Anchor chains, plane motors, and train whistles.

Things I would have tweeted on the way to Maine if I dared text while driving

2011-07-02T17:34:00.001-07:00

circa 11:07: On the road at last!

c. 11:20: Lots of disabled cars on the Mass Pike. Tough start to a holiday weekend!

c. 11:45: Yikes! My bike rack is slipping big time! Better stop at McDonalds to tighten the straps!

c. 1:25: OMG this traffic is making me want to die. Time for a McCafe break.

c. 1:30: Life is much better with a fresh iced latte in my cupholder.

c. 1:45: Traffic was from a broken down RV on a bridge! Hooray for the open road.

c. 1:50: So much for the open road. Stopped again. #killmenow

c. 1:55: I should have just started riding the bike instead of tightening the straps on the bike rack.

c. 2:35: I don't care if it's only been an hour since the last McCafe, I'm stopping again.

c. 2:40: Took an inadvertent tour of charming historic Amesbury, but I've got a full tank of gas and another iced latte, so who cares!

c. 2:50: My "Queen: Greatest Hits" album seems to be missing a lot of their greatest hits. Whither "Bohemian Rhapsody?" Whither "Radio Ga Ga?"

c. 3:00: Listening to "Don't Stop Me Now" while you're stuck in traffic is more depressing than not. #makeasupersonicwomanofme

c. 3:20: Getting off of I-95 to take route 1 instead is an interesting idea, Google Maps, but I'm not falling for your tricks.

c. 3:45: Only 4.5 hours to drive 170 miles! That's almost 40 mph! In medieval times people would have thought I was a wizard! #stupidpeasants

A post about farms, bumper stickers, and shared cultural touchstones

2011-07-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

Around here I see a lot of cars sporting "No farms, no food" bumper stickers. It's the slogan of an organization that works to protect farmland from development, which is a pretty popular position around here, where the quality of the soil and the short growing season make farming even more of a dicey proposition than in many other parts of the US. Add to that the fact that New England is pretty heavily developed already, and it's not hard to see why a farmer in Western Massachusetts might be willing to sell her fields to Wal-Mart or something.

Anyway, over the past week or so I've seen two variant bumper stickers. One said, "No farms, no beer," which is funny (beer!) and more accurate than the original sticker - after all, we could always fish and hunt and gather, (though I wouldn't like to do it myself) but making beer exclusively from wild hops and barley seems pretty unlikely. The other one was a more positive, but less grammatically parsable "Yes farms, yes food." Would "Yes farms, yes food" make sense to someone who wasn't already familiar with the "No farms, no food" sticker? I've heard of (though I haven't seen) yet another bumper sticker that says, "Know farms, know food," which is another nice take on the topic AND possibly a riff on a popular religious slogan - "No God, no peace; know God, know peace"* but again, not something that makes a whole lot of sense on its own.

Which reminds me of a great bumper sticker I saw last year at a gift shop near Baxter State Park in Maine. It said, "This car climbed Mt. Katahdin," and I thought it was hilarious (I didn't buy one and I'm still annoyed with myself about that - next time I am at Baxter I am 100% definitely getting one). Now, in order to find that bumper sticker as hilarious as I do you have to be in a certain shared cultural space with me.

You have to be familiar with the "This car climbed Mt. Washington" bumper sticker, reasonably common in New England, advertising the prowess of cars that have ascended New England's highest peak via the (genuinely treacherous) Mt. Washington auto road.
You have to know that the peak of Mt. Katahdin is accessible only by foot.
And for good measure, it helps to know that although Katahdin is about 1,000 feet shorter than Washington, it's an absolutely bastard to climb, and significantly more difficult (and vastly less popular) than Mt. Washington.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, bumper stickers don't have a lot of room to get their message across, and so the best ones use not only catchy slogans but also cultural in-jokes and shared understanding. I'm coming to appreciate the genius of the clever bumper sticker, and thinking it might be time to get some for my as-yet-sticker free car. If you're heading up to Baxter pick one up for me.

* With assorted variations like "No Jesus, no love," etc.

Crowdsource the anthem!

2011-02-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

So, I didn't watch the Super Bowl last night because I am a Bad American, but I did at least get to hear Christina Aguilera's version of The Star-Spangled Banner on Hot 93.7* this morning. And you know what? I think on the whole, we are better off just singing our national anthem our own damn selves. It is time for all patriotic Americans to reclaim control of our national anthem from the "singers" who, let's face it, haven't exactly been doing a bang-up job with it.

Exhibit 1!

The crowd at Fenway Park picks up the tune when a disabled man dissolves into nervous giggles (also, note that this man gets further into the song without making mistakes than Xtina does!). Everyone sounds great.

Exhibit 2!

The crowd at a minor league hockey game in Virginia finishes the anthem when a little girl's mic cuts out. They sound even better than the Fenway crowd!

What I'm saying is, yes, The Star-Spangled Banner is kind of a difficult song for any one person to sing, but it actually sounds good when sung by a crowd. Which makes sense, given that the tune comes from a drinking song. Who sings drinking songs as dramatic solos?** And even if people mess up the words, there are enough other people singing to cover for it.

I'm not saying a solo version of The Star-Spangled Banner can't succeed - I've got a soft spot and a half for Rene Rancourt***, for example:

To me, the most successful performances of The Star-Spangled Banner are the ones that let the crowd sing along! But no, no one just sings the damn song straight, everyone wants to show off! I wish we could have the singer(s) get the song started and then let the crowd take over. I think the main barrier is not the difficulty, but just that it's a long song - I don't know if everyone would stay in for the whole thing (without an adorable child or intellectually-challenged person to support).

And it's not going to happen, because people want their chances to show off, and even with eleventy-million professional, semi-pro, college, high school, and peewee sports games being played in the US every year, there eleventy-one million stars, starlets, kids, acapella groups, military bands, and state troopers itching to perform their souped-up versions of the national anthem. And maybe because we've all been taught that The Star-Spangled Banner is too difficult for ordinary people to sing.

But it's not! Really! Together we can perform this song! Let's do it! We'll sound great!

NOTES
*Connecticut's #1 for Hip-Hop and R&B - I'm mostly an NPR girl, but I can't stand Cokie Roberts' "analysis", so every Monday morning when she comes on, it's Hot 93.7 all the way.

**Ooh, now I'm tempted to record an extended, melisma-filled version of, I don't know, "The Irish Rover" or something.

***Although really I think I like Rene Rancourt's O Canada even better than his Star-Spangled Banner. Observe this fabulous example of classy passive-aggressiveness exhibited by Rancourt and a Garden full of Bruins fans after Canadiens fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner in Montreal:

Buying woollen things

2011-01-07T10:58:00.001-08:00

I said I would write more about Iceland and then I forgot. Whoops! Here goes, then - I did a bunch of shopping when I was in Iceland. I am not much of a shopper when I'm at home, but I do like visiting shops in unfamiliar places, that carry unfamiliar goods. I don't always buy much, but it's fun to look.

Iceland has a reputation for being very expensive, and this is true to some extent; food and alcohol are especially high-priced (with the exception of fish, lamb, and brennivin), and a lot of the items in shops would be much cheaper anywhere other than in Iceland. Check out these Silly Bandz knockoffs selling for almost $3 a dozen!

I don't shop for Silly Bandz regularly but I hope that's not how much they cost in the US, because if so all those poor kids are getting shafted.

But there are bargains to be had in Iceland, especially on wool. Did you know that in Icelandic the word for "money" and the word for "sheep" is the same word? That's what a shopkeeper told me, and this online English-Icelandic dictionary backs me up.

One nice thing about buying wool products in Iceland is that if you export them you can get all your VAT (something like 15%) back, no matter how much wool you buy. These yarns cost about half as much in Iceland as they do in the US, so there are great bargains to be had for knitters. They also have wool for felting at what appeared to be an excellent price, though I am not a felter so I don't know how it compares. I bought a lot of yarn at the Handknitting Association of Iceland shop, enough to fill my small suitcase (fortunately, I had brought an extra suitcase in anticipation of this event). Most of it was for me, but some was for a friend. I swear! I wish I'd bought more.

The Handknitting Association also sells great handmade Lopi sweaters, which are very, very popular in Iceland, though I think most of the ones you see Icelanders wearing are not just handmade but homemade - all Icelanders learn to knit in primary school, and Lopi sweaters are not difficult to knit, so pretty much any grandma or aunt (or uncle or whatever!) has the know-how to make one of these. Non-knitters can skip the rest of this paragraph, but knitting nerds may be interested to know that Lopi sweaters are knitted from the bottom up, in the round, from bulky weight Icelandic wool, and they feature a stranded colorworked yoke, often featuring 3-4 shades of the same color (grays, browns, or blues, for example). Pullovers, buttoned cardigans, and zip cardigans are all pretty popular.

As a knitter, I chose to buy the yarn and knit my own, but if you don't knit but want a great souvenir of Iceland, I think a Lopi sweater is a great choice - they're very attractive, unmistakeably Icelandic, and super-useful (I use mine in place of a jacket in fall and early winter). They're scratchy, but they're also nearly waterproof, and pretty durable. If you can't afford the prices in the tourist shops, check out the Icelandic Red Cross thrift store on Laugavegur in Reykjavik - you might luck out and find a used one you like there.

In addition to the yarn, I bought two scarves, one fancy and one functional, both of Icelandic wool. I spent way too much on the fancy scarf but I love it. It's by a small Icelandic brand called Kurlproject (WARNING: site plays music automatically, ugh). It seems like everyone in Iceland is either a clothing designer or a musician. Or both.

I also bought an adorable felt Christmas ornament:

The brand on this one is Kata Handverk, and the crafter had loads of different types of ornaments and figurines, all the same basic shape. I wish I'd gotten her little nativity/creche! It was so cute. On the other hand, I don't really have any spare surfaces in my apartment that I want to turn over to a nativity scene and I'm not really religious. So, maybe I was right. I like buying souvenir Christmas ornaments, because you don't get used to them - you get to rediscover and remember them every year when you trim the tree.

I bought some other stuff but it was mostly junk. The main exports of Iceland are fish, fishing-related equipment, aluminum, software, and woolen goods. I don't really need any aluminum or fishing-related equipment, software I can buy pretty easily from home, and I can't legally import fish into the US. So woolens it is! Oh, and some cute little hand-carved wooden sheep for a toddler cousin.

Frozen

2011-01-05T10:27:00.000-08:00

I think a lot of people have the experience where they're dreaming but they're frozen - unable to move to run away from something or towards something or whatever. This makes a lot of sense, since when you're in dream-stage sleep all your muscle movements are frozen, and just like a light or noise from outside of your brain can sneak into your dream (I once had a dream that a friend was excitedly telling me about the Red Sox home opener, which turned out to be my clock radio telling me the same information), the feeling of paralysis can sneak into your dream as well (I think! Any stray sleep scientists stumbling across this blog, please correct me as necessary!).

I had a weird variation on this experience the other night. I dreamt that I was on a subway with some (ill-defined) friends, and someone started singing the Hallelujah Chorus (sort of like one of those Hallelujah Chorus flashmobs you see on YouTube). I tried to join in on the soprano part (because no one else was singing it), but I could only make choking, squawking noises. I strongly suspect that if anyone had been in the room with me, they would have complained to me in the morning about how I had been waking them up with my weird chokey squawky noises. I think my sleep-paralyzed vocal chords weren't responding to my brain's message ("Sing 'King of Kings!', dammit!") and I worked that "my voice doesn't work" feeling into the dream. I can't think of another time when I've dreamed about singing; I wonder if this always happens?

Holiday! Celebrate! Waffles!

2011-01-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

I had a very low-key holiday season this year, with one exception - I was supposed to go to New Orleans but was prevented by a blizzard. That was frustrating, and required me to spend a lot of time on the phone trying to contact airlines and travel agents, but what can you do? I'll make it to New Orleans someday, and in the meantime my airfare's being refunded.

And the blizzard also meant I got a great chance to try out my new snowshoes (a Christmas present) on the rail trail behind my dad's house, which was a lot of fun. Sadly, the blizzard was a coastal storm so by the time I got back home to the Valley there wasn't any snow to speak of, but I'm sure it will come soon enough. Hopefully I'll be able to procure some gaiters and trekking poles by the time it shows up. I also got a lot done around the house while I was not in New Orleans (including a redo of my bedroom, pics to follow).

I got a NordicWare Belgian Waffler for Christmas. This is a stove-top waffle maker (not electric), and it's how we made waffles in my house growing up (and by "we," I mean "my dad"). I wanted one of these because, dammit, sometimes you want waffles, and pancakes won't do! But I didn't want a big counter-top appliance that I would have to store someplace. The Belgian Waffler fits in my cabinet with the cookie sheets and the muffin pans. It's a bit harder to master than an electric waffle maker, but I was able to make recognizable (and delicious) waffles on my first try.

I made Overnight Waffles from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. (Actually this was either from the original, yellow cover copy of HTCE or HTCE Vegetarian but the same recipe is in all three books.)

The great thing about this yeast-risen waffle recipe is that (as the name suggests) you mix it up the night before so, #1, you hardly have to do any work in the morning to actually prepare the waffles and, #2, you get to go to sleep dreaming of waffles. I was slightly uncomfortable about leaving dairy-containing batter out overnight, but I put my trust in Bittman and sure enough, my fears were unfounded. If you don't feel like whipping egg whites in the morning, don't worry about it, just throw the eggs in. I whipped the whites because I had just rescued my old hand mixer from my dad's attic, where it had been since sometime in 2002.

I put the extra waffles in the freezer and I heated one up for breakfast this morning - ace! I will be making some whole-grain waffles for the freezer soon, since I generally try to make my weekday breakfasts healthier than white-flour waffles. For the past couple of months I have been eating like some kind of feral animal that lives behind a candy factory, so although I'm not making a formal New Year's resolution, I am going to try to eat healthier in the coming months.

Snaefellsnes! (God bless you)

2010-12-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

So, on Sunday, I took a tour of the Snaefellsnes peninsula. I signed up for the day tour, but was upgraded to the luxury tour with gourmet dinner and aurora borealis on the way home! I think because I was the only one who wanted to do the day tour, and it's a small company, so they were only going to do one or the other. On the one hand, this was great - I got the fancy tour for the price of the less-fancy tour! On the other hand, it was an incredibly long day, longer than I was prepared for. I was picked up at my hotel at 9AM and didn't get back until 11:30PM. 14-and-a-half hours in a minivan with a bunch of strangers! Woo-hoo! On the website, they say the tour is 10-12 hours, so it's not like I thought I was going to be back in time for dinner or anything, but still.

Oh, wait, was I bitching about something? Aside from the grueling 14-hourishness of it, this tour was amazing. At 9AM, it was still very dark, and the streets were deserted. It felt like the middle of the night. We picked up sandwiches ("We won't stop for lunch - we have so little light," our guide said) and piled into the minivan. By the end of the day I was VERY glad I got one of the bucket seats and didn't end up crammed into the back seat. If I were a nicer person I guess I would have volunteered to switch seats with someone else, but I'm not, so I didn't!

We drove north from Reykjavik, in the dark at first. After maybe an hour and a half, we stopped at a rest stop in Borgarnes, the last "city" we'd see for the next several hours (it was a tiny supply town for the surrounding farms - maybe a few thousand people). We stopped at a couple of places to take photos of a volcanic crater (above) and the Snaefellsjokull (a glacier, behind the mountain below).

We visited a natural hot tub, where we hung out in 100+F water while freezing wind blew across the field. I am still washing the peat out of my swimsuit. While we were in the pool I tried an Icelandic delicacy called hakarl, or fermented shark. According to the wikipedia entry Anthony Bourdain called hakarl "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he had ever eaten. Tony speaks the truth! I chewed, and chewed, but I couldn't make myself swallow it, and after I'd gagged twice I spit it out and threw it away.

I attempted to wash the shark taste out of my mouth with brennivin, traditional Icelandic schnapps made with potatoes and flavored with cumin. Brennivin will never be my favorite taste (and for what it's worth it's apparently the favorite tipple of the Icelandic problem drinker) but it's a hell of a lot better than hakarl.

Snaefellsnes is gorgeous, and, in the winter at least, it feels completely deserted. We hardly saw any other cars; we passed occasional farms with Icelandic ponies or sheep roaming around outside, but didn't see any of the farmers.

It was bleak, but stunning. Our guide talked about how Icelanders traditionally have a kind of adversarial relationship with nature, and haven't always seen it as something to be preserved, but rather to be defended against. You can see where they were coming from.

Really otherworldly. Driving through a lava field while listening to Sigur Ros was pretty amazing. (Also, Icelanders talk about Sigur Ros a lot. And Bjork.) We had a great dinner (amazing fish soup, yummy lamb, and apple caramel cake) and then we saw the Aurora Borealis on the way home, huge and gorgeous. There was a new moon and the sky was completely clear. It was as many stars as I'd ever seen in my life. I was freezing cold and exhausted, but taken all in all it was a great night. I just wish I'd know how long it was going to be; I would have gotten some more sleep the night before!

Iceland, take 2

2010-12-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

So, this past weekend I went to Reykjavik again. It was a lovely trip. I went by myself and didn't re-do any of the things I did when I went last year, except for eating lobster soup (humarsupa) at Sea Baron again.

