Belated Father's Day

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Check it out -- even Honest Abe got his yarn on:


I know, I know -- not that kind of yarn. But he's still a cool dude.

I love old books. The older, the better. I picked this one up back in April at the Richmond Public Library's Friends Book Sale. They have a special room just for rare books, and I always make a beeline for there first. You never know what treasures you might find.

106 years old!

A few years ago at that book sale, I found a 1917 first edition of Henry Vincent Hubbard's An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design, the first textbook on landscape design published in this country, for the first landscape design program in this country at Harvard University. I'm pretty proud of that find.

And this year, I was finally able to get my hands on a used copy of Hortus Third in excellent condition. It's not particularly rare, but at one point was particularly expensive. I see I can now buy used versions from sellers on Amazon.com for around $22, I suppose because the information within is becoming more and more outdated as the years pass. But from what I've read, there will be no Hortus Fourth, so Third is a good reference to have in the gardening library.

My dad is a history buff, so I figured he might like that Lincoln tome. I am going over to my parents house tonight for a belated Father's Day celebration (his request) and am bringing dinner and his gift (the book), before heading on to knitting group. I hope he likes it!

And I'll finally get to lay my eyes on the print version of Sunday's RTD article about the Hokie blanket sewing party. Speaking of which, it looks like our knitting group will be sewing another one together tonight at Barnes & Noble. If you're in the area, come join us!

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Me and Cher and Demi -- who knew?!

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This is freakin' hilarious:



The photo in the center is my driver's license photo from 7 years ago, back when I still had bangs and wore contacts. According to the facial recognition software on this website (which I think is more hairstyle-recognition than anything else), these are the celebrities I most look like.

Ha! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Okay, now, here are the celebrities that look like my work photo from two years ago:



Lynda Carter and David Letterman. HILARIOUS!

(And what's with the resemblance to James Joyce? Is it the mustache?)

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Fun Stuff

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It's been hot, hot, hot here in Rivah City. Got to 100ºF here yesterday, but slightly cooler today. Me hates the heat and the associated humidity. The only upside is that the cats love it and therefore just loll around or sleep all day in a heat-induced stupor and stay out of my hair while I'm working. So, as long as the AC keeps working, I won't complain. I find that if I keep my AC set at 78ºF, it doesn't kick in all that much, but still keeps the house comfortable enough for sitting at a desk all day. Night-time is another story altogether, however -- the colder, the better, so the thermostat gets set to 65ºF or lower before I got to bed, and then back up to 78 when I wake up.

Despite the non-wool-friendly temperatures, I've been knitting on my pink heart scarf for the last few nights. I'd finished the first half weeks ago and had set it aside, but have now picked up the other half and should finish it in a few days. I can get three or four repeats done while watching tv at night. It's a quick knit, but goes slower when one makes a mistake every other row and has to un-knit and re-knit. I tell ya, I think I have adult ADD. Or am just easily distracted by whatever is on television at the time. Or am just a remedial knitter. Whatever. It'll get done. Then I think I'll block both halves before grafting them together -- easier to block two short rectangles than one long one.

For those who aren't so interested in handling wool when it's sweltering, here's a few fun websites to go visit:

• The Anticraft
• My World
• Newspaper Snippet Generator
• World's Longest Domain Name
• Richmond Daily Photo
• Animated Stick Figure Olympics
• Email Time Capsule
• Ultimate Paper Airplane
• Word Cloud

Once again, Go. Have fun. Stay cool.

That is all.

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LibraryThing

This is totally off-topic, but I couldn't resist, since it seems like it applies to half the knit-bloggers I read these days.

So, here's a quick note for all you librarians, former librarians, wannabe librarians, library employees and just plain book lovers out there. Have you stumbled upon this website yet?

Go. Have fun.

Stocking Stuffers for those who have everything

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One of my many hobbies is calligraphy, and so I sometimes find myself window-shopping for pens and associated supplies. According to those in the know, THE store for fancy pens is Joon of New York. I've never been there, but I do get their catalog. Who knew there were so many fancy pens to be had? There's a whole category of fancy pen collectors, apparently. I picture them as gray-haired men smoking pipes, wearing silk ascots tucked into sweater vests under tweed jackets, sitting in tufted leather chairs at carved mahogany desks in their wood-paneled libraries .

