Eagle Creek Park

More staycation pictures! We spent a lovely few hours hiking in Eagle Creek Park.

Fishies!

Go, pollinators!

Looking across Eagle Creek

Maybe I'm a sap, but I see a heart.

Yup, we did that.

What about if the flag looks like this?

My favorite.

I always am stunned by how beautiful lotus flowers are.

We had sun and rain, which was just fine with us. We started the longest trail, deciding we could stop halfway if we wanted. We were having such a great walk that we did the whole trail. Then we went home, showered, and went to dinner to eat fried pickles, burgers and fries at Burgerhaus. I love us.

Hanukah Miracle

Andrew has a shelf in the yarn storage dedicated to yarn he's picked out for himself. I grabbed a skein of Fleece Artists's Hand Maiden Casbah Sock in Phoenix (Andrew has excellent taste) to make him socks.

 

That yarn is delightful. Squishy, pretty, and very soft. I believe I will need to buy a skein for myself.

 

It has 325 meters, which is 355 yards. More than once I've run out of yarn making socks. I like the legs to be fairly tall, and I've screwed up a pair for me and a pair for Andrew.* I was determined not to make that mistake again.

 

Toe-up.

 

I don't particularly like toe-up, but that's because I think increasing is fiddlier (technical term) than decreasing. There was no way around it. Toe-up would be the smartest way to utilize the yardage and make sure I didn't up with a toe of a different color.**

 

Time Traveler Socks (mine raveled here),

knit in Fleece Artist's Hand Maiden Casbah Sock in the Phoenix colorway

 

Not only did I have plenty of yarn to make these socks the height I wanted, but I had enough leftover to make a surprise Christmas something.

 

Four of them.

 

I couldn't understand it. How could I have plenty of this yarn when I ran out of similar yardages? The Silkies socks I made for Andrew had the same yardage in the skein as these. The stitch pattern was similar. The needle size was smaller for the Silkies socks than for the Time Traveler Socks. It just didn't make any sense.

 

Then I looked at the calendar. It's Hanukah. My friends, I believe I've experienced my own Hanukah miracle. I am thankful to the spirit of the Maccabees. Knit on.

 

*It's a painful story.
**I'm looking at you, Lycaena virgaureae socks.

Big Four Bridge

Andrew's grandpa worked for the railroad. The Big Four railroad bridge has been remade into a pedestrian/bicycle path across the Ohio River. On Saturday, a chunk of Andrew's family, us included, made the two-hour drive to Louisville, met up with Andrew's great-uncle and new wife, and walked the bridge.

 

It's beautiful.

 

 

The bridge itself is about a mile long, and they've built a long, spirally entrance to it on the Louisville side. (The Jeffersonville, Indiana side isn't quite finished. At the end of the bridge, you come to a fence. Then you turn around and walk back to Louisville.)

 



 

We wondered how many rivets were in the bridge. The answer seems to be "a lot."

 

If you look at Andrew's glasses, you can see the bridge. Plus, he's adorable.

They've done a pretty good job of preserving the history of the bridge. Along the way, there are a few information signs telling about the bridge, the repairs, etc.

The weather was extremely odd for July. It was in the 70s, windy, and slightly rainy. I'll take that over the normal 95 anytime. In Indy, we set a new record low for this time of year. HOORAY!

Looking out over the Ohio River, an Ani DiFranco lyric went through my head.

 

The sky is grey. The sand is grey. And the ocean is grey.

I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome, alone in my way.

Ani DiFranco's "Grey"

 

The weather was perfect for me. It was a nice walk, followed by a nice visit with Andrew's family. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

 

Thanks and Happy Anniversary

Today is Andrew and my 13th anniversary. He is my very favorite person in all the world. He's delightful.

Let's look at one example of his wonderfulness from yesterday:

After getting home from hanging out with his family for Father's Day, I decided I wanted to wind some yarn. Andrew used to be my human swift, but then he wised up and bought me a swift for some holiday. Clever.

I put the yarn on the swift and didn't have one of the loops correct. It is always a mistake to ignore this. I know this, and I ignored it anyway. Immediately, one end tangled. When I untangled it, it wrapped itself around the main bar of the swift.

After getting that unwound and tucked where it hopefully wouldn't get loose, I was able to wind about 75% of the yarn without further incident. Then all hell broke loose.

The end wrapped itself around the swift again. I eventually just took it off the swift and laid it on the floor.

