Where do I begin?

How bout somewhere warmer? Like Miami. The trip was full of productive worky things, a rally/protest/march through Fort Lauderdale, a nice morning stroll on the miami beach boardwalk, and a Portuguese Man o' War.

Seeing about 10 of them washed up on the beach made me suddenly a little gladder that I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit. Frankly I don't know how anyone could stand to swim in the same water that a school of men o' war (man o' wars?) are inhabiting. My brother had a nasty run-in with one when he was 7 in Melbourne Beach, FL. The thing stung his whole right leg, then he panicked and tried to wipe off the tentacles with his hands making it twice as bad.
I'm going back to Miami on Tuesday and I AM bringing my suit so those Iberian, war-mongering jellyfish* have 2 days to clear the area.

I'm going to skip ALL of the time between London and Miami and instead talk about this past weekend. I spent most of it in the garden! I was notified about a month ago that I had gotten a
plot in the community garden I signed up for in August.
Here is a 'before' picture. My garden-neighbor Juan told me that the plot hasn't really been used for 2-3 years.

I've had 3 intense weeding sessions in the last week and as such have discovered new muscles I didn't know I had. This is especially good cuz they seem to be in areas of the body that could use some more attention - generally speaking, the back-side. I don't really know when I can start planting things. Many of my garden neighbors have delighted in giving me advice on how to get things done since I'm a newbie. This is much appreciated because I really don't know what I'm doing, however, if I were to follow ALL of their nuggets of wisdom, I probably couldn't start planting until August. I guess they all have different ways of preparing their plots and I'm going to just have to pick a method and stick with it if we're to enjoy any home-grown veggies this year.
Here are the nominees for things I might grow this year:

• tomatoes (a must)
• peppers - green or red, I'm not particular. My stingy self is leaning towards red since they're much more expensive than greens at the store.
• cucumbers
• green beans
• radishes: shout out to mika.
• zucchini
• basil
• a leafy green: romaine? lettuce? spinach? I haven't decided yet.
• cinnamon basil: the National Arboretum sale was out of regular basil so I got 1 cinnamon basil for kicks.
• Annual Honesty/Money Plant: also purchased at the Arboretum. My mom grew this in her ginormous herb garden when I was little and I remember thinking the seed pods were cool.
• Stevia/Sweetleaf: from the Arboretum as well. I've never heard of this herb but the tag said the can be used as a sweetener (it's 300 times sweeter than sugar) and is commonly used in Paraguay and Brazil. I'll be trying it in tea.

And finally, a reward for the knitters who are getting bored of this very unyarny post.
My needles were busy in March and April. First is a pair of armwarmers I started for myself sometime in winter. They had 3 purposes: use up stash yarn (free from a swap!), practice fairisle and pattern-making, trial run for a gifted pair of armwarmers in the spring. I like them and wore them throughout DC's last gasp of winter, so mission(s) accomplished.

These were followed by a baby cardigan I made for a former coworker who just had her baby last week! She knew she was having a girl so I was excited to use this purple/pink elann cotton that bought last year. Although there are better baby wrap-cardigans out there, few are free so I went with this pattern from Crystal Palace.

The mom lives in El Salvador so I was hoping this mercerized cotton would be cooler than most of the wooly things out there. And wouldn't you think a wrap cardigan would be more breathable? I'm not sure, but I went with it.

Finally, the gifted armwarmers - I used Cheryl Niamath's pattern for Fetching from Knitty.

My friend lives in Philly in a basement apartment. So even though her birthday was last week, I think she still might get some use out of these this season. Knit in the same yarn as the fairisle armwarmers above. Thanks to the SnB DC yarn swap!

Currently on the needles is sock #2 for Mr. Beta. I've never knit him socks and rarely knit him anything. Even though I've barely turned the heel for the 2nd sock, I think they'll be done in time for his birthday this week especially since I'll be spending time in a plane and a couple airports. I did get him other things (not giving away any surprises here though cuz he's nosey!) because knitted socks are really more fun for me than for him. They're my first experience with Lorna's Laces (Shepherd Sock) and I loves it. Colorway is camouflage to help boost the manly factor.

