Rolling On One

We stopped in the Hannaford’s supermarket in Windham on Friday evening — it’s open until 11, we were there by 9:40 even after standing in a long line at the Burger King at the Kennebunk rest area to get a cup of coffee, and we knew there wasn’t any OJ, milk, nor eggs in the Casco house. We were about set to check out when a woman came up and asked, “Do you shop here often? Do you know how the store is layed out? Where’s the the toothpaste?” The fact is we’ve stoped there four or five times, and we do have a vague idea of how the store is set up. I had noticed the health and beauty aids section, as it seems to be called these days, a moment before and I pointed it out to her.

I giggled as soon as she was halfway there. It reminded me of when we were in Rome five years ago, walking from our hotel to the Spanish Steps which were a couple of blocks away, and a young woman stopped us and asked, “Scusi, dove gli Scali Spagni?” in an American accent. I just said, “Diretto!” (“straight ahead”), she said, “Grazi”, went on, and I cracked up (under my breath of course.) Everyone in Rome was an American tourist. It would have been easier on both of us in English.

On Tuesday night, as our last meeting of the year, the Jewish Community Center klezmer band had what our teacher/leader called a musical soiree at the home of one of the members. It’s a big house on Commonwealth Ave in Newton, right along the route of the Boston Marathon (except that part of Comm Ave has a one-way lane separated from the race route on the two main traffic lanes by a grassy mall area, so our pianist can’t really watch the race from her front lawn). There were, let’s see, accordion, piano, electronic keyboard, electric bass, snare drum, flute, clarinet, and trumpet. Most of the musicians had invited at least one friend or significant other. The hostess had invited neighbors, her grown-up kids, and her 80-something aunt. Even that big house was pretty full, with musicians in the living room, a couple of audience members on the sofa, others in the family room at the rear of the house and in the big front hall.
I did vocals on “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” and “Tumbalalaika” as well as trumpet for a couple of the early songs and baritone horn for most of the concert.

Who’da thunk it, I finished something. Here’s the cabled hat made from Bartlett Mills 2-ply fisherman yarn, Sandstone color, that I got at Naturally Fuzzy Yarns in Harrison ME.

The secret of this hat is that inside the cuff is a band of super-soft Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran Tweed wool-silk-cashmere yarn. Look at that, I googled the yarn and found that the company is showing it in a hat with cables. Also, from the URL it looks as if the price includes a boat ticket from Australia for the yarn. I bought 2 50-gram balls of that stuff a couple of months ago and made one hat mostly with it except for the cuff of Bartlett Mills fisherman yarn that I had left over from last year’s sweater project. I loved the feel, but the stitch definition was blah. The Bartlett yarn has good stitch definition but is definitely more scratchy. I had enough of the Jo Sharp left over for a band over the ears. Here’s the hat with the cuff folded down —

On the first hat I did cables all the way to the top, decreasing the width of the cables near the top. On this one I stopped the cables and just decreased ribbing when it was time to decrease. This is a little higher than it needs to be — I didn’t want to have to tug it down over my ears, but if I had started decreasing one cable crossing sooner it would have been better.

This chair was on the curb down the street on garbage night. A couple of weeks ago we bought a chair with a broken cane seat for $1 at a yard sale in Maine. I didn’t like the chair all that much, but it looked like something I could learn caning on. I like this chair a lot better, and the price was right. A little steel wool, a lot of elbow grease, a little stain and butcher’s wax, and a lot of time caning, and this will be a pretty chair. I hope.

The only thing I know about caning so far is that you need different sizes of cane depending on how close together the holes are drilled in the chair frame. I bought plenty of cane of the right size for the $1 chair. This one has holes 1/2 inch apart, whereas the other has ’em at 5/8 inch intervals. So I need a batch of finer-size cane. Darn.

This couldn’t pose as a part-time knitblog without pictures of what I got at the Maine Fiber Frolic, could it? Here goes.

A kit to make felted juggling balls, from One Lupine Fiber Arts of Orono, ME. I told Jodi I was a card-carrying member of the International Juggler’s Association, but I couldn’t find the membership card, so maybe I’m not.

