Catching up

Wow, I have continued to be blog-negligent. The funny thing is, I've actually been getting a reasonable amount of knitting done... but let me hit the non knitting highlights first. We had our 20-week ultrasound and found out that... (drumroll please).... the Bip is a boy! We would have been thrilled either way, but it really makes the fact of "baby" in four months feel much more tangible. We're still getting used to saying "he" and starting to think of names...

Here's a set of pics of Mr. Bip; bottom left you see him doing baby yoga with his leg out. At one point he was playing with his toes - so flexible!

Then last week we headed to Boston for a lovely 5-day weekend visiting family. We went with the Somervillians to a sheep-shearing festival and had a lovely time. The nieces were entranced by the animals, and my SIL got a large share of a black-sheep fleece for a steal! We met up briefly with some Boston-area-Ravelers who ooh'd and aah'd over the hand-spun and/or handknit the girls were wearing (made by SIL, of course!)My parents threw a great party with my aunt, cousins and cousins' kids, as well as the Somervillians. These family parties are so much fun, as the adults chat and the kids tear through the family room which contains 30 years worth of toys from my and my brother's childhoods. It's amazing to think that in a year, the Bip will be part of that! (though probably not tearing through things quite yet...). Here's a pic of the younger generation making silly faces for the camera :D

Anyway, I have a few smallish FOs to show off, but in the interests of getting to bed on time I'll save that for a separate post. And those on Ravelry have already seen them, since it is easier to just post the pics there without commentary :). (reminder, I'm Parallel on Ravelry)

Oh, and in the interest of documentation, here's a pic of me (and Andy) at 20w5d along. Now that I'm firmly into the second trimester and have some energy back and am mostly not nauseated, I actually feel less pregnant (except when Bip is moving - then it's either pregnant or "posessed by alien"!), so it's surprising to me to see my belly looking so big in pictures!

Cactus Pr0n

I wanted to just post a few (heh!) pictures of my week in Phoenix. The work I was doing was really sporadic, requiring me to BE THERE NOW! but only occasionally - most of it was waiting for the times I had to BE THERE (which oddly almost always ended up at 3AM). I know this is very vague, but it's really not all that interesting; it was just annoying and a bit amusing. So I did manage to do some desert hiking / geocaching in South Mountain Park on one day, and to visit the awesome Desert Botanical Garden on another. Thus, I have many pictures of cacti to present. I also visited a very nice LYS (not much of a website, though) where I picked up yarn for hats for Andy and myself (baby alpaca for me; non-wools for him), and sat and knit a spell with the locals.

But anyway. I want to show off these cacti! So, so different than the vegetation in rainy Portland!

These are growing wild in South Mountain Park, encountered while geocaching. I was very grateful that the AZ analog to a parallel pile of sticks is an artfully arranged pile of rocks, and not a spiky pile of cacti!


(self-portait in the desert with camera balanced on a rock)


From the Botanical Garden (which conveniently has a take-your-own-picture stand):


(there was also a butterfly exhibit in a nice humid tent-type thing)




I should note - not only does the camera lens have spots, it is now deciding that perfectly good batteries are drained after a very short time (and when we put them in another device, they are still "full"). So we are probably in the market for a new camera - any suggestions, either raves or cameras to avoid, are welcomed!

Flock and Fiber!

Well, after a rather icky day Saturday (broke my laptop; things fell apart at work and I had to go in twice; many pages during the day and overnight), Sunday was rather better. I made good progress on my diagonal silk garden scarf (almost half done!) - though in fairness, I had brought it in to work when I went in the second time Satruday and did a few rows during some dead time (at my desk! Yarn not allowed in the fab!). Here it is modeling in far and near view. I am loving the colors - from pastel to intense, this yarn has it all, mostly in blues and purples with some greens and golds thrown in. It also has really uneven plying, bits of hay and thread, and some knots for joins. All of which I had read in others' blogs... but I think it will be worth it in the end.

