’ll leave it. More scraps used up, more color work practicing. Not totally pleased with the results, but okay enough to move on.

Also, see how red my hair is in the top photo? Finally got around to mixing up some henna again. (Of course, the original plan for the weekend was originally to go see Jen’s new house and get dinner with Tom for his birthday, but snow and ice altered that, unfortunately.) Three packets of Rajasthani Twilight, two lemons and some tap-hot water. 5 hours later, the dye had released, the red was good to go. I put it in the fridge for later, and gooped up my hair after dinner. I’d made a double batch, so half went into the freezer. Its kind of an annoying process, but doesn’t stain the tub, lasts longer than regular dye and actually conditions my hair instead of completely damaging it like regular dye.

Playing with colors

Being out from under the weight of Alexis’ sweater is wonderful. Yeah, yeah, so I’ve still got another sweater on the needles. But its for me, so I can take as much time finishing it as possible. After some cleaning of the living room, I uncovered my “Knitting with Icelandic Wool” book…. attention span, gone. I’m still trying to figure out which pattern to make with the Lopi I got in Vik, but I realized I don’t really have much experience with stranded color work. (Of course, other than Chris’ scarf, which I pretty much made up, so I don’t know if that counts as “pattern following”.) So to swatching! And using up remnants! And making squares for my quilt! YAY!

Pink and Grey Totoro

The funny thing… I still haven’t really looked up the proper way to do stranded work. I keep the floats going along the back, wrapping them every 5 stitches or so for the longer passes. Until just now when I double checked how to spell “intarsia” I thought that was the technique I was using. (It isn’t. Apparently intarsia involves bobbins and no carried yarn…. sounds like a good old mess to me.) Of course, what with my reduced pattern attention span, it wasn’t long before I was hopping around on Ravelry looking for more things to make. A lovely little Totoro?? Why not! This guy is a little lumpy. Some longer patches for him, so longer to float the yarn, and more chances for the tension to get totally whacked. Of course it is cotton, so won’t really stretch out and even itself. Which got me thinking about how the floats have potential to get annoying in a blanket. I saw something recently about double knitting, so…… back to the internet! And a little over a movie later… a double knit snowflake in green and purple, another pattern from my Icelandic book.

Double Knit Snowflake

The colors are oddly more similar than I thought they’d be, and the pattern doesn’t stand out as much as I’d like. Turns out the purple has some green tones in it. Oops. I also made a few mistakes when following the chart, or when choosing which yarn should be front. Originally this was supposed to also be for the blanket, but I think it’ll end up as a trivet. As it’s two layers of knit, the end product turned out quite bulky.

So yeah, I’m sure I’ll get back to my sweater. For now though? The blanket is smaller than I thought, and I have a lot of small bits of yarn to use up………. small satisfying knits for the next week or so? Yes please.

Blocking the Larch

I’ve finally cast of and blocked the Larch sweater Alexis requested last year. Yup, the damn thing took me nearly a full year. While I could blame not taking the train anymore, it’s really just that the whole thing was garter stitch and BORING. Also, I wasn’t super happy with the bottom, and wasn’t terribly confident of it pulling together in the end, but a good pep talk from Mom over Christmas (and a reminder about the awesomeness of blocking) got me moving again. I hope it fits, I hope she likes it, but overall I’m just glad its over. I love the collar on it, but I think the sleeves are a bit too long… though it’s a thin fabric so having them kinda scrunchy isn’t really that bad. I’m not crazy about how the picked up stitches looks, and the bottom corners on the font are kinda odd… but I think the blocking might straighten some of that out. As much as the twisted rib was a pain, I think it creates a great feeling fabric.

cable-y awesomeness

So. Now that its off the needles…. free for other projects! I started a cable sweater for myself around the same time that I started Alexis’ sweater, but realized I’d never get both done at the same time in any sort of reasonable fashion, so banished it to the bottom of the knit bag. I pulled it out as soon as I set the Larch to block… but alas, no pattern. No idea where I put it. Of course. While looking for it, though, I uncovered just how much yarn I have stashed. Its frightening. So now I’m extra motivated to get going on this sweater so I can start another project with some of the beautiful wooly-ness just begging to be cast on. (I ended up finding the pattern again, thanks to Ravelry, and re-writing it to include my mods and make it easier to read…. that definitely helped me figure out where I left off the first go.)

Road trip yarn

Now the question… what to queue? I have some beautiful yarn. The Lopi from Iceland, destined to become a “traditional” Icelandic lopapeysa. Alpaca from the farm on Schooley’s Mountain that Tom gave me last year (planning on making a Betiko, but not sure…) and the beautiful fingering yarn I bought with no plan. Lovely purple with metallic silver woven in from Detroit, and a locally dyed teal from Nangellini, probably at least three-years-stashed.

