I’m trying to finish up a pair of socks for my Mom. I showed them to her in an unfinished state last week so that I’d have license to work on them in her presence while I was home, and maybe have some chance of finishing them before I left. But that was not to be. I’m knitting these in Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in the “red wood” colorway.

I really like working with this stuff, both in this fine gauge and in the “light” and regular versions. The fine gauge is 50% Wool, 20% super fine alpaca, and 30% Nylon (for sock durability), whereas the heavier blends are 50% alpaca, and 50% Peruvian wool. I find them all to keep a body quite warm for their weight.

For these socks, I’m using the pattern “Sugar Maple” by Melissa Morgan-Oakes from her book, 2-at-a-time Socks. This is my first experience with the two-socks-at-a-time method. (Both socks are knit simultaneously on one long circular needle.) I enjoy most aspects of the two at at time method, although I’ve had a few tangle incidents while knitting from both ends of the ball. Knitting in strange and cramped places has caused most of my tangles though. For example, I did several hours of work on the plane to and from my geophysics meeting in San Francisco last week:

While on the plane, a little boy next to me said, “Look mom, he’s yarning!” I thought only old people could do that!” She told him it was called knitting and that he watched too many cartoons. I thought it was cool that he found my age rather than my gender to the the unusual thing about my knitting. The needle I’m using is a Hiya-Hiya US#1. I have a nickel allergy that prevents me from using Addi turbos for more than a few minutes. But these Hiya-Hiyas are nickel-free, cost less than half as much, and seem just as smooth to me. So if you have a nickel allergy, (or just want to save money on circular needles) check them out. Indoor lighting does not show off the tiny cable twists very well:

but hopefully I’ll be able to get a better picture when these are finished.

]]> http://bpatricksullivan.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/potw-7-christmas-day-cardinal/ Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:03:26 +0000 bpatricksullivan http://bpatricksullivan.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/potw-7-christmas-day-cardinal/

Female Northern Cardinal; Cardinalis cardinalis

focal length: 432 mm, aperture: f/3.5, shutter: 1/160 sec,  distance: 3 meters, location: Groton, CT.

This Cardinal didn’t do anything to help defend the Pope this Christmas, but I enjoyed her visit anyway. We’re visiting Beth’s parents in Connecticut for a few days. The birds put on an entertaining show several times a day at their many backyard feeders. This morning I saw six bluejays congregating at the trayfeeder for breakfast, but the camera wasn’t handy. I’ve never seen so many bluejays in such a small area before.

When we arrived in town late Wednesday evening, thirteen inches of snow covered the yard. Rain has basically washed it all away now. We packed our cross country skis, but skiing it seems will have to wait until we return to NH.

Hecale Longwing (Heliconius hecale)

I was in San Francisco this past week for the American Geophysical Union “fall” meeting to present some results and a proposal, and Beth and I took one afternoon to go to the California Academy of Sciences Museum. This place was amazing, and as icing on the cake, it happened to be “free day” because we went on the third Wednesday of the month. This butterfly was one of many amazing sights we saw in the museum. Hopefully I’ll have time to blog about more of the week in a few days. As I write, I am sitting and waiting for a delayed flight in the Akron/Canton airport in Ohio; I stopped by Ohio to visit my family for a few days. I love small airports with free wifi. Time to board…

New Orleans to be exact. Eating fried alligator po’boys with extra mayo. I think I’m going to fast starting tomorrow.

The other morning, like all mornings nowadays, i got into a DTC 543 Ext. to get to college. Had to run for it so I wouldn’t miss it, even as conductor sahib stared amusedly out his window. and commented on my breathlessness when i was buying my ticket. Holding on to the pole in front of me, so i wouldn’t go crashing into something, or worse, someone, when Vin Diesel in the driver’s seat made yet another swerve, the urbane chick in me was irritated when this big shawl-wrapped, decaying-teethed, dirt-streaked bugger from god knows what sad part of the country wanted to seemingly stamp all over me to get his ticket first. so i elbowed him out a bit, pulled the earphones out, and yelled “bhaiya, 15 ki dena!” at the bus conductor, since he was happily ignoring my proffered fare. clutching my ticket, i elbowed the jerk a bit more, so i could get to a seat. once settled, breathing again, i plugged in my earphones again, pulled out my book, n was about to get around to finally enjoying my morning solitude, when there was a sudden commotion right behind me. pulling out the earplugs once again (disturbing John Mayer’s newest rendition a second time thus), i turn around to see the jerk from 5 minutes earlier yelling at a man for, apparently, taking his seat. all forms of garbage was spewing forth – “ye tere baap ki seat nai, *********“; “hum pehle aaye the, tum kya samajhte ho tum kaun ho,**********” This turned into a bit of filthy hair pulling, which provoked the other to tear the former’s shirt. The conductor, as you may have guessed, waited till this precise moment to intervene. Calling them both names, he said he’d throw them both out if they didn’t stop it. Which got them to stop mauling each other, but the words got even filthier than the buggers involved. Conductor sahib directed the fellow already sitting to come sit next to him, in the seat permanently vacant next to the conductor. And now, a ‘gentle’man sitting in the third row pipes up, in full Indian patriarchal my-opinions-matter style, “pata nahi kahan kahan se chale aate hain ye gawaar, bihar kya chhota pad gaya. dilli mein pehle hi itni bheed hai, aur gandagi failane chale aate hain. jao bhai, waapas chale jao, nahi chahiye tum log yahan…” This expert opinion was cheered on by a few, fully and completely agreed with by some others, and tittered about by almost the entire population of that bus. at this, the jerk attempted a retort, which was silenced by a suited-booted man with a deep voice, who had gotten tired of not being able to give gyaan on his phone because of the excitement. But the ‘gentle’man continued to discuss such unwanted migration (i doubt if he even knows this word) with a sympathetic auntyji, who kept nodding and shaking her head vigorously, tch-tching at the right places.

