MarQ1

10 am, on a Saturday morning two days before xmas, I’m on a conference call to discuss on-going testing for a system conversion. And we’re trying to pack up and head up to Rhode Island to spend the holiday with J’s family. Tuesday morning I back in the office. This is not going to feel like a three-day weekend.

What to take to knit (quietly in the corner)? Nothing is currently portable, so I’ve packed yarn and dpn’s for socks.

I’ve made two cheese balls and J made some French Canadian pork spread—blech!—to take along. I forgot to buy crackers, so we’ll have to hit the grocery store when we get there. We’ve also got wine to bring. And a few presents.

I hope everyone has a relaxing and pleasant holiday.

Specifically, a hat in Noro Blossom.

When I started knitting the Noro Blossom, I thought, “This strongly resembles dust bunnies that a cat has been sick on.” Still, it’s not my favorite yarn, but it turned out nice enough. Completed in less than a day with slightly more than one skein of yarn.

The bulk of the remaining yarn will make a nice wine bottle gift bag. I doubt that I would ever use this yarn again. Why?

1. mohair
2. clumpy
3. obvious nylon bits
4. bad feel when running through my fingers

On the plus side, unlike other Noro skeins I’ve suffered through, this one had no knots. And everyone else seems to like the hat.

The relatively flat top was achieved with by decreasing nine stitches every other round until tying off the crown. I have to remember that.

[K₁: if you think A₁ will think it looks like cat barf, warn me off now. Otherwise, it’s in the (holiday) mail. Eventually.]

Backtracking

I had what I thought was a relatively fine Thanksgiving day. J went off to his folks in the Crazy State and I stayed home alone, being antisocial. The highlight was snaking the cheap low-flush American Standard toilet that the condo sponsor had installed when the place was built. I kid you not, the last time it clogged, it clogged on three sheets of unwadded toilet paper. Literally, it’s cr@p. If I could find the model number I’d warn you off it. The snaking seems to have worked: fifteen days without a stoppage.

I had store-bought Thanksgiving tortellini for dinner.

Friday I drove up to the Crazy State (not to be confused with the Nutmeg State or the Bay State), picked J up at his parent’s house and drove to Ptown to visit Mike and Tom, our friends at the Grandview Inn. It was the last hurrah. They’ve sold the place and are moving back to Chicago. It was a fun, but too short weekend. We’ll visit them in Chicago, and we’ll still go to Ptown, but summer vacation will never be the same. Or fall vacation, or New Year’s vacation.

On the Subject of Vacations

Guess who needs to work the week between Xmas and New Year’s? At least I should be left alone to get some work done. On the bright side, I don’t have to go to an airport. Or sit on an airplane. Or wait for checked luggage. Or…

We’ll see my Mom in January for her birthday. Travelling should be more sane, at least.

BTW, does anyone know what I did with the green chevron scarf I knit last fall? I think I gave it to someone as a holiday present.

J & I went up to Hudson NY for his birthday—he’s Brad Pitt’s age. We drove up on Thursday, stopping at a couple of wineries, one of which was open. We picked up half a case at Millbrook, three each of a Cabernet Franc and a 2005 Chardonnay, both good for the price. We got to Hudson a quarter after three and walked around after settling in at the guest house. We decided to have a margarita at Mexican Radio, which turned into two drinks with chips and salsa and then into dinner at the bar. We stretched it out and left a bit after six.

Hudson is very quiet on a Thursday evening in mid-fall. The street was almost empty. There were only two interesting shops open after we left the restaurant. I bought two coasters from a shop selling Turkish ceramics and glass, and we looked in on a shop that had, among other things, some cute knitted things—women’s and children’s only—some hand-knit locally, but didn’t buy anything. We went back to our rooms and found it was only seven. An early night of TV and knitting.

Friday we drove up to Mass MOCA in North Adams, MA. For J’s birthday we go to museums and restaurants; for mine we go to bars and restaurants, and I go yarn shopping and he goes to museums. The museum was a great space and I liked some of the art, but I still occasionally got that feeling of a joke I just don’t get.

On the way back, we stopped at The Fields Sculpture Park in Ghent. This is worth a stop, a long stop. Acres of fields and woods and a pond with large, outdoor contemporary sculpture and installations. We only had a little over and hour to spend before sunset, but we could have easily spent the whole afternoon. Most contemporary art doesn’t appeal to me, but the big sculptures do.

