Eye Candy Friday

Honey bees at the Marsh house in coastal Washington, North Carolina.

The Marsh house was fired upon during the Civil War and is still sporting a cannonball (on the right, just above the first story windows).


The unnamed house next door also suffered the same fate (cannonball on the left, a bit above the first story windows):
Both of these homes are private residences or offices, but they are directly across the street from the North Carolina Estuarium, and an easy walk from the shops and restaurants on Washington's main drag.

We strolled here on Saturday after having a meal with all the family and friends that could attend my grandmother's memorial service. It was a gorgeous day and a nice send off for Grandma.

And then it rained

I intended to sit down last night to write a little recap of our North Carolina trip, but a huge downpour changed my plans.
We got 3 or 4 inches in about 1 hour, and the basement flooded.

D was on his way home from his mom's house in the suburbs. He'd gone out to take care of a downed tree, and on the way back he got stuck in the deluge and then a huge traffic jam. The gridlock on Irving Park Road was so solid that he and Libby eventually abandoned the car about 4 miles from the house, and just walked the rest of the way. (She was all kisses and smiles when she got home.)

We spent the night cleaning up the flood in the basement, and then going back to retrieve the car.

I feel really lucky that Streets & San came by about a week ago and sucked out the clogged sewer at the corner. If the sewer hadn't been open last night, our basement flood would have been a lot worse. As it is, there's just some cardboard boxes, wall-to-wall carpeting, and throw rugs that got soaked with rainwater and need to dry out. Our neighbors across the alley got flooded with foul, raw sewage and have piled all sorts of stuff out in the alley.

So, if I don't take my tired shoulders to Forrest yoga class tonight, I'll write up North Carolina.

A peaceful trip

I'm back from North Carolina! It was great -- we had such an easy, slow-paced time together on the coast. More photos to follow. :)

You can't win them all

I'm an unusually lucky person, but it can't always go my way, can it?

Case in point. Yesterday I got a jump on packing for the long weekend and had everything ready to go before I went to work on Wednesday morning. As much as I think I know my little girl, I had no idea she was going to rummage around my toiletries and chomp into my brand new, just out of the box $40 tube of moisturizer. How could it have an enticing smell if I haven't even opened it once? When I found the cap on the floor, next to the nice rug, I was worried, but it turns out she was satisfied to just to wrestle off the cap. The little foil seal under the cap was intact and she never bit through the tube. Shewwwoo!

Then again, if you've been KIPing with me lately, you probably know I've been flirting with disaster by adding 3 repeats to my Swallowtail Shawl. The odds were pretty high that two skeins of sock yarn wouldn't be sufficient. Sure enough, my luck ran out, and I'm faced with a choice of now doing only 1 repeat of the Lily of the Valley border, or ripping out the 3 extra repeats and knitting the shawl as directed (2 repeats of the Lily border). The Lily border and the peaked edges are what make the shawl, no? So I'll be ripping on the plane ride to the Atlantic coast. Grrrr. See you in a few, unless there's good internet access in the Outer Banks.

This and that

I managed to do a little bead work. I made these earrings from a pair of sterling silver earwires, headpins, and tear drop crystals. They're very simple and go with just about everything. I can really use a little bling after getting a new really short haircut. I think the materials cost about 8 bucks and took about 10 minutes to put together. I usually have a hard time getting my wire wraps symmetric, and this time was no exception.
I made this small mala a while back and have been using it for meditation. It's made of faceted agate beads, small spacing beads, silk beading cord, and part of a skein of cotton embroidery floss. It's sort of like a rosary, if you're familiar with that concept, but for saying mantras. Instead of counting or setting a timer, you can work your way from one end of the strand to the other, and back again, and then back the other way. The faceted agate have a nice cool feel.
I've also been trying to get new pictures for my masthead. What do you think? I'm not loving any of them, and the fig season is almost over, so I'll have another photo shoot really soon. I think the afternoon light was too low.

Tomorrow, though, I'm head to North Carolina to see my family. My mom has already flown over from Germany, and my big sister and little brother are en route from Florida. My little sister will be flying to Chicago in the morning, and I'll be joining her on the leg to Raleigh. I'm so excited about spending time with everyone!