I tried to wind the yarn again. The ball winder flew off the shelf.

The first time I roared like a lion in frustration, Andrew yelled from downstairs to see if I was all right.

Try again. Then the ball, which must have been too loose, flew off the winder.

Then it wrapped itself around the gears of the winder.

Another roar, and this time I leave the room and shut the door. I'll do it another day.

Except I can't leave it.* Ten minutes later, I'm back in the room. This time, I get it so wound around the workings of the ball winder that I can't untangle it.

I yell downstairs, "Andrew I need you." He trots upstairs, looks at me kindly and says, "I thought you were going to leave it for today."

"I know, but I can't."

He sits on the floor, gently untangling the yarn, and in three minutes the skein is wound.

I threaten the yarn, reminding it that I own scissors and I want no more sass out of it. Andrew asks if it's really a good idea to taunt yarn that is already clearly mischievous, and I simply yell loudly in the direction of the skein still on the ball winder, "You were only $11. If I have to, I will cut you."

And then we went downstairs.

Andrew not only does not have me committed for holding angry conversations with inanimate objects, but he also will spend time untangling my messes that would be easier to untangle if I could just leave them alone for awhile.

And we're not just talking about yarn.

Happy anniversary, Andrew! I love you. I am immeasurably grateful you're my partner for this ride.

*This explains a lot about me.

A Quick Trip

This weekend we drove two hours to Cincinnati for a quick overnight trip. We saw the Reds game on Friday night and another one Saturday. They won both. Naturally, their victory was because we were there. You're welcome, Cincinnati.

Friday was rainy, and both days were chilly. We wore waterproof (well, water resistant) coats Friday and snuggled underneath one of those sad plastic ponchos to keep our legs warm. It rained for the first few innings and then dried out. It wasn't bad at all.

I made friends with Mr. Redlegs and Rosie Red.

We try to go to Cincinnati a couple times each baseball season, often in May and late September. I am a delicate flower who has no desire to sit in the sun in 95 degree weather surrounded by beer drinkers for three hours at a baseball game.

I love baseball. I always have. I think it's because I played softball as a little girl and understand the rules. Many, many, many people think baseball games move too slowly.

That's why you knit.

Spirals, Spit Splicing, and Success

Once I started knitting Andrew's hat, I had a very hard time stopping.

So, basically, I didn't. 

Brain Wave (mine ravelled here),

knit in Crystal Palace Yarns' Mini Mochi in colorway 103

The combination of knitting with two balls at once and multiple colors in each ball makes this hat look crazy hard. It was not. The ribbing was slow because I don't purl well with my left hand. (I do it combination style, and that means I have to purl through the back loop and blah blah blah.) Once I got to the stockinette part, it became lots faster.

I did cut the yarn and spit splice a couple of times because I didn't like how the colors were progressing on their own. I'm glad I did. There are a couple of places where the colors get a little muddy, but there would have been big swaths of muddiness had I not forced the colors to do what I wanted.

Most importantly, it fits! It covers Andrew's ears and is tight, two things that are Imperative Hat Qualities in Andrew's book.

I meant to do a very lightweight hat. Although I did knit it with lightweight yarn, it is stranded. That means it's two thicknesses of yarn instead of one. He'll definitely get a lot of wear out of it, but it's possible I'll end up knitting another hat someday that's a single thickness of lightweight yarn.

That's okay. I have a lot of knitting years left. It's a relief to still have no problem finding projects to queue.

Clifty Falls State Park

Indiana's State Park Inns have discounted rates Sunday through Thursday in the winter. This works out great for us since we don't have kids with school schedules that keep us from taking some time off in February.

We like staying in the inns, but there must be a town close by. There also has to be a fridge in the room. The reason for this is that we are not home cooking, meat and potatoes people. Even before I became a vegetarian, I wanted no part of fried chicken, meatloaf, or green beans with bacon. Since this is precisely the sort of food our state park inns think we want to eat, we do not want eat in the inn very often at all. This time, we had breakfast there once. (Pancake edges should not be crunchy. That's all I'm saying.) The rest of the time, we either ate out in a nearby town or ate food from a Trader Joe's spree I did before we left.*

We went to Clifty Falls State Park.

Our first full day, the weather was beautiful. We took a long hike.

The sky looked like this:

There were signs that Spring is coming:

We did parts of several trails that day. One of them took us across the creek. Neither of us fell in. I deem that a success.