We had dinner at Ca’ Mea. It was good. We stretched it out with appetizers, entrees, dessert and coffee. J really liked the rigatoni in pumpkin cream sauce.

We still got back to the rooms by eight. We played a board game and watched Roseanne on HBO. How could anyone marry that voice?

Saturday morning, we had brunch at Red Dot, walked down to Parade Hill the look at the river, then did some shopping, but didn’t buy anything. We hit another winery on the way back, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

I did try to get some knitting in, but couldn’t come up with anything I liked. I knit five or six different patterns, frogging them all as doing nothing for the Fleece Artist kid mohair/silk I have. It’s a beautifull yarn. Frustrating. I came back to Brooklyn with nothing more than frogged yarn.

I have finished my hat made of Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino leftovers, mostly knit during conference calls.

That’s the outside; this is the inside. [The color is more blue than purple.]

Generally, it’s reversable, but the inside has a k4p1 rib to fit better inside the k8p1 rib on the outside. Cast on 90, btw.

Otherwise. Doesn’t Brad Pitt’s middle look a bit thick almost human on the cover of Vanity Fair?

Sometimes I feel like my life is insufficiently gay. And I don’t mean happy. I’m unfizzy. Flat. Anti-fabulous.

This usually happens after we come back from PTown. Yes, PTown is a bit of a gay fantasyland, but so is Manhattan. I feel so dull, almost corporate.

I’m OUT at work. It’s not a feeling of closetedness; it’s a sense of not living up to my gay potential. I’m boring gay-wise. My job is boring gay-wise. It’s not a gay job.

I don’t know anyone gay at work. I know that some people are gay, but I don’t know them.

Without giving up my job, which does in a limited way allow a bit of diva-ism, I want to be more gay.

I hereby vow to be gayer, as soon I figure out what I mean by that.

More on the vacation after the break. If the gay stuff makes you uncomfortable, move on. Not that I’m getting explicit, but I prefer my rudeness to be intentional.

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Only one vacation photo, and this from only moments ago.

This is what F&F looks like on a 60″ Addi Turbo at round 138. I did get over 11,000 stitches in over the six days. And I’m bored. I’ve got to get some quick things in. I haven’t even hit the 50% mark yet. This going to take forever.

Why is this the only photo, clearly taken here at home? The camera never left my bag. Have to keep my PG rating.

PTown. We went for the Tennessee Williams Festival. Right.

Off to PTown.

F&F is coming along this time.

I cannot tell you how much I need this long weekend, or how much my co-workers think I need one too.

Back Tuesday.

You might ask just that.

Going way back, I slipped into vacation mode a little early, right after that last post. I considered posting that weekend, but put it off until the 4^th. The Fourth was going to be a hot one, so I went out early on my bike. Twenty minutes into the ride, I had to hit the brakes real hard to avoid hitting a school bus that had the right-of-way—who rides a school bus on the 4^th of July!?—and the front brake caught before the back and I just avoided going over the handlebars into the path of the bus, wrenching my back out. I spent the 4^th and the 5^th on my back or on my stomach with ice on my butt or propped up rigidly in a straight-back dining room chair to knit. No posting possible.

It is not possible for me to knit Feather & Fan lying down.

That gave me one twelve-hour workday to get everything done at work before taking off. Too pooped to post.

Friday, the seventh, I had every intent to post, but ran out of time what with taking the car to the carwash—they had to run it through twice—doing laundry, cleaning out the fridge, packing, deciding what knitting to take, moving the plants from the front to the back terrace, loading the car and picking J up by 5:00. Sorry.

I over optimistically took the Rowan Kid Silk Haze to work on Birch, which Mom said she would like. I didn’t even get this far:

I made it only through row 32 in PTown, knitting on the deck while waiting for other people to wake up. That’s not the best yarn to be knitting in a breeze. I also knit after dinner while J napped before going out to the bars at night. This is now my office knitting. That’s my disgusting office chair underneath it. I got 8 more rows done during Thursday’s and Friday’s conference calls.

Vacation

Right off the bat, let me say that while I packed the camera I never unpacked it. No pictures.

After picking J up, the drive was pretty easy all the way up. We had dinner in Milford and pretty much drove straight through getting in at 12:05am.