And I saw the Northern Lights! And utterly failed to get any kind of a good photograph of them.

My best shot.

They were huge, and gorgeous. I saw them on the way home from a VERY LONG small-group day tour to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. I was completely exhausted and out of sorts but then we got out of the car and the lights were taking up what seemed like half the sky (actually they were probably about 120 degrees wide and 60 degrees high). They were moving and shimmering and streaks kept appearing and then disappearing. It was pretty damn sweet.

One of the people on the tour, a very nice French girl who worked for the tour company, was trying to explain what causes the aurora, leading to a very funny and odd conversation.

B: It's because of the... I don't know how you say the word in English... "Yawn"?

The English speakers in the car: Yawn?

B: You know? Yawn? The yoan?

Jonas, the tour guide: What, me?

B: No, no the yawn? With the charge of electricity!

English speakers: IONS!

Hah, it was the exact same word just pronounced differently, and we spent probably five minutes going back and forth like this. If she'd just spelled it, we would have gotten it much sooner. It reminded me of one time I was talking to a French-Canadian girl at the museum of science and she was trying to ask me if the monkeys were "amiable", but pronouncing it in this half-French, half-English way. I had no idea what she was talking about. One word, two languages.

At home for fall

2010-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

What with the solstice last week I can feel the days drawing in. I love fall, but it always reminds me of the opportunities I missed during the summer. Now that the sun is setting before 7PM I can't help but regret the post-dinner hikes and bike rides and runs I didn't take back in June and July when it was light until nine. And soon enough it will be dark when I get home from work.

Seriously, though, I really enjoy fall and winter! There's something enjoyably primal about battening down the hatches (or at least putting those plastic storm-window sheets over the windows) and curling up with a hot beverage and a throw blanket or two. In my last apartment we had no control over our heat (steam radiators controlled at the building level) so I am really looking forward to having control of my own heat this winter. And on the gas company website I was able to see how many therms the previous tenant used over the last couple of winters, so I'm geekily looking forward to seeing whether I can use less gas than she did. I lead an exciting life.

Also on the energy-saving front, I replaced most of my light bulbs with fluorescents yesterday. And while I was at it, I washed the old-fashioned glass shades on the ceiling lights in the sink. Man, were they gross. One was full of dead ladybugs. So I'm glad I got that cleaned up. Next: cleaning out under my range top. A couple of weeks ago I spilled something down there and when I went to clean it up, I discovered that no one had cleaned under the range top in a long time, maybe not since it was installed (and it is an old stove). I started cleaning it up, but it was just too much work with the tools and products I had at hand, and I have not been able to bring myself to open up the range top since. I'm not sure what I'm going to need to use to clean it up... hopefully I won't set anything on fire in the process. At least there weren't any ladybugs.

Oh, and speaking of my stove, yesterday I baked bread in a covered casserole and it has the awesomest crust in all the land! If you have not tried baking bread in a casserole or dutch oven or whatever, can I just very very strongly recommend that you do so? The bread itself was only OK, because I only decided at around 5:30 that I wanted fresh bread to go with my pumpkin soup, so I couldn't give it as much rising time as I would have liked and still eat it that same evening, but it was not bad at all for 2-hour bread. I can't wait to bake a nice bread that I make with a proper sponge and everything in the pot. Yum.

Glorious food

2010-08-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

I went to the Northampton farmers' market on Saturday and I got seriously the best peaches I think I have ever eaten. And the tomatoes were great too. I always either underbuy or overbuy at farmers' markets - I can never seem to accurately gauge how much vegetables I'm going to want to eat in the next few days. I guess I didn't completely underbuy this time; I still have most of a head of lettuce in the fridge, and half a cucumber, and there's another farmers' market today. But I definitely didn't buy enough tomatoes.

These weren't heirloom or anything but they were the kind of tomatoes where you cut into them and you are just startled by the rich, gorgeous color of them. And they taste... dang. I ate them in salad with a little vinaigrette, mixed some, chopped, into guacamole (perhaps a waste... I'm not sure), made salsa (so good).

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a bunch of kale that someone from work had gotten in a farmshare or something and did not want. I am not a huge fan of kale. First, I made the mistake of trying to just eat it sauteed. This is not a good way to eat kale for me, especially summer kale (winter kale can be a bit sweeter). Then I mixed some of the leftover sauteed kale into pasta with pesto and tomatoes (not the glorious tomatoes, just some pretty good tomatoes). That wasn't bad.

Then last night, I thought, you need to either use that kale or throw it away, and it might have too much oil on it to compost even. So I made a bread pudding with some bread ends I'd stuck in the freezer. It was so good, I ate the whole pie plate full (which wasn't quite as bad as it sounds... though it was still a lot of food).

Here's my recipe for bread pudding with kale:

Ingredients:
1-2 cups of cut up bread (supermarket baguettes in my case, but any bread will work)
2/3 cup of milk (would have used more but I was running low and wanted to save some for coffee)
2 eggs
2 oz or so of cheese, grated or cut into 1/4 inch dice (I used gruyere)
1 cup precooked kale, chopped into bite-sized pieces
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.

Put the bread in a 8-inch baking dish or 9-inch pie plate.

Warm the milk (should be hot, but not boiling or burnt) and pour it over the bread. Let it soak in for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly beat the eggs with the salt and pepper.

Add the eggs, cheese, and kale to the pie plate and stir until everything is pretty evenly distributed.

Pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes (or go work on adjusting your TV wall mount and forget all about it until it starts smelling delicious). When it's done it should be golden on top, and if you put a sharp-bladed knife into it it should come out fairly clean.

Chow down.

Western Mass(achusetts)

2010-08-09T18:17:00.000-07:00

So, I've been living and working in the Pioneer Valley for over a month now, and I'm actually liking it very much. I'm not entirely comfortable with how much I'm driving (from a financial and an environmental standpoint) and I have no friends (if you're in the Five Colleges area and want to be my friend, let me know!), but I am kind of a loner anyhow so that doesn't actually bother me much (it bothers me a bit how little my friendlessness bothers me, but that's getting silly).

Anyhow, this weekend my mom and my sister came to visit me on Saturday and we went for a nice bike ride and did some shopping in Northampton and had a slightly excessive lunch. After a very good tired sleep I woke up on Sunday with no particular plan besides possibly building a window seat in my bedroom, but I really need to price out foam and cushions before I can make that a reality. So instead I gave myself twenty minutes to tidy up the apartment, then I got in my car and drove to MASS MoCA.

MASS MoCA is a modern art museum in almost the very northwesternmost corner of the state, in North Adams, about an hour and a half away from me. The museum is housed in old mill buildings, and there is a lot of exposed brick and industrial-looking business, and honestly it would be a pretty cool place if they just let you wander around the old buildings! But instead they've filled it up with modern art, which is also cool.

This was one of my favorite pieces I saw - it's called Re-projections: Hoosac, and it's by Tobias Putrih. It's made of hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of monofilament fishing line strung across this very long gallery and lit by a spotlight maybe two-thirds of the way down. It's tunnel-shaped, and it slopes, so you can get right inside it like these people are doing here. It's incredibly disorienting! Turns out I love large, disorienting pieces of modern sculpture. Although it's completely different in execution, walking inside the tunnel reminded me of some of the Richard Serra pieces I saw at the retrospective at MoMA a few years ago.

I also really enjoyed the huge Sol Lewitt retrospective. I'd never heard of Lewitt before (in this respect he is like most artists of the last 100 years, I'm afraid) but he was a conceptual/minimalist artist, and most of the things on display at MASS MoCA are huge wall drawings/paintings. Lewitt would conceive the drawings, and then draftspeople would execute them. Some of the drawings I saw were never executed in his lifetime, which is kind of interesting.

Here is a video of the installation being, um, installed:

SO COOL. Would it be blasphemous for me to decorate my new coffee table ($6 at Goodwill! Ugly!) in the style of a Sol Lewitt drawing? I'm not sure I care. That video makes me want to get out the masking tape, big time.

When I saw the paintings and read the label copy and understood what they were, I thought, "He's like John Cage, but for visual art!" But I guess it is still even a little stranger to do this for visual art; most composers intend for other artists to interpret their work, but most visual artists do most of the execution of their work themselves. Though I can think of exceptions on both sides of that equation.

On the way home a bald eagle flew right over my car as I crossed a bridge. The Mohawk Trail (Route 2) is a stunning drive, and I can't wait to do it in the Fall. I stopped in Shelburne Falls, which is an adorable little town with a garden on an old trolley bridge and interesting geological features. Then I drove the rest of the way home along the Connecticut River, but I skipped the interstate so I was on nice little secondary roads most of the time. I drove past tobacco farms! I didn't even know there were tobacco farms in Massachusetts (though I knew there were in Connecticut, so I guess why not). First I noticed the strange barns where they dry the leaves, which seemed vaguely familiar (either from seeing them in Virginia or from photos, I don't know) and eventually I put two and two together.

Anyway, an excellent (non-lazy) Sunday.

One blog

2010-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided that instead of having a travel blog and a crafting blog, I'm going to just have one blog and it's going to be about more than just crafting and travel (though it will occasionally be about crafting and/or travel), and I'm going to update it at least a couple of times a week, hopefully more often.

And of course, now that I've said that, I feel like I have nothing to say.

But I do, kind of! I will talk about a recent Sunday I spent in Maine.

I went to an annual church service at a historic church, which shall remain nameless. They only open this church up once a year, and a guest pastor comes to preach at one shortish service, and then they lock the church back up until the next year (unless someone wants to get married there in the meantime). There's an organ with foot-pump bellows, box pews, the works; it's not in great condition (think peeling wallpaper, stained ceiling) but it's old, at any rate, and has a certain charm.

As you might guess, this service attracts a fairly... mature crowd. There were a few people there in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, and two adorable children had been brought in to ring the church bell, but for the most part the congregation ranged from Old to Really Very Old Indeed.

Anyway, the minister was giving a sermon about how he had gone to Tanzania to train bush pastors who could not even afford bibles. Which, to me, raised the question, "Why didn't you give them bibles, then?" He did say that the conference he was at distributed 50 bibles, but seriously, I don't understand why there should be a limit to the number of bibles they're distributing. For the cost of this guy's and his wife's plane tickets to Tanzania, surely they could have photocopied at least a few hundred Kiswahili New Testaments. But perhaps I am missing the point. And I digress.

About halfway through the sermon, one of the members of the congregation collapsed. It was pretty scary. At first the minister kept going and we all tried not to pay attention, because it wasn't entirely clear what was going on, but it quickly became clear that it was serious, and my cousin (who was an EMT 15 years ago) and another woman (a nurse) ended up performing CPR before the ambulance came.

The minister had most of us leave the church and wait out in front while all this was going on. I'm not sure this was actually such a good idea; it took so long for people to get out of the church I was genuinely afraid that when the ambulance got here the EMTs wouldn't be able to reach the patient because the aisles would be clogged with very slow people using walkers and canes, and I considered trying to get everyone to sit back down. (It wasn't an issue - the aisles were clear by the time the ambulance came. And who knows, maybe someone else would have collapsed if we'd all stayed in the stuffy little church.)

The man who'd collapsed was conscious when they got him into the ambulance, and I hope he is OK. My cousin (the one who resuscitated him) hadn't been planning on going to the service, but decided to go because her dad usually goes but was out of town and disappointed about not being able to make it. Anyway, here's to my cousin and to that nurse, for saving that guy's life! Without them, it would have been a tragic service.

So, after the ambulance left, we all filed back into the little church (slowly) and after a prayer of thanksgiving, the pastor picked his sermon right back up where he left off! And didn't appear to change a single thing about it, even though he had mentioned earlier in his sermon how much we take for granted having access to medical treatment! I am not minister, but I tell you I could think of twelve ways to incorporate the actual events of the day into that sermon, none of which this minister took advantage of. I suppose he was rattled just like the rest of us, but really, missed opportunity.

Then we went back to my family's cottage, where there were more family members, and we had a nice cookout which I had to leave Way Too Early because of my long, trafficky Sunday-afternoon drive home. It was an odd day; a strange combination of sleepy and intense.

It never hurts to ask

2010-03-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

I went out to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, and because it was significantly cheaper I flew through Chicago, rather than direct. Not ideal, but liveable on the way out (although I was really annoyed when they gate-checked my bag from Boston straight through to LA - if I was going to check a bag, I would have packed completely differently!).

I was really not looking forward to the trip home, though - I was scheduled on a red-eye flight to Chicago followed by an early morning flight to Boston. I was tired and ready to go home by about 5PM and my flight didn't leave until 11:30. So I decided to go to the airport a little early and see what my other options were. The little check-in computer was uninterested in letting me change my flights BUT it also asked me if I would be willing to give up my seat on the Chicago flight, which was overbooked (as near as I could tell, another Chicago flight had been cancelled).

"Hmm," I said to myself, "this seems like an opportunity - the airline doesn't want me to go to Chicago, and I don't want to go to Chicago either!" After a half-hour of wandering around the terminal and checking on the little check-in computers to see if there were any other flights available, I found the customer service line. Which I then waited in for 45 minutes.

Easily half the movement of the line was people getting frustrated and walking away (yikes!), but I persevered. I was wearing comfortable shoes and I had podcasts to listen to. But finally, I got up the front of the line, just as boarding was starting for the direct LAX-BOS flight!

I explained the situation to the woman at the desk, and she said, "If it'll make one of the Chicago people happy, no problem. But I have to type like the wind!" She gave me a boarding pass and said she didn't know if it was a good seat or anything but I figured I didn't have a particularly good seat on the Chicago flight, and this way I didn't have to go to Chicago. And when I boarded the plane, my seat was a perfectly nice window seat and, get this, the seat next to me was empty! I think it was the only empty seat on the plane!

I got home hours earlier than I expected, I didn't have to get off the plane in Chicago at 5AM (5AM Chicago time, so 3AM LA time), and I got to spread out and take as much sleeping room as I wanted for the whole flight. It was awesome. All it took was 45 minutes of waiting in line, and let's face it, I was already in the terminal and it's not like I had anything better to do with my time. I felt triumphant. Travel Win!

Dream vacations

2009-08-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

It's HOT in Boston right now - we're having an honest to God heat wave. Any sensible person would be getting out of town, and fast, but my vacation savings account (yes, I have a savings account just for vacations) and my time off balance are both at record lows right now, so here's a list of places I'd like to be going, though I have no prospects of actually getting there.

Chile

My sister and her husband went skiing in Portillo, Chile on their honeymoon last year:

photo by nessfc on flickr

Oh, that looks lovely. And I haven't been skiing in seven or eight years!

Iceland

I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Iceland in March - I had a great time in Iceland in March. But I think that I would enjoy it even more right now. They're going to have highs in the 50s (F) all week. We're going to have highs in the 90s all week. And there are views like this:

photo by strawberrymaya on flickr

Back in March I was in the very spot where this photo was taken, but all I saw was fog and snow. Alas.

Maine

I love Maine. I have loads of family in Maine. If I had the vacation time I could go up to Maine right now and take a dip in the freezing cold ocean off a rocky Midcoast beach; I could lie in a hammock next to a lake; I could take a boat out to one of the islands in Casco Bay; and there might very well be an aunt or grandmother around who I could mooch a delicious meal or two off of; but it is too much to think of. Here are some photos of Maine.

photo by jkbashkin on flickr

photo by dana_moos on flickr

Bhutan

I bet it's cool up in the mountains right now. And relaxing. Bhutan is somewhere I'd like to go but I expect I never will go, because it is so expensive and so inconvenient. That's part of what makes me want to go - not exclusivity for exclusivity's sake, but the fact that it's an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world where tourism's impact is low. And I mean look at this:

photo by jmhullot on flickr

It makes me want to convert to Buddhism on the spot!

OK, enough fantasies for today. It's nearly time for me to head outside into the 90 degree heat and sweat my way home. Good times.

(Many thanks to the photographers whose photos I've used here and to all those who post to flickr using Creative Commons licenses!)

Athens, belatedly, and Madrid

2009-07-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hi! I never got around to writing about Athens.

I had heard that Athens was really only worth spending a day or so in, and indeed I ended up only spending a day or so there (about a day and a half, really, and actually a lot of that was in my hotel room). This is probably overly dismissive, but you can definitely see some very cool things in one day in Athens.

I arrived in Athens via overnight ferry from Rhodes. This was actually quite nice. I shelled out a little extra money so that I had a bed in a shared cabin - it was somewhere between a floating hostel and going on a cruise with a couple of complete strangers! But it was fairly quiet and though I didn't fall asleep immediately, once I did I slept like a baby - right through my iPod alarm. Oops!

The ferry arrived around 6AM, then I got lost trying to find the metro station, and wandered around for what felt like hours but was probably about 20 minutes, and eventually I found a tram stop and a nice woman waiting for the tram told me to get on and ride it to the metro station. Though of course I did not have a ticket, since this tram stop did not sell tickets. But I didn't get caught, so there. I buy a bus and subway pass at home every month and usually don't get nearly my money's worth out of it, so I will absolve myself of that particular sin. If they had put up a sign that said where the metro station was, I wouldn't have had to fare-jump their tram, so there!