There are four named waterfalls in the park: Big Clifty, Little Clifty (startlingly creative, I know), Tunnel, and Hoffman. We visited all four. I have no idea which one this is, but here's one of them:

The next day was cold and rainy, so we walked around historic Madison, a nearby town. My friend Holly had talked about a couple of shops when she visited recently (here), and we made sure to hit those places as well as whatever else attracted our interest.

The next day was cold, but it was so cold that what precipitation there was was primarily frozen. We decided it was fine to walk in. The trails were going to be very muddy after the rain the day before, so we walked as much as we could on the roads and went off on the trails at strategic points to see what we wanted to see.

It was also the day we found this:

There are over 150 steps there. I come from a part of the state that has been squished flat by glaciers; I am not used to this many steps. I felt really out of shape when I finally made it to the top.

We had recovered from the steps enough that we decided to visit the observation tower that looks out over the Ohio River when we came upon it.

It gave us a view like this:

When we weren't walking or eating, we played a computer game together and I knit. We have developed a comfortable routine of playing adventure games together. Andrew operates the laptop, and I knit. He is much more persistent than I am, so he often wants to spend more time figuring out puzzles than I do. (I have no problem cheating by looking up the answer online. This is a game. It's supposed to be fun. When it stops being fun, I stop caring about it.) I have found that if I'm knitting, I don't care if he's spending fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to unlock a secret door in the castle.

It was a short, quiet vacation and really, really lovely. I was reminded how lucky I am to have this life with Andrew. He is my favorite person, and I can't imagine what sort of karma allowed us to find one another. I bow to the ground in gratitude.


*By the way, Trader Joe's doughnut holes are delicious, and I don't usually enjoy doughnut holes. You should try them.

Success!

Important news first:

Dexter is much better. He had to wear the dreaded cone Tuesday overnight and Wednesday during the day so he wouldn't tear at the bandage on his paw. It was heartbreaking. He's obviously still uncomfortable, but he jumped up on our bed yesterday, so he can't be in too much pain. The vet said that it would be a month or so before we knew if his nail was going to grow back, but I don't think it matters much. He'll be able to walk perfectly well without it, and he lives a pampered life. I'm so glad he's better.

I redid Andrew's hat, and I had enough yarn that I didn't need to use the felted stuff that I used for the first attempt. He was thrilled with the fit.

Now I'm afraid to wash it. What if it grows?

I would hate to disappoint someone so adorable.

Herringbone Rib Aviator Hat (mine ravelled here),

knit in Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Gaea, Jabberwocky colorway

The tree immediately behind Andrew is the one that fell over. Yes, we have more than one Christmas tree. Our holiday cheer cannot be contained in one tree.



Sockapalooza

There are two things you should know about Andrew for this story: He is picky, and he is honest. If you ask Andrew if your butt looks big in these jeans, he will tell you the truth. You have to learn not to ask if you don't want to know. The good part about this is that when he says you look nice, you can rest assured that you really do look nice. The other good part about this is that he's not an asshole. 

I have knit Andrew a bunch of hats and scarves, but I've only made him a few pair of socks. It's been trial and error to figure out what makes the perfect Andrew Sock.

I think I have it. 

I call these the Tighter Yet Socks (ravelled here.) I made the toes less pointy than normal, and I did 2-1 ribbing all the way down the leg and across the top of the foot. I used Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball Starke 6 yarn, which is a sport weight, so I only had 54 stitches in a round. I'll have to figure out what adjustments I need for fingering weight socks, but I'm learning more what Andrew thinks makes a perfect sock.

And let's take a moment to rejoice that he loves color and doesn't care if they match. That makes the knitting so much more interesting.

I also finished a pair of socks for my oldest sister. I talked about them in this post.

Groovy socks (mine ravelled here) knit in Knitpicks Felici Sport, Dockside colorway

This is a great pattern for striping yarn. I don't think the pattern is online anymore, but it's a simple two row repeat:

Round 1: Knit all stitches.

Round 2 (multiple of 8): k1, yo, k1, k2tog, ssk, k1, yo, k1. Repeat those 8 stitches to end of round.

I didn't intend for them to match, but they did. I ran out of yarn at the tip of the toe on each sock, so I used a bit of another colorway of the same yarn to finish (the very tip done in various shades of blue). I don't think it's noticeable at all. It's nice to have these for the present pile to give her on her birthday!

A Shelf and a Rain Barrel

We have a closet in our entryway. It's home to electronics that I'm confident should be recycled since we haven't looked at them in years, too many coats (How many coats do two people need? The answer, apparently, is A LOT.), and winter accessories. 

