Rolling On One

By now this morning I’ve fixed a miscrossed cable on that Aran sweater. It’s the first of those I’m aware of in the project, which is now one pattern repeat above the armpits (but just the back piece). I just googled “fix miscrossed cable” and a page that Stephanie posted about two years ago showed up at the top of the list. Maybe I should have looked farther down the search page and tried it this way, but at any rate it’s all better now. I bet I’ll have another chance to try the second way before I finish the project 🙁

When I was buying some boards for shelves in our bedroom armoire (or maybe it’s a chifforobe?) at the Casco Bargain Barn, the guy working there asked me, “Did you just break your glasses, or are they magnetic?” They’re magnetic. I’ve told the story a few times by now, so I ought to post it.

When we were last in Bridgton, probably three weekends ago, for the Art in the Park crafts sale, as I was walking past the kayak store I saw a kayak with a fishing rod holder mounted on the front deck. That looked like the way to fish from a kayak without worrying about where the rod was while you were paddling. I went into the store and asked if they had a fishing rod holder like that without a kayak attached. They found me one in the back, and I asked the saleswoman, “How much does it cost? I can’t read the price tag without my glasses.” She said, “Then you need one of these!” and demonstrated her reading glasses. They had a strip of plastic going all the way around in back and popped apart over the nose. She was very enthusiastic about how she never leaves her glasses behind any more, just puts these on in the morning and leaves them around her neck if she’s not wearing them. I’ve seen glasses with a cord to keep them around your neck, but they’re a nuisance because they hang too low. So besides the fishing rod holder she sold me a pair of reading glasses.

Judy tagged me with this meme:

Its fun!!! You opened it, you have to do it. Then, send it back to
the person who sent it to you and the rest of your friends!

Two names you go by:
1. Dean
2. My father used to call me “Beamish”, as in Jabberwocky, “Come to my arms, my beamish boy”. Other than that, I’ve never much had a nickname. (holy smokes, I knew I’d find a link to the poem, but I didn’t know there was a whole Jabberwocky domain!)

Two things you are wearing right now:
1. Blue and white print shirt that was made with the printed side on the inside of the shirt.
2. Pair of pants with a patch I sewed in this morning to fix the hole in the pocket that my change was dribbling out of while I was bicycling home on Friday.

Two of your favorite things to do:
1. Watch meteor showers
2. Midnight snowshoe walks

Two things you want very badly
1. decline to answer on general kinahora principles

Two favorite pets you have had/have
1. It’s been so long since I’ve had pets that I’ll just list my mom’s dogs, Dixie and Tsu-Ra.
2. That was already two on line 1.
Two people who will send this back completed:
1. I’ll play but I won’t tag!

Two things you did last night:
1. Put a coat of urethane on new trail signs. Photo is on the digital camera, not downloaded yet.
2. Packed three pints of pickles (Peter Piper…). Brought to a boil 2 C water, 1 C vinegar, 1 C sugar, 1 T pickling spice, added 3 sliced cucumbers (2 from our garden), put in jars, let cool; refrigerate until you eat, they’re not processed.

Two things you ate today:
1. coffee
2. cranberry-nut muffin

Two people you last talked to:
1. The only people I’ve spoke to this morning are Arlene and the cashier who sold me that muffin
2. long phone conversation a couple of weeks ago with Winnie, whom I’ve spoken to several times in the last six years but haven’t seen since we worked at Tuskegee in 1967.

Two things you plan on doing tomorrow:
1. Practice trumpet. I almost have that riff at the end of “Lebedik & Freilich” up to tempo, and the third strain of “Carnival of Venice” only has one bad rough spot. Another week on it, then on to the next strain. I’m not expecting to play it like that, ever ever.
2. Weather looks good for bicycling to work.

Two longest trips taken in the last five years:
1. Mill Valley CA for my high school reunion
2. Out to Pocatello and up to Island Park back in June.

