Catch Me If You Can, Corporate Monkeys

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. – Groucho Marx

I am not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I love to walk and hike and bike, but always quite pleasurably and at a leisurely pace. I love yoga as well...mostly because it's not competitive and you can quietly flop around your mat at your own speed. Plus, I am prone to awkwardly falling in ways that make everyone point and laugh before catching their breath in between giggles to get around to asking me if I'm okay.

Imagine my absolute excitement and glee when I was put in charge organizing a corporate team for a charity run. I rallied the troops and got about 35 people agreeing to run.

Everyone was into it in theory. The week before the race, they dropped like flies. On race day, we had a grand total of FOUR people.

FOUR.




Yeah. That's right. We're winners for just showing up.

A quick look around revealed that everyone else had team t-shirts on. We were chic and polished in our conservative black and grey team uniforms. The anti-conformist conformist. Also, I failed to have the foresight to splurge for a hospitality tent and we were forced to endure the taunting of our peers as they indulged in ice cream bars, Gatorade and other fine delicacies in the comfort of their refined encampments.

Anyway...the the race is so huge, that it took a half hour from the gun time to get up to the start line. 15,000 people were running. Because I had been waiting for another team member to show up, I ended up starting at the very back of the crowd, with a lot of walkers to dodge.



It was a gorgeous day for a run in Central Park. Or, in my case, it was nice day to plod the 3.5 miles in my slow, non-competitive jogging pace. I enjoyed myself immeasurably. I even finished 10 minutes faster than I predicted, showing that my once-powerful psychic powers of prediction have atrophied to the point of unpredictability.

Plus, afterwards, we went out for drinks at an outdoor bar that had comfy porch-swing type seating. You can't really beat that.

Wensleydale Singles

...as in "a single ply of wensleydale yarn", not "bachelors from a small area of Yorkshire".

The weather cooled off a bit after the heat wave so now it is comfortable and breezy, which is perfect weather to get a little spinning in.



(This is actually a Leicester Longwool sheep, but they have similar fleeces to Wensleydale.)

The fiber was 1 oz of Tussah Silk and 2 oz of Wensleydale, dyed with madder and called "Cardinal". It was a club shipment from A Verb For Keeping Warm.



I spun it as a continuous single. It's so hard for me to resist the urge to ply. Plied yarn is so neat and tidy and balanced and everything else just looks odd to me.



It was interesting- both fibers like to be spun worsted and the staple length is incredibly long, but they are so different from each other. The silk is smooth and slick; the sheep is hairy and slippery. It's not unpleasant to spin, but it has almost no memory or crimp to it. Long draw worked well.

Finished, after a nice warm bath to set the twist and a healthy glug of vinegar to stop the dye from bleeding:



488 yards of lace singles. Which I'm trying my best to leave as singles. I love how the reds marled to a pretty valentine pink.



The Wendsleydale has a nice hairy halo. I'm not sure what I have in mind for a project with this yet.

As soon as this was off the bobbin, I started a polar opposite spinning project:



Cashmere and Silk blend! It's lovely. I have 8oz of it, so it should spin up to a decent amount- I'm aiming for sport-weight. I'm finding it really easy to put too much twist in this- it's so fine and slippery, and it likes to fall apart on you. Hence the over-twist. I'm really happy when I'm spinning this, and plying it will take out some of the kinked-up overtwist. The one bad thing about this fiber is that I have to commit to it when I spin it- the cashmere is so light and flyaway, I end up with a nice head-to-toe coating of fuzz the not even the bravest of lint rollers might be able to tackle.

Defying Gravity

I've been doing yoga for ages now. When I get a good groove on with the instructor and style that I'm comfortable with, I absolutely love it. I like Iyengar and Vinyasa the best, Ashtanga and Bikram the least. After being in the office all day it's really nice to relax and have a good stretch. After, I feel more calm and collected and an eerie optimism creeps into my thoughts.

I joined a studio near my office that has a nice schedule of daily lunchtime classes. I got really excited when I found out they offered "Anti-gravity" yoga. I would highly recommend watching This Video from The NY Times.



It's so much fun doing yoga suspended from the ceiling and upside down. Having the sling supporting some of your weight means you can be more experimental with your poses, and not having the floor in your way really expands the amount of stretching you can do. It's also a killer workout. Lots of work for the abs and arms and shoulders lifting yourself up and holding yourself steady. There will also be no moments of passive rest as you always have to be actively balancing. It's quite the workout.

I know this is just novelty yoga, but the element of playfulness is refreshing. Hanging upside down from my legs on a swing is something I haven't done since I was a kid. It used to come so naturally as part of play, but now I hesitate to let go. It takes a minute to trust yourself to not fall before you can let gravity take over.

Also, the hammocks are made from silk. Gorgeous, drapey, lustrous silk. How can I resist the silkworm's siren cry?

The Shetland Who Wants to Be Pretty Returns...

And this time it's in yarn form.

My wee Shetland fleece has been all spun up.