Sunday afternoon I dragged Andy not-too-unwillingly to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, which was about 25 miles away in the rural area outlying Portland to the south. It was really nice - kind of a cross between a huge yarn and roving bazaar and a county fair. I got to pet a camel! We said hello to many llamas, alpacas, goats, and sheep. We saw lots of spinning, and I fondled lots of yarn and petted lots of roving, and did some stash-increasing. Almost everything has a purpose, either a project in mind or as a gift, so I don't feel so bad. I am not sure what to do with the 100 yards of bamboo that was on sale for $4, though! (I thought about a preemie hat for the 20 hats project, but it's not machine-dryable :( ).


Here are a few quick pics and yarn pr0n for my loyal readers...


Hello, llama!


Mother-daughter alpacas. Nice haircut, mom!

The real reason goats have horns (maybe he's allergic to wool? heh, heh, heh)




Pair of antique spinning wheels for sale. From Germany and Maine!





Amazing colors of roving - I think that's what it called, anyway the really soft fluffy stuff that isn't quite yarn yet. This was just one of many, many vendors, but I didn't take any other vendor pics - I was too busy inspecting the goods!


Prize-winning hand-spun skeins. It was fun to read some of the judges' comments, especially comparing the "novice" and "expert" categories.


Career opportunity?







And finally... stash enhancement /yarn pr0n :)
















Some good sturdy Idaho wool in significant colors, Socks that Rock (Oregon local, of course!), some nature cotton that was only $4/skein (I'm thinking dishcloths), and the aforementioned Madil Eden bamboo. And yep, that's some Oregon coast handmade soap for my swap pal. The nice older lady who makes the soap was a bit bemused by the idea of strangers on the internet sending each other dishcloths and soap, but she was happy to give me tips on what my partner might like.

That's all for now - I still need to blog Japan and SF, argh! Too much to do! But now I'm going to finish watching Monday night football and work on the silk scarf :)

Travels and yarn in Japan (a retrospective) - part I

Well, I never got around to blogging my Japan trip, and since it was coming up on 2 months ago (July 6-12), I figure I should at least hit the highlights. I'll make this part 1 - most of the knitting stuff will be in part 2... (and, after spending a good few hours blogging this (and eating dinner, and taking a walk, etc, etc - be warned, part 1 is huge!!)

I've already shown the progress that I made on my Cabled Tank Top on the trip, mostly on the 10-hour flights there and back. The other major knitting-related accomplishment, besides tank-toppage on various modes of transportaion, was visiting a wonderful hand-dying yarn store near the factory in the mountains near Mt. Fuji 2 hours outside Tokyo. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Day 1 (Friday) - leave Portland in the afternoon. Fly in plane for 10 hours, knitting and watching movies.

Day 2 (Saturday) - arrive at 5 PM Tokyo time, even though flight was only 10 hours. Yikes, international dateline and jetlag! Take "limousine bus" (really just a bus, with cupholders!) to the Imperial Hotel downtown. Narita airport is over an hour outside of the city, so plenty of knitting time. Eat an energy bar from my backpack stash, and crash by 8PM Tokyo time (4AM Portland).

Day 3 (Sunday - a really really long day and blog post) - my only full free day, in Tokyo. Up around 5, found Andy and my brother on chat, stared at maps and guides, and finally was driven out of the room by hunger. Considered the American-style breakfast at the hotel, but it didn't open for 10 minutes and was expensive; one of my guides said one could always walk into a corner store and get a cheap rice roll for a quick meal, so I set out in search of that, with a brief detour through Hibiya Park across from the hotel, noting the prevalence of feral cats and homeless people just waking up.

I then crossed a couple of streets and found the perfect place for breakfast - much cheaper and more authentic than the hotel. Lots of youngish business people were also grabbing breakfast there.

Fortified with rice rolls (one with a sweetish fish type thing - maybe crab? - and one with rather bland red beans I think) and bottled cold green tea (mmmm!), I wandered around Ginza, the dowtown shopping district, for a while, and then hopped on the subway to go to Asakusa, an "old-style Tokyo" district famous for its temple and, apparantly, its kitchen supply market area.

One of the interesting things about Tokyo is the highly efficient use of space (and relative lack of greenspace in the city from what I could see). Here are a bunch of restaurants underneath the raised train tracks, right around the corner from the AM/PM.

First thing in Asakusa (besides a swell of pride at succesful subway navigation!), I headed across the wafer to the giant turd building (er, HQ of Asahi beer) to find a geocache in the plaza there. Yeah, trans-pacific geocaching!