Two favorite holidays:
1. Purim
2. Thanksgiving

Two favorite beverages:
1. V-8
2. Pilsner Urquell (at least this time of year)

On Tuessday night Arlene and I went to see a junior high summer school production of Bye Bye Birdie. Arlene’s art teacher Carolyn had done the scenery for it, as she has for the Newton schools summer arts program’s musical theater productions for years, and gave us some complimentary tickets. I was sitting in a front row aisle seat and had to duck several times as the actors came running up and down the aisle! Since the show is all about teenage girls reacting to a rock star, and the chorus is all supposed to be high school kids, the chorus was essentially playing themselves, and did a great job of it. I think of the show as being about Elvis being drafted. The period aspect was very striking — kids talking on rotary-dial telephones in an era when there was only one phone line in the household and probably not one in the kid’s room, being asked to get off the phone so someone else could use it! The Ed Sullivan show, and indeed TV when there were only three programs going on at any one time. And the main plot point, the rock star being drafted. I don’t know how much the kids learned about all those things, but they did a fine job with the show. Someone asked us, “Are you here for someone in particular?” I just said, “We’re here to be entertained.” And we were.

Yesterday I brought my unicycle in the car, parked up on the otherwise deserted (well, one other vehicle on the entire level) roof level of the parking garage, and did one lap around. I hadn’t ridden the uni at all last year, and only two or three times the year before. I wasn’t at all confident this time, and indeed it took several false starts and unplanned dismounts (I refuse to count them as falls so long as it’s only the soles of my shoes that hit the ground) before I had the tire pressure the way I wanted it. Even so, it took half a lap before I remembered the best advice about riding that I was ever given, this from Steve Aveson (who the last time I looked was a newscaster on a Boston cable TV channel) when he was my juggling teacher at Boston Center for Adult Education, “sit your butt down on the damn unicycle.” He meant to let the seat support as much of your weight as possible, and use the pedals for propulsion and controlling where the wheel is, not for support. When I was able to relax enough to do that, the riding got much much easier. But I still didn’t feel like attempting a second lap in a row.

This is the aran sweater from _Knitting with Balls_. I’m just 3/4 of a pattern repeat from binding off at the bottom of the armscyes on the back, and I haven’t quite used up two of the ten skeins of yarn I got. It’s going to be a little close on yarn, I think. I got the yarn at the Maine Fiber Frolic directly from the Bartlett Mills booth and did a lot of the work when we were in Pocatello. It’s been moving along slowly since we got back, but for a sweater to be progressing at all over the summer isn’t bad for me.

Millie and Joel and their grandson Jacob were up in Casco the weekend of the 19th. I only got one reasonable picture of Joel and Jacob — here you go:

Today we drove up to Augusta for the Maine Quilts 2008 show at the Augusta Civic Center. It turned out to be one of the biggest events we’ve been to in Maine, other than the Fryeburg Fair, but even so it wasn’t crowded and there was plenty of opportunity to talk with vendors and show volunteers, to try out high-tech sewing machines, and get good looks at all the quilts.

I have enough trouble getting the tension right on our sewing machine that I don’t really want to have to keep one of these computer-controlled babies going, but it was fun to try one out. It was a relatively low-end Bernina, maybe $2400 on show special rather than the MSRP 3600, that would sew in any direction that you chose to pull the facric. It senses how fast you’re moving the fabric and keeps the stitches a uniform length! And that’s not even one of the expensive quilting machines! I tried, with pretty good success, to stitch around the edges of some leaves in the print of the fabric. In an adjacent booth was a sewing machine automatically stitching a picture someone had just taken with a digital camera. I didn’t know things like either of those machines existed.

Mostly we looked at, and of course bought, gorgeous fabric. With a little luck some of it will turn into shirts and a vest. If so, of course, I’ll keep you posted.

There were a few men at the show, probably more than half a dozen but maybe not more than a dozen. I’d guess that was about 3% of the attendees.