My hotel in Athens was in Omonia, which is apparently kind of a sketchy red-light district. I figured I would be tired and going to bed early anyhow, so who cared if there were drug deals and prostitution going on outside in the middle of the night - I intended to be in bed by about 10PM. In the morning, it was a little on the gritty side but nothing to send me screaming. And the hotel itself did not seem prostitute-infested (it was a Best Western, for what that's worth).

Once I was checked in to my hotel, I went to the Acropolis. This was pretty good! I considered hiring a guide for a tour, but they seemed to vary dramatically in quality, so I ended up just eavesdropping on other people's guides. I really only needed to spend an hour or so here, which was good - by 10:30AM or so it was crowded to the point of uncomfortableness. When they tell you to get to the Acropolis early, they mean it!

Here's the amphitheater at the Acropolis, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. This is where such exciting events as "Yanni: Live at the Acropolis" and the 1973 Miss Universe Pageant were held. Seriously, though, it's lovely. And the seats have cushions!

This is before it got crowded:

The Parthenon - seriously impressive:

Even with the scaffolding and hordes of tourists:

I also visited a few other ancient sites - with your 12 euro Acropolis ticket, you also get admission to six other ancient sites in Athens (I only made it to three). Here's a photo of a frieze in the Ancient Agora:

I also visited two museums, the Cycladic Art Museum, which was not a big museum but had some lovely art from the prehistoric Cyclades. The people of the Cyclades (islands which include modern-day Santorini and Naxos) made these ritual figurines that I found incredibly appealing.

This is a very large version of the classic figurine (maybe four or five feet tall, near life-size):

They carved these figures over and over. To me they look quite modern, but maybe I just misunderstand the prehistoric Cycladeans. I thought the figures were absolutely lovely, and considered buying one of the reproductions in the gift shop but they were pretty pricey.

And here's a less-typical figure they call "The Cup-Bearer" - I love this guy:

Later in the afternoon, I went to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, which was delightful! I spent a couple of hours in the prehistorical section - featuring more Cycladic art, Neolithic art, and gorgeous Mycenean gold, before I realized that there must be a lot more to the museum that I hadn't seen yet. Between my feet being exhausted and the museum getting ready to close, I was only able to spend an hour or so in the rest of the museum, but I wasn't all that upset - for whatever reason, the prehistoric stuff is closer to my heart than the classical Greek and Roman stuff. Maybe I need to re-read my Odyssey.

One funny thing happened when I was in the Archaeological Museum - in a room of Neolithic pottery, an American tourist was asking the guard what was the oldest thing in the room, and the guard helpfully pointed out a jar dating to 6000 BCE. Then she kept asking the guard, "Why does this label say 14056 then?" and the guard didn't seem to understand and I was right there so I explained that the 14056 was an inventory number or something, and didn't actually mean anything.

Then we got in a discussion about human evolution in which I had to explain that Lucy the fossil was actually millions of years old, not thousands like this pottery, and that the people who made this pottery were genetically almost the same as us and if you gave them a bath and a haircut and taught them modern language and culture, you'd hardly be able to tell them apart from any other person, but Lucy was a creepy little ape-lady who wouldn't pass for human with any amount of shaving and instruction. And then she said she wasn't sure if she believed in all that, and I said I was on vacation from my work in a museum anyhow and we both moved on.

It was a lovely museum and I would love to visit it again someday. And on the way home, I saw a political demonstration (nonviolent), for the PASOK party. There was a lot of political advertising up all over Athens and Rhodes, as the European elections were being held that weekend I think. Video of political leaders speaking languages I don't understand always seems sinister to me - something about the motions and cadences of a crowd-pleasing oration deprived of their meaning turns me right off. Oliver Sacks wrote about a group of aphasics (people who do not understand speech) laughing uproariously at Ronald Reagan's speeches, but to me political speech devoid of content is more creepy than hilarious. (This is all terribly unfair of me, I know!)

I flew home through Madrid and stayed one night there, but I didn't take any photos. I visited the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia which I loved! Their showpiece is Picasso's famous Guernica, but they don't just show you Guernica - they also have loads of sketches and studies Picasso did in planning the painting, and actual photographs of the canvas at various points in the painting process. Excellent exhibit.

I also spent a good twenty minutes watching the Buster Keaton film "One Week" at the Reina Sofia. It was hilarious! I laughed out loud more than once. Honestly, I think I kind of missed the point of the exhibition it was part of, but whatever, it was a pleasure to sit in a dark room and watch that movie.

After the museum I had a fried calamari sandwich and a beer at a sandwich/tapas place near the museum. Delicious! And I got an olive and a mussel on a tiny plate to tide me over while they made my sandwich. The next morning before my flight I had churros and coffee for breakfast. I definitely want to get back to Madrid. Churros for breakfast!

All in all it was a great trip. It will be a while before I can get away for that long again, and I don't really have any vacation plans on the horizon, which is odd for me (I'd been planning on going to Turkey for about two years!), but we'll see what comes next. I've been doing a lot of staycationing - visiting tourist areas in and near my own city - and I've enjoyed it lots.

Solo travel to Turkey - one woman's experience

2009-06-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

A brief diversion from an account of my trip to talk about a few things people have been asking me about (in real life, not on the internet, but hey, maybe someone out there will get some use out of this).

I know that before I came to Turkey I wondered a lot about what it would be like to travel there on my own, as a woman - whether it would be safe, whether I would be extraordinarily conspicuous, etc. I have friends and acquaintances, male and female, who had traveled to Turkey in pairs and small groups, but I didn't know anyone who'd gone to Turkey on their own, male or female. None of my friends who'd been to Turkey urged me to go on my own (one of the things about traveling solo is that your friends don't necessarily learn a lot about your travel style!), but none of them said, "God, no, don't do it!" So, I took to the internet to hear what other women trave ling alone had thought about Turkey. I found a lot of encouraging firsthand stories, a few people who had been miserable, and some news and guidebook accounts of actual crimes and other horror stories.

But you know, I think by the time I started looking at other women's stories, I'd already made up my mind to go. So if you're a woman (or a man) who's already decided to go to Turkey on your own, go ahead and read this post for lots of reassurance and a few caveats and cautionary tales.

Now, for starters, solo travel is not for everyone, period. Some people don't like traveling alone, and I think this is largely a personal temperment issue. Solo travel in general and its challenges and rewards is probably worth a whole blog entry of its own (which I may even write at some point!), so for now I'll just talk about Turkey specifically.

Lots of people have asked me if I felt safe in Turkey, and overall I would say yes. I acknowledge that the risk of being affected by a terrorist attack is probably higher than in the US or Western Europe, though still extremely unlikely. As far as crimes against my person (attack, robbery, rape, whatever), I can 100% say that I never once felt that I was at risk of bodily harm from another person. I did get lost more than once, and that was unsettling and a bit scary, but realistically I do not think I was in any actual danger (other than the danger of needing to take an expensive taxi ride to get where I needed to go!).

I was appropriately cautious; I did not stay out very late, I kept to well-populated areas, especially at night, I did not drink to excess or use any mind-altering substances, and I was vigilant about what was going on around me. I'm a reasonably street-smart person - I used to work in an inner-city hospital complex until midnight, then take the bus home, and I never came to any grief there - and I used my own good judgement.

The time I was most scared, and probably in the most actual danger, was when I got lost in the scrub forest in Kas. This was my own fault for wandering off the trail, and I would have been in just as much danger if not more if I'd been in the mountains of my native New England (in Kas, I at least had a great mobile phone signal, which you can't count on in the White Mountains!). Even then, though, because I'd taken appropriate precautions, the risk I ran was pretty small - I had a mobile phone that I could use to call for help if necessary, I had a whistle, a flashlight, a small first-aid kit, food (dried fruit) and water, and I had good long-sleeve, long-trouser, synthetic hiking clothes. I might have really annoyed my hotel and the local police if I'd had to call for help, but there was never really any risk that I wouldn't be able to get out!

I would say that as far as physical danger goes, you can greatly reduce the amount of risk you run by observing a healthy level of caution, being prepared, and thinking things through. Also, if you know you're prepared, you'll feel a lot more comfortable! (Just don't get too comfortable and stop observing your healthy level of caution...)

A couple of people have asked me about food safety - I didn't drink tap water, but I wasn't particularly careful otherwise, and I felt 100% fine. I ate raw fruit and vegetables without worrying about whether they'd been peeled or how they'd been washed, and a lot of the food was served lukewarm, which I know are all the red flags you're supposed to avoid, but I never had any problem. I do have a stomach of steel, though; I've never had food poisoning that I can remember, and I seem to be able to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, with basically no ill effects (besides weight gain). I think the cure for IBS is lurking somewhere in my digestive tract (OK, gross image; we'll move on now). Obviously if you have a more sensitive stomach you might want to ease into things and be more cautious.

Enough about danger - let's move on to "hassle". In the touristy parts of Turkey that I visited, people (and by people I mean men, actually) are constantly asking you, "Where are you from?" and "What is your name?" and "Are you lost?" I found it a little bit exhausting, just because there are so many of them; individually they're no more annoying than many Save the Children and Greenpeace canvassers I've encountered at home. Mostly I was able to ignore them or develop a sense of humor about it - when I ignored one guy who asked me where I was from he said, "Are you Japanese?" and I said, "Yes, konnichiwa!" which he thought was pretty funny. And I just had to bust out laughing when one guy asked me "Are you lost?" while I was standing directly in front of the Aya Sofya! I don't think it would be possible to be less lost anywhere in Turkey - it's surely the most famous and recognizable landmark in the country.

Constant questioning aside, I did feel very observed on occasion. More than once when I was wandering around in Istanbul I would suddenly find myself in a bustling street (just beyond a touristy area) that was full of men, with no women at all besides myself. It was disconcerting! I don't recall ever finding myself in that situation in North America or Western Europe. It certainly made me feel like I stuck out. In Ankara, also, I felt like people were paying me more attention than I would have liked. But what can you do? I did try to maintain a low profile in terms of my appearance, but I was clearly not Turkish, and clearly a tourist.

I did run into one scam (um, one scam that I noticed, anyway), at the Nevsehir bus station - as described in many other travelers' reports and in all the guidebooks, people at Nevsehir bus station will try to scam you into taking their taxis and private transfers to Goreme and Urgup, rather than the bus company transfer included with your bus ticket. Be prepared and don't fall for it. Make sure you buy a through bus ticket to your final destination, and if you do have to transfer make sure you find the real transfer bus (it will be the one without a bunch of guys trying to talk you in to taking it!).

Another question people have asked me is "What did you wear?" and "What do women wear in Turkey?" I wore long sleeves with highish necklines most of the time, but this was actually as much for sun protection as it was for modesty (I am of the Pink race). I was traveling light, so I brought one pair of (quick-drying, nylon) trousers and one skirt (likewise a wringable, comfy breathable polyester knit) and some long-sleeve shirts. I also brought a couple of t-shirts (and I didn't feel conspicuous in these, either) and a couple of sweaters (almost completely unnecessary - should have left them home!).

As for what how other women dressed, I saw people wearing just about any old thing you've ever seen on anyone - Western and East Asian tourists in tank tops, shorts, beach caftan coverups, jeans, t-shirts, sundresses, a kameez top from a salwar kameez with no trousers underneath (my personal favorite), and other tourists, pilgrims, and local women in various kinds of Muslim traditional dress from long sleeves and ankle-length skirts right on up to women in niqab/black face veils. All over Turkey I saw lots of women in headscarves and lots of women with bare heads. In Cappadocia I saw lots of women in traditional salvar trousers (I can't find any good pictures but basically they have as much fabric as a skirt and a very low crotch, well below the knee; I wish I'd taken photos but I hate asking people if I can take their photos). I saw lots of women wearing variations on these drop-crotch trousers in Greece and Madrid, and I remember seeing those kinds of trousers on The Sartorialist (a fashion blog). I guess I should have bought some - I'd be tres chic! But I'm not sure tres chic is really the way to go in Boston. We're simple people; frumpy and content to stay that way.

The last thing I should mention is the Turkish language. People didn't speak as much English as I expected; not that I have any right to complain about this, as I am pretty monolingual myself. But I didn't do much to prepare myself at all. I wish I'd at least brought a proper phrasebook, rather than relying on the abbreviated one in the back of the Lonely Planet guide. Turkish mostly just washed right over me. I think by the end of two weeks I knew maybe 15 words of Turkish, five of which I've now forgotten two weeks later (I definitely knew the word for "ten" at one point, but that's gone). My favorite Turkish word was "feribot" which, disappointingly, is just pronounced the like "ferryboat", not like some kind of exotic robotic ferry system.

One consequence of the language barrier was that it could be a bit lonely (constant "Where you from?" and "Are you lost?" queries aside). I only spoke with one or two Turkish women the whole trip; almost all of the women I spoke to were either expats living in Turkey or other tourists/travelers. This was a language thing and a cultural thing - my impression was that at least in the tourist industry the men were more likely to hold the public-facing jobs, and the women were more often working behind the scenes; women don't need to speak English to do these jobs, so they don't know English, and so even when I did interact with the Turkish women working at the hotels and restaurants I visited, we couldn't really talk (though some of them were incredibly friendly).

Anyway, to sum up: There are some dangers and annoyances in Turkey, as in anyplace worth going, but I found them completely manageable and worth it. If you can ignore a charity canvasser or a panhandler, you can ignore a Turkish carpet salesman (and the carpet salesman will be a lot more polite than either the canvasser or the panhandler). Read Turkey Travel Planner and a guidebook or two or three before you go to give you an idea of what to expect. Think through a couple of worst-case scenarios (worst-case scenarios aren't as scary to think about if you're prepared for them). Even if you're uncomfortable in one part of Turkey there's probably someplace else that will be a perfect fit for you (it's a big country, and it offers a diversity of tourism experiences). Solo travel in Turkey can be loads of fun; it's probably not for everyone but it was great for me, and if you think it sounds good, go for it!

More Rhodes

2009-06-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

I did eventually venture out of the Old Town in Rhodes, and went to what you might call the Actually Much Older town, i.e. the Acropolis of Rhodes.

This is the ancient city of Rhodes. There were three other ancient acropolises on the island of Rhodes, but I did not make it out of Rhodes Town, I'm sorry to say. There's also a stadium there:

Wikipedia says that "acropolis" literally means "city on the edge" (edge in the sense of extremity). I like the idea of a "city on the edge" even if the translation maybe has some layers of meaning that the original version might not. Unsurprisingly, ancient people liked to build their cities up high, where it was easy to defend them. Then the actually living city of Rhodes built up around the acropolis, and the part of the city near the harbor ended up being the more important part.

I also went to several more museums in Rhodes, and I think my favorite was the decorative arts museum. It was all everyday objects like pottery, bedsheets, cabinets, and that sort of thing. It was small, but I really liked the stuff in it. Here's one of my favorite pieces, a jug with a beautiful young lady with a unibrow on it:

So much of the stuff here was just simple and charming and lovely; I took loads of pictures mostly with the idea of eventually stealing the motifs for as-yet-unconceived-of art and craft projects.

I also took the Wall Walk, which, as you might guess, is a walk around the city walls. This was cool, even though it was raining a little bit (it did not rain much while I was in Turkey and Greece. It was lovely).

Rhodes rooftops:

When I was up there I noticed loads of solar hot water heaters and satellite dishes, but they're not so obvious in the photos.

I took a Blue Star ferry overnight from Rhodes to Athens. I got a berth in a four-berth cabin - it's cheaper than getting a private cabin, but more comfortable than sitting up all night on the brightly-lit areas above decks! It was a little noisy, but I got a several good hours of sleep and didn't wake up until they played the "coming in to Athens, time to get off the boat" announcement (at six AM, ay-yi-yi).

I then proceeded to leave my iPod on the boat and spend a good hour wandering around Pireas, lost, but the iPod was old and had something wrong with the screen, and eventually some locals took pity on me and dragged me onto a tram that took me to the metro, so all was well. Next entry: Athens!

Goodbye Turkey, Hello Greece

2009-06-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday morning I was checking out of my hotel, planning to take the bus to Marmaris and then take the ferry to Rhodes in Greece from there. But when I asked Marie at the hotel if she could help me book the ferry she was like, don't go to Marmaris! You can go via Kastelorizo instead and it will be cheaper and more fun and more comfortable! But you have to leave right this second! So she hurriedly checked me out, got me and my luggage on a scooter down to the harbor for a boat to Kastelorizo, and called to make sure there was indeed a way for me to get from that island to my final destination of Rhodes.

I went on an excursion boat to Kastelorizo, which is an interesting place in a sleepy kind of way. You might say that it's boring, but for interesting reasons.

Kastellorizo has been occupied by basically any entity that has ever occupied an island in the Mediterranean. It is currently part of Greece, and before wwII it had something like 15,000 residents; after bombings, fires, and assorted other geopolitical difficulties, it currently has a population of about 250. There are a lot of ruined buildings:

Part of the problem is they can't have such strong ties (trade and otherwise) with the towns on the Turkish mainland as they once did. One interesting consequence of this population loss is that, in order to maintain sovereignty to an island that is actually much closer geographically to Turkey than to any other part of Greece, the Greek government basically pays people to live on Kastelorizo (which is also known in Greek as Megisti, and to Turks as Meis). And it subsidizes travel between Kastelorizo and other Greek islands, which is how I ended up on the afternoon flight to Rhodes (I paid 26 euros for the flight!). Here's the airport*:

Here's the plane, just landed from Rhodes:

Here's the baggage claim area:

Anyway, so we all got on the Olympic Airlines plane (maybe 25 of us) for a 25 minute flight to Rhodes. The flight attendant gave us all drinks and snacks and everything, just as if it were a real flight! Then we landed in Rhodes and picked up our luggage from a real luggage claim.