It started out as a fleece that had tons of cross-fibering. It was clean and didn't have any other terrible flaws aside from the fact that it looked like it had been carded already. It was hard to pull out individual locks, but they weren't so stuck together where I was getting tears and breaking the fleece. I didn't pay a whole lot for it and I washed it up in the bathtub with no issues. It was taking the leap from fleece in a bag under my bed to usable product that was hanging me up.

I had the brilliant idea to turn it into roving at the Loop spin-in, and blended it with a good deal of tussah silk that I had dyed up. It gave it a rich, slightly metallic sheen. I threw in some angora I had lying around for good measure.





I spun it up as thick as I can and now I have an Aran-weight 2ply.


It didn't take me that long- I whipped through the almost 2 lbs of roving an just a couple weeks- but I've been lazy about plying. Having time to sit down in front of the wheel to finish everything has been a huge challenge.



It's lovely- I really enjoyed spinning this and I was a little melancholic when the last bit of it got sucked onto the bobbin. The staple on the shetland was very long, and the silk reinforced that, so I didn't been much twist in the singles. I plied it tightly though because I love the way a tightly plied yarn looks- so neat and orderly. I have 5 skeins plied up so far, all with 110-160 yards a piece (yeah, I know. I have to work on my consistency). In the end, I'll have enough for a small sweater. I love the fact that it's not so blended that the silk didn't get lost here.

So aside from resolving to get more spinning done (and knitting and cooking and organizing and weaving and dyeing and jewelry-making and blogging and learning new languages and doing yoga and everything else that I feel like my skills are constantly withering away) I will have to eventually pick a project for this yarn.

Meanwhile, as my spinning stash gets spun up and the knitting stash gets knitted, I keep getting my AVFKW club in the mail. Luckily, they are small bumps.



This is "Cherry Blossom", a blend of Alpaca/Silk and Merino/Silk.



This one is "Ambrosial", which is a nice soft chunk of Targhee. I love how dark and saturated with color it is. I should probably discontinue this club for a bit. I now have 11 little bumps of fiber in need of being spun up. It's starting to add up and I'm just not spinning fast enough. The colors and fibers are so gorgeous though. I don't think there has been one month where I wasn't thrilled with the colors.

I promise an etsy update soon- I have a huge stack of freshly dyed yarn and roving that I need to get listed. Also, a giveaway of sorts, but it's going to take some thought and some organizing on my part and I really do want to go on vacation sometime this summer, so it might be a little while until that happens.

The First Official Misadventure of the Summer

If you have the first Official weekend of the summer, you also have to have the first Official Misadventure as well. And how.

We decided to go for a day hike up in Harriman Sate Park- the weather was beautiful and not so hot that it would be unpleasant. Harriman is about an hour north of the city in Rockland Country, and probably the first real nature place you might come across if you want to get out. A good stretch of the Appalachian trail runs through the park, and there are several small mountains and good sized hills that have trails. It's ideal for day trips and you can even take the Metro-North trains to the trailhead.

We packed our lunches and got an early start in the trusty old Honda Civic that has been on the road since I was in Junior High School. She's a little long in the tooth, but she runs, has low mileage and is a great beater of a city car. Despite being broken into a couple times, no one has stolen the tape deck yet.

We're driving along the Palisades Parkway, almost to the trailhead, when the car started to make a noise like something was caught up in the wheel well. Almost like the tire blew, but with none of the dramatic loss of control that comes with it. We pulled off the next exit and pulled into a parking lot to investigate the mystery noise.



That's odd. I distinctly recall leaving Brooklyn with four tires on the car.



Really now. Does this qualify as a flat? "Goodyear", my ass.



Once we got over the fact that the tire had pulled a David Blaine-style vanishing act, we got to work putting the oft-used donut on to get us to a nearby garage. Oh, by the way, is the car leaking something? I think there's a puddle actively forming under the engine-area. Yes, I can change a flat, and I know what it looks like when the radiator is spewing coolant, but I'm rather helpless otherwise when it comes to the car leaking mystery fluids.

Being Sunday, the closest tire place we could find was a Sears in the Nanuet Mall. We had some time to kill, so we actually went into the mall. Bry was excited since this was the hangout he had spent so much time in when he was growing up.



It was an eerie ghost town. He was baffled at the change, and I was just kind of creeped out. There was a Sears at one end, a Macy's at the other, and two levels of empty mall stores in between. The ceilings were water-stained and the paint peeling. It was a huge, semi-abandoned temple to former commerce.



The food court was mostly empty as well.



It was a Sunday afternoon and there were only a couple people in the entire place.



The centerpiece fountain had been filled in with dried-out mulch, bits of trash and long-bloomed bromelia.

Just walking around and taking pictures, a security guard and another worker stopped me to ask what I was doing. They were both curious as to what I was finding so interesting to take pictures of. Apparently when the giant Palisades Mall opened up down the road, all the businesses and shoppers went there.

Well, that was a depressing detour.

With the car finally back on four wheels and the leak diagnosed as something to be dealt with another day, we were back on the road on the way to the trail head.

