Sanity Savers

You’ve seen these socks around the old Blog on WiP Wednesdays for a few weeks now.



They’ve come in particularly handy during meetings and other situations where if I didn’t have something to do with my hands (and that little “I’m bored” corner of my brain), I would be prone to inflicting bodily harm on someone in the immediate vicinity.

Toe Pic!

My good ‘ol Garter Toe, then a plain stockingette sock. Let the yarn do the hard work!



Riverbed arch expansion, then the beyond-memorized New Pathways heel turn

I did try one new thing on this pair: Jeny’s Suprisingly Stretchy Bind Off on the second sock. The Knitty.com editorial was posted after I had finished Sock #1, so we wound up with a nice compare-and-contrast

Jeny on the left, EZ’s sewn bind-off on the right.

All in all, a very enjoyable pair of socks. These will most certainly count for the STASH (Seriously Terminate All Stash Holiday) Knit-A-Long. (Ravelry Link) This yarn was one of the first in the door for my then-puny sock yarn stash. I've had it for at least three years!

Socks for Erin

Pattern: Riverbed Master
Source: New Pathways for Sock Knitters
Size: Teeny-Tiny (a US women’s 6, I believe. Circumference is 7.5”, length is 9”)
Yarn: Collinette Jitterbug
Color: Jewel
Source: Beach Knitting, Manhattan Beach, Calif. (Yes, it had been in the stash THAT LONG)
Needles: US 1.5/2.5mm. Next time, I’ll use a 2.75 for this yarn. These are dense socks, even for me!
Started: 1 September 2009
Finished: 27 September 2009

Da Burgh

In case you didn’t get my comment yesterday about the remainder of this week in Pittsburgh being brought to you by the Letter G and Number 20, it’s because the G20 summit is in Pittsburgh today and tomorrow.

Although this seems very odd. Air Force One isn’t expected to land until 3:30 pm today (Thursday) and everything is supposed to be “back to normal” by tomorrow (Friday) evening. How long is this summit? 15 minutes? Sheesh.

Anyhoo, I grew up in Pittsburgh as well as living here now. I firmly believe that when they handed out civic pride, Pittsburghers got in line twice. We are very proud of our city, with good reason. Since I’m a bit concerned that most of the images out-of-towners will see from my city will be of the protesters and other ugliness, I wanted to show you a tiny bit of happy from this city that I love.

Last weekend, the Hubster and I were able to show off Da Burgh to his parents, who were visiting from Chicago. Hubster had been dying to do a Just Ducky tour, so we did!

The tour starts at Station Square, then crosses the Smithfield Street Bridge. As we started the tour, we got a nice view of the Monongahela Incline



I do want to mention that I wasn’t thinking ahead when I “packed” for the day, since my good camera doesn’t take great Roaming Tigger photos. Oh well.

After driving through town for a bit, we crossed the Warhol/7th Street Bridge onto the North Side, then splashed down into the Allegheny River near Heinz Field



Tigger doesn’t swim all that well, but he’s happy to take boat or Hippo Tours.

We also floated past the Carnegie Science Center



I tried to lighten up RT in Photoshop, but all of my efforts just made it look like I had cut/pasted him into the photo. So you get a dark Tigger.

I did get one nice shot of Tigger and Dahntahn



Don’t be surprised to see this shot on a Ravatar near you…

After the Ducky Tour, we headed over to PNC Park to witness one of the Pirates three wins in their last 25 games (YUCK-O). We did a bunch of tourist-ey stuff in the Strip District then visited the Heinz History Center, but no fun photos from that field trip.



So once all these idiot protesters leave town, come and visit! We have two spare bedrooms! Plenty of space! And here’s hoping that none of the protesters break anything while they’re here.

Bracing for the Storm

The remainder of this week in Pittsburgh is brought to you by the LETTER G and NUMBER 20. If that makes no sense to you … consider yourself very, very lucky.

Sorry it has been so quiet here at ye olde bloggity blog. I’ve been running around like a crazy person since returning form the Lake a week ago. But there has actually been knitting!



I finished the first sister-in-law sock and am cruising along with Sock #2. I hope these will be off the needles by this time next week.

Meanwhile, I’m zipping along on my Mondo Cable Vest. When I’ve actually been home, I can crank out nearly a full ball of yarn (100 yards) in a single sitting.



I can also see the home stretch on this project, so hopefully you’ll be seeing brand new shiny WiPs this time next week. And with any luck? They might even be fabric instead of knitting!

Speaking of quilting, my favorite quilt store is having a three-day sale Wed-Thu-Fri this week to encourage people to leave their homes. If I can get from here to there tomorrow, I’m gonna try to go, but I have to make certain about road closures before I leave the house. Yeesh. Still, I’m quite glad I don’t need to go anywhere near downtown for the next three days.

Many Photos, Few Words

It’s late and I have a packed day tomorrow, so I’ll make this as quick as I can so I can go hit the hay.

Woke up this morning and took a walk. Same distance covered in half an hour less than normal. I only picked up the “really good” pieces of glass today, one in particular kind of blew me away. Whole haul:



As (I hope) you can see, there’s one gigantic piece of glass there next to the battery. But you can’t really tell what’s going on with that piece until you see it up close a little better



That blue piece is larger than normal and I got a few more good ones, but yeah. Let’s talk about that monster just above the battery.



