Day 2!!

Here is what we did on day two!
First (after breakfast in the hotel - yummy bread, eggs, bacon, fresh squeezed orange juice and fruit) we went to the Concertgebouw to listen to a Tchaikovsky concert consisting of Cappriccio Italien and Symphony #5. It was an hour long and the acoustics were fantastic. We went hoping to get tickets at the window when a man asked us if we needed tickets (he was not a scalper, as he actually asked the ticket counter if he could sell them) and so we got awesome seats in the middle row and middle seats! For 2/3 of the price we would have paid! It was amazing.
Here are some pictures:





Then we went to the Rijksmuseum. That was amazing too - lot of Vermeer and other famous Dutch Painters. The Rembrandt 'Nightwatch' which was astoundingly large was there as well as the Vermeer "Milkmaid". There was also a a lot of artifacts like old Delftware and weapons and cabinetwork. It is quite a museum. Here are some pictures from he outside.






And then later - at night we went to VondelPark which is a huge park in Amsterdam. Here is a cafe in the middle of the park. It looked so pretty in twighlight.

1st day!

Where to start when one has taken 322 pictures on one's vacation? I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. (I think there was a song about that, actually, it's a very fine place to start). Anyway, don't worry I will not bore you with all the pictures.

But here is the brief version of day one.
1. arrived int he early am (around 7am) got to our hotel by 8:30am.
2. after wine and peanuts (nice hotel) went to the Van Gogh museum.
3. got caught in a downpour and had to to duck under an awning.
4. took a nap
5. ate ricetable at an Indonesian restaurant.
6. watched some Dutch TV.

Here are some pictures:

Our Hotel


The Van Gogh museum is in the center. To the right is the Rijksmuseum which we visit another day.


Here is the view outside our hotel window.

And the view at night...


Here is a picture from the restaurant. I think it looks like the lighting in old romance movies that start the likes of Vivien Leigh or such. I never thought that that kind of lighting could actually occur in real life... it always looked so "movielike".

Of course when H. saw this picture, he said "cool, I look like a ninja". So I have called this shot Ninja Romance. Enjoy!!


If you are curious if, in fact, ninjas can love... this question has been answered by "ask a ninja". If you haven't seen these video podcasts they are pretty funny. I'll include one here for your amusement since our first day was a little on the light side of pictures.

I'm back!!

Hey everyone I am back from the Netherlands, I have about 1,000,000,000 pictures (or so it feels like) and soon I will start posting some. Not today because I also have 1,000,000,000 things to do, since we left the Friday after we moved and the house is in complete disorder.

COMPLETE. DISORDER.

So I have told myself today I must get at least the bedroom straightened out and fully unpacked, if not the kitchen as well.

But I wanted to let everyone know I am back and safe and sound, I even found a knitting store there.

We saw a lot of great things. I can hardly wait to share it will you all.

If I don't past later today, I will tomorrow evening!

afghans for Afghans

Hey everyone!
Are you looking for a small project to knit?
Or do you have some leftover 100% wool yarn you don't know what to do with?
Do you want to feel good after knitting?

Consider knitting for the organization afghans for Afghans. They need children's items by October 12th. (They must have moved back the date, because last week I wrote down September 21st ont he top of my pattern). They need blankets, hats, mittens, socks, sweaters, and vests for youth ages 7-14.

Check out what they need over Here at the Current Campaign Site



Think you don't have enough time? I started this last night and I already have one mitten done and am working on a second mitten. That is one night in front of the TV and two bus trips later... And I am a fairly slow knitter, y'all.

Just think of the difference you could make with a night or two of knitting! I put the sock I was working on away and have decided to dedicate until September 30th all my knitting time to knitting for this group.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to volunteer more an donate what I could, and this is really a win-win-win... get rid of some yarn that is taking up room, get rid of my stress by knitting (from moving and all), all the while of getting rid of some bad karma while helping others! What could be better?? Why, you joining me of course!