We didn't hike quite as long as we intended since it was not much later in the day than we planned on, we still got a good 6 miles of hiking in.

It's a lot of hills and rocky trails and some steep ascends. We saw deer with their fawns, hundreds of chipmunks and squirrels, and more than one mosquito.



We hit a part of the AT called the Lemon Squeeze. It's a bunch of tight rock formations that you alternately squeeze and clamber up. If you have a big pack, you'd have to take it off to push through.



Being part of the AT, we did encounter a couple of hikers who were on their way to Maine.



We usually do a nice Katahdin hike when we are up in Maine in the summer. Rather intelligently, we don't walk the 793 miles there. We save our strength and make the airplane or motorcycle do most of the work. I do totally respect the through-hikers. They are an unusual, and ofttimes fragrant bunch.



We ended up with a beautiful afternoon and made the most of our abbreviated hike.



This is where were were planning on having our lunch on the trail. Ah well. The curb of an abandoned back parking lot got as fed just as well.



I just love the pleasant exhaustion that hits you at the end of the hike. You really feel like you've earned that ice cream.

I guess the good part about being stuck waiting for the car to get out of the Auto-ER is I did get some knitting done.



These are the Rivendell socks. I'm using a skein of Holiday Yarn's sock yarn in the "Burnt Orange" colorway. I had started them on the plane coming home from Arizona, and then promptly set them down because they were fussy with all the wrapped clusters of stitches. I bucked up and finished the fussy part and now they should coast right along.

I really hope this constitutes as our one odd happening of this summer.

Kicking Off the Summer Appropriately

The warmer months in New York are usually pretty darn unpleasant. It's really shocking to see a blue sky...for weeks at a time as there is so much humidity, you get a nice smoggy grey atmosphere. Sitting around in front of the AC in your underwear is really the only way to go. Sorry co-workers, it's required of me.

Most New Yorkers head out of town for the weekends, causing a traffic crush on Fridays that just becomes known as "Your Worst Nightmare", only for it to reoccur on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes it's nice to brave the heat on the weekends as you get the city to yourself- no lines at trendy brunch spots is really a self-congratulatory experience no one should be without.

Since Governor's Island because open to the public on summer weekends with free ferry service, it's really just become a micro-hamptons as far as the popularity contest goes. Except you can't go swimming.

To kick of the summer this year, they had a "BeerNYC". A picnic. With Beer. In New York. Sadly, the event itself was one of the most poorly run I've been to. People paid a lot of money to get in, only to be denied food and beer as vendors ran out. Also, they promised VIP ticket holders food and beverage at 11am, only to find out that because of the "Blue Laws", they couldn't serve until noon. When I arrived after 1pm, the place was so packed, it was an hour wait to get anything- the whole lawn was nothing but lines, and finding where one line ended and the other began was impossible. Terrible planning on the event organizer's behalf.

That's didn't stop us from getting together and having fun.



Oh, and there was a ukulele parade.





We were able to stake out a spot on the lawn and catch up with friends.



Some of the friends actually made it to the front of the beer line. Brave souls.



It's nice to have a different vantage point of the city anyway.







I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend as well. I do love the leisurely long days we have to look forward to.

FO: Uni Beret makes me say "oui!"

I have such mixed feelings about berets. On one hand, they can be very stylish and chic. On the other hand, they can look foppish and, as my friend Knithound found out, "like a feedbag". (Whatever. She looks regal in it when she's not trying to rob banks.) I approach beret-making with much trepidation. They take up twice the amount of yarn as a regular beanie hat, and they usually take about twice the time. Beret= neigh.

The solution:



Yarn that is thick and roving-like. You lose a bit of the drape, but it only took me a hair over an hour to finish a hat. If it looked like I was about to run away and join the French Circus, it would't be a huge time loss.

Also, I really needed a quick pick-me-up since all I've been plugging away at have been eye-straining chart-reading cable and lace projects. Big projects. They have ceased to be fun, and I usually put them down and forget my place on a weekly basis. I should break this cycle, but I am way too committed to it at this point. I want to making no visible progress on my cable sweater FOREVER. I prefer it that way.

Here it is, the Urchin beret:



Except I prefer to call it "Uni", since that's what it's called in sushi form.



It's a bit heavy and warm for the summer. Quite a bit. Also, it pissed me off to no end that it took almost a week to dry after blocking since it wouldn't stop raining. I couldn't get anything to dry at all, and at the end of the two-week rainstorm we had that is called "Springtime" everything smelled like musty grossness of doom and gloom. I sprayed down everything with tea tree oil once I could get a dry day. I was seriously worried that a mushroom forest would have popped up in the bathroom if I didn't spray something.



A floppy fun head-covering in an hour.

The specs:

I used less than 1 skeins of Classic Elite Soft Chunky Yarn. It's only 83 yards to a skein, so it's a good use of most of one. The pattern is called the "Urchin Beret" from "Twinkle's Weekend Knits". I used size 15 needles. Bigger is really better when Instant Gratification is needed.