It just dwarfs the battery



Bigger in every way. I was just shocked when I saw that piece on the beach.

I snapped a few WiP Wednesday photos



I cranked on the sister in law socks on Saturday. Almost done with Sock #1!

And I’m still Mondo-ing along



I’m on my fourth ball of yarn and it’s a pretty simple knit at this point.

Snapped a few final photos of the Lake and I was out of there.





So that’s it. I have a gazillion things on my to-do list for Thursday, so I’d best hit the sack.

Sayonara

My last full day at the Lake in 2009 is complete. Well, it’s a little past complete. I’m up past my (self-imposed) bedtime and have a very full day that will start early (for me) Wednesday morning.

So how did I spend my final day in paradise?

Woke up at a semi-reasonable hour. Took a two-hour walk on the beach. Located a pretty impressive quantity of glass:



It has been the easiest thing in the world to walk out the door for a two-hour walk when I know I can pick up beach glass over those 5,000+ steps (I wore my pedometer today). Here’s hoping I can keep up a somewhat similar quantity of exercise when I get back to Pittsburgh. Working out daily is going to be my job. Right? Right!

After returning from my walk, I scrounged a bit of lunch, started some laundry and went to the beach for nearly two hours to read trashy novels and listen to the waves. We had a cold-and-dark snap this afternoon, then I took a mini-walk on the beach at sunset.



Wasn’t much of a sunset …



That first shot (above) is about 20-25 minutes before the sun actually set, but was the closest thing to a sunset that we had this evening.



And I was reminded that I never made it out on the kayaks this summer. Then again, I wasn’t here all that much.



Once it started getting too dark to be on the beach, I ambled on down the beach to visit my dear friends the Blackburns for the final time this summer. I spent about an hour with them before heading home to putter around and mentally prepare to scram tomorrow following my morning beach walk.

I hope I haven’t bored all of you to tears with my pictures of glass and sunsets. We’ll get back to the regular blog fodder shortly.

Love and Hate

I have a day and a half left at the Lake for 2009. I was in Pittsburgh on Saturday and came back up here that night.

Sunday was a perfect beach glass day.



Notice I’ve switched my “for scale” object in the photos. That’s because of the one piece of glass just to the right of my phone. It is the largest piece of beach glass I’ve ever seen, by far. Let’s have a closer look…



Yeah, the other pieces closest to my phone aren’t too shabby either. The one directly above is probably close to an inch thick. Oh! And I also found my first-ever marble that same day. See?



Today was another good day. Here’s my haul from my “primary” walk, around lunchtime today:



Not too shabby, I’d say! The half-round just to the left of my phone is a really nice piece I found at the tail end of my walk



So that covers the “love.” What’s the hate?



Bugs. Well, Ladybugs. I don’t know anything about the life cycle of this insect, but the beach has just been infested this week. There are long stretches where it’s impossible to walk without stepping on the damn things. And when they land on you they stick. Yuck. Yeah, I know there are all sorts of cute Ladybug stories and there’s something about letting the bugs stay on you and make a wish or some crap like that? I’m over it. They’re gross.

We had a decent sunset tonight






And on my way back up to the house, I ran into a couple I’ve been noticing all summer. Why have they stood out so clearly? Because of this guy:



Meet Sam. He’s a very large very old dog whose hind end doesn’t work so well anymore. So this is how he goes on his walks.

Cute, huh?

Still Here!

Hi! I haven’t fallen into the Lake, I’ve just been busy with good vacation stuff. I go home tomorrow, but only for about 24 hours, then back up here Sun-Wed for my 2009 swan song.

Anyhoo, let me catch you up as succinctly as possible. (I haven't been able to figure out how to keep the photos from getting cut off on the right edge, but if you click, you can see the whole shebang in Flickr)

WiPs:



Socks for my sister in law. Still growing, but have been somewhat neglected.



Vest is growing. I should have been in the round by the time I took this photo, but late on Monday night I realized that I hadn’t read the pattern correctly and I had to rip out both fronts to where they were picked up. I’m in the round now.

There was lots of other knitting that isn’t pictured because it’s (mostly) finished. I’ll catch you up on that before long. I’ll just say that you never saw it as a WiP because I started on Friday night and finished on Monday night. Zoom!

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking long beach walks daily.



Tuesday’s glass. Yes, that’s the entire neck of a brown-glass bottle up next to the battery.




Wednesday’s glass



Close-up of Wednesdays “treasures”



Today’s glass



Close-up of the best from today. That green piece is really unusual. The round piece on the top-right next to the “for scale” battery was the first thing I saw when I got down to the water today. Bonus!

We also had a great sunset tonight. Enjoy!







In case you were curious, Yes, I’m still a little irked with football, but I’m trying hard to enjoy being near a lake and not a river tonight. It’ll be OK.

More of the Same

Today looked like it was going to be overcast and boring. I woke up late, visited with some favorite neighbors and walked home just as the sun started to come out from behind the clouds. Beach day!

First of all, here is Sunday’s beach glass haul



The big piece at the top near the battery (included for scale) is the bottom of a coke bottle or something similar. It was a surprisingly good beach glass day!

It was extremely quiet at the beach today. Until sunset.



I won’t get into the rant that’s itching to come out of my fingers



But the bottom line? Pooper-scoopering is important. GRRRRR!!!

But on a happier note?



Happy sunset picture!