A Beach Sock Sob Story

This weekend I went to visit my most of family who were staying in Ocean City, MD. My family goes every year. This year it was 2/3 of my Uncle Johns (all my uncles are named John it is very handy to my husband who doesn't have to keep track of their names. Like-wise I'm lucky on my in-law side I get to call all his uncles Su-su which means 'uncle' in Chinese), my aunt Joanne, my parents and my Grandpa. I'd show you a picture but somehow I forgot to take a group shot (maybe because everyone else was doing so!!).

But I did take some pictures of some sock drama (which, it is really hard to get sock drama in less than 3 days - but I managed somehow).

At first the sock was doing well. Enjoying vacation. Enjoying the view of the beach (even the cold temperatures didn't bother the sock, as it is made of a wool-cotton blend).



But then chaos happened as it started to rain on the vacationers, so too a gloom descended on the sock. (but how much gloom can you have, even when raining on vacation if there are cool kites that look like flamingos?)



The yarn, not carefully wound into a ball - but merely used straight from the skein - TANGLED! Into a horrible mess! And the more it was tried to untangle the sock yarn, the worse it became.



The tangled web that was wove continued into the night...


And even came home from vacation that way (even with my little homemade bobbin out of paper towel there was no hope!). But Luckily today it was finally untangled - after a few days of craziness - it was a very happy ending. I even got to knit on it a little bit tonight.


P.S. If you ever find yourself on a Metro Bus or a Metro Subway car and you want a seat to yourself, take out a ball of tangled yarn with some half done knitting attached on one end. For some reason no one wanted to sit next to me today. Maybe they were concerned they would become entangled in this mess and not be able to get off at their stop?

FO Friday post, 5.75 hours late

Good morning. It is 5:40 am as I type this. On a Saturday. I did that thing where you are dreaming about something, and then you hear a noise and you wake up thinking "there is a robber right in this very room!!" But it is just that you knocked a pillow or something off the bed onto something that made a noise. But in your sleepy haze, the body has already dispatched the adrenaline so - now, you can not fall asleep again. This doesn't happen very often with me, but I think it is going around, because earlier this week Harland did the same thing!

But anyway - I finished the other sock (in a week, I can hardly believe it! I mean it is a really simple pattern, but wow! I have never finished a sock in that short of time before!)

So anyway here are their stats.
needles: KnitPicks size 1 circular (16 inch)
yarn: Socks that Rock in Watermelon
Pattern: 'Made up' of K2P2 ribbing for the ankle and down the front, regular "French" round heel, and 3 point star toes from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.

It's my first 'made up' sock pattern. If you count K2P2 to be inventive. Haha. But it was fun selecting what kind of heel and what kind of toe.

So here they are in all their glory.


Here is me modeling them at 11:11pm last night (truly they were a Friday FO but I wanted to go to bed instead of post). I like how the pooling at the bottom of the ankle/top of the gusset is radically different in color on each sock. I don't know why that tickles me so much but it does.




And here is a close up of the toe. I love the star toes.


But I am thinking of trying the next pair as toe-ups. Dear KB is doing a really fun pair of toe-ups over here on his blog. And I have to admit, I really want to try these socks, over at Wendy Knits. The Cabletini Socks. Bless her she has published the sock pattern for FREE.

Thankful Thursday

Well it is that time again...
I'm thankful for several things this week:

1. Moving to a new apt. away from my crazy (and loud!) upstairs neighbor soon. I'll let you know how it is once I move in a few weeks.
2. Harry Potter books - they entertained me and now they are entertaining my husband - although I kinda miss him. Every night he reads and reads until it is time to go to bed. That leaves me a lot of knitting time... but... see number 3.
3. Knitting. I am stressed these days... with the move so close, and I don't think we are far enough in the packing yet (see reason 2). Makes me nervous.
4. Cat-sitting. I am taking care of my co-worker's cat. He (the cat) is sooo sweet and since his family has been gone for a while now, he is so clingy and loves being petted and purrs these really cute purrs that end in chirps... like PUUUURRRRRrrrrrrrrrrriiiirrrrpppp! Well, I guess you can't really get it from that but that will have to do. His family is, unfortunately, in Peru... which also makes me nervous. I dunno if transportation will be running as smooth as usual. I may have to cat sit a while longer or something. We'll see.

And well, that is it for today. Don't have much else going on around here.