Now, at this point, because I had not been planning to come to Rhodes for another day, I had no hotel reservation and no real idea of how I was supposed to get from the airport to any place that I would want to stay. A difficulty. I saw a sign for a bus stop and there were some kids waiting at the bus stop and the bus timetable said a bus would be by soon, so I waited for the bus, and took it into Rhodes Town. Then I still had no idea where to go so I wandered for a bit until I found a tourist information office. A nice young man in the tourist office called a pension for me and got me a room, and while we waited for the pension owner to show up to take me to the room he showed me on a map all the places I should go while I was in Rhodes. Given that I had no idea what I was doing at any step in the process, I think it turned out very well!

And Rhodes - I love it! The old town, where I am staying, is just about the most romantic thing I've ever seen (or at least it was at first; I've gotten lost in it several times since and now it seems to be equal parts romantic and irritating). But seriously, it is great:

Winding passageways:

Ruins:

A laundromat called Hobby of Laundry for some reason:

Rhodes Old Town is super-touristy - almost all of the businesses are souvenir shops or restaurants (and not particularly good souvenir shops or restaurants, either) - but it's still wonderful. I really like it here. Today I went to a couple of museums, which didn't allow me to take pictures, and then I got lost, stuck in the fortifications of the city:

I walked three-quarters of the way around the city stuck between those two walls.

Anyway, tomorrow a lot of museums and things are closed so I think I'm going to do some open-air activities, and maybe even go to the beach!

*I think Kastelorizo airport is smaller than Beverly Municipal Airport, the airport in my backyard growing up; Beverly has three runways, and Kastelorizo only has the one.

Kas

2009-06-01T05:42:00.000-07:00

I took the bus to Kas, which is kind of a long trip from Selcuk (that's why I spent the extra day in Selcuk, because I couldn't quite bring myself to spend another 7 hours on the bus after just getting in).

The bus was smaller than the one I took to Cappadocia from Ankara, but also less full, so it was more comfortable in the end. I had to take one bus to Fethiye, then change for another one to Kas; it was supposed to be about five hours to Fethiye and then another two-plus hours to Kas. It ended up taking even longer, though - our bus needed maintenance halfway through our journey so we had to sit around at a highway rest area for an hour and a half. Fortunately there were some companionable people on the bus - a Canadian family with two tween/teen kids who had been travelling for almost a year and were getting ready to go home, and a nice English couple. So we hung out and got to know each other a bit, though I've now forgotten all of their names. Alas. Here's the rest stop:

Anyway, the bus change went smoothly, and I decided to just walk to my hotel from the bus station because it seemed pretty close, and I only got a little bit lost, and the hotel was lovely, with a beautiful terrace and excellent breakfasts and BBQ dinners. I really love Turkish food. So simple, and so tasty. And the vegetables are so good - so fresh and delicious! The tomatoes in Turkey have me really excited for July and August in New England. Tomato time! I don't seem to have any photos of the hotel or the hotel terrace, which is too bad because it was a lovely place and I hung out there a lot; met some nice people there, too, not least the hotel staff who were all 100% charming.

My first day in Kas I went for a walk to Liman Agzi, which is a beach that's only accessible by water or by walking. I had a little guidebook to show me the way but it was actually very well waymarked because this is a very popular hike. On my way there I got invited in for tea by a woman who then asked me to ask my family to help support her mentally disabled son, and gave me gifts to encourage me to do so. Which was kind of uncomfortable and embarassing, but oh well! She was very nice.

Anyhow, the beach was beautiful:

And then on the hike back you pass some Lycian tombs:

The Lycians were a mysterious people who lived in the southeastern part of Turkey and buried people in these cliff tombs, dug into cliff faces with sort of shelves for the bodies to lay on. They also built sarcophagi once the cliff tomb fad passed, and these are all over the place in this part of Turkey. I went on a kayak trip and saw some in the water:

The kayak trip was great. First we went to a nice little beach for swimming:

Then we went on to paddle near the sunken city of Kekova, a Lycian city that got dumped into the ocean by an earthquake hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I don't have any pictures from when we're paddling because I'm scared to get my camera wet.

I spent four days and five nights in Kas; I think one of those days I just kind of pootled around, shopped for souvenirs, went to see the Antiphellos ruins (a Greek amphitheater right around the corner from my hotel):

I went for another hike on my last full day in Kas, which was a bit disastrous - I tried to follow another hike from the same book as the first one, but the land seemed to bear no relationship to the directions in the book. So, like an idiot, rather than just turn around and go back, I decided to try and cut across to another path that I knew was probably not far away. It wasn't all that far away, but I ended up hacking my way through pricker bushes and scrambling down rocks, and scratched up my arms and ripped a hole in my trousers. I had my mobile phone and a whistle and things like that if I had really been seriously lost, but it was stupid to put myself in that situation in the first place and I'm embarassed that I did it - you would think I would have learned something in Girl Scouts, backpacking class, etc., but apparently not. But no harm done, except to the trousers. When I did eventually rejoin the path, I followed it back to Liman Agzi, and this time I took the taxi boat back (even though it was an exorbitant 10 TL!).

Next post: My precipitous departure from Kas!

Selcuk

2009-06-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

OK, so my last post was about Cappadocia and how wonderful it was to take a balloon ride there! Which still stands, but apparently the other day one of the longest and best-established balloon companies in Cappadocia, Kapadokya Balloons, had a fatal accident. There were two balloons involved (not clear if they were both from the same company or what) and the basket on the upper balloon tore the lower balloon, which then fell several hundred meters. A British tourist was killed. How awful, and how scary. I am selfishly glad this happened after I took my balloon ride, otherwise I might have talked myself out of doing it. I hope the Turkish equivalent of the FAA or whoever is in charge of something like this gets to the bottom of it and figures out a way to prevent anything like it from happening in the future (just as a wild guess I wonder if 45 balloons aloft in an area only a few kilometers square all in one hour may be too many; maybe they need to spread out more, or send up fewer balloons, or something. But I'm no balloonologist).

Anyway, after Cappadocia, I flew to Selcuk (in a plane, not a balloon). I ended up spending three nights there, which was one night too many. For me, there was really only one day worth of stuff to do in Selcuk - the ancient city of Ephesus, the ruined Temple of Artemis, the Ephesus Museum and the ruined St. John Basilica all fit handily into one day for me, and then I just sat around and did nothing the second day. I thought on the second day maybe I would go to the beach or take the bus to a nearby village that is supposed to be cute, but I couldn't quite delazify myself so I just hung around Selcuk and read. Which, really, there are worse things I could do with my time. It was nice.

Anyways, Ephesus! The best-preserved classical city in Turkey, and one of the best-preserved classical cities anywhere; you may remember Ephesus from such holy books as the Letter to the Ephesians - this is who St. Paul was writing to. Ephesus was a prosperous port town with a population of 250,000 in its heyday and became the capitol of the Roman province of Asia Minor. However, the river on which the port was located changed course, the port dried up, and so did Ephesus. Here's what it looks like today:

Still very busy as you see! There were thousands and thousands of people at Selcuk when I went. I went right in the middle of the day, against the advice of the guidebooks, and it was as hot and crowded as the guidebooks said. All that white stone reflects the light something fierce - it reminded me of being in Washington, DC a little bit, in that there were tourists and white marble everywhere. Some of the tourists come on cruise ships that dock at nearby Kusadasi, some come from Selcuk where I stayed, some come from further afield. It all adds up, apparently, because there were loads of people there.

Here's the library, which I am contractually obligated to take a particular interest in:

They stored thousands of scrolls there - seems like that would be even more of a hassle than storing books, and storing books is hard enough! But I guess books hadn't been invented yet? I should look it up.

Anyway, part of the reason Ephesus was so important was that it was a center for the worship of Cybele/Artemis/Diana/whatever other names she went by. Here is what's left of her temple, which was once one of the Seven Wonders of the World:

Just one column left out of, I believe, 127 original columns (note the stork nest on top of the column). There are also some foundation pool deals.

The Ephesus Museum was pretty nice - It's mostly stuff that has been recovered from digs at or near the city - statues, parts of statues, etc.:

My favorite was the pipes, though:

I love ancient technology!

Then I went to the Basilica of St. John, where John, the author of the eponymous Gospel, is supposed to be buried. There's pretty good evidence, as I understand it, that John did in fact spend time in and around Ephesus; the Virgin Mary is also legendarily said to have come to Ephesus to spend her last days but that's less well backed-up as I understand it. Ephesus was an important early Christian site (as you might guess from the Letters), and this basilica was built by Justinian, who also had the Aya Sofya built, over a fourth-century tomb that supposedly held John's body (what John, a contemporary of Jesus, would be doing in a fourth-century tomb is not explained).

It's a very lovely place, though:

It's located right up at the top of a hill and gets nice breezes. It was basically completely ruined but has been extensively restored. I especially liked the cross-shaped walk-in baptismal font:

Anyway, as I say, I spent the next day pootling around the pension where I was staying and sitting in parks reading books. It was nice and vacationy, but I really rather would have spent that day in Cappadocia, where I'd come from, or Kas, where I was headed to. Next entry: Kas!

Cappadocia

2009-05-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

I've been throwing a lot of updates up all of a sudden! I had some stored up from when I was in Istanbul. I'm writing this one to post the same day as I finish it, but I'm still talking about stuff I did a few days ago. Anyway, if anything's confusing, just go back a couple of entries, but you're smart folks.

Anyway, Cappadocia! I stayed in Goreme, which is kind of backpacker central in this region. But for all that, it did have some charm. I've seen a lot of people online and in the guidebooks say that Goreme is spoiled and you should stay in Urgup or Uchisar instead. And a guy I ran into on a path said that I should have stayed in Cavusin (his village). My feeling is, none of these places are perfect. Yes, there are a lot of tourists in Goreme, but I didn't feel like there were any fewer in Urgup (didn't visit Uchisar). And while Cavusin may be a charming example of a Cappadocian village (and it is), it's a lot less convenient, there are only a couple of pensions to stay in, and there aren't any restaurants or ATMs or long-distance buses. So I think Goreme was a perfectly OK place to stay.

My hotel, the Local Cave House:

In most ways, this place was great! Friendly, non-pushy staff, big rooms IN ACTUAL CAVES carved from the rock (people in this part of Turkey traditionally lived in caves - they're naturally cool in summer, sturdy, etc., and the rock is soft enough to carve out a cave without lots of fancy tools, a pool (although I never went in it)... and then there was the bathroom. Ew. Not a good bathroom. I recognize that ventilation is going to be a difficulty in a cave kind of situation, but this thing was seriously DANK. Something ought to be done, preferably involving industrial-size fans and several gallons of KILZ. Anyway, we shall forget about the bathroom (I very nearly forgot about it by the end of my three-night stay, though when I first arrived I was seriously grossed out).

Another nice thing about the hotel was that it was just up the street from the Goreme Open-Air Museum. The Goreme Open-Air Museum consists of a bunch of churches and other buildings from a Byzantine monastery. These are all carved into the rock! Monks living in caves in Central Anatolia... that's the true hermit lifestyle. These guys knew what they were doing. Many of the churches have frescoes in them, and some of these are incredibly well-preserved:

These are from a church called the Dark Church, because it was basically windowless. That's why the frescoes in this particular church are still in such great shape. The Dark Church also has frescoes very high up the walls, which was lucky because when Iconoclasm became the new thing to do, they defaced the features of all the figures (I believe these were Byzantine iconoclasts - the Istanbul churches were defaced when they were converted into mosques, for similar reasons). But the iconoclasts apparently forgot to bring a ladder, so all the faces above six feet high or so are largely intact.

My favorite church I visited was not in the Open-Air Museum, it was the Aynali (Mirror) Church, off the road from the Open-Air Museum to Ortahisar. This museum didn't have such fancy frescoes, but it did have Suleyman the caretaker, who was fabulous! He said I was the only person to have come so far that day (it wasn't quite lunchtime, so there was still hope). He gave me tea and told my about how he had recently had a brain tumor removed, and he showed me how he played music on his extra chair:

I have video of this, but it's not uploading to flickr and YouTube is banned in Turkey.

The church also had seriously creepy tunnels. Not for the claustrophobic.

I basically just wandered around while I was in Cappadocia. I didn't see all the sites you're supposed to see; I missed the Underground Cities and Ihlara Canyon. I did see people working at their traditional job of storing citrus fruit in caves in Ortahisar:

Not really that exciting, but I had read about it in the guidebook and I was like, "What does that even mean?" I'll tell you what it means: it means they store citrus fruit in caves.

I did go to some of the valleys that are famous for their rock formations. Rose Valley:

And Love Valley, where I forgot to bring my camera. I do have a few photos on my phone but no good way to get them off the phone right now.

My last day, I took a balloon ride, my first! 45 balloons take off on any given morning in Cappadocia. Each balloon holds 10-20 (or even, in one case, 30) people. I flew with Goreme Balloons (cheaper through my hotel than if I'd booked direct - another reason to tolerate the bathroom cave).

I ended up changing around my schedule at this point because I didn't want to take an overnight bus. Overnight travel has been making me extremely cranky on this trip, so I decided to avoid it and fly to Izmir instead of taking on overnight bus to Fethiye. I think it was mostly a good choice, although I ended up spending too much time in Selcuk. It was a restful kind of too much time, though. More on that soon.

Photoless interlude

2009-05-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this a couple of days ago in Selcuk.)

The internet situation at my current hotel/pension is not conducive to uploading photos, so I'm going to hold off on posting more of those until I get to my next place (where I should have wi-fi). Please enjoy this text-only entry :)

Last week in Istanbul I was noticing that there were toddlers and preschoolers running all over the place at break-neck speeds on the cobblestone streets and other tricky places. Good lord, I thought, how are they not falling on the ground and bashing their adorable little brains out? Not that all American children sit around decorously except when confined to soft carpeted areas, but I was highly impressed by the recklessness of the Turkish under-six crowd.

A couple of days later another thought came to me, at first seemingly unrelated, when I saw another little girl with a bandage on her forehead. I never saw so many small children with bandaids and gauze and whatnot on their faces before I came to Turkey. And then I had my aha moment! So now I suspect that the recklessness is not entirely without consequences. Hopefully a bandage on the nose is the worst of it for most of them.

Just finished reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (is that right?), by Junot Diaz. Good book! I read it on Kindle for iPhone, which is a first for me. I don't like the Kindle for iPhone interface as much as I like the Stanza interface (another iPhone/iPod touch e-reader). But it's not bad. And it's nice to be able to bring books with me without having to actually bring a pile of books. Using the e-readers does tend to eat up the battery life on the iPod, though, so I have to remember to charge it every night, which is a pain since I should also charge my camera battery and I only have one plug adapter. I should get more plug adapters, or maybe next time bring a US extension cord with multiple outlets.

I'm writing this from the garden of the hotel; there is a little swimming pool and birds keep swooping low and skimming over the top of it. I don't know if they're eating bugs (in which case, thanks, birds!) or drinking the water (in which case, I hope it doesn't make you sick!). It's very nice though.

2009-05-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Rest of Istanbul! (I wrote this almost a week ago now but haven't had the chance to update since then due to internet connection issues.)

On my third and last day in Istanbul I went to Topkapi Palace, which was 100% delightful. It was also kind of interesting because it was my first non-weekend day in Istanbul and there were tons of school groups there. At home, I work at the museum but usually only on Saturdays, and when I fill in for someone on a weekday, I'm always surprised by the number of school kids there (we get groups of kids on weekends, too - out-of-towners, scouts, etc., but during the weekdays it's ALL school kids). So it reminded me of that.

The palace is where the Ottoman sultans and their huge households/entourages lived for a long time, until they built a European-style palace on the other side of the Bosphorous. I think they were fools to leave! Topkapi is gorgeous, and I didn't visit Dolmahbahce (the "new" palace) but I don't think it can be half as nice.

You go through a series of gates to get into the palace:

And there are these lovely courtyard/park thingies around which all the buildings are arranged.

There are also lots of lines - lines to get tickets to the palace (and a separate ticket for the Harem), lines to put your bag through the x-ray machine (that no one was looking at, I swear), lines to get your ticket punched to get into the palace, and then lines to get into individual attractions. I waited in all of these lines, on the principle that so many people couldn't possibly all be wrong, and I was mostly well served. The longest line of all was to get into the treasury:

I don't have any pictures from inside the treasury, because you're not supposed to take pictures in there. I don't think it's anything to do with the objects themselves, they just don't want people spending a lot of time taking photos -- they hurried you along if you spent too long looking at any one thing. There was some pretty cool stuff - the fourth or fifth largest diamond in the world, a dagger all covered in huge emeralds (the handle, not the sharp part - I don't think that would make a very good dagger), lots of beautiful little things made out of jade and rock crystal and things.