A kit to make “Oh-Wow” mittens, from Miller Farm, Livermore ME. When I saw the (70-something? 80-something?) designer/vendor knitting on a pair of them, I thought at first they were thrummed mittens. No, they’re combed merino top knit in with worsted weight yarn, *3 st worsted, 1 st roving* repeat across, finish 1 st worsted on round 1, then 1 worsted, *1 roving, 3 worsted* repeat across row 2, etc. Well, more or less. There are detailed directions, including ordering info for the merino top and yarn substitution suggestions if you’re working from directions instead of the kit. I expect these to be WARM mittens!

Two 100g balls of sock yarn, 1 ball makes 1 pair of socks, Lana Grossa Meilenweit colortweed 80% wool 20% polyamide, colors 706 and 1001 — oh wait! color 1001 is the Meilenweit, color 706 is Mega Boots Stretch 70% wool, 23% polyamide, 7% Elite (PBT), from Purple Fleece, Stockton Springs ME. Oops! She had a little adventure with me. I gave her my Discover card, and early Monday morning I got a phone call from her — she couldn’t put the card through, because it seems she doesn’t take Discover. I gave her a Mastercard number on the phone and all is well.

1500 yards of wool for a sweater, 4 250 yd skeins dark brown, 2 skeins light tan, from Ruit Farm North, Bristol ME. This is from Coopworth sheep, maybe a little lighter weight than worsted. It feels great on the hank and is a multi-sensory experience, with lots of lanolin smell left in it. Nina says to wash it in dishwashing detergent before winding into balls. Frankly? I’d like some more yarn like this in other colors — say a real black or white and medium-dark grey, and do a pattern like Charley’s lopi sweater. Nina sent me to another vendor, Hatchtown Farm, who gets their yarn processed and spun by the same mill, so it should be a good match, but Hatchtown hadn’t brought any yarn to the event. I’ll see what I can do by internet and mail from them. If that silvery grey on their web page is a fair representation, and really the same weight, I want some of it. I’ll have lots left over but I can figure out something to do with it, I bet.

Koleinu gave its year-end concert last Thursday night at Temple Isaiah in Lexington. Here’s a picture from the dress rehearsal —

That’s Carol, our director, on the left in the green sweater. We were accompanied by piano on most of the pieces, and harp, cello, and violin on three pieces in the middle. The ark, containing the torah scrolls, is in the background, decorated with a big star and carvings representing the twelve tribes. Above and in front of it is an unusual tetrahedral eternal light.
I got to the dress rehearsal a little late, thanks to lots of rush hour traffic on a rainy day. I was still very early for the rehearsal, just a little late to help getting the stage set up. However, other people had set it up and found that it was easy; so that was fine. We went late into the evening, because there were lots and lots of rough spots that Carol wanted to go over. I had told Arlene to expect me home after 10, but I don’t think I phoned to say I was on my way until after 10:30.

And here we are in concert garb, getting ourselves set up. There was a curtain in front of the ark for the concert. That’s me just to the right of that curtain, looking to the right.

Near the beginning of the program we did two pieces by a local (or Central Massachusetts, anyway) composer, Karen Tarlow. She spoke for just a minute before we sung them, saying something about the basic building blocks were listening for the rhythym of the text and getting the music to match it and making up a tune that made sense with the text, and that was about it. She smiled and gave the chorus a thumbs up sign after we finished the songs.

We did four songs by Robert Starer of which I really thought three were too hard for the chorus. The last three of them were the ones with violin, cello, and harp. To my surprise, they went smoothly, and of course sounded gorgeous with that instrumentation.

The only real hitch was that the last song had three verses with solos and a rousing chorus after each. The second soloist completely forgot her text and did the whole verse over after getting a copy of the music to read from. Then the third soloist forgot half of his text. At that point we didn’t repeat the verse. It was not really our strongest finish.