Then I, along with hundreds of Japanese and a smattering of other tourists, headed for the Sensoji temple. After entering the great old gates, one encounters a huge market of traditional &/or touristy goods and snacks. I picked up a few little things (Tabi socks for the nieces, snacks for me) and wandered towards the temple itself.

I didn't get really great pics of the temple itself (and honestly, too look at it wasn't overwhelming or anything, and since I didn't know the history I didn't stay very long), but here are some snippets of the area around it. Interpretations of cultural or religious symbology should be taken with a huge grain of salt (and hopefully no offence if woefully inaccurate), since I am remembering from a borrowed guidebook and quick searchings on the web.

Burning incence in front of the temple - wave it towards any part of your body that needs healing.

Raccoon-dog god statue in a shrine at the edge of the temple complex.

Dragon shrine, same area

I wandered out of the temple and on the guidebook's suggested walking route towards the kitchen/restaurant supply district. But on Sunday, most of these stores were closed (though I did see the building topped by a giant chef's head!). So I walked further up, and happened to wander into a street fair! It was the perfect place to get a late lunch: a 100-yen (<$1) sausage on a stick, a slice of very juicy watermelon... people warned me that eating in Japan would be expensive, but not at the places I frequented for breakfast and lunch!

I think of all my exploring that day, the street fair was my favorite. It was just great to see the mix of adults, kids, dogs (quite a few small dogs in strollers!), mostly modern but a few in traditional dress, doing the market/festival thing. None of my Japanese colleagues, when I asked them later, knew if there was a specific reason for the the festival.

Some of the other onlookers were also fun to watch!

I got back to the hotel from Asakusa sometime around 3PM (I think), took a short nap and debated whether to go into a different part of the city or hang out in the hotel. Although I was pretty tired from the exploring thus far, since it was my only day in Tokyo, I decided to go see one of the high-rise, crowded, shopping areas: Shinjuku

Not too much to report from Shinjuku - I tried to follow the guidebook's suggested walking itinerary, but was a block off for most of it, and lost my nerve when, at the end of a glowing review of a ramen restaurant, it noted "there is no English sign on the restaurant, but it's the only ramen shop on the block". Great! Now, if only I knew how to recognize a ramen shop!

So, I ended up in a 7-story department store, real old-style compared to the small Macys and Penney's and things in Portland - the 7th floor had several restaurants, so I picked Chinese as we have a dearth of good Chinese food in Portland - and I was tired enough to know I wouldn't appreciate sushi or high-end Japanese cuisine. Then a little more city wandering, then train back to hotel, to bed, and the next day to meet my "sales engineer" who would escort me to the factory in Yaminashi.

Just a few (hah!) brief (hah, hah!) photos of Shinjuku - I'm getting tired of blogging, and this is dragging on!!

I'm presuming this was an anti-war protest, by the train station. Ominous music and video played, there were dudes with megaphones... It was in trying to leave the train station area that I got a block off the walking tour in the guidebook.

Shinjuku, according to Wikipedia, has over 300,000 inhabitants. Many of them ride bikes.

Lawson Station, a convenience store chain I saw all over the place in Tokyo (waves to certain readers!)

Toy food from the children's floor of the department store

I wandered around a big bookstore, but wasn't successful in finding an English language section (have I mentioned that I don't speak or read Japanese?). I did stumble upon the knitting (crocheting? crafting?) section :)

Finally, Shinjuku at night. This is how I'd pictured Tokyo, and while I was glad to have found the neon-crowded part, I was really happy to have explored multiple areas, gotten a teeny feel for some of it, and taken lots of pictures. Unlike my husband, who in multiple trips to Japan a couple of years ago, brought back pics of Tokyo Disneyland from the bus, a toilet (granted, the toilets were pretty cool, and I'll post pics of my own in part II), and the electric kettle in the hotel room:P

Man, what a long blog post. Congrats if you made it to the end! Part II later this week!

The weekend

A little rainy kayaking on the Nehalem River...

Unsuccessful hunting for an island geocache:

(We did manage to find a different island cache, but I forgot to take a picture...)

A little knitting...














And then some hiking. Oh, deer!





















Aaaaaaaaaah, the joys of a not-on-call weekend :)