London Wrap Up

London was a lot of fun - and gray the whole time. Fred and I have been there several times and we've seen a lot, so this trip was more about it just hang out and walk around with Patty and her friend/colleague Donna, who was a nice addition. This is a picture of Patty, flanked by Fred on the left and me on the right, in front of Buckingham Palace. It was a pain in the neck to find a spot that wasn't crowded with people trying to get a shot like this.

We also had tea at Harrods department store. It was one of those things that Patty wanted to do that Fred and I would not normally do. So it was great that she requested it because otherwise, we would not have darkened the doorway of that tea room. It was very interesting - and very sweet. We sat in a little balcony and ate pastries and drank tea. Sort of a great way to end the afternoon, although we were sort of stuffed afterwards.

A knitting friend talked last week about the tea rooms in Amsterdam. Apparently she's been to them all. So she's a great resource for tea information. I really should do more tea - in the sense that I really like to collect different experiences. But I have to balance that with the question: Exactly how gay are you? At any rate, I'll have some places to go when Patty is here. Having a woman along is a great excuse to do things like that.

We also saw Wicked again. What a great show. We bought tickets at a booth on the street for 35 pounds each, and they ended up being at the very top. There was literally nothing but a walkway behind Fred and me. I still loved it. We all moved down after intermission. And if you're ever there, don't bother with the binoculars you can rent for 50 pence. They're worth about 15 pence and that's just for the scrap plastic if you melted them down. They're foggy and didn't magnify anything. All they did was extract 50 pence from my pocket.

So London was great. It's great to become acquainted with a place like that. That kind of legendary city that people talk about visiting once or twice in their lives. Sort of like New York City or Amsterdam. I'm a city guy.

Athens and a Little Rant

While "hanging out" on Ravelry (I'm still not quite comfortable with the term hanging out at a website that the kids are using these days.), I came across a group called "ABC Along - 2008." The idea is that you post a picture every two weeks corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. I just made it in under the wire, although I don't think it would take much to catch up. It's really not much, but it's a little something to give structure to this almost-structure-free blog.

The first picture I've chosen is about Athens. Oh. I also said that I was going to try to do this in Dutch, so it's actually Athene. Cheating? A little. And to take cheating to a new level, this is not even from Athens itself. It's from London - the British Museum in London. But it was in Athens a couple hundred years ago.

The room where these sculptures are is pretty amazing and pretty packed with these. What's amazing is how mangled they all are. Apparently, they were all in the Parthenon, which was where some gunpowder was being stored, and someone blew the building up. So all of these sculptures were wrecked. Then they lay in a heap for a couple hundred years until a British guy made a deal to take them away and now some of the Greeks want them back - say they were stolen. I'm on the side of the Brits here.

My point is that it's sort of hard for me to look at these sculptures, always has been. It's like looking at a person who has been horribly disfigured by an accident. Not that it's not fascinating. It's just that it just makes me think of what we're not able to see - the complete sculptures. (There's a really nice naked guy on a horse in the entry hall. Who doesn't love a perfect marble statue of a naked guy on a horse?) Not to mention that on almost all of these, some jackasses took it upon themselves to go along and lop off all of the penises, so they're all castrated. I'm just sayin' that it's distracting. Plus, that kind of crazy conservatism annoys me.

And that's an excellent segue to my next thought. Conservatism. I recently had a long conversation with an old friend from high school who is pretty conservative. With most people, if they're really conservative, I just move along. I don't run into that a whole lot here. It's sort of like NYC in that way. There are the conservatives, but they either don't talk about it or they avoid me. But she's an old friend and I try to look past it - although I must say that I found some of her reasoning flawed, like she insists that Obama is a Muslim (not that there's anything wrong with that) even though he's on the record as being a Christian. The problem is that she holds the Muslim thing against him even though it's not true. Can't argue with that, huh?

So I ran into a group on Ravelry called "GOP Knitters." And one of my favorite people is in there! I was shocked. (They're ongoing conversations are a fun read.) My family is pretty conservative, as I have written here. They all voted Bush-Cheney twice - and of course they voted for him for governor twice. It's almost embarrassing, if it weren't so tragic. (Who are these people?) So I'm on this new thing where I'm trying to accept it. (It's actually not a new thing. It's an old thing that feels new.)

Conservative people are people too. It doesn't always seem like it, but they are. They are not all robots who say things like, "Fred Thompson is a breath of fresh air!" Some people actually think about why they vote like they do, why they hate the environment and why they don't like people who are different from them.

Oh, by the way...political moment alert. Too late.

Knitting update: The fingers on my gloves were driving me a little nuts, so after seven, I put the gloves down for a day or two. Maybe I'll do a couple tonight. I'd love to have them done. I think if I tried, they would have been done in a week. That's pretty cool for a little gift like that. Now I'm doing a swatch for a sweater I like the way it looks, but it feels like a lot of work. We'll see. I'll keep you updated. I know you're on the edge of your chair.

