One year!

Yesterday was Bastille Day again, which means this blog is one year old! I'll celebrate by posting some of those pictures I promised.

On May 3, I took a chartered bus from midtown Manhattan to West Friendship, Maryland for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It was gigantic. I highly recommend this event to anyone into this sort of thing. The landscape was so breathtakingly beautiful that I wept as our bus was pulling up to the fairground. Really.

herding dog demonstration

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Just a few of the many cute animals.

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Ravelry meetup. The pink bandana in the foreground is tied around the head of Pam a.k.a lickmysticks - Bad ass webring master.

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Sleeve I made on the bus ride home.

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I stayed in NYC for about a week and a half.

Dana on Williamsburg Bridge.

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Me on same bridge.

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Garage sale. Dana said "dude, those look so good you have to buy them". So I did. I think I look just like Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

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Green tea Kit Kat from Japan

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Carl Hiaasen at Barnes and Noble Union Square.

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Dinner at Les Halles Park Avenue with Alex.

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Alex and her daughter Maven. Aren't they precious?

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A french fry place I should have eaten at on 2nd Avenue.

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Beverly Road subway station in Brooklyn.

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A mural in Williamsburg illustrating the dangers of smoking.

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Junk yard of cab parts behind Dana's.

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I got most of the yarn for this Inga Hat at a store called Knit New York on E 14th Street and 2nd Avenue. The blue and the green are some Auracania handpaint stuff they had on sale. The red stripe is a Malabrigo that I got in Philadelphia at Sophie's Yarns on fabric row. I went to two other yarn shops in New York. One was The Point. The other, and my favorite by far, was Purl Soho. It had the nicest selection, best light, and friendliest staff.

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I spent about five days in Philadelphia. Ori and I spent the first (incredibly rainy) day at the Franklin Institute. We saw an Imax movie about the space station. Unfortunately it was narrated by Tom Cruise. We also went to the Planetarium.

Here I am on the Sky Bike. Wheee!

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One of those cemetaries that's so old that the headstones are worn away.

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Something Ori found in a dumpster and hung on his wall. His Philly friends think he's a dork for hanging it up. I think it's cool.

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Trying to sneak up on Shani and Barrett. Another precious pair. My old friends are making beautiful kids.

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Some really nice shears I got on fabric row for my shoe class at Peters Valley.

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Shoe class.

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The necklace I made for Dana to thank her for letting me stay at her house for a week.

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For the record, this post took 3 hours. Happy Birthday Lydia Wrench and Rik Giannola (again!)

July 11

The fact that I haven't been posting on here with any regularity has been bugging me, but I haven't had a streaming internal monologue worth writing down. It has just been mostly snippets lately, which I forget soon after they come to me or I find scribbled on bits of paper in the bottom of my bag. A great deal of my time lately has been spent on a frustrating search for a room for rent in either Berkeley or Oakland. It's a really annoying thing to try to do from 140 miles away so I keep going back and forth between there and Kelseyville. I am so tired of sending out emails that all say different versions of the exact same thing to get responses from maybe one in seven. Every time I check my email I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall.

Some things that I've found enjoyable lately are:

My recent crochet project which is a gigantic (over 5' x 5' so far) granny square of a zillion colors. It's beautiful. I will post many photos when it's done (yeah , I know, I said that about my vacation too. pppppbbbbtht!)

Going to the library.

Going with my friend Scotty to quad rugby (a.k.a. murderball).

The farmer's market by the Ferry Building.

Crisp, foggy breezes.

Happy birthday Donovan Drummond! And Elias Welsh (I think) and Garrett Buss (tomorrow).

And congratulations Josh! I hope to meet little Sequoia Holly Boyer some day and that her tiny hat fits her still by the time she gets it.

My dear friend Kelly's beautiful wife Andrea died on July 5. She had inflammatory breast cancer. She was 37. I got to meet her on my recent visit to Philadelphia. She was warm and radiant and lovely and an incredible mother of six. I felt honored to be welcomed into her home, and I wish I could have spent more time with her. She and her family have a blog here.