Saturday

We planned to go to the beach, but at breakfast we both realized we forgot to pack beach hats. So we had to go shopping. Four pairs of shorts, four shirts, three hats, three bars of soap a bottle of body wash, a book and a pair of cufflinks later it was after 1 o’clock, so we decided to skip the beach. Took a nap. Showered. Had dinner at Fanizzi’s, a good long walk to the other end of town. Walked back. Rested, read or napped. Went out to the bars at 11:30. Stood outside Spiritus with everyone else after the bars closed at 1. Went back to the house and slept.

Sunday

Slept late for me: 8-ish. Knit on deck while having my coffee; walked to the beach (2 miles?); beach, i.e., watching guys, reading and or napping; walked from the beach; showered; napped; had dinner at the Mews, which was very good; rested read or napped; went to the bars; stood outside Spiritus Pizza; went to an after hours party; went back to the house and slept.

Monday

Awoke aroung 7am. Read. Knit on deck while having my coffee; walked to the beach (2 miles?); beach; walked from the beach; showered; napped; had dinner at the Fanizzi’s again, really early with the old people; rested read or napped; went to the bars; stood outside Spiritus Pizza; went back to the house and slept.

Mike and Tom’s cat, Andre, got out and ran off for the first time ever.

Tuesday

See Monday, except dinner at Edwige at Night. The sweet pea falafel was wonderful as was the blueberry cobbler. And we didn’t go to the bars, since neither of us managed to wake up from our evening nap.

Andre came home.

Wednesday

Overcast with a threat of showers, so we skipped the beach. Shopped. Read. Knit. Napped.

That night we saw Ryan Landry’s Cleopatra. It stank utterly. It was boring. Aphrodite as Cleopatra was boring. Ryan Landry didn’t even do drag. The only bright spots were Olive Another as Caesar’s wife, Chlamydia, and Penny Champagne as Octavia and our cute bar waiter whose pants got lower and lower everytime he came by with the overpriced drinks. Between the tickets and the three rounds of drinks—a necessity for this show—this was a $100+ tab. The tush was cute, but not that cute.

We’ve seen the Ryan Landry production every year we can remember—and a few we can’t. This was the first flop. It was also the first time the room wasn’t standing room only.

The evening was such a downer, we didn’t even think about hitting the bars. The three rounds also influenced our decision.

Thursday

Rain in the morning, clearing up too late to go to the beach, which would have been too damp to be fun anyway. More shopping, napping, reading and knitting. Cocktails on the deck. We had dinner with Mike & Tom at Edwige at Night. Yes, this restaurant is worth hitting twice in one trip. J is still raving about the tuna. Though I wish I had gotten the falafel again. That was so good. Slightly spicy with a salad with feta and nuts and other stuff.

Too stuffed to go out late. Went shopping earlier instead.

Friday

Woke up at 3am. Lay awake until 4:30. Too much napping. Went for a walk. Five other people out and about. Watched the sunrise. Took nap till 7:30. Read. Knit on deck while having my coffee; walked to the beach (2 miles?); beach; walked from the beach; showered.

Instead of dinner as usual, we joined Mike & Tom and other guest of the Grandview Inn on the Bay Lady II, a two-masted schooner, for a sunset picnic cruise out on Cape Code Bay. I loved this. The feel of a wind-driven vessel is exciting. The winds were still and the bay a bit choppy; on the return the waves were splashing over the bow. I loved it. It didn’t hurt that the crew was cute too.

Rested, read or napped; went to the bars; stood outside Spiritus Pizza; went back to the house and slept.

Saturday

The usual. J announced at dinner—Fanizzi’s again (a good burger, btw)—that he was coming down with something. So later only I went out the bar. Spiritus. Sleep.

Sunday

Coffee on the deck. Packed up. Left PTown around 10:30. Remarkably easy and fast trip back. Stomach a little queasy. J has head cold. Home a little after 5.

Monday

Laundry. Nine hours of it.

Since Vacation

Rambling. No real excuse for not posting. Just lazy at home and I’ve been reading and my stomach has been queasy all week. Too busy at work trying to catch up. I did finish off the practice F&F in PTown with a crocheted chain and blocked it Tuesday.

You can see the mistakes, but I’m pleased with the effect. I have avoided the mistakes the second time through.

I have yet to pick up F&F again. Been reading instead. It was a horrible book that I just couldn’t put down, but it’s done and has been tossed into the recycling bin.

Stomach’s better, but I’m getting J’s head cold.

Later.

AND I GAINED NO WEIGHT ON VACATION!