I think I'm becoming a monogamous knitter. I want to work on one project until it's done. This new philosophy is making me seriously consider the next project I take on.

London Knitting

We're back from London. It was a good trip. Lots of walking. We walked for hours each day. It was really sort of exhausting, but London is a really nice city and it was nice to be there again. Les Miserables was really long. It's sort of a tired musical. Probably because some of the same people have been singing the same songs for years. They others we've seen there were newer, fresher. Still, it was a packed house and the big songs were done well.


The last knitted object I finished in 2007 was this beautiful Koolhaas hat. I had Fred take a picture of it in a park outside of the British Museum and then again inside the museum, which had a glass ceiling that seemed to be inspired by Jared Flood's hat. (However, I think the ceiling was done before the hat was.) If you haven't tried this pattern, I encourage you to do it. It's sort of fiddly, but the results are nice. He suggests doing either four or five repeats of the pattern. I did four, which is a little small on my head, but I've got a big head. Next time I'll do five. I also didn't switch to bigger needles after the ribbing, which probably has something to do with it being a little small. I do it again with extra stitches. I think four more will do it.

I also finished the socks - in the airport yesterday, which I will now wash, block and send out. A little late, but I think he'll enjoy them anyway. Amazingly, the socks came out exactly as long as I wanted them to. It's always a bit of a crap shoot about when to stop knitting the foot and start with the toe. I counted on a bit of a stretch with the sock. I think I calculated right. We'll see. Here's a snap of the socks and a close-up of the pattern. - Garter Rib. These colors are really nice. Again, it's Regia. Just Regia, as I wrote in an earlier post. They have some nice, new self-striping yarns. I recommend.

Now I want to get my stash in order. I don't have an out-of-control stash. I'd just like to see what I have and use it. There's not really a bunch of stuff that I love seeing in ball form. I'd rather have it knitted up. There's some event in Zwolle in February. So I'm not buying anything until then. I can't really think of anything I need until then.

I also decided to not buy any books until I read seven of the books I already own but haven't read. It was sort of a resolution, but I don't really like resolutions. I'd rather just make changes when I see a need.

I have a few days off now before I start back to work. Thank God. Happy New Year.

Koolhaas and a Happy New Year

While struggling to finish those socks, I was meandering thorugh my link list and I came across this pattern by Jared Flood of Brooklyntweed. (Go see the pictures. They're really wonderful.) I took this picture of my own after the sun had gone down and it's not the best, but I promised Butch that I would put up a picture so that he could see what it was that I was going on about.

Of course, on Ravelry, there are literally hundreds of people either in the process of making the Koolhaas or finished with it. Check out Elem's. It's completely different and very smart looking. The pattern is fascinating. It's a lot of fiddling with the cable needle, but it's worth it, and after a while, it makes sense.

Jared also has some of the best pictures of knitting that I've come across. When I met Fabienne a few months ago, she said (I believe she said), "He has this camera." She pointed to her own. (Look what else you can see on Fabienne's blog.) Fred and I are in the market for a new camera. We bought each other less stuff this year because we're going in on a really nice camera - and we're going to London for New Years. Speaking of nice pictures, check out Elem's pictures. He also does a very nice job with the photos. Completely different from Jared's. Elem uses a light box, from what I understand. I use the sun and the dining room table.

So anyway, I went and bought the pattern from Interweave. It was only $4.50 which is (as of this moment) €3,09. I screwed up when I started knitting because I started on the written instructions instead of the chart. But I ripped it out and started again. It's very doable and I like the results.

The socks will get done. They're good airplane knitting. It's the foot that always makes me nuts. I don't mind the leg, the heel flap and heel turn are no problem and decreasing at the gusset keeps my interest. But that foot! I'm tired of the pattern. It's lots of straight knitting.

We're leaving for London tomorrow morning. We're going to The British Museum, The London Bridge Museum and maybe a day trip to Canterbury if we can swing it. We're focusing on things we've never done. We're also seeing Les Miserables, which is something I've never seen, but which my good friend, Patty, has talked about (with enthusiasm) in the past. Once I've seen that, I can get that punched on my gay card. We were going to see The Mousetrap last time we were there, but some old queen talked us out of it. It's been playing for about 55 years and he said the actors basically sleepwalk through the performance. But every time it comes up, we both grouse about the old queen who talked us out of seeing it. Picture an old priss pot seated behind a ticket counter with his eyelids fluttering, moving back slightly as if he'd just smelled bad cheese. "Oh, no no, dear. You can skip that..." Now we want to see it just to spite the old girl.

So have a Happy New Year. This is Andy B signing off for 2007. Tune in next year!