MarQ1

Crystal Palace Bamboo #0 dpn’s don’t travel as well as I had over-optimistically hoped. At least it was the loose needle and not one holding the loops. Steel, maybe.

This is our hop plant¹ climbing up our terrace railing. It’s climbing four to six inches a day, now that the weather is warmer. Those are pansies in the background.

Much warmer. I went out on the bike too late yesterday and the heat, the wind and the hills of Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo², Vinegar Hill, Williamsburgh, Greenpoint and Bushwick did me in. I was out for only an hour. My legs still felt dead from last week.

Today I went out earlier and to the southeast, which is much more even terrain, with the exception of Sunset Park and Dyker Heights. I was out an hour and forty-five minutes and my legs were just shy of exhaustion by the time I carried the bike upstairs. It was still effing warm and humid too.

Brooklyn’s bumpy roads are doing wonders for my biceps and forearms. If only they could rattle off my love handles².

This is the winning hop bine, the first to crest the bar of the terrace rail.

¹ According to Wikipedia, a bine, not a vine.
² Down Under the Brooklyn & Manhattan Overpasses
³ Only six weeks until our Ptown vacation.

J & I left work early Friday and drove out to Doylestown PA for the opening of an exhibit, Irving Berlin’s Hollywood at the Michener Museum. Our friend David curated it and J designed it and for some unknown reason I have a credit in the program (as J’s driver?). We arrived later than we wanted—no hor d’ouvres remained—and the place was packed. It was a nice show. [I’m not a good reviewer.]

The Holland Tunnel

For a while it looked like we might not make it. The traffic approaching the Holland Tunnel was backed up almost to Chambers St. and filled with angry, pushy, aggressive drivers. Me, I was just annoyed¹. It took over an hour to get into the tunnel. About thirty minutes into the crawl toward Canal St., a white pickup truck tried to cut in front of the blue pickup truck in front of us. The drivers argued. They spit into each other’s cabs. They threw things into each other’s cabs. A passenger in the white truck crawled halfway out the drivers window and began beating on the blue truck with what might have been a sharp object. The driver of the white truck eventually got out and took pictures of the other license plate with his cell phone and called someone. Who? I’m sure it wasn’t 911. I kept thinking, If they shoot each other, we’ll never get through the tunnel. Both trucks, btw, had Jersey plates.

Yarn

Since J and David wanted to see the exhibit again, without the throngs, Saturday morning and we were in Doylestown, I went instead to Forever Yarn again. The owner remembered me from the weekend Stephanie spoke at the bookstore and thanked me for the mention. I bought yarn, of course.

I took some chances here: these are a little more frou frou than my usual purchases. Clockwise, from the top, 1) Blue Heron Rayon/Metallic in Celadon (green again), just because I liked it; 2) Tilli Thomas—I’m embarrassed to type this—Disco Lights in Parchment, because I think it would make a nice, light scarf for a gift; 3) Wool in the Woods Cameo (rayon) in Rosebud, for a scarf for a friend who is sensitive to wool and likes purple; and 4) Debbie Bliss cashmerino astrakhan, because it was slightly cheaper than I get it locally and I want to try it.

Photos

On the way back to NYC Saturday afternoon, we stopped at Gallery 31 North to see a show of photos, Persistence, by our friend Susan had with another artist. Her images are clean and thoughful. The one shown on the gallery site was one of my favorites. I can’t say I particularly liked the other artist’s work.

More Sock

While in Bucks County, I turned the heel of the second railway stitch sock. When we return to our apartment, I frogged it back. Fatal flaw. I have reknit it and am passed the gusset.

¹ If J drove, I could have been knitting.

Just to frighten you.

All clean and scrubbed after my bike ride.

New estimates of legitimate traffic to my site are significantly lower than previously estimated. I average under 50 real visitors per day, though it looks like more when bots mimic people. Very few of you could click on 31 links in under 3 minutes.

Counters have been reset accordingly.

Since determining what is legit is more art than science, it would be best not to take one’s stats too seriously.

In 700 days, I will be fifty.

Yes, I’m still counting down.

Looking at my BlueHost visitor logs and my Bad Behavior logs, I can see that the spammers are attacking the same four or five posts over and over and over. With the trackback spam it’s the same post regardless of source. What is it? Is spamming like a junk-call auto-dialer: if they can’t catch you at home, they call back later?

I hope I get over this obsession with spam soon. It’s cutting into quality time with the sock.

I come up 9^th on a Google for Noro quality. Hah!