Now, where do we go from here?

(Click to view larger) Our route from Dover, NH, USA to West Jeddore, NS, Canada (and back). For scenic reasons, we took the southern route on the way there, and the northern route on the way back.

Last week, for our second anniversary, Beth and I took a trip to Nova Scotia to take a textile spinning workshop. During the trip we stayed in two very nice Canadian B&B’s. We packed up after thanksgiving dinner and hit the road for St. Stephen, New Brunswick just over the US/Canada border to stay at the Blair House Heritage Inn.

Beth researches activities for Saturday in New Brunswick

The breakfast of pancakes and fruit was delicious. David, our host, made excellent tea. David hails originally from England, and worked as a hunting and fishing guide before taking over the bed and breakfast a few years ago. I really liked our room’s hand-shaped light fixtures:

From St. Stephen, we traveled to St. John, the capital of New Brunswick, which is on the coast. Apparently they really like their Saint names in the Canadian maritime provinces. The downtown area of St. John is populated by these stocky wooden sculptures of pedestrians:

can you spot Beth?

The wooden people even walk around in the mall!

After escaping the wooden Canadians we checked out the New Brunswick Museum for a few hours. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the museum, but my favorite parts were the exhibits on ship building (New Brunswick was a major ship building center during the age of sail), and the Hall of Great Whales, where there were complete skeletons of several kinds of whale, and a 90% scale model of a North Atlantic Right Whale (like those we saw live in August).

From St. John we continued on to Musquodoboit Harbor  on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, where we were taking the weekend-long spinning workshop. There was going to be one other student, but she canceled due to swine flu. So, Beth and I had the entire workshop to ourselves!

I should explain how we ended up going to Nova Scotia for a spinning workshop. Having practiced drop spindle spinning for a few weeks, we decided we’d like to learn to spin with a wheel. We found the Spinner’s Loft online, and thought a weekend spinning workshop vacation in Nova Scotia would be a fun way to celebrate our anniversary. So we called up Leslie, the proprietor of the Spinner’s Loft, and found as luck would have it that she was available for the weekend of American Thanksgiving.

There were many wheels in the spinner's loft.

Leslie has been spinning for about 30 years, and has spun an amazing variety of fibers: wool, silk, flax (linen), horse hair, musk ox, dog hair, cat hair, organic cotton from tampons, and lion’s mane to name a few! Don’t worry, the lion was not sheared. The lion’s mane hairs were gathered from tree branches where they’d become stuck when the lion rubbed against the tree.

We began on the first day by learning about washing, picking and carding of fleece. I passed some Cotswold fleece through the triple picker, which was definitely the device most closely resembling a medieval torture implement. A triple picker consists of a cradle shaped bed of nails, and a nail studded pendulum that swings just above the bed. You feed the locks of wool in one end while swinging the pendulum-of-death, and an airy cloud of wool magically comes out the other end.

Cotswold fleece and the triple picker (right). Cotswold are cool looking dredlock rasta sheep (see photo).

We took the cloud over to the drum carder and learned to use it. This is basically a pair of giant round hairbrushes with a crank to drive them around. The drum carder produces a moderately tenuous bat of fiber, which can either be torn into strips along the “grain” to make roving or it can be rolled perpendicular to the grain to make little logs called rolags.

Next we did some drop spindle spinning “in the grease.” This means spinning wool that still has a fair amount of  lanolin in it. In our case, there was also some vegetable matter and maybe an occasional trace of sheep poo in it, too. The spindling was much easier with Leslie’s spindles than our tiny-whorled homemade ones. (The whorl is the disc shaped part of the spindle). After the drop spindling warm-up, we moved on to learning to use the wheel. I think this post is long enough, so I’ll save the wheel stuff for another post.