I think the Betiko might be next on the needles, since I’ve been wanting to try it, and we still have some good cold weather ahead of us. Also, having two sweaters going at the same time doesn’t seem like a productive plan. I’m also considering frogging my Goodale… I never wear it. It hangs kind of awkwardly, and I just end up feeling really wide. Although, to be fair it’s never actually been blocked, which might do wonders…. Anyone have any suggestions?

Rowing my way through Knoxville

Last year we went to Detroit, this year… Nashville! We went by way of Nashville to visit Amy (and see her awesome house in person! It looks great!) and then through Pigeon Forge and Chattanooga. Pigeon Forge was my call… I just love Dolly Parton, and somewhere along the line in planning for the trip got it in my head that we should go to Dollywood. Eventually I realized that an amusement park in the winter wasn’t really going to be too great. Plus I really just wanted an awesome Dolly museum or something. So instead… Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede dinner show! It was fantastic. And cheesy. And absurd. Basically everything I had hoped it would be. Complete with a black-light dancing toy segment, a lumberjack competition and horse tricks.

Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede Dinner & Show!

Pigeon Forge itself was absurd. Paired with Gatlinburg, its apparently quite the destination in the Smokey Mountains. Hello tourist trap! Lots of go-kart tracks, dinner shows and bizarre museum-ish things. More “Old Timey Photo” shops than I’ve ever seen. (I was dying to stop at one, but we decided we’d do it in Nashville… but alas! No photo shops there! Oh well, next time.) I could see why Amy politely turned down our invite to join us at the Dixie Stampede… but I had a ton of fun.

Next stop- Chattanooga. It was a nice little town. And apparently the home of Moon Pies! We stopped in the Moon Pie general store, and stocked up. Best little shop ever! The mint moon pies are like thin mints, but better. Chattanooga has a cute little arts area with a nice sculpture garden, and a pretty decent art museum. One of the big draws in town is Lookout Mountain, home of the Ruby Falls cave and Rock City. (Man, are these folks good at monetizing their natural environment!) Ruby Falls is an underwater waterfall in a cave with a pretty impressive tourist structure. Well made paths, lights and an elevator that brings the folks down. We got an awesome almost private tour, since its the off season and there weren’t that many folks going through.

Gnome says- That Way!

After our stop at Ruby Falls, we headed over to the Christmas spectacular at Rock City. The whole place was lit up quite magically. We got there right when it opened, which was great because we didn’t end up stuck in a huge group as we walked along the path. I thought it would be kinda cheesy… don’t get me wrong, there was a pretty high level of cheese… but it was actually really nice and I’m glad we went at night to see it all lit up.

Making sugar maple charcoal

On our way out of Chattanooga we decided to stop by the Jack Daniel’s distillery. It was about an hour out of our way, but it was a free tour, and we didn’t have anything particular set for our next stop, so seemed like a good detour. Again, a pretty awesome almost private tour. Traveling in the off season can be pretty awesome! It was an interesting tour. Oddly enough, they’re in a dry county, so can’t actually sell the product. (Though they do have ‘collectors bottles’ that happened to be filled with whiskey.) Some folks on the tour with us were buying a whole barrel through the “Single Barrel” program that they have at the distillery. I’m assuming they own a bar or something. What else would you do with a whole barrel of whiskey??

Stalking Datsyuk again :-)

Next- Nashville! We stayed right in town, and walked around quite a lot. Swung by the honky-tonks, checked out the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Ryman Theatre (original location of the Grand Ol’ Opry). Had the best BBQ in the world at Jack’s. Bought some boots, saw some hockey. The crowd was about half Wings fans… unfortunately they lost, but it was still a pretty good game.

We drove all the way back from Nashville in one day… man was that a car ride. But it was good to be back home. Vacation is great, but sleeping in my own bed is pretty fantastic, too.

Rosemary tree! Almost done with shopping!

I have lights up on the window, sparkly garland wrapped around the bars. (Although, I haven’t been outside to see what it looks like from the street…. probably sort of like Christmas threw up all over the window, but whatever. FESTIVE!)

I also have very little voice. I think I got sick from the kidlets on Thanksgiving or Jexi at the fashion show. Either way, I’ve been sick for a week, and completely lost my voice on Thursday. Its slowly coming back, but I’m not supposed to talk. Which makes planning our upcoming road trip very difficult. And grocery shopping. And pretty much anything.

Wampa and the tree

Even with no voice, yesterday was extremely productive. Lots of Christmas presents bought, some even wrapped! Christmas tree decorated… okay, so it is a little rosemary cone, and doesn’t really need much decoration, but still… festive! While shopping for presents for the kids, Chris tried to convince me to buy the lego Millennium Falcon. I couldn’t bring myself to spend $140 on it, though, but we did go for the Hoth set. A Wampa! After we finally got done running around, I crashed on the couch while Chris got buys building. I think hanging out with Atticus reminded him how awesome building with legos is. I think we’re going to need to get a lego storage box of our own.