Another nice thing about the treasury is that in the third of the four rooms, there's a beautiful little pavilion that's open on two sides, with the ocean all around it. It was lovely and breezy and surprising:

There is also a collection of holy relics relating to the Prophet Muhammad and his compatriots (there was a name for these people, but I forget what it is). That was also a hurry-along, no photos area, presumably because otherwise people would have their noses all pressed up against the glass indefinitely, looking at Muhammad's beard hair (I am not joking - one of the relics is a beard hair). There was a very high concentration of chador-clad ladies in this area. I don't really get the relic concept. Even in my secular way, owning Abraham Lincoln's hair or an actual piece of the set from Battlestar Galactica or something, I don't really get the whole concept of treasuring an object for its association with a concept. I'm not even all that into souvenirs.

I also toured the Harem, which was the quarters of the Sultan and his family, and by family we of course mean "hundreds of concubines, wives, children, assorted other relatives, and all of their ladies-in-waiting and the black eunuchs who took guarded them." The Sultan's mother was the one in charge of the harem. This is what her quarters looked like:

"Restrained" is probably not the best word... it's still actually very beautiful, though, and I suppose it was the style at the time, if a little much. Look, here's the Sultan's mom herself, entertaining some other female member of her vast household:

Fortunately there were only a handful of these mannequins. One of my few strong opinions about museum exhibit design is that you should avoid using mannequins wherever possible. Especially these kind, which have an off-the-rack, last-seen-at-Empire*-circa-1985 quality to them.

I spent a few hours at the palace then wandered the streets of Sultanahmet for a while, which was also very nice. Then I dragged myself and my bags down to the tram, took the tram to the ferry, and took the ferry to the train station. Then I took an overnight train to Ankara, where I got lost repeatedly, and it was hot, and no one spoke any English at all (and I really need people who speak English most of the time). Also there was a museum, but all in all it was not one of my better days of vacation. Let us never speak of it again. From Ankara I took a bus to Goreme (and in so doing, learned to pronounce Goreme properly!), which was also slightly confusing and stressful. But I got to my hotel/pension in the end, and though the bathroom here is... disappointing, I'm in a great location amid beautiful surroundings with helpful staff. More about Goreme and Cappadocia soon.

*long-since-closed store where we bought clothes when I was a kid

Istanbul Day 2

2009-05-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

On my second day in Istanbul, I went to churches. First church: Aya Sofya, aka Haghia Sofia, aka Sancta Sophia, aka La Sainte Sophie, aka Church of the Sacred Wisdom - I guess when you've been around for 1500 years, and served as the center of Christianity for most of the first 900 of those years, you pick up some nicknames.

The first thing you notice about Aya Sofya is that it's ginormous. I don't think any of my photos really capture the sheer size of the church. Here's a photo of the central dome, which is half-filled with scaffolding as part of a long-term renovation process:

Here's a photo in the upstairs gallery:

Oh, and this one gives you a bit of a sense of the scale:

The second thing you notice is that it's full of beautiful things:

And then you start to realize how old it is:

In this photo you can see a bit of the mosaic under the plaster (when it was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, they covered up the Christian iconography with painted plaster). So it was covered up with plaster 500+ years ago, and the mosaic itself was put up who-knows-how-many years before that. Amazing.

Oh, and on the way out I noticed that a cat had found its way into Aya Sofya:

I overheard someone else's tour guide telling her that this was "Obama's cat" because when Obama came to visit Aya Sofya he took a shine to her or something. The woman being tour guided seemed a bit dubious, as was I. A lot of the Turks I've met want to talk about Obama, but mostly the people I've talked to don't understand enough English for me to really explain anything. Today I was talking to a guy, and he was like, "America, Obama, yes, you like?" And I wanted to say something along the lines of, "Well, I think more than anything it was important to get away from Bush, and I feel like almost any sort of change would have been positive; Obama is great from a symbolic perspective but I'm not sure he really shares my values 100%. Still I'm very hopeful that he will be the president we need right now, and effect some positive change," but what I ended up saying was, "Change - hope" - ay! I thought, I've become a Shepard Fairey poster!

Obama Cats aside, Aya Sofya was not quite enough Byzantine church for me! I was hungry for more so I got on a bus across town and went to see the Chora church. It is a small church, but it has beautiful mosaics and frescoes.

Here's a closeup of the mosaic in the photo above (it's the hem of Mary's robe):

Tiny rocks, stuck to the wall! Amazing.

Afterwards I had a very nice lunch in the restaurant next to the church - lamb and figs and apricots and shallots, I forget what it was called. And for a starter, delicious bread, goat cheese, and a sort of tapenade.

Then I decided to walk along the city wall to where I could get the ferry. I lost track of the city wall at some point, and basically had no idea where I was, but I figured if I kept heading down, I would surely end up at the water at some point, and then I would just follow along the water to the ferry stop. But I ended up coming out right at the ferry stop I had originally intended to stop at. There is a sort of park there, and about half of Istanbul appeared to be hanging out there. I had to wait about 40 minutes for the ferry, but it was nice out and I was well-fed and I knew where I was for the first time in the last half-hour or so, so I was happy.

The ferry ride was nice. There is tea service on the ferry - they will bring it right to you at your seat. I did not partake, though. There were nice views but I was sitting towards the middle of the boat so I didn't get any really great photos.

Then I wandered around the Sultanahmet neighborhood some more. There are loads of hotels in this neighborhood and loads of tourist-oriented businesses, but also lots of ordinary people going about their lives. Here are some neighborhood kids helping an old man push his cart full of shoes up a hill:

A couple of times I would come around a corner and it would feel like the North End for a minute, right down to the old people eyeing you suspiciously.

For dinner I went to Simit Sarayi (Simit = bagel/pretzel-like thing; Sarayi = Palace; Simit Sarayi = very popular Turkish fast food place). I had a stuffed spinach pastry (borek) and the girl at the counter talked me into a simit as well; this, and a water set me back 3.50TL ($2-$2.50). It was delicious. We need to get Simit Sarayi over to the US ASAP.

And that was the end of day two.

Istanbul - day one!

2009-05-16T11:36:00.001-07:00

I arrived in Istanbul late last night - didn't get to the hotel until about 12:30. I had arranged beforehand to have the hotel pick me up, which was great. Since my flight was delayed I think the driver was about as happy to see me as I was to see him. We passed a major road accident on the way to the hotel, and my driver slowed down and leaned out the window to stare; I thought this was kind of unprofessional until I noticed that other people were actually stopping their cars, backing up, and getting out to watch. So then I appreciated his restraint.

This morning I woke sometime after 4AM to the call to prayer. According to Wikipedia, for Sunni Muslims the morning call to prayer includes the words "Prayer is better than sleep." I am pretty sure I disagree with this statement. But I just put in my earplugs and went back to sleep until 10:30 (just in time to get breakfast on the rooftop terrace overlooking the Bosphorous):

(This photo is actually from the evening but you get the idea.)

I had meant to go the Aya Sofya (or Hagia Sofia, or Sancta Sophia, or whatever you like to call it) but by the time I got there, after noon, it was a madhouse; I decided to take the guidebook's advice and come as early as possible so as to avoid the crowds. This is what it looks like from the hotel terrace at sunset:

I went to the Blue Mosque, which was basically the Ottoman Turkish response to the much Byzantine Aya Sofya. It's very nice; you have to take off your shoes, and there's all lovely carpet inside, and stained glass and loads of mosaics and inlay. I did not get any really good photos of the mosque as a whole, but I liked this mosaic:

Then I wandered around for a while, occasionally stumbling across things like what appeared to be a tiny cemetery behind a fence just off the main street:

and eventually I came to the Grand Bazaar, which is pretty extraordinary. I am not much of a shopper, really, and I didn't actually buy anything, and a lot of the stuff for sale is pure tourist bait, but I actually loved it.

I liked looking at the gold jewelry best, because it was patently obvious that I had no intention of buying any of it. I did come fairly near to buying a very pretty silver bracelet with turquoise and marcasite but I hadn't intended to buy any jewelry, I couldn't remember what the exchange rate was, and I had no idea how much something like it would cost at home, so I felt that I was in an unfortunate position as far as bargaining. I think I'm going to try to get some pillow covers before I leave.

Just outside the bazaar were a bunch of people with blankets spread out and completely random assemblages of stuff for sale on the blanket. Like, a couple of watches, some coffee mugs, and what appeared to be a pile of little plastic animals, all on a mat about two feet square. Each seller had different random wares for sale, but each collection kind of made me think of stuff a crazy homeless person might collect and carry around in his or her cart. Anyway, something happened, and all the sellers started grabbing their mats and frantically scooping their stuff into bags. I have no idea what any of that was about.

Then I got hopeless lost in a commercial district where EVERYTHING was for sale; there were shops full of fishing reels, mysterious motors, sewing machines, zippers, striped canvas (like, that was all the shop sold, striped canvas), and god knows what else. That was kind of awesome. I thought about getting a zipper for the sweater I'm making with my Icelandic wool, but number one I wasn't sure if they sold them individually or just by the case or something, and number two I was daunted by the prospect of buying notions in an unfamiliar language.

I stopped and got a chicken doner kabob sandwich, and took it away to eat somewhere else, and a little while later when I found a nice place to sit down and eat it, I realized that I had not paid for it. And that I had no idea how to find my way back to the place where I had "bought" it. The sandwich was good, but I was consumed with embarrassment the whole time I was eating it! When I went to throw the rest away, I realized that the paper it was wrapped in had the shop's name and address written on it, but that wouldn't really have helped much because the street name isn't on my maps. I may try to send them the money if I still feel guilty about it tomorrow (it was only about a dollar anyhow!).

After a bit more wandering, I went to the Spice Bazaar (also sometimes called the Egyptian Market), where I bought dried apricots. Which are, oh my god, the best dried apricots I've ever eaten. I was planning to just have some to eat while I'm here (I got a half-kilo, which I should be able to take care of in three weeks) but I may got back and get some vacuum-packed so I can take them home. I might also get some saffron, because it was really inexpensive, and maybe I'd use saffron more if I weren't always thinking about how expensive it is. Seriously, though, these apricots are so good I'm going to make myself ill if I don't stop eating them right now.

There is loads of delicious-looking street food all over the place here, and I was seduced into trying a roasted ear of corn. It was not very good. The corn is not sweet! I don't know if it's a completely different kind of corn than I'm used to, or if it's just bad corn. So disappointing. Wouldn't you want to eat this?

Let me tell you, you would be setting yourself up for disappointment. Tomorrow I'm going to try simit, which looks like something between a bagel and a pretzel. With sesame seeds instead of salt. I'm looking forward to it. There are a lot of things here that I want to eat.

I went back to the hotel for a shower and some moleskin for a little blister that was coming up, and then I went to the Basilica Cistern.

This is, well, a huge cistern, over a thousand years old, that is right underneath Istanbul. I wish I had brought my gorillapod, because it was so cool in there but so dark it was hard to get any decent pictures. The cistern dates to the 6th century A.D. Apparently the 6th-century watchword was "Waste not, want not":

Look, Medusa's all "ow, you guys, I can't hold this up!" The cistern was nice - perhaps a little overpriced at 10TL ($6-7) for what you get, but a nice, cool, relatively quiet touristic experience.

I say quiet, because Istanbul is loud! There's the aforementioned call to prayer, which is very nice and exotic and Oriental and all that, but also very loud. And there are people constantly trying to sell you things (I find this quite easy to avoid, actually - I have been trained to politely turn down requests for my money by Masspirg, Save the Children, Greenpeace, Mass Equality, and a variety of other well-meaning organizations). Also, people yell a lot. I have heard more bloodcurdling screams out of children today than I can remember hearing in the last year. Oh, and everyone's playing CDs and radios and things. The lovely rooftop terrace is adjacent to the lovely rooftop terrace of the Big Apple Hostel, where they place music all day long. It was mostly techno for a while, then they played "Je ne regrette rien" by Edith Piaf twice in a row, then on to some light rock. Basically, I'm glad I brought earplugs. They must have crazy good windows and AC in the Four Seasons, which is just around the corner and surely subject to many of the same loud noises.

Anyway, now I am relaxing and watching the Eurovision Song Contest and eating apricots, but I need to go to sleep soon if I'm going to be up in time to avoid the worst of the Aya Sofya lines tomorrow. So good night to anyone reading this!

Trip kickoff - Madrid!

2009-05-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

So, I flew into Istanbul via Madrid, and this is what I wrote about that yesterday (didn't post, though, because I was unwilling to pay for Spanish airport internet.

Spent today in Madrid. I accidentally booked myself a ten hour layover
in Madrid but it's actually been quite nice.

Getting out of Boston was less nice-there was something wrong with
Iberia's computer system at Logan so they had to do everything by
hand. Obviously, this took forever-when they checked me in they had to
phone my information in to someplace else and then hand write a
boarding pass! Fortunately I didn't have any luggage to check (I'm
packed frighteningly light for this trip) because I totally didn't
trust their handwritten tags either. The flight ended up leaving about
an hour late. Boo!

My sad, sad excuse for a boarding pass.

Once we landed in Madrid they hooked me up with a real boarding pass
for my continuing flight, I dropped my bag off in a locker, and took
the metro into the city. The metro is very nice. How awesome would of
be if the MBTA (in Boston) joined the rest of the world and started putting up
signs to tell when the next train was coming and such? Some day.

Once I was in Madrid I spent some time walking around (I was trying to
follow the historic Madrid walking tour from my Lonely Planet chapter,
but it's terrible, very hard to follow). Then I went to the Prado,
which is actually where I'm writing this right now.

The Prado! Probably no one needs me to confirm that the Prado is, indeed, a brilliant museum. Only problem is it's a bit crowded, less crowded today at least than the Met when I've been there, but more crowded than the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston, except maybe if the MFA were having a free
day. I saw Goya's seriously unsettling Pinturas Negros*, Bosch's
Garden of Earthly Delights (so weird and wonderful; I wanted so much
to get closer and see more of the painting, but so did everyone else
in the room).

I think my favorite painting, though, was Las Meninas, the big
Velasquez picture with the little princess and the royal household
around her. It reminded me of Sargent's painting of the daughters of
Edward Darley Boit. They similar in size and they both feature small
girls, but they also both have a lot of shadows, and things going on
in the shadows, and people looking at things not visible to the viewer
of the picture. I don't know if Sargent is known or assumed to have
been influenced by the Velasquez painting but it seemed that way to me.

Anyway, then I lost my jacket at the airport, which was decidedly frustrating. I will check at the Lost and Found when I go back through the airport on my way home. Oh and then the flight was delayed, though only a half-hour but still! It was supposed to arrive at 11PM and I was annoyed to arrive even later.

*in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susannah Clarke has Goya paint
Strange surrounded by the dead Neapolitan soldiers he has revived; now
I really understand what she as talking about.
Kyle

Day 2, written from home (OK, from work)

2009-04-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well, Iceland was a bit of a whirlwhind trip, and I never got around to posting about it again. Alas!

On Day 2 we went to some more sights and museums and did some shopping. In the morning we went to Perlan, a sort of restaurant/museum/function hall deal on a hill in Reykjavik. It's a big dome, and there's a rotating restaurant, a cafe, the Saga Museum (sort of a wax-museum deal, which we skipped because it was 1500 kronur rather than the 700 kronur the book said it was going to be!), and an imitation geyser (which only runs from noon to six pm - we were too early for the geyser).

The view was lovely:

I don't seem to have uploaded any photos of Perlan itself. More later, maybe (I'm posting from work and don't have my computer).

As for shopping, we noticed that there were a lot of Iceland-made products in the stores; apparently because of Iceland's financial crisis, it's very much restricted how much money they can get out of the country and, therefore, how much they can import. The Christian Science Monitor had a neat article about it. So that meant a lot of wool, and touristy jewelry made from lava rocks (which I really wanted to buy some of, but none of it was quite to my taste). There was very little actually of the sort of standard made-in-China tourist crap you always see in any tourist location, which was kind of nice.

We both ended up buying things at the Handknitting Association of Iceland shop. They had hundreds and hundreds of Icelandic "Lopi" sweaters - I'll probably post more about this on my knitting blog. I bought enough yarn (probably much more than enough, really) to make my own Lopi sweater, plus a pair of machine-knit woolen gloves (I'd been looking for something like them for seriously YEARS, so it was great to find them). Kris got some yarn and a nice lace shawl. I kind of wish I had gotten more yarn, since it was seriously cheap. The Alafoss Lopi yarn I bought retails for $5-6 a ball in the US, and I got it for something like $3 a ball. Geez, now that I think about it I should have really loaded up on yarn and sold it all on eBay - subsidized my trip a little bit! And it's very light to pack.

After we'd been to the Handknitting store we started noticing that EVERYONE was wearing Lopi sweaters. The old fisherman at the best lobster soup place in the world had a nice one in shades of blue; very tall college-student-looking boys wore gray ones as jackets; a girl in a bar paired a natural white sweater with a bright red and white striped skirt and knee-high boots. I don't think that the Lopi sweaters are just because of the current economic troubles, either - from what I understand they just been very popular ever since they began to catch on in the 1940s.

