MarQ1

Somehow I twisted my knee while of after biking 24 miles yesterday. Going down stairs and getting up after sitting at my desk are difficult, but the ride was worth it.

Carroll Gardens… Gowanus… Sunset Park… Bay Ridge… Bath Beach… Bensonhurst… Coney Island… Brighton Beach… Sheepshead Bay… the Knapp Street sewage treatment plant… some neighborhoods whose names I don’t yet know… Midwood… Kensington… Windsor Terrace… Park Slope and home. Barely winded. In high gear. Mostly.

Got to scare a pedestrian, too. He was crossing against the light and not looking. I can be loud when I want to.

Feather & Fan is at 80%. Twenty rows and the crocheted binding to go.

Finally summery. With a nice evening breeze.

Last Sunday’s Route

Twenty-four and half miles, following on 20.5 the day before.

Feather & Fan

Less than 25% remaining. I’m sorry, it is tedious. It is nice though.

I had a delightfully witty post all ready for Wednesday, but hit the back button on the browser and lost it all. That was dumb, because I already knew that I have more flexibility typing it in TextWrangler and pasting it in when I’m finished.

Cool, a bit damp. Nowhere near as cold as Friday and yesterday morning.

Shopping

Yesterday’s shopping trip was the Container Store in Manhattan. I have a new piece of furniture, a console, which has two main functions: to look nicer than the desk it replaces in the living/dining room and to store yarn. It has glass doors and somehow plastic zipper bags of yarn weren’t the most attractive thing to display. So we had to buy something to put the yarn in to put it in the console.

This is full now, but there is no yarn stashed anywhere else in this apartment. At least, not that I can remember. And, yes, some plastic bags are still visible. I need to do some rearranging. The bright flash also makes it more obvious. The room is usually darker.

While there, we ordered stuff to organize the bedroom closet better, and bought trays and boxes to straighten up around here. I’ve even cleaned my desk.

Going Out

J & I went to a new wine bar on Atlantic Ave. yesterday evening, Donna DeVine (I’m not sure of the capitalization). We each had a fight of reds and some cheeses. The wine and the cheese were excellent. It was a little early and the place was not busy, so it was slow and relaxing. The place has a nice atmosphere too.

Backing Up

The witty post was supposed to be about last weekend’s trip to Dallas to see my mom for her birthday. I can’t remember the last time I celebrated her birthday, certainly not without celebrating my younger sister’s, which is on the same day.

We flew down on Saturday. I took knitting on a plane with me for the first time. Airports and airplanes are much less stressful when I’m knitting, or maybe it wasn’t that stressful because for once I wasn’t flying during a holiday season.

I had no problem going through security with Addi Turbos in my carry-on, but it still took us a while to get through: J wore a shirt with steel snaps, under a sweater. The guy scanned him for five minutes.

Our flight attendant on the way back was a newbie knitter, so we talked knitting for awhile.

At Mom’s we ate and played Scrabble, WordThief and Upwords and vainly tried to complete the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle. I gained another pound I’ll have to work off before spring, but it was fun.

My older sister and my neice want hand-knitted socks, so I’ll have an opportunity to knit some more feminine socks with brighter colors.

Hoping

I’m hoping for a less stressful week at work. Both of my bosses will be out of town and I’ve finished one round of system testing and the next doesn’t hit me for two weeks. I’ll cross my fingers, but I won’t hold my breath.

And I’m picking up Feather & Fan again this week.

Literally, cold sweat running down my cr–ck. Yes, I went out on the bike today. You would have thought I had learned my lesson yesterday, but, no, I thought another layer on my torso would help. Slap me upside the head. It just prevented evaporation. Sweat ran down my back, chilled by the 15 mph wind I was biking into—let’s just assume I was going 15 mph or more and make that an effective windspeed of 30mph—right passed the love handles and—a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!

I was out two hours and got a full-body workout. One thing about where we live in Brooklyn, almost every place I could bike to is east of here. Which means that on the way out today’s crisp northwest wind was behind me and on the way back it was in my face, arms, chest, belly, thighs and calves, all of which currently hate me and are complaining that I am incredibly stupid. My hip and ankle joints agree.

For the record, I went out Dean and St Marks to Eastern Parkway; down Rockaway Blvd and Rockaway Ave to Ave K in Canarsie; up to Glenwood on E 80th; over to Kings Hwy and then down to Ave L along the service road; across to E 4th where L ends and down to Ave M and over to 59th; then cut up to 51st on 17th Ave; cut up to 12th Ave on New Utrecht; 12th to Dahill; Dahill to Caton; Caton to E 3rd; E 3rd to Terrace/11th Ave; up 18th St to 8th Ave; from there to President St; there to 6th; over to 5th at some point then homeward on Bergen. Google it.

Grapevine Scarf

Wool in the Woods Cameo (rayon) in Rosebud. Grapevine Pattern from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury of Knitting Patterns, altered so that the edges are symmetrical.

I like the pattern. I like the yarn, to a point. Hand-painted yarn, I’ve heard, can be variable from skein to skein and this would be no exception. I had several false starts getting the pink to line up when changing from one skein to the next. There was, fortunately, no appreciable difference in color from one skein to the next. I do like the finished effect.

Stephanie wrote this, “Saturday, September 16th I’ll be at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble in Brooklyn at 7:30.” on her post today.

*all a-twitter*

After last week’s heat, it was nice to get out on the bike in more moderate weather. Yesterday was a bit hotter than expected, however, and the route I chose was more treeless than not. Up through Williamsburgh and Greenpoint to Long Island City and over to Maspeth, then back through Bushwick and Williamsburgh on the inappropriately named Grand Ave. Again, I sweat out 3 lbs, bringing me to my lowest weight in a year. While there is some satisfaction in seeing that number on the scale again, I would have preferred a bit more life in my legs.

Today I headed for greener and shadier lanes: Baltic St, Park Place, Vanderbilt Ave, Grand Army Plaza, Eastern Parkway, Bedford Ave—which has this bike lane for much of its length—Ave K, Ocean Pkwy, Ave L, East 4^th St, Ave N, 60^th St, Dahill Rd, 59^th St, 3^rd Ave, 3^rd St and home. Just under two hours. It would have been slightly less, but I stopped for pictures, all of which are not as well focused as I would have liked, but I was breathing hard and dripping sweat (3 more pounds).

Twelve o’Clock at Brooklyn College

I assume that I wasn’t holding the camera straight. I’m sure someone would have noticed if the clock tower leaned that far to the right. Oddly, I took two shots of this, each at the same angle.

A Nice Downhill Slope on the Bedford Ave Bike Route

Bedford basically goes downhill from Eastern Parkway almost to the ocean with an occasional rise for variety. This section, at Ave I, is relatively smooth and nicely shaded and the drivers are not as nearly lunatic as you find in Borough Park and Sunset Park.

The Gowanus Expressway Hanging over Third Ave at 47^th St

While technically you could call this section “green”, I chose it because it has been recently resurfaced and on the weekends the traffic is not bad. Provided no vehicle comes flying over the railing of the Gowanus, it’s a lot safer than 4^th or 5^th Avenues. This was a nice contrast to 59^th St, which has been ground up for resurfacing next Tuesday.

Hope you all had a nice weekend.

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.