Finally en route home, but stuck in Shanghai for a long, unplanned layover due to air travel transfer messiness. Hoping to get out today.

Hence the time again to type. Once the photo festival got going there was a lot less time for the blogs, especially considering the tedious iPhone typing, limited capacity for photos (also limited to the phone), and roundabout posting methods. But watch for a full report (including a lot more photos but from a real camera, some video, and maybe even some audio) that I’m working on for Orion that will at least be online at orionmagazine.org. I’ll post a link here too for anyone who cares.

…all assuming I ever make it home. At least there was a ‘Cheerway Easy Go!’ in the checkin lounge where I could pass the time.

Even after 20 hours in the airport, how could you be sad?

I’ve been pretty  bad at remembering to do my photo of the week for at least a month. My mother and brother came to visit me and Beth in NH this past August. I now see the ocean pretty regularly because we live less than 15 miles from it. I can even ride my bike there. It hadn’t occurred to me until we went to the beach during their visit that my brother had probably not seen the ocean in about ten years. It’s a pretty amazing sight.

Adam watches the Ocean. 10 August 2009. Newport, RI.  shutter: 1/200 sec., focal length: 32.2mm, aperture f/3.5. distance: about 10 meters.

Them’s grubs. Crispy on the outside. Soft and creamy on the inside.

Taj getting the whole chopstick thing down. Motivation thanks to them yummy grubs.

Blueberry flavored and 2% beer. I’m ready to come home.

The mango ones were 'natural & warm'.

Fried Extruded Snacks:

Still haven't figured out where this name came from...

Piquancy.flavor and American classic

…all the other food groups:

meat...

fruit...

veggies...

...umm...rare seaweed? and rocks?

…and of course…

...no idea...

Yes. Those are cicada thorax. Yes. Of course I ate them. How could I not?

When she saw we'd actually eat them, the waitress went in the back,
printed up and brought out the picture.

Turns out it was duck tongue. Rad. But what’s with all the bones?

Visited Space C enter Houston. Literally haven’t been since a fifth grade field trip.  Such a blast from the past! (yes, pun intended)

(made an astronaut friend..)

Space ice cream is such an underrated delicious snack. Seriously!!

Popped over to Moody Gardens, one of the last stops on the journey, to take a look around the aquarium (and fall in love with the penguins!)

and look.. here’s Nemo!

300 miles in… and on our way to NASA Space Center Houston

When drving around town for 400 miles in one day, a must stop is a Cracker Barrell.

See below for some pics from our 5 minute pit stop.

This is my first time in Cracker Barrell, very exciting!!Taking a break in one of the famous rocking chairs on the porch.Always a warm, country feel with Root Beer samples, taffy and sweet ladies.

Back on the road… another 250 miles or so to go!

One of but 20 such plates of ill translated delectables…

For lunch: jellyfish, something we thought might be turtle, shrimp with all their parts, tasty root veggies of unknown sorts with fried fat, crab guts, and, oh, French, albeit ‘cabernet merlot’ red wine.

…but only a half.

Bacon. Yum. But, no, I have no idea what the curly/turd/cocoon thing is.

Yum.

They were just in a bowl, next to the rice stuff

We didn’t tell the hotel it was for Thanksgiving. Explaining to a country that lives with thousands of years of its own history everyday that it was a big deal meal about some guy ‘discovering’ America a couple of hundred years ago felt silly. We simply asked if they could recommend a very typically Wenzhouian restaurant. They knew just the place, scribbled out something on a ‘take me to…’ taxi card and sent us off.

The restaurant (we don’t know what it was called – we only ever saw the Chinese characters) was across town, above the Playboy home furnishings store (?).

We walked in, up the grand staircase, to tanks of fish, crabs, and snails, as well as plates and plates of examples in cases and behind a big glass wall along the kitchen.

Then were descended upon China style by a half dozen young waiters and waitresses who soon enough figured out we spoke no Chinese. They escorted us back into our own little room and giggled as they tried to explain to us how it worked. Apparently we were supposed to go up and point at what we wanted to eat. Cool.

We were eventually led back up to the front of the restaurant, to the fish swimming and those on ice, where we, luckily, met the best English speaking Chinese of the trip yet.

He asked what we wanted and we asked what he recommended. He showed us the fish we wanted (said it was from deep and made good flavor), recommended the mystery dumplings (again? Really?) with some salty sour mushrooms, and for the veggie course said the seaweed/algae plate was the way to go. He also suggested Heineken. The only time we questioned his advice. We chose the Tru-Chill Double Deer instead, a beer made right here in Wenzhou.

Whole deep-sea fish, seaweed, and dumplings…Thanksgiving, China style, and as authentic as we could have expected to find.