And so, if you have the aforementioned fancy pen collector on your Christmas list and lots of money to burn, you might want to get them this set:

It's a Montegrappa Eternal Bird Limited Edition 18K gold, diamond and ruby fountain pen and ink well.

And you can get them both for a mere $45,350.

(They don't even list the price on their website - you have to call to order. The catalog reveals all, however).

I notice that they give you a choice of nib sizes. It seems to me, if you're shelling out $45K for a pen & inkwell set, they might throw in all three nibs.

I'm just sayin'.

Merry Christmas shopping!

Deltiology

What is that, you say? Why, it is yet another geeky hobby of mine, perhaps even geekier and more spinster-ish than knitting, if that's possible.

About a year ago I got turned on to collecting vintage and antique postcards of my hometown, which is steeped in history. I get a particular kick out of seeing old postcards of buildings I'm intimately familiar with -- (I've eaten there, I've worked there, I've shopped there) -- with horse-and-buggies or Model-T's parked out front. Reminds me that this town had a significant and interesting history long before I showed up.

The danger of this hobby is that, there is so much out there that, you could get sucked in and, next thing you know, your house is chock full, floor-to-ceiling, front-to-back, side-to-side, wall-to-wall, with postcards. And so, you must specialize. And so far, I've been good at keeping it to just a shoebox full of a few towns that I'm very familiar with -- the town where I was born, town where I grew up, town where I went to college, town where my ancestors hailed from.

But yesterday, I discovered that there's another nitch I may get sucked into, which is vintage knitting postcards.

So, I'm thinking I may need to get a bigger house! ;-)

Never thought I'd become one of THOSE people....

...you know, the ones who are apathetically undecided. But this election season I found myself unsure as to which gubernatorial candidate I disliked more, and was stressing out because I'd yet to make a decision on who was going to get my vote. And the nasty, negative TV ads weren't helping, either. Then I woke up yesterday morning and said to myself, "Self? You know what? I don't like either candidate so I'm not going to vote for either one."

And so, for the first time in my adult life, I didn't vote. And I felt nothing but relief. I get the feeling that a lot of folks stayed away from the polls for the very same reason.

Oh well - color me unpatriotic, or un-civic minded or something. Perhaps we'll have better choices 4 years from now.

Meanwhile, I'm almost done with the 3x2 ribbing on the chemo cap I'm knitting, so I'll soon get to switch to just straight knitting in the round for about four inches - yay! And then the decreases start and I'll have to switch to scary DPNs at some point. That's when I'll make another trip to my favorite LYS for a little help. My ribbing is pretty sad looking, I must admit -- there are a few holes, I think I've dropped a stitch or two, and despite my overzealous addition of stitch markers every 5 stitches, I've no doubt mixed up the knits and purls in a few places, but you know what? I don't care -- I think (hope) the fuzziness of the yarn, which has made this such a pain in the a$$ challenge for me, will hide all of that anyway.

If I do finish this cap and am not too ashamed of it, I'll be giving it to its intended recipient, and I think I'll put it in a little box and then wrap the box with this, which I ordered yesterday and which has already shipped. And so, even if she doesn't like the cap, she might like the scarf. I can only hope.

Those who can't, buy.

One day when I'm a grown-up knitter I will be able to knit myself sweaters and add fancy stitch patterns to various items. Until then, I press on with my scarf knitting, and when I have the urge for a cable-knit sweater, I buy one:

Thanks, Eddie Bauer!

The Boss is not a knitter....

...but pesky little details like that just don't matter when you're in the presence of greatness.

He came to town last night and was as amazing as ever. I missed the E-Street Band, but not much. He puts on a great show all by his lonesome. (Setlist available here.)

I think that Cara, who dreams about him on a nightly basis, should knit him some socks in a colorway that matches the stage lighting. I think he'd appreciate it.

Actually, the Coliseum was so chilly, thanks to Hurricane Wilma raging outside, that even Bruce mentioned that his hands were cold as he was playing the piano. I think, then, that fingerless gloves might be a more appropriate gift for the one true King of rock-n-roll. (Step aside, Elvis - you've been de-throned).

I'm hooked....

<-- This is the crack cocaine of online games. It is deceptively easy and apparently meant for kids, but that's probably why it has hooked my simple mind. I've wasted untold hours playing this game and have no doubt killed important and irreplaceable brain cells. I think the Asian characters at the top are Korean -- I just hope it's not a thinly-veiled North Korean plot to take over the world, because it just might work!