The apple blossoms are gone and the fruits have just started to form. The little apples are perhaps half an inch in diameter. The amazing thing is that even at that size they look like themselves. That is, you can tell from the shape which tree is the Delicious.

Arlene phoned some garden centers to find spraying equipment and materials. Everyone recommended that we go to the Paris Farmers’ Union. I looked for them on the web and found that they had a store in Bridgton, which we’d rather drive to than Paris (especially after the long drive on Saturday, and having to drive home later Sunday). Kitty, the woman in the picture on the web page for the Bridgton store (and she looks just like the picture) helped us pick out a sprayer, paper mouth and nose mask, and goggles.

We also got a whiskey-barrel planter and a few bags of potting soil to fill it. Arlene put some gourd and pumpkin seeds in it.

I got rotenone-pyrethrum spray. It disqualifies us from saying the apples are organically grown, but is a lot less toxic to people and birds (read: less scary to me) than the spray that says “for fruit trees” on the label. It got pretty late by the time I figured out the sprayer, sprayed, cleaned out the sprayer, and gave myself a good shower. I hope spraying is quicker next time, because I’m going to have to do it every couple of weeks over the summer.

We traveled about sixty miles farther in Maine than usual, past Augusta to Windsor and the Maine Fiber Frolic. I’ll start with my best lamb picture:

It was a cool (not to say chilly) drizzly day. We parked amidst lots of other Subarus — ideal cars for this sort of parking lot —

We were wearing our muck boots so we didn’t mind walking through mud, of which there was plenty, nor wet grass.

You can see from the line for food how people were dressed for the weather. This was June 10, people!

Most of the fiber was in two largish exhibit halls. Several vendors were in the sheep shed, and a couple, like this one and A Touch of Twist, were outdoors in tents.

I guess the high point of the event was seeing the Maine Llama Drill Team in action, in the pulling arena, the covered area in the background of the picture above. As soon as we got to the event we asked people at an information table what to do, and they said to be sure not to miss the drill team. It had shown up on the schedule at the web site as happening Sunday, so being there for the performance was an extra bonus.

When I googled “llama drill team” I found some besides the Maine group. It looks as though there are some people in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois who are into this stuff too. But the high page rank llama drill team is the Maine one.

Don’t expect the kind of precision marching that you see at the Marine parade grounds in DC. The llamas really couldn’t care less about keeping in time to the music, or in line with the rest of the drill team They good-naturedly put up with the silly humans, at least most of the time. A couple of times a llama balked and refused to follow the person leading it. In those cases, the person would walk around the llama, and it would turn around and then go along in the original direction after one complete turn. It was sort of “Oh, you want to go that way. Why didn’t you say so?”

Arlene was very impressed by the diversity of llamas in the group, as to sizes, shapes, and haircuts, and the age range of the humans, from a little girl probaby under 10 to middle-aged men and women.

The team first did some back-and-forth parading to “The Washington Post March,” then a routine with a lot of 4-person (plus 4-llama), 8-person (plus 8-llama), and a whole ensemble pinwheel to “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” At one point of the 4-person pinwheels everyone hugged and petted their llama, and you really could feel the love. Then, like a university band at a halftime show, the people and llamas formed the word “LOVE”. I suddenly thought that it was a shame that Elton John would probably never get to see his song used this way. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have expected it.

And more of the sights:

— a whimsical back on an Adirondack chair at a table in the food booth

— a fraction of the fleeces. These were in the fleece competition; dozens more bags were on tables and the ground in the shed.

— I could have learned lots about breeds of sheep if I had spent more time in the sheep barn. This breed, I think it’s called the Jacob sheep from the Bible story of Jacob getting the spotted sheep from his father-in-law’s flock, tends to have multiple horns. This one has four horns, one low on the other side out of this picture.

We stayed until the show closed at four. In fact, I think we took a last look at the  A Touch of Twist booth after four. On the way home, we filled the tank up at a general store down the road. When’s the last time you saw a gas pump with mechanical dials instead of an electronic display for the price?