And once again I've created an obnoxiously long post and given myself blogger-burnout. Ugh. Luckily, I know someone will remind me when too much time passes before the next post so hopefully you won't have to wait too long to hear about my pathetically domestic spring endeavors. I wish I could stop feeling guilty that my list of leisure activities includes cooking, knitting, and (now) gardening. *sigh*



P.S. YES, I am STILL reading the same book. I'd like to lie and say I just haven't had time to change out the sidebar. Reading Lolita in Tehran is good - but my new job is closer to home so I ride my bike every day; I haven't figured out how to make up that lost reading time from bus rides. And now that I've added gardening to the list of things I try to squeeze in on weekday evenings, I'm afraid the libraries around here may start to feel the sting of my decreased patronage.


* The Portuguese Man O' War is not actually a jellyfish. It is (according to Wikipedia) a siphonophore - a colony of specialized polyps and medusoids. I learned something new :)

Bienvenido...

...a Miami.
And so begins part of the chorus of Will Smith's famous song "Miami". I'm going down to Miami Beach tomorrow for the 2nd work trip - this time for 4 days. And much like the last time, I can't get that stupid chorus out of my head.
...Welcome to Miami | Bienvenido a Miami...

This 1930's boutique hotel will be my pad for the next few days.

Yes, work trips to Miami are a good thing. Especially when they follow freak April snow in DC.

I still plan on giving updates on the following sectors of my life:
* knitting
* Londonium
* visitors

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Unrelated Note: cubicle life is amusing. This is a new experience for me having always worked in smaller, cubicle-free, organizations. Today I heard a new sound effect wafting through the purple-padded cubes....nail clippers. I'm going to assume they were fingernail clippers rather than toenail. It went on for about 6-7 minutes. These kinds of things aren't bothersome really, but they're a funny distraction.

Must...post...one...entry..in...March...

You probably won't believe it based on my track record here, but I used to write in my journal nearly every day. During a particularly strong period of OCD-ness, I actually did write in it every single day from May 1 to August 20th, 1995. I flipped through those pages recently and was shocked at what I thought was worthy of a written record at 14 years old.

I think I would post more if I had a laptop.
or a portable desk.

Update

I know you're all dying w/ anticipation.
And the winner of the previous vote was.....



The write-in candidate proposed by SealDaze!

I don't have a picture to show you what I'm talking about but it's basically the more complicated pattern (Little Leaf), but using garter stitch so the odd rows are knit across instead of purl across. It does lose something in the cuteness that Little Leaf had - but now it's reversible! And it's not that complicated after all. I memorized the 2 different patterns for the even rows and it's going pretty quickly.
Now my only complaint is that I HAVE NO TIME FOR KNITTING! But you guys can't really help me w/ that via voting.
Today is my last full week at work - I have 2 more days next week and then I start the new job on Wednesday. Wow. Normally, I'd have all these profound thoughts to share about this big transition, but with the back-to-back meetings we have tomorrow and Friday, I haven't had time to breathe, much less think profound thoughts.

I'll leave you with some shots of the antiwar protest from Saturday.

Indecision 2007

Since we don't actually get an election in '07, I'll give you all a chance to vote right now.
Some of you are already familiar with my search for the perfect pattern for my lovely Qiviut (musk ox) yarn, a Christmas present from PassionKNITly. I wanted something reversible, lacey, but not too complicated because I'm not that experience with lace. This hunt turned out be to be quite challenging. I can't even count how many times I googled variations of reversible lace pattern. A certain M-friend of mine said I was going about the whole thing like a scientist (in a good way i think). Thankfully, I was able to narrow down the myriad options to 2 choices.