Oh, and that fashion show I mentioned? Yeah, as much as maybe that’s the reason I’m sick, it was still pretty fun. Michelle and Jexi have started their own line, called Fumé Noir. (They’re still working on their site so there isn’t really anything up there.) To launch the whole thing off, we did a fashion show at Dorian’s Parlor, the monthly Steam Punk event at the Doubletree hotel in downtown Philly. I absolutely loved the event. It was full of the most amazing nerds ever. My people!! And everyone was so friendly! My friend Tim and his roommate Pat came to hang out with Chris… Tim kept trying to dance, but I have to say, Steam Punk music is a bit tough for guys to move to. I could just do some sort of belly dance weirdness and flail around, didn’t work so well for him. But the guy in the cape (awesome!) and sort of military garb dancing next to us kept giving him encouraging looks. They knew were weren’t mocking them, merely very confused. The costuming was intense. You honestly couldn’t tell the people from the fashion show apart from the folks in attendance. The flickr stream over at the Dorian’s Parlor group has some great shots of our show as well as the general crowd. There were actually two shows, one was all leather stuff… ours was the one with the hoops and bull whip and other fun props :-) Also, after seeing Michelle dance with her sword… yeah, I want one.  So here’s my outfit… and so far the only shot I’ve seen with my eyes open. Sheesh, I need to work on that. The whole black-on-black aspect of it didn’t photograph very well, but it looked awesome in person.

Photo by Jason S. Colflesh

Making friends with a goat.

I hope next week is better. Maybe I’ll actually make it to the gym. Bah. Fingers crossed.

Best Wedding Toppers

My cousin Richard married the lovely Jill today. It was the first time I’ve met Jill, and as you can tell from their wedding toppers… she seems like she’s pretty great. The wedding is a full weekend event, but I  could only make the ceremony and reception. I made it to the church in time, after an accidental detour to the reception hall first (I had the wrong address somehow.) Found my Dad and step-Mom, took a seat, caught up on family. The ceremony started, and much to my surprise my brother was the first groomsman out the door. I didn’t know he was even coming, much less going to be in the wedding! It was a nice surprise.

wedding favor spices

Richard really loves cooking. He always talks to my Dad about cooking game meats, and my step-mom made venison chili (for the pre-wedding party) with a buck my Dad got on Richard’s mother’s property. I wasn’t there, but from the raves I heard, it was quite a hit. So the wedding favors made complete sense for the couple, and were pretty rad for all the guests. They included a link to a site where they gave suggestions for the spices and why they like them. So clever! Jill’s flowers were all made of twisted fabric, including the boutonnieres for the groomsmen. So pretty and again, clever! I think I’m really going to like getting to know her. Welcome to the family, Jill!

The one odd bit about the wedding was the DJ. His music was okay….. he played all requests from the party. Some Guinness Record schtick. But he played only cassette tapes. He had boxes and boxes of tapes with hand labeled cases. The audio quality was super lo-fi. It worked okay for an afternoon wedding party, but I think the limits in his selection may have been a bit harsh for a later-night-dancey wedding. Seems like the dancey bit is happening at the after party (I had to head home, so I’m missing that) so I’m sure it’ll work out… but this guy was seriously strange. Not just the tape thing. He also gave a little talk before pretty much every song. When it came out, what rank it hit on the charts and when, it was like he was a oldies-dj or an advertisement for one of those era-compilation-discs. I bet you could fit all the music he had on one iPod. With better sound quality. And faster to find the music. My table was convinced the modern pop songs he had he recorded off the radio. It was unique, I’ll say that.

First go at pickling

Pickling supplies

We harvested a ton of peppers a week or so ago. It quickly became apparent that we could never use nor give away nearly enough. I didn’t mean to grow all hot peppers, I swear. I tried to plant two different varieties of sweet pepper that apparently were mislabeled at home depot. Instead of a sweet bell and a gypsy pepper I got a jalapeno and cherry red hot. That’s in addition to the jalapeno and cherry red hot I had already planted. Oh well…. canning time! I’ve never canned before, and of course I decide it will be a brilliant thing to do before heading out to a wedding. Right… but all the jars sealed, they look like pickled hot peppers are supposed to look, so seems all went according to plan. Still not sure, as we haven’t popped open a jar yet, but we’ll see.

Then, wedding! It was fun, I danced all night, and only took pictures of people waiting on the train platform to head back into the city for the ‘after party’. Where I realized I never grabbed my ID and couldn’t get into the bar. Ug. Cab ride home for idiot Nicole.

The NJ Hellrazors

Sunday was for relaxing, watching cheesy movies and finishing laundry. Then…. to derby! Jen O is on the NJ Hellrazors, and they had a home bout, at a roller rink that happens to be 30 seconds away from Chris’ parents house. We made dinner with his folks and headed over to the rink to watch Jen-O Go-Go zoom around the track. The Hellrazors slammed the other team, something like 175 to 69. It was awesome. Jen’s so fast! She skated as a jammer a whole bunch of times, and racked up a ton of points. Super rad. Now to get her wearing some stripey tights….