That night we went on a Northern Lights tour with Reykjavik Excursions. We piled into a bus and a rather depressed-sounding guide told us that there were three things necessary to see the Aurora Borealis: magnetic activity, darkness, and clear skies. And that we were at a low point in the magnetic activity cycle, that the skies were partly cloudy, and that we might not be able to get far enough from Reykjavik for it to be properly dark. But! We did in fact see the Lights, although not the fantastic postcard kind you see sometimes. Here is a picture of Kris in front of the Northern Lights:

See, you really need a tripod to take a picture of the Aurora Borealis, and I did not bring mine. Also people kept taking pictures with flash. Please, if you go see the Northern Lights, turn off your flash.

OK, that was day two! I will post about day three soon! Maybe tonight even!

Iceland - Day 1

2009-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

So, getting to Iceland (on a five-hour overnight flight that got in to Reykjavik at 6:30AM and was full of screaming children and constant offers of drinks and snacks and they left the lights on FOR EVER) was not super fun, but since then things have been really lovely, although also really really cold.

We arrived right on time and caught our airport transfer bus with no difficulty, plus our hotel (Fosshotel Lind, booked through Icelandair as a package with the airfare) had a room available for us when we arrived before 9AM, which was great. Then we went out and did some sightseeing! We got a museum admission/discount card/bus pass, two days for something like $10-12 per person, and we have been using it all over town. So far today we've been to several museums (about which more later, maybe), and done some shopping (although not yet any buying).

Some of the highlights so far:

Going to the top of the Hallgrimskirkja, the tallest point in Reykjavik. The tower is under repair, so we had to look out through scaffolding, but it was great anyhow. It was incredibly windy up there. Here's Kris trying to take a photo:

Here is a guy working on the scaffolding:

I really hope there is some magical way that the guys up there manage to keep warm. They do get a lovely view, though:

Reykjavik is a very attractive city, small and easily walkable, and there are wonderful sea and mountain views everywhere:

A lot of the buildings have the kind of siding and metal roofs that I associate with Quebec - I guess they must be practical in cold weather for some reason?

So far we are finding costs very reasonable - we were really pleased at prices the yarn and knitwear products at the Handknitting Association of Iceland store, and there is some very nice lava-rock jewelry available in several stores. I'm still not quite sure what exchange rate we're going to receive, so we're just pretending that it's 100 Icelandic Kronur to $1 US, even though it will actually be better than that, possibly much better (some websites give the exchange rate as around 113 ISK/$1, others as more like 175 ISK/$1. Obviously I'm rooting for 175, no offense Icelanders).

OK, time for a much-needed shower before dinner!

Another low-content trip-planning post

2009-01-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

So, I just booked plane tickets for another trip, and I'll be going to Turkey and Greece in May. I'm taking a full three weeks of vacation - the longest amount of time I've ever taken since I started working, unless you count a few months of complete unemployment here and there, which weren't entirely vacationlike - so that's exciting just in itself.

But even more exciting is the trip! I'll be flying into Istanbul and home from Athens three weeks later (with an overnight layover in Madrid - just long enough to visit the Prado, and maybe whatsitcalled, the museum with Guernica), and even with all that time I know I'm not going to be able to see everything I want to see. I have a lot of planning and prioritizing to do, but that's going to be part of the fun! I think I'm going to plan this trip out more precisely than my trip to Switzerland last summer; in theory I liked the idea of being able to do everything on the fly, but in practice I didn't really enjoy planning my trip while at the same time taking the trip.

Now it's off to the bookstore to drink coffee and peruse guidebooks, and off to TurkeyTravelPlanner.com (which I think I'm going to have to add to my LeechBlock list, it's so addictive), and tripadvisor, and picking the brains of friends, and all that good stuff...

2008-12-20T07:14:00.000-08:00

I haven't been doing any travelling lately, unless you include to and from the homes of various family members in New England, but I've got a trip planned on the horizon. My roommate and I are heading for everyone's favorite new budget destination, Iceland! Icelandair has some really impressive deals - they are running an Iceland Winter Budget Getaway for $479pp double occupancy (single occupancy rates are not bad either) for flight to Reykjavik from Boston and two night hotel. Right now the website says that the offer is only available through December 31st, but when I booked (November 30th) it said the offer was expiring that day, so take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, we won't be going until the end of March - hopefully I will take at least a US-based minibreak between now and then, and I will try to post about it.

Home again, home again

2008-08-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I left my hotel right around sunrise and stayed awake until about 9:30 Boston time. Long day. My flight left Zurich at 10AM, and I was staying in Lucerne, a little more than an hour from the airport, and I didn't know what the lines would be like or anything, so caught a 6:30 train to Zurich airport. Well, that was unnecessary. It took me all of fifteen minutes to get from the airport train station to the gate, including check-in. Even though my passport wouldn't scan. (The blue cover on my passport bled through onto the photo page in several spots because it got a bit damp when I was in England -- I kept it in inside pocket most of the time. For the last two years I have been worried that I am going to get hassled about it, but so far nothing bad has happened. Of course, really I've only been to Canada the once and then this trip to Switzerland, so I haven't exactly put it to the test. I have five years left on that passport so I hope it doesn't get any worse. I don't keep it anywhere damp anymore.)

So I paid nine Swiss francs for a four-ounce cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant to pass the time. I had about 15 CHF when I got to the airport and I figured I might as well spend it, since it seemed unlikely that I would be able to hold on to $15 worth of foreign coins until the next time I go to Switzerland (the smallest-denomination Swiss bill is the 10 CHF note -- they have coins for fives, twos, and ones).

In Paris I was befriended by a slightly-lost Croatian boy who was going to do a senior year at boarding school in Maine. He liked my photos, and took a picture of me before we got on the plane. Good luck, Martin from Croatia! Then in the line for Customs at Boston a guy who appeared to be in his early twenties came up to me and asked if I would do him a favor. "It depends on the favor!" I said -- doing favors for strangers involving U.S. Customs seems like it would generally be a bad idea. He just wanted to use my phone, though, and it didn't work in there anyhow. He had just gotten back from two years with the Peace Corps in Armenia, he said.

My flights were fine, although I was oddly focused on what I would do if the plane crashed, something I don't ordinarily think about much. I wasn't afraid the plane was going to crash, I just felt like I needed to have a plan in case it did. I had decided who I would call if I had access to a phone, who I would email if I had access to email, and I decided that a Facebook status update would be a good part of an assuring-people-I'm-OK plan.

Being home is fine. I have been giving people chocolate, which makes them like me. I had Thai food for dinner last night and an iced coffee on my way home from work today (these, together, cost me less than the coffee and croissant I had had for breakfast yesterday). I was so excited to put on a different pair of shoes this morning! Two weeks alternating between my Dansko sandals, my flip-flops, and my hiking boots made me very ready to try on something else. Only flat shoes for more than two weeks! What will my Achilles think when I put on heels tomorrow?

As I walked to work this morning, number one it felt really nice to be walking on the flat for thirty minutes straight. Wow, I don't think I had two miles of flat walking anywhere in the whole country of Switzerland. And the Trader Joe's parking lot is finished, finally! And a building I walk past every day was completely torn down while I was gone (I knew this was going to happen, but it was really weird to see the big pile of bricks where it used to be).

I've been looking over all my photos -- I've got something around 500, although some of those are repeats, and some are just sort of for reference rather than being nice photos. I'm really happy with them, overall. They make me want to take more photos, and possibly to get a more fidgety camera that I can do things with. Although I do really like my current camera -- it is small and blue and it has a big screen and a 10x zoom. Also, once I discovered how to fiddle with the white balance (um, two days ago), I was able to get a better handle on taking photos in bright sunlight, I think.

Here are some of my favorites (they have probably all appeared in the blog already):

Well, I could go on. What a beautiful country. I'm playing my photos on the TiVo right now, and some of them I just look at and think, "that cannot possibly have been real."

I definitely hope to go back there someday. Overall I had a great time. I felt a little bummed and lonely this past weekend in Basel, but it's not like I generally go two weeks at home without ever feeling blue. Sometimes I think there's too much pressure to have fun on vacation. I have to remind myself that just because I'm not ecstatic non-stop doesn't mean the vacation is a failure or a waste!

This morning I woke up at 3:30 and thought, "Oh no! I forgot to go to the glacier cave!" Because, you know, I did forget. I had been planning on going in the glacier cave on Monday, but I got distracted with sledding and catching trains and things. It was right there (somewhere -- I didn't see any signs for it), but I just forgot to go in. So sad! So I'll definitely have to go back.

2008-08-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

So, my last day in Switzerland, Monday (not counting Tuesday, which basically consists of a trip to the airport), I decided I would take a trip to one of the mountains that are relatively easily accessible from Lucerne, where I was staying. My candidates were Mt. Pilatus, the mountain which overlooks Lucerne; Mt. Rigi, a lower ridgey kind of mountain that supposedly has great views of other mountains and of basically the whole city, and Mt. Titlis, which is a little further away and more expensive than the other two but which has glaciers. I decided on Titlis, because I had been disappointed that I didn't get the chance to take the train up to the Jungfraujoch and see the glaciers there.

I think I made a good choice! To get to Titlis, you take the train from Lucerne to Engelberg, which is actually fairly fun just for itself, since the train goes at a very steep incline for part of the way. Then you take a six-person ski gondola for about twenty minutes. Then you get on a cable car for another five minutes. Then you get on a REVOLVING cable car for another five minutes.

The revolving cable car also plays music. While I was in the cable car it played "Karma Chameleon", "Just Like Heaven", and "Can't Touch This". So that was a bit odd, but highly entertaining,

Then when you get to the top, it's all cold and snowy! In August!

It was right around freezing up there, I believe. Very pleasant, actually, in the sun. I had packed a lunch, but then I saw some people eating french fries, and I thought those looked like they would really hit the spot, but then I looked at the price board and they were 7.50 CHF, which is about $7. So I decided I could live with my cheese sandwich and my peanut butter sandwich. I have basically lived on cheese sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches for the last two weeks. Restaurants are so expensive here, and there are plenty of nice places to picnic.

Here are some more pictures from the top of Titlis:

Mountains!

Rock formations!

Also, you can take a ski lift over the glacier:

And then you can go sledding:

I went for three or four sledding runs. There is a "magic carpet" lift to bring you back up to the top of the run, and they provide sleds and helmets (although there are a lot less helmets than there are sleds -- I decided not to wait around for a helmet, since they probably wouldn't have had one that fit me.

Anyway, that was the first and probably last time I ever go sledding wearing capri pants (well, maybe clam diggers is more accurate). I only brought two pairs of trousers on the trip, khakis and my orangey-red nylon pants. I went with shorter nylon pants over the longer khakis, and that was a good choice because they dried out really fast, but still not exactly ideal because in slowing myself down I kicked up a lot of snow, half of which went right up my trouser leg. Next time I will bring long quick-drying pants.

Anyway, I spent an hour or two up on Titlis (by the way, Mt. Titlis is called Mt. Titlis for the same reason the Grand Tetons are called the Grand Tetons, but I never really saw the actual mountain except for a brief glimpse from the train, so I don't know striking the resemblance is).

Then I went back to Lucerne and went to a museum of modern art, the Rosengart Collection. This is one of those very personal museums, where all the art was collected by one family. There are over 100 works by Klee on the lowest floor, all arranged chronicologically. "Little X", which is a really cute little painting, is "Angela Rosengart's first Klee", which she bought when she was 16. This museum also had by far the best English-language exhibit interpretation booklet that I encountered while I was in Switzerland. I liked this place!

Then I went to the Jesuit Church, which is from the Counter-Reformation and very big and grand and Rococo.

In one of my guidebooks it says that this is actually a toned-down version of the way the church originally looked. In which case you can kind of start to get a feeling for where the Reformation people were coming from, jeez, lay off the decorations a little, guys.

Here's another last picture of Lucerne, of the Chapel Bridge, which was partially burned down in the 90s but rebuilt:

Anyway, I will probably do one more entry about my trip once I get home or possibly on the way home today, but this will be my last entry from Switzerland. I've had a great time.

Lucerne

2008-08-18T12:20:00.001-07:00

(This is my second post in a fairly short period of time, so scroll down if you don't want to miss anything.)

So, Lucerne. I like Lucerne a lot! I would definitely come back here. Here is the famous lion sculpture of Lucerne:

It's a monument to the Swiss mercenary soldiers who died protecting the French royalty during the French Revolution. It's really big. It's a lion. The end!

Another famous feature of Lucerne are its wooden covered bridges. This is the Mill Bridge, I think. There are paintings in the middle of all the supports for the bridges. I like this one with the dancing skeletons:

There's a lot of stuff in the dancing-skeleton sort of vein. I believe all the paintings have skeletons in them somewhere (I read that somewhere and certainly in the ones I looked at there were skeletons), to remind people of their eventual demise. Cheery! Most of the skeletons are just sort of off to the side, leering and waiting.

The river water flows very fast to one side of the bridge because of a complicated kind of dam, and there was a guy surfing in sort of rapids there:

He seemed likely to meet his eventual demise sooner rather than later. Maybe he needs to take a hard look at those skeleton pictures.

Another cool thing in Lucerne is that many of the buildings in the old town have these murals on them, like this:

And this:

Pretty!

Also, I bought some souvenirs at the oldest giftshop in town:

Whee! Actually, it was not really a very good giftshop. There is a lot of Switzerland-themed crap in the world, my friends. I did end up buying a little of it.

That was all yesterday evening; today I took a really cool trip to the summit of Mt. Titlis, which I will write about in a separate entry which might not get posted until I am home. Which means tomorrow night, just a little over 24 hours from now. Sadness!

Basel and Fortress Furigen

2008-08-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

So, I spent a day in Basel, then came to Lucerne. Basel was OK, with lots of classy museums, and I like Lucerne a lot. Here is the view from my hotel room window:

Later, there was a rainbow!

Anyway, Basel. The most impressive thing in Basel I didn't take any pictures of (I was a little burnt out on picture-taking after Lauterbrunnen); it's the Barfüsserkirche, the church where they have their city history museum. The impressive thing about it is that during the Reformation, the church was completely gutted, and all of the decorations and things were destroyed. I guess when you are radically changing your religion you can't just have a sale and hand off all your old saints' statues to someone else who isn't so into Reforming. It wasn't even used as a church for most of the last 400 years (they used it for storage and things, and as recently as 50 or 60 years ago they were going to tear it down to build a school). Anyway, the nave of the church (and it's quite a large church) is now filled with religious art that was mostly rescued from other Swiss churches; there may have been a few pieces that were original to that particular church, but I think basically everything from that church was destroyed.

I mean, obviously I learned about the Reformation in school, but imagining that big huge church being used as a grain store, and seeing examples of the kinds of treasures that were destroyed and can never be recovered was illuminating. And because it's All About Me, I also couldn't help but think about how less than a hundred years after that church was... well, let's say "renovated", people were getting on boats to America bringing practically nothing with them so that they could build a properly austere and God-fearing society in the place where I live now.

There are a lot of museums in Basel. I think I only visited three. I meant to visit a couple more, but then I couldn't find one of them, and I just got museumed-out after a while. The Natural History museum was pretty good, with a dodo and a quagga and a nice little mammoth exhibit with lots of skulls. Also they had a model of the Hobbit skull, Homo floresiensis, in their human evolution exhibit.

I also really like what they did with the little pictures of what the different hominids ate and what kinds of tools and things they had. Also there was a very cool exhibit with a colony of leaf-cutter ants! I think we should get one of those at the Museum of Science.

They had almost no English or French label copy, though, so I didn't really get to learn much that I didn't know already. This is one of the reasons I liked the little pictures of what the hominids ate.

Then I came to Lucerne by way of the Fortress Fürigen military museum. This is one of several fortresses that the Swiss constructed during WWII when Switzerland was surrounded by Nazi-occupied territory. The idea was to be able to defend the North-South route that runs near Lucerne and to be able to cut off the country (or at least the middle of the country) entirely if necessary. It was a dramatic illustration of the concept of "armed neutrality". The fortress is dug right into this cliff (the very unobtrusive entrance is not in this photo, but I don't know that it would show -- I nearly walked right by it):

Inside:

There are all sorts of machine-gun and other bigger kinds of guns, and ammunition for them. In the 60s they also installed anti-radiation air filters and things. The fortress was only decommissioned in the 80s, I think.

I'm no military buff and I didn't properly appreciate most of the stuff in there (and I didn't really stay all that long, either), but just its existence was eye-opening. Something like 150 soldiers plus officers and things would stay in the fortress. It's very compact and space-efficient, almost like a submarine. It's also cold and wet and filled with dehumidifiers.

I'll do another entry on Lucerne and the exciting place where I am going today tonight.

The Schilthorn and more Bernese Oberland

2008-08-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

So, the Jungfrau area continued to be incredibly picturesque and lovely. I had to leave today and I wish I had arranged things so that I could stay longer. I could have stayed a week, easily, and I suspect that even though I have four more days to my trip, the Bernese Oberland is going to stay the highlight.