I might not blog until I get back next week. I'm taking my Thai massage mat so that I can help the travelers unwind, and I kind of don't want to lug the laptop along too. Maybe I'll just take the cord for downloading photos from my digital, and see what happens at the B&B.

Eye Candy Friday, sort of

From the northwoods. What do you think, is it really eye candy? It's not the usual floribunda.
We'll be back in the northwoods in a few weeks, for the 4th of July. The little town nearby always has a little parade, with the firetruck, the V.F.W. group, a few baton throwers, and some local businesses. The cars honk and flash their lights and the marchers throw candy to all the kids, big and little.

Although there's been talk of dressing up and decorating one of the cars so that we could march in the parade representing the homeowners on our lake, we have never actually carried through. It would be a bit of work, and we usually get to the U.P. just before the parade. Maybe next year when the 4th falls later in the week and we would be up there in time to put things together.

I'm also getting ready for a short trip to North Carolina. When my grandmother died in a Florida nursing home last Fall, we postponed a memorial service until everyone could get back to her hometown in the Outer Banks. We'll be having a simple service at the graveyard, when her ashes are joined with her husband's. My mom declined the cemetery's offer to roll out the Astroturf and put up a tent. Too fussy for the simple country service we envisioned. It will probably be hot and muggy on the coast in late June, and we plan to wear sandals, lightweight cotton skirts and pants, and no tie for my brother. If anyone would like us to flaunt convention and just come as we are, it would be my grandmother. Afterwards, the family and friends will head to a local restaurant for lunch. I expect it to be a little bittersweet to reminisce and catch up with everyone. Being the world traveler, my grandmother would appreciate that we're coming in from all parts, especially my mom, who is flying in from Bavaria.

When I get back from Raleigh, I'll have a week at work, and then head to the U.P. It really feels like summer is here.

I told you he was good

After tracking down the problem, acquiring this thingie, and spending at least an hour on the phone with our Internet provider, D restored our access to the web! Yay! So what makes a router go bad? A power surge? We're not sure when the old router quit working, since our computer was just automatically connecting us to whatever wireless network it could find. Ooops. I would apologize to our neighbors if I had any idea who they were.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Graduation Day. Don't let the bright sunshine fool you, it poured a bit later and our celebratory cookout got moved indoors.

Libby got to hang with her favorite boy toy, Carson:
And on the way home, my exhausted girl enjoyed the full width of the back seat. See Karen, how's that for a companion animal money shot?
Fast forward to World Wide KIP Day 2007, which was over way to fast. I spent a couple of hours over at the annual Printers Row Book Fair with GirlReaction and then walked over to the park, where I joined my usual KIP group. The turnout was great, but I took all of one picture.

From left to right, there's new Chicagoan/new knitter/nonblogger Molly, Sturdy Girl, Bonne Marie, and Mary McCain. Three out of four are wearing their handknits!
I think that catches me up. I've got a few WIPs in rotation. More about those later. And yes, I realize they're all red, purple, or pink. What can I say.

Please stand by

We've got only sporadic access to the internet because our provider is being flakey. Or maybe it's our wireless router that's being flakey. Can't stay on long enough to upload photos and I'm not even sure this post is going to make it through.

But have no fear! My tech support team (my handsome man), is on the job and will get to the bottom of it. See you soon with a WIP pic and a mega money shot for my trendsetting friend Karen.

A postcard from the weekend

Grandma couldn't be prouder.

Eye Candy Friday

Happy Friday, people!

Here's a little more eye candy for you. I'm all about the pink lately.

My glorious pink peony from yesterday's post is already dropping petals. That didn't take long, did it? I'm glad I got the picture before it was gone.

Today we're packing up the car for a quick trip to St. Louis. Lib gets nervous when she sees luggage, but she's going to like seeing her BFF Carson Lee. We're going to whoop and cheer on Saturday morning when one of D's nieces graduates from dental school. How cool is that! And she's job hunting in Chicago. Even cooler!

Enjoy the spring weather, y'all. See you next week.