Most of the vendors were from northern New England, but there were booths from New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and even one from Davis, California. One booth we spent a lot of time at (and bought enough fabric for a long-sleeved shirt, and Ronke Luke-Boone’sbook African Fabrics) was African Fabric Lady of Hancock, ME.

Another booth, Studio 55 of Stormville NY, had gorgeous batiks. I got a package of ten fat eights (that’s an eighth of a yard worth of fabric, but more like a quarter of a yard long half the width of the fabric on the bolt, so you have a more useful shape of fabric than an eight of a yard the full width) of earth tone linear batiks plus a couple of half-yard pieces that match one of the fabrics in the assortment,

so I should have enough to piece together a vest. Then from Fabritique of Wayland MA we got one yard of a blue batik fabric 108 inches wide, which should be plenty for another shirt, especially after I added a fat quarter of navy batik which should be good for at least a collar band if not also a collar and pocket.

Oh, and also two pieces of Hmong stitchery. And five other little pieces in greens and blues that might end up being a pieced fish to go on the back of a denim shirt,

or that’s my fantasy for them anyway. And at the artist’s booth Arlene got a pieced pansy flower done by Cindy Heyse-David of Strong, ME.

That’s the closest to quilting I have a picture of for you.

And somewhere we picked up Westminster Quilting and Patchwork book 2, which includes lots of Kaffe Fasset designs. I’m sorry to say that when it comes to spending money on fabric, Arlene and I are co-enablers.

Perhaps the highlight of the whole thing for me was when a woman shopping at the Studio 55 booth looked at me and said, “Don’t you go to Narramissic?” I recognized her, and in a couple of seconds had her name — Linda Whiting, she’s a hand dyer and tapestry artist whom Julia often mentions with great admiration. Arlene later said, “there aren’t that many men that interested in fiber arts, any you don’t look like anyone else,” but I was still very pleased that she remembered me, and that I can occasionally run into someone I know. And, she was about to buy the same assortment of earth tone fat eighths that I had got, so maybe we’re some kind of kindred spirits at that.

Last weekend Arlene said she wished she had a picture of my face when I reported back to the group on at one of two points — we’re not sure just which.

Millie and Joel and their toddler grandson Jacob were with us in Casco. We were coming home from the Art in the Park art and crafts sale in Bridgton, and had pulled into the Bridgton Hannaford’s parking lot to get enough food for the rest of the weekend. We pulled up next to one of those kid shopping carts that has a big plastic truck in front that two kids can sit in, with steering wheels for each. I hopped out of the car looked in the truck, and turned around and told our party, “That Cinderella, she’s left her shoes behind again.”

Maybe that was the moment. Maybe it was when I caught up with them as they were shopping, after I had brought the pair of little girl’s sneakers with Disney character pictures up to the customer service counter. I reported that I had said, “Hi, someone left these in one of the kiddie carts.” The young woman behind the counter said, “… and they don’t fit you.”

As we got to the top of Mayberry Hill on our way to the house in Casco at 9:55 last night, we saw a line of cars parked along the side of the road overlooking Pleasant Lake.There wasn’t a house right there to be having a party, and it’s not as though that’s a place kids go parking — too much traffic. Could it be that they were watching the fireworks from Casco Days? I made a three-point turn, parked behind the last car in line, got out, and asked the driver of that car, “what’s the occasion?” “Fireworks,” he said. “Supposed to start at 10.” Sure enough! We were a mile and a half away, nowhere near as close as when we were watching the Naples Fourth of July fireworks display from on the Songo River Queen fireworks cruise (which I now see I’ve been remiss in not blogging about) but close enough to see all the rockets and hear all the booms — between a mile and a mile and a half away, actually, judging from the time between the bursts and the time we heard the noise. The show was over a little after 10:10, and by the time we made another three-point turn and went back in our original direction you wouldn’t have known anyone had been there.