Arlene’s old college suitemate Jeannette and her husband invited us and Judy, another of the suitemates, to spend the weekend at the cottage they were renting in Brewster on Cape Cod. We had been there the same way just about a year ago, on a chilly late May or early June weekend. The weather was about the same this year. In fact, there were spots on the drive down there when it was raining so hard I wondered if I wanted to stop the car and wait it out. On the cape the rain slowed to a slight drizzle and then stopped enough that we had a fine time walking on the beach.

Last year we had seen a piping plover on the stretch of beach within walking distance of the cottage. We weren’t so lucky this year, but there were a horned lark, lots of black-bellied plover, and a couple of ruddy turnstones.

We spent a lot of time discussing where to have supper and settled on Oliver’s in Dennis. It’s a nice restaurant (I mean, not casual dining but not really fine dining) with a big menu. I had roast duck that was a little dried out. Other people said their meals were good.

We passed up on dessert at the restaurant, but there was ice cream back at the cottage, and Arlene had brought along a batch of brownies I had made the night before.

In the evening we started working a jigsaw puzzle that Arlene had brought, a Springbok puzzle of chocolate in all the forms the photographer could get together — chocolate pudding, big chunks of chocolate melting in a saucepan, chocolate-dipped strawberries, whipped-cream and cinnamon topped hot chocolate, little bonbons, and so on. It was an old puzzle, and the box said there were missing pieces. It went well with the mocha almond ice cream and the brownies, even if the pieces were a little hard to see on the dark pine table. We got it more than halfway together by the time we stopped.

Meanwhile I started knitting a mistake-rib scarf from some gray sportweight alpaca-merino blend that I had got at the Denmark Sheepfest. The yarn is rather splitty and the scarf has several more mistakes than just the mistake rib, but it still looks pretty good, smells nice and lanolin-y, and feels wonderfully soft. I only have 195 yards of that yarn so it’s going to be a mighty short scarf. But it’s an excuse to use up the yarn before it gets lost in the stash.

Sunday morning we drove up to South Wellfleet for breakfast at Van Rensalears. Arlene and I had eaten there a couple of times when we were staying at the Southfleet Motor Inn next door. It’s the same basic level of place as Olivers. When we were there before it must have been Patriot’s Day weekend and the restaurant was just opening for the season. That time it was packed with local people who had been eager for the seasonal places to open, as well as with holiday travelers. This weekend there were lots of other restaurants open and the crummy weather had kept the day trippers to a minimum, and VRs was less than 2/3 full. The breakfast buffet selection was good, though, and we all pigged out.

We wouldn’t have gone all the way to Wellfleet except that we wanted to walk around the Audubon place. The people in the office asked if we had been there before. Arlene said, “A million times.” I said, “Closer to fifty.” Arlene is correct that it’s more than fifty; we went there first in 1969, when we were the houseparents of the Eastham youth hostel, and have probably averaged more than two visits per year ever since. We did the Goose Pond trail. Arlene found a great horned owl in some pines on the way back near the pond, thanks to a bunch of crows that were giving the owl a hard time.

From there we went to the Fort Hill area and walked near the shore to Hemenway Landing, then back through the Red Maple Swamp trail. I love boardwalks, even if we never see much wildlife along that trail.

We all got lunch at the sald bar at the Orleans Stop & Shop (except Jeannette’s husband, who got some sushi), went back to the cottage, ate, removed ticks from people’s clothing (Jeannette seems to be a magnet for them), and finished the puzzle.

Arlene looked out the window to the backyard and spotted a fox trotting along. I just got a glimpse of it. The people who owned the cottage had left a note about the place which said that they often see foxes there.

Just because it was handy, I scanned the old hip pocket that I replaced last night. Would you want to accept a credit card from a wallet that got pulled out of this pocket? I’d hesitate.

Oh, continuing on the mending theme, I sewed up an unraveling seam in the sweater Charley brought back from Peru. It only took me three months to get around to it. I used some 50% alpaca – 50% merino yarn that I got at the Denmark Sheepfest that was really a pretty fair match to the sweater yarn in color, weight, and softness. That sweater does have a nice feel!