I mean really:

Yesterday I didn't do any more hiking, partly because (grossness alert) my wool hiking socks had given me some kind of nasty rash on my ankles, and I didn't want to wear socks. Instead I took the cable car up to the top of the Schilthorn. It was cloudy in Gimmelwald, but the cable car went right through the cloud:

At the top of the Schilthorn is an observation terrace, a gift shop, and a revolving restaurant. The view was like nothing I have ever seen. The clouds were still down in the valley below us (we came out of the clouds a bit before Birg, which is at something like 2500 meters above sea level, and the restaurant is at 2900+ meters), so only the tops of the mountains popped out of the clouds. It was unreal. The Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau, in the top picture, are the real stars, but there are loads of other mountains that you can see right up close from there. It was amazing.

Also, kind of hilariously, there is the aforementioned revolving restaurant, which I did not visit, and the tacky gift shop, called Top-Shop, and tons of James Bond-associated stuff, because several scenes from On Her Majesty's Secret Service were filmed there. And you can watch them, in the Touristorama! Taken out of context, and given that it was not perhaps the best of the Bond films, it all looks pretty cheesy, but Diana Rigg is the main Bond Girl, so it's not all bad.

Hee!

Oh, but that was not my whole day, folks! I took the cable car all the way back down to the valley and I went to Trümmelbach Falls, which is where all the water from the glaciers on the Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau goes. There are 10 waterfalls inside these cliffs. It was hard to get a good photo because it's all inside and very wet, but I tried:

This place was amazing -- you can really see how the water is carving out the rock, slowing but surely. All of the water in the rivers and lakes is different milky colors as a result of the rock that's suspended in the water. Amazing.

I'm a huge geek, of course, so I can't help but think about and be amazed by the natural processes that have made and shaped (and continue to shape) these mountains. I'm no geologist, but even with my little bit of eighth-grade Earth Science and assorted facts picked up from working at the science museum, I look at these mountains and think about the plate tectonics that shoved them up in the first place, the glaciers that shoved all of the topsoil off of them, the forces of water and weather that are wearing them down right this very minute (according to Wikipedia, they're still being shoved up, but they're being eroded at about the same rate as they're growing). It's like being able to see time.

Anyway, today I left the mountains. I stopped off in Interlaken for a bit. Interlaken reminds me of Virginia Beach somehow. Lots of souvenir shops and hotels. Also there are places where you can book all kinds of trips and adventure sports things, which would probably be fun, but all I really saw was the souvenir shops. Oh, also a museum about the history of tourism in the Jungfrau region, which was kind of cute and kind of depressing in that small-museum way. Also I banged my shin on one of the sedan-chair kinds of things they had there.

Now I'm in Basel. I'm going to spend tomorrow looking at Art and other things in museums, then head to Central Switzerland and Luzern, then home! I'm equal parts sad to be going and happy that I'll be back in my own bed and not living out of a suitcase and I'm quite looking forward to having TiVo again (this is the first place I've stayed on this trip with a TV in the room, but even here the only English-language channels are CNN and BBC Prime (which I think might be even worse than BBC America, although maybe that's just because I get to use my TiVo on BBC America and filter out the worst of it) and I've been watching a bit of the English-language channels and some of the Olympics on one of the French channels). I'm not quite homesick, but I have listened to the latest episodes of Car Talk and This American Life today, and I checked up on what the Red Sox have been up to.

So that's a good way to feel, I think, as I get to the end of my vacation. Can't say I'm looking forward to going back to work, but perhaps this break will have given me a new perspective on my job and it will all seem exciting and wonderful when I get back. Could happen!

Bernese Oberland

2008-08-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

Dang, I am tired. Today I hiked most of the way from Grindelwald in the next valley over from where I am staying in the Lauterbrunnental up to the Kleine Scheidegg, which is this high mountain pass, then on over to Wengen, which is across the valley from the village where I'm staying.

I took so many pictures today. I was hiking for almost six hours! I needed a lot of rest breaks!

Here's the restaurant where I ate lunch -- that's the North Face of the Eiger in the background.

After lunch, I realized I was starting to get a blister on my heel, so I took the train from Alpiglen (where the restaurant is) to Kleine Scheidegg. One of the nice things about this hike is that it roughly parallels a narrow-gauge cog railway, so there are lots of bailout points. I bailed out at Alpiglen. But then in Kleine Scheidegg, I bought some blister dealies, and I put them on, and I felt good! And I had just skipped a few hundred meters of climbing by taking the train, and it was all downhill from there, so I kept going, down to Wengen, where I bailed out once again. So convenient!

Anyway, the place where I am staying is in a village called Gimmelwald, which is just below Murren. You have to take a cable car to get there. Yesterday it rained most of the day and when we got up into the town we were basically in a cloud. It was very cool, but hard to photograph.

This morning when I woke up this is what I saw out of my bedroom window:

I went back to sleep because it was early, and when I woke up properly the clouds had come back in, so I was glad to have taken it when I did.

OK, now there is more that I would like to post but I am so exhausted I just have to stop. I did put a ton of pictures up on Flickr (too many -- I will edit them down later) -- you can get there from the badge on the right-hand side of the blog.

Bern and Murten

2008-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

So, tonight I will spend my third night in Bern. Three nights was probably a little too long, especially since one of the days was a Sunday (when all the shops are closed) and another day was a Monday (when all of the museums are closed), and it has been raining a bit this afternoon. Still, Bern is a very beautiful city. Let me show you it:

View from a bridge.

Swiss National Bank -- gold on the inside, but still plenty of geraniums on the outside.

Parliament building -- under renovation. The wet plaza in front is a nice multi-jet fountain that children were playing in.

One of Bern's many lovely, wide, nearly traffic-free streets, I think Kramgasse.

After I checked into my hotel on Saturday evening, I tooled around the city for a bit. There was a festival going on called Buskers Bern, and there were musicians and performers from all over the world doing their thing out in the streets of the old town (which are these big, wide streets with covered arcades at the sides so you can stay out of the sun or rain while you're walking around). I wandered around and watched some of the acts, including these guys, who were I believe a Swiss Klezmer band.

I mean, they were definitely a klezmer band, and I think they were Swiss.

Plus there were all kinds of food vendors, yum. I got churros and tempura shrimp and a beer. I mostly just got the beer because I love the novelty of being able to drink beer in the street! Another cool peripheral point: they served the food and drinks in plastic cups and plates and things, and you paid a 2 SF deposit for them. Then you could bring your plate or cup back and either get a refill or get your deposit back. Cool system.

Oh, another random thing I like about Switzerland: strawberries are currently in season here. YUM. I spend a lot of money on local strawberries during strawberry season at home, and I am splurging on strawberries almost every time I go to a supermarket here.

I also went to the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, which is an art museum and cultural center dedicated to the art and teachings of Paul Klee. I ended up spending the whole morning in the special collections and never making it to the permanent collection at all. Excellent place. I got an audioguide that was just music that someone had picked out to go with different pieces in the exhibit.

They offer lots of classes for kids there, too, in these beautiful studios:

On the way back I swung by the bear pits, where there are two bears who are I guess you would say the mascots of Bern. I neglected to take a picture of them, but it was basically a big pit with a bear in it (well, two bears, but I could only see one) and some greenery and things. Apparently the bears are quite old and when they die the pit is going to be redone and made more like a proper zoo kind of thing.

After lunch I went to the Bern fine arts museum, which was OK. Most of the museum was currently devoted to a huge exhibit of the work of Ferdinand Hodler, which I was mostly not crazy about. Apparently he is the most famous Swiss painter of the 19th century. He was a Symbolist. The rest of the museum was stuff from the regular collection kind of arranged in thematic groups. They had several of William Wegman's video pieces on display, which was kind of fun, although the quality of the videos was approximately the same as on YouTube. Also there were no English labels on anything, or even French on most things, and there were boxes that said they had English-language guides in them but actually they were in German. There were some French-language guides sheets though, and I was mostly able to understand them.

Oh, also, I had a bit of a luggage mix-up. I had intended to check my large bag through from Zermatt to Bern, and only bring a small bag to Lausanne. Unfortunately I did it wrong, and my bag just sat around in the left-luggage office in Zermatt for a few days, until I went to try to pick it up. The people at the Bern train station were very helpful and I got my bag the next day. Whew. I was pretty calm about it, though; I figured, absolute worst-case scenario, I have to go back to Zermatt to pick it up. Which would be an annoyance and a waste of time, but I would survive.

So, this morning, since I was once again in possession of all my clothes, I did laundry. Fun! Then I went to Murten, which is an old little town on a lake. Lake Murten, possibly. It has two churches and a library and lots of tea shops (with alcohol and without alcohol, they are labeled on the outside). I visited the churches, which are pretty stark and post-Reformation-y and walked around the ramparts, which give you a great view of the surrounding countryside and of the town inside the walls. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of the countryside, but here are the roofs in the town:

I thought about taking one of the lake boats across to Neuchatel and then taking the train back to Bern, but it started to rain so I ditched that plan.

Anyway, plan for this evening includes more wandering around Bern. Tomorrow I am heading up into the mountains again, to the Lauterbrunnen Valley. Hiking will ensue! Which means lots more photos because photos give you a good excuse to stop and rest while you're hiking.

Lausanne and Gruyeres

2008-08-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

So, when last I wrote, I was on the train from Zermatt to Lausanne.

On the way to Lausanne I stopped in Montreux, and walked to the Chateau de Chillon, which my guidebook said was "a one mile hike" from Montreux. It looked significantly more than one mile away (Montreux and the Chateau de Chillon are both on Lake Geneva, and you can see the Chateau from the shore at Montreux), but it didn't look too far to walk, so I figured what the hey. It took me about 45 minutes, which means either that I was seriously off my usual walking pace or it was a little under three miles. This makes me suspect that the guidebook meant to say "a one hour hike". That is a different thing. But regardless of how far it was, I walked all the way there and, for some reason, all the way back, even though I could have taken a tram or bus or a boat or something. Anyway: Chateau de Chillon = well worth the walk.

I had this book when I was in probably late elementary school, Castle by David Macaulay (it was award-winning and very popular, maybe you remember it too, and he wrote others about pyramids and cathedrals and things), all about how Medieval castles were built and stuff. And this castle was just like the castle in the book! Albeit less square and more adjacent to a lake. It was very cool.

The castle was built a long, long time ago, in the 12th century I think, and was used and occupied by various rulers and things, and then in the late 19th century it was excavated and restored. Because the restoration began so long ago, some of the restorations are kind of like little artifacts of what people of the 19th century thought castles should be like, which is interesting in itself I think.

According to my map, there are four courtyards, but I could not tell them apart and kept getting confused. The castle is much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside! Here's one of the courtyards:

Also a lot of the walls are painted, though most of the painting was, I believe, 19th-century recreations of the original paintings. I don't know if the restorers painted them to look old, or if they just deteriorated really fast, but this is what they look like:

Since this has been a tourist attraction since at least the early part of the 19th century (before it started to get restored), there is a lot of graffiti, most of it quite old. Here is Byron's name carved into a column! (It's covered with glass so that other people won't graffiti over his graffiti.)

If anyone out there is writing a historical novel set in the early 19th century, please have one of your characters carve his or her name into something ancient that a modern person would be horrified at the idea of carving their name into. I have a soft spot for 19th-century graffiti.

Then I went on to Lausanne, where I took no pictures for some reason. Lausanne is very pretty, but very steep. Also, since I didn't get there until lateish, having stopped at Chillon, most everything was closed. I ended up walking around with this Italian guy, Alessandro, and talking his ear off about various things. He recommended that I visit Gruyères, which I did.

I think Gruyères was probably a mistake; it would have been better to spend the day in Lausanne. I did spend the morning in Lausanne and went to the Olympic Museum, which was interesting since they had a lot of stuff on about the Beijing games. When I arrived there was a pickup Tai Chi class going on on the plaza out front:

No photos allowed inside the museum, and some of the coolest stuff was missing because it was on display in Beijing, but it was pretty cool, if a little overly-sunny about how great a place China is. I thought some of the stuff about the 1948 London games was interesting -- since it was right after WWII they didn't build any new stadiums or athletes' villages or anything, they just held it in existing facilities, and the athletes stayed in hotels and dorms and things. Kind of nice, really, given how excessive the preparations for the Olympics can get.

Anyhow, then I went on to Gruyères. Here is what was wrong with Gruyères:

Oh my holy pete was it crowded.

Also it was at the top of a hill, and no lift or funicular or bus or anything.

And there were no luggage lockers at the station, so I carried my backpack all the way up (my medium-sized backpack, not my all-my-stuff-in-it backpack, but still, it was heavy). (I think there may have been a left-luggage office there, but I didn't see it until I came back, so a lot of good that did me.)

There was something going on there while I was there, although I don't know if it was a special day or just Saturday. There were musical demonstrations, and traditional dancing demonstrations, and you could try out alpenhorns and cowbells:

So that was kind of fun, although I did not try them out. Also, in front of all the restaurants were tables full of free cheese samples! Actually, I am not 100% sure that they were free samples, but I had some and no one charged me for them or told me off for cheese-thievery, so I guess it was cool.

There is also a castle in Gruyères, which was pretty boring after Chillon the day before, although it did have a nice view:

Then after I hiked back down from Gruyères (on the one hand, it would be nice if there was some kind of public transport up to the town, but on the other hand, that would surely attract even more people to the town, yikes), I stopped at the cheese factory/shop near the train station. They have a cheese-curing robot!

The robot goes up and down the aisle and... picks up the cheese? And moves it around? OK, actually I'm not entirely sure what the robot does. I did not take the tour to see more of the cheese-making process, because I was ready to say goodbye to Gruyères, but I bought some, and I ate some of it for dinner. I have to say that whatever that robot is doing, I approve of it heartily, because that cheese was yummy.

From Gruyères I went on to Bern, where I am now, and which I will write a separate entry about. Today is Sunday and most things are closed and there don't seem to be any non-prohibitively-expensive concerts going on or anything, so I have been chilling out in my hotel room and catching up on the internet. For way too long, actually!

Zermatt with Pictures

2008-08-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today I am taking the train from Zermatt to Lausanne. I'm writing this on the train, and I'll post it when I get to Lausanne. With pictures, at last!

A little bit more about the hike I took yesterday. I took an underground funicular from Zermatt up to a place called Sunegga, where I believe you can ski in the winter. I have no pictures of the underground funicular, which was ugly and cold but only took five or ten minutes. At the top there is a little place where you can get lunch and sit and enjoy the view:

There is a tiny lake called the Leisee right near the Sunegga funicular, and people were picknicking there:

The view is not bad.

Then I went uphill for a while, along very pretty somewhat skinny paths:

After a while, I came to a slightly larger lake called the Grindjisee:

I took a photo of a very nice Japanese couple and they took one of me in return. We had almost the same camera, except theirs was smaller than mine and didn't have as long of a zoom. Note my extremely sexy flip-up sunglasses, which were almost as useless as they were ugly. I forgot to bring on my hideous-but-effective clip-ons from home, so I bought these in Zermatt, because it was incredibly sunny. I am so getting prescription sunglasses next time I get my eyes checked.

A little while after the Grindjisee I ran into two guys and a dog, and they asked whether I was hiking down to Zermatt, and I said no, Riffelalp, but maybe on to Zermatt from Riffelalp, and they said that it was going to rain in a couple of hours. It was starting to look threatening, and it was getting quite a bit colder:

Actually, it didn't wait a couple of hours to start raining; it started raining almost immediately. Fortunately I had been a good hiker and packed rain gear even though it was blindingly sunny when I left. But there aren't many pictures from the second part of the hike because I didn't want to get my camer wet.

I had been planning on taking the cog railway down from Riffelalp back to Zermatt, but I got there just as one was leaving. I knew it would be 20 minutes before the next one came, and there was a signpost for a footpath down to Zermatt that said it would take 55 minutes, and it had stopped raining and I felt good, so I thought, "Why not?" Alas, the reason it theoretically only took 55 minutes to get to Zermatt via that path was because it was really, really steep. My knees and hamstrings were sad by the time I got down (in rather more than 55 minutes). It was pretty, though, zig-zagging down through a larch forest.

Also I failed to take into account that "Zermatt" wasn't going to mean "Kyle's Hotel in Zermatt", so I still had a bit of a walk up from the ski lift end of town once I got down from the mountain. All in all I ascended maybe a couple of hundred meters and then descended over a thousand. If I had thought it through beforehand and realized that 1200 meters is almost 4000 feet, I think I would have taken the cog railway! Still, the whole thing took only about four hours, including the funicular and lunch and lots and lots of photos (there are more over on Flickr).

Once I got back to my hotel it started to rain in earnest. There was thunder and heavy rain from about 3:30 to maybe 5 o'clock, and then at night there was a nice electrical storm with lightning and everything. The thunder sounded incredible, echoing off all the mountains. This morning it was cold -- 10°C when I saw a thermometer, and I that was around 9:30 and it had already warmed up a bit.

Each morning in July and August, a group of kids walks a little herd of goats right down the middle of the street on their way to pasture somewhere. I happened to catch this on my first morning in Zermatt, but I had just run out to buy some bread for lunch and I hadn't brought my camera (moral: always carry your camera). So this morning I was determined to catch them, and when I heard the goat bells while I was at breakfast in my hotel, I finished off my coffee and dashed outside to take a photo.

There was one teenage girl and a few younger kids herding the goats, who are these very dramatic-looking black and white goats which are apparently only found in the Valais. The teenage girl made me think of (my cousin) Margaret lobstering -- teenagers doing picturesque "traditional" work in a place where people are on vacation.