1. Little Leaf Lace Scarf and
   
   
2. Feathery Lace Stole (from Exquisite Little Knits, but brought to my attention by SealDaze)
   

Here is the issue. I like both of them. Only the Feathery Lace Stole is reversible. It's also much easier to keep track of. But the Little Leaf pattern is so pretty! And some people have said that the purl side doesn't really look that bad. It's just more complicated because I have to count rows.
Do you have an opinion? Is the Little Leaf pattern pretty enough to be worth the extra thinking required? And should I care that it's not reversible?

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (so why did I write so much?)

This past Christmas might have been my craftiest yet. I didn't quite realize that until after we were back in DC after our exotic stay in rhode island. While I didn't knit nearly as much as some of my friends, I managed to make a good number of the gifts. Unfortunately, I'm a bad blogger and didn't photograph all of the items so this, and the subsequent post in this series might be a little lame for those of you who only want to see pictures and don't like all the 'reading'.

But you're in luck, because first up, we have the photographic gifts. Having had such success last April when I gave my gram a framed shot of her favorite cherry blossoms, I decided to try my luck again by giving my dad a trio of monument photos for his home office. Because that room is my former bedroom, it suffers from a lack of masculinity and so far, no amount of techy gadgets and action DVDs seems to butch it up enough. I woke up extra early the last weekday before we flew home and spent an hour with my camera, the sunrise, and some humbling monuments. I have never seen the Vietnam Memorial or the Lincoln Memorial so empty. I wasn't there to photograph the Lincoln, but I rode by it on my bike on my way to the Korean War Memorial.
Here are the results, arranged the way they were hung on the wall.

It was particularly cute when, on Christmas Eve as Erich and I were assembling his mother's homemade gift, my dad remarked how nice it was that we were making it and how he is always so touched by homemade gifts. Score. He was indeed touched the next day when he opened his gift. Especially a few minutes later when Erich astutely realized something about my dad's reaction and told him that I had taken the pictures myself. Apparently my dad originally thought I had just purchased some interesting shots of the monuments and framed those as a gift.

Speaking of the gift for Erich's mom...
One of the things we gave her was a small album of mostly architectural shots of DC for inspiration for her pottery. She has a kiln and potter's wheel right in her house and spends many evenings throwing gorgeous bowls and assorted dishes. She asked several months ago if we might take some pictures of interesting architectural motifs in the city that could bring some outside inspiration to her pottery. That's easier said than done however since we don't usually have our cameras on us during commutes to work and errand-running. I therefore started jotting down building names and addresses whenever something caught my eye and lucky for me, the weekend before we flew to RI was gorgeous, blue-sky weather. I did a little bike tour of the city starting by Trader Joes at Foggy Bottom and ending up in Adams Morgan at an entrance to Rock Creek Park.



Finally, I also gave Erich a gift involveing photography, but in this case, it was his own. He took HUNDREDS of photos in Peru and never got around to printing them out or putting them in an album. He loves the album he put together a couple years ago of his service trip to Nicaragua. So I secretly orderd prints of the ~200 best Peru photos and tracked down a brown leather & suede album (it's hard to find manly looking photo albums!) in which to mount them, scrapbook style. I didn't include any captions because I really have no idea what the names of any of the sacred trail points are. But most of the challenge lay in trying to keep the whole thing a secret from him. Apparently I was successful because he seemed very surprised on Christmas morning. It's still a bit of a work in progress because the 2nd set of insert sleeves for the cardstock don't quite match the 1st set even though they're from the same brand and had identical labels on the packaging. So the 2nd half of the album sticks out a little more. Also, it would look better if a handful of the best photos were enlarged to 5 x 7 so he's going to pick some out and insert those pages later.

Still to come in this 2-part series: Knitting and Co.
Also, here's a tip on how to get out of Federal Jury Duty: make sure you work for an organization that fights for the same rights that are being contested in the case you're called to be a juror for. The opposing side usually doesn't like that too much and will probably make sure you're not selected so you can't brainwash the other jurors.