This winter, Andrew and I found that we only wore hats, scarves and mittens from the top of the pile. That's the only part we could easily get to without causing a wool avalanche.

This is dumb. I knit a lot of awesome knitwear, and it all deserves to be worn.

Friday I bought two $10 plastic boxes from Ikea. Andrew's winter stuff is in one, and mine is in the other. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference.




We had a rain barrel put in last summer. Andrew didn't like that it was balanced on a couple cement blocks, so he put it on some pavers. When he did, he asked me if I wanted it raised.

I said no, which was a mistake. I could only use a tiny watering can with it because everything else was too tall to fit under the spigot. I put off asking Andrew to change it because he had asked me, and I said no, and now I wanted him to redo something he'd already done...

Andrew redid it this weekend. See that green watering can? That's what I can fit under the spigot now. I may be a hippie tree hugger, but I am basically a lazy hippie tree hugger. There is no way I would water from the rain barrel in July if I had to use the tiny blue watering can.

Even though Andrew and I have been married nearly twelve years and have been together for over fifteen, I still sometimes am surprised by how wonderful he is. If I had asked my dad to redo something he'd already done for me after he'd asked me how I wanted it done... well, I wouldn't do that. Andrew didn't think it was a big deal at all. Each one of those six pavers is a 20" square, and they weight a gajillion pounds apiece. I couldn't even help put them in the cart or carry them from the car to the back of the garage. Andrew did it all with no complaints.

It's amazing the amount of happiness these two things have given me:

• an organized shelf
• a raised rain barrel

I suspect it isn't the physical things that make me happy. I'm lucky to be able to share a disorganized shelf and a yard with Andrew, and I'm even luckier that we can improve them together.

I hope you have this kind of happiness in your life as well.

On the Occasion of My 33rd Birthday

Several years ago, I was listening to Writer's Almanac in the car when they presented a poem by Wendy Cope. I loved it.  A long time later, I e-mailed it to some friends, and was really, really, really shocked to find that some of them didn't like it at all.

Make your own decision:

Being Boring
'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

Linked from here.

Once I realized this poem didn't resonate with everyone--not even necessarily with people I love dearly-- I tried to figure out why I loved it so much.

The easy answer (which I've tried to type a couple times, so it's obviously not all that easy) is that my parents' relationship was uber-dysfunctional, and I try to avoid drama in response.

The more honest answer is that I've done a lot of work to figure out how to break the cycle of crazy.  And, for the most part, I have.  

After growing up in Dysfunction Junction, I thought I wouldn't get married.  Then I met Andrew, and I slowly realized that things could be different--really different.  Andrew is the main reason I believe in reincarnation; I'm pretty sure we knew each other before this go-round.

I'm thinking about all this today because it is my birthday.  It's the one day a year that is uniquely mine.  What is the very best way I can imagine spending this day?

Today I went to work.  I went to lunch with a friend.  When I get home, I want to take a walk, eat my favorite meal*, and knit on the couch while we watch something funny.

A happier cabbage you never did see.

*chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter, a banana, veggie sausage links, and either milk or iced coffee

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is Andrew and my 10th anniversary.

I thought about what to say about that.

• I adore him.
• He's smart.
• And funny.
• And quirky in freakishly similar ways to me.
• And kind.
• And the kind of person I'd want to be with at the end of the world. Sure, we'd both die, but we'd go out together.
• And sexy.
• And my best friend.
• And steady as a rock.
• And I'm keenly aware of how amazing our relationship is and how rare it is to find someone you actually want to spend your life with.
• And I can honestly say I've never once doubted that this marriage thing was worth it because I was married to Andrew. This is pretty damn shocking considering some of the marriage role models I've had.
• And I'm the luckiest person ever.

All of that is true, and it all sounds like Hallmark crap. So, I'll just leave it at this:

Andrew, you are my very favorite person in the world. I have no idea how we got this lucky, but I'm guessing we had some really bad stuff happen to us in a previous life and the universe is trying to make it up to us. Let's not dwell on it. Thanks for loving me even though we've both changed a lot in the past ten years. There's no one I'd rather do life with than you.

I love you. Happy anniversary to us.

Oh, and I'm really looking forward to fried vegetables and a crock of gooey cheese. Thanks for helping us find a restaurant that has more than one vegetarian option for our anniversary dinner.