Speaking of touristy, Zermatt is possibly one of the most touristy places I have ever been, but I really liked it anyway. It actually reminded me of Disneyworld in a way, in that it's totally unapologetically tourist-oriented, but that's what you go there for and it's done so well you would feel like kind of a jerk if you got annoyed about it. I am sorry to be leaving, but I didn't want to stay another night and I didn't want to go on another hike without a hotel to shower at afterwards! So, onward to Lausanne, and then to Bern.

This is what I saw almost from the front door of my hotel in Zermatt the first night:

Daaaaaang!

2008-08-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

The thing I am finding about Switzerland is that it is so universally picturesque that once you get your camera out it's hard to put it away. Yesterday I took the train to Zermatt from Chur, which was great, but long. It is called the Glacier Express but it actually doesn't go very fast at all. But due to being overwhelmed with picturesqueness I think I took maybe two pictures over the course of six highly picturesque hours.

Today I rode a funicular up to Sunegga and hiked around to Riffelalp, which is one of the "easy" hikes in Lonely Planet's book Walking in Switzerland. It was a good hike. It was pretty steep (up) at first, but the view of the Matterhorn is so unbelievable there's always a good reason to stop and take a picture and catch your breath. The second half was a nice gentle downhill. It was bright and sunny most of the way, but it started to rain a bit towards the end. Then when I got to Riffelalp, the cog train that I was planning to take down was just leaving, and there was a sign that said, "Zermatt, 55 min", so I thought, why not just walk down? That was a mistake. It was very steep. My knees are sad now. It didn't take much more than 55 minutes, but that was a loooong 55 minutes.

Still no photos -- I took lots of pictures today, and I found my memory card reader, but I can't put it into this computer. Hopefully I will have WiFi again soon. Also, then I'll be able to use my laptop's nice American keyboard where all the keys are just where I expect them to be.

A quick story from the train yesterday. Warning! Contains bad language! There was a family sitting across the aisle from me, parents, two kids (a girl of about 9 and a boy maybe 12 or 13), and grandmother. The man and the grandmother appeared to be American, but the nuclear family clearly lived in Switzerland. They were mostly speaking English, since the grandmother didn't speak much German. The kids were getting seriously antsy by the end -- unsurprising, since they'd gotten on in St. Moritz, two hours before me -- but they were pretty entertaining on the whole. The little girl especially cracked me up, because she kept swearing in English. She said, "Shit!" once, and "Jesus Christ" a couple of times (she kept losing to her brother at Connect 4), which clearly offended the grandmother. Then she said, "Oh my gosh!" and apologized, then said to the father, "I learned it from you!" I guess it is especially dangerous to swear around your children if it's not in the native language of their peers, because it's much harder to claim they picked it up at school or something. Also apparently they can get the wrong idea about how offensive different swear words are.

Sleepy in Chur

2008-08-06T01:07:00.000-07:00

Well, I have safely arrived in and found an un-locked-down WiFi spot in Switzerland! I am not exactly sure what the rules about using other people's WiFi are here, but I'm not sure what they are at home either so I won't let it worry me too much. I have to sit right in the window of my hotel room to get it to work, but it's a very nice window so I'm not overly bothered, except the radiator digs into my knees a bit.

I had a fairly miserable flight from Boston to Paris -- my seat was next to the galley, and it was loud and bright all night long. I will definitely be checking Seat Guru or something similar for the way home. Also somehow my seat contrived to be even more uncomfortable than most airplane seats, AND my feet swelled up to the point where I nearly couldn't get my shoes back on after we landed. But enough whining! I did actually get some sleep, and many thanks to my lovely roommate for the loan of the fancy noise-cancelling headphones, which did help, although I swear it was the loudest plane I have ever been on in my life.

The flight from Paris to Zurich was fine, although I was momentarily worried when I couldn't find the gate -- it was one of those little downstairs deals where you take a bus to the plane, which is how I got confused. I had three whole seat to myself, though, which was fabulously luxurious. When we arrived, we had to get on another little bus, which took us about 100 yards to the terminal. It's cool how different the farmland around Zurich looks from the farmland around Paris. And of course I'm used to flying out of Boston and DC and New York and things where there is no noticeable farmland around the city at all. I remember flying out of Denver, where the farms are these huge round fields (something to do with irrigation? someone explained this to me once but apparently I forgot). Mexico City was the most amazing city I've ever flown into, because it seemed like you were flying over the actual city for an hour before you actually got there. It is incredibly huge.

Now I'm in Chur, which is a charming place that I have seen very little of -- yesterday I was a sleep-deprived zombie (I also spent a couple of hours walking around Zurich yesterday, which is now just a blur -- I probably would have been better off lying down on a park bench and taking a nap), and I have spent most of the time I've been here asleep.

No pictures yet, because I don't know where I put my memory card reader, although I am very nearly sure I packed it. But today I am taking the Glacier Express to Zermatt, so I will have lots of pictures soon, I'm sure!

Another blog...

2008-07-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

I am going to Switzerland next week, and my grandmother (a longtime fan of Switzerland) wrote "Will you want to send any dispatches home?? or are you just gonna drop out on vacation?" and that made up my mind: I would start a travel blog. I figure I'll at least have one reader (Hi Grammie!) and anyway, I just like writing about things. I'll try to use this blog for future trips, and maybe even write about day and weekend trips here as well.

I'll be on my own for this trip -- I don't have any plans to meet up with anyone at all, which is a little different from previous solo trips I've taken where I've had a few people to stop and have dinner with and things. I could conceivably go all introverted and not talk to anyone beyond the bare necessities for two full weeks, but I'm hoping that my extroverted side comes out enough for me to meet some new people and have some fun (I'm willing to have fun without meeting new people too, if necessary).

Right now I'm deciding what to pack, and what I still need to buy, and whether I have time to get a haircut before I leave on Tuesday (I've been complaining that my hair has been growing faster than usual, but now that I think about it I haven't had a haircut since April -- that could be part of the problem). I'm also trying to get some work things squared away -- I thought this would be a good time to take off, since there are no classes and the library is basically empty (there's hardly any work to be done at all) but I hadn't taken into account the fact that there would hardly be any students around to work, and scheduling people to cover is proving a bit more difficult than I expected (even though they won't actually have to do much in the way of work), but I think it will all work out. Fingers crossed!

Completed socks, and a pay it forward meme (aka FREE STUFF!)

2008-06-14T03:57:00.000-07:00

I have finished the Jojoland Melody socks, and my fears about their not matching and my consolation that they would probably at least "go" have both been realized.

Look how very nicely they go together!

Aaaaaaand look how they don't actually really match so much!

It's all good, though.

Unfortunately my "on-deck" socks are not working out. I'm trying to knit Catherine, but it's coming out much too big, even down on 000s, and the pattern repeat is so long that I'm not seeing an easy way to modify the pattern to be smaller. I may try these again some day with another yarn (I'm using Cherry Tree Hill Supersock), because it's a pretty and simple pattern. But it is not the sock for me right now -- I've knitted the first couple of inches twice and there's just no way.

Now, I believe I may have mentioned FREE STUFF in the title.

Here is how the handmade Pay It Forward works (modified from other blogs):

I will send a handmade gift to 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange.* I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

I came across this idea on Mary Jane's blog. It's fun!

*First three people who comment on the blog, OR three people chosen at random from people who comment before I go to bed on Tuesday night, in case this is vastly more popular than I expect.

My semi-annual update.

2008-06-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

Well this is about the worst blog in the world, isn't it?

I have actually been knitting! I made a Shedir for my sister's birthday, which came out nice. It's in Rowan Felted Tweed. I didn't take any photos of it. Maybe sometime next winter my sister will wear it and I can get a photo then.

I'm also working on a pair of Froot Loop socks, in Jojoland Melody.

I am just about to start the heel flap on the second sock (pictures soon, perhaps), and here is the thing about Jojoland Melody: it is very variegated. Or not so much variegated as self-striping. OK, it's a three-ply yarn and the color of each of the plies changes at different points in the yarn. It's kind of like if you plied three slightly different colors of Noro together. And the way it looks and the way it shades, I like it very much. However, these socks are not going to match in any conventional sense of the word "match". The colors are quite different from each other. I tried to find an end that would be in a relatively similar place in the color to where I started, but alas I could not. Still, even if the socks don't match, I think they will go, which is fine. You hardly even see my socks anyways, since usually when I am wearing wool socks I am also wearing long pants and clogs.

I am also working on the Sapporo Norwegian ski sweater. Here's a not-that recent photo:

Imagine that with about eight more inches of red stockinette, and you will know what it looks like now. This was actually take two -- I knitted a couple of inches before I realized that it was twisted. Curse you, twisted knitting! That made me very very angry, in a silent rageful kind of way.

This sweater has been my baseball knitting, although the sweater is getting bulkier and more lap-filling just as the weather gets hotter, and I'm afraid that as it gets a bit more complicated (I am just about ready to start the colorwork) it may be a little less mindless. So I may have to set it down until September or take it someplace air conditioned to work on it. Or I could just work on the socks more.

I do have another pair of socks on deck -- I have some great red Cherry Tree Hill something or other that I'm looking forward to using. Actually I just have a lot of sock yarn, period. And socks are great for summer. Right now I'm trying to decide what sock or socks I should take on the 2-week trip to Switzerland I'll be taking in August. Lots of train and mountain knitting!

Belated holiday roundup, cat sweaters, and the tiniest circulars ever...

2008-01-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas (or holiday of your choice) from the Korknisse! These guys were great fun to make -- they took maybe a half-hour each. The pattern is available in English, Dutch, and Norwegian, but really you can just cast on say 12-20 stitches on small needles and knit around in 1x1 rib until you have an inch or so for a sweater, then cast on the same number of stitches for the hat and start decreasing after a couple of rows. They were a big hit with my family, too -- I made them as last-minute gifts.

My roommate's cat Darwin does not wish to share any holiday wishes, but rather would like to tell you to stop making him wear freaking baby sweaters:

Her other cat, Watson, was marginally more sanguine about it:

The sweater is the 5 Hour Baby Sweater in leftover Wool-Ease. I knitted it several years ago and never even sewed up the arm seams (which made it easier to put on the cats).

As a little after-Christmas not-really-present for myself, I ordered some very tiny circular needles so that I could get to work on my Norwegian ski sweater. Check it out:

I cannot even deal with how tiny these are! They are size 0000. I don't know that I'll actually need to use them, but I got them sort of as insurance in case my knitting gets too loose for 00s and 000s. They're HiyaHiyas, and I haven't knitted with them yet but the join feels really nice and they're fairly inexpensive -- $7.50 each, I think, from The KnittingZone, who also had free shipping for orders over $50 (and, well, you can always use a couple of extra skeins of sock yarn to pull your total up to $50). And the shipping was fast!

So I should be casting on for the Sapporo soon. I can't remember the last time I made a sweater. I don't have any sweaters that I've made -- they've all gone to Goodwill. But I'm surely a much smarter knitter than I was the last time I tried, and I'm knitting it in the yarn that's suggested in the pattern and everything. It should be quite straightforward.

On a less ominous note, here are the Christmas presents I knitted this (last!) year:

For my mom, a Palindrome scarf for my mom, in Cascade 220 superwash:

I think maybe I need to make myself a light box or something if I want to photograph my knitting -- I'm only home for about 1 hour of sunlight a day, and the angle it comes in through the window is very inconvenient for photography. Suffice it to say, the scarf does not actually glow in person.

This scarf is completely reversible, which I thought made it great for my mom who is very classy in her dress and generally not a huge fan of things that look homemade. I think this was a nice "handmade, not homemade" present, and she seemed to like it a lot.

For my stepmother, an entirely different scarf, from the What-Not-Scarf pattern:

Another terrible picture, I know. At least the korknisse look cute! This is in Manos del Uruguay in a very nice autumnal colorway. It's probably about eight feet long. Another successful gift -- she put it on when she took the dog out on Christmas afternoon!

For my not-exactly-step sister, Dashing mitts in Berroco Pure Merino, a very nice superwash yarn that I will be using again for sure (very soft and squishy -- hopefully it doesn't pill up too much):

These seemed to be well-received. The kids are wearing those kinds of things these days, aren't they?

My most disappointing gift was this hat for my father:

The pattern is Spiral Hat (PDF) by Bethany Kok. I found the twisted stitches very hard on my wrists, at least with the yarn I was using (Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran, which is pretty and has great subtle complex color but which I probably won't buy again). Anyway, this hat is like the definition of "Meh" the pattern doesn't show off the pretty subtleties of the yarn, and I had to wear a wrist brace to finish it.

The happ-happiest season of all.

2007-12-02T15:56:00.000-08:00

I am usually not much of a giver of knitted gifts, but this year, for some reason, I've changed my mind and I am going to be knitting lots. Tonight I finally, finally finished a scarf for my dad's birthday (a week from today). The pattern is Henry, by Mareike Sattler, from the Fall '07 Knitty.

Here it is, blocking. The final result is nice, but Sweet Christmas, it is one time-consuming sonofabitch. I did the math, and it's something over 50,000 stitches. For a scarf. Really not worth it, even for a fast knitter like myself. The yarn is KnitPicks Gloss, a very reasonably-priced merino-silk blend that I highly recommend. I may be making myself a sweater out of it after the holidays.

I also started a second gift project yesterday, another Knitty pattern: Dashing armwarmers/fingerless gloves, by Cheryl Niamath. These knit up fast, and are super cute. I'm using Berroco Pure Merino (Aran weight), which is soft and very warm and a bit splitty but also machine washable -- I do like to avoid giving people non-machine washable gifts.

I'm doing small projects (hats, scarves, mitts) for all my immediate/nuclear family members. And I'm really glad I just wrote that because I just realized I don't have anything planned for my sister's fiance. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make another trip to the yarn store! Boo hoo.

Thankful for quick projects

2007-11-24T04:19:00.000-08:00

I checked weather.com a few minutes ago and it said it was 20°F -- ooh, I thought, not even two days after Thanksgiving and it's already winter. Then I check again and now it's down to 19°!

What I'm saying is, I'm really glad I made this hat on Thursday!

I go up to Maine for Thanksgiving at my grandparents', and that means a half-hour on the subway, a half-hour on the train, and an hour and a half in the car with my dad and stepmother and sisters each way -- prime knitting time, except for the return car trip which is in the dark. And somehow, the only project I'm working on right now is a scarf for my dad's birthday, so I couldn't bring that (it's Henry, and it's very nice, but I did the math and it's a freaking 50,000 stitch scarf -- what was I thinking?). I cast on for the hat on the subway (24 stitches, as opposed to 400-something for the freaking scarf) and I finished the knitting on the train on the way home. I hadn't realized how quick a project it would be, so I didn't have a yarn needle to graft it together at the end, so I had to finish that at home, otherwise I could have worn it for the subway ride (um, if it hadn't been over 50° out Thursday night).

The pattern is Urchin, from Knitty, by Ysolda. It's cuter than it looks in my photo. I used some handspun yarn that I bought off eBay five or six years ago and never really knew what to do with it. I wanted a big beret so that when I'm too lazy to dry my hair in the morning I can shove it in a hat and not freeze on the way to work -- most of my hats are close-fitting caps with no room for a bun. It didn't come out quite so big and poofy as I was hoping (my own fault -- I only brought one set of needles on the train and I probably should have gone up a size) but it's big enough to accommodate a bun or ponytail, and that's what I was going for. Plus, if I pluck out all my eyebrows and draw them back in with a pencil, I'll be able to blend in with my old Russian lady neighbors, many of whom sport kicky berets year-round.

World Champion Socks! Also, an impasse.

2007-10-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

So if you are the type of person who cares about such things, you will know that the Boston Red Sox just won the Worlds Series and so can officially be called the Best Team in Baseball! This was a really fun playoff season for me because I've probably paid more attention to baseball this season than ever before, and especially because I got to attend the first game of the world series through being lucky enough to have an awesome dad who is also lucky.

But I also feel like I deserved to be at that World Series game, because the Red Sox would never have gotten there without my lucky socks:

I bought the yarn for these socks just before the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years, back in 2004. Then the yarn kind of languished, half-knitted into a boring plain sock during the 2005 and 2006 seasons. I frogged that sock and started knitting these ones a day or two before the Red Sox home opening game, and posted about them on the day of said home opener. I finished them back in August while watching (on TV) a game in which the Red Sox pummelled the White Sox 11-1.

So clearly, they were lucky socks. I crammed them into my clogs (they're pretty bulky socks -- I'm thinking I need to get some bigger shoes for wearing with handknit socks) and wore them to the World Series game last Wednesday. The Red Sox dominated the game! I couldn't wear them during the second and third games on the series, but I had them with me anyway. And I proudly wore them on Sunday night, when the Red Sox finished off the Rockies. They're powerful socks! I'll be knitting another pair of fancy red socks next baseball season, if anyone wants to join me. White Sox fans and fans of any other potentially knitting-related teams are also welcome to join in.

I've started a Henry scarf. I've just about finished the second pattern repeat of seven, so that makes me more than a quarter of the way finished. I'm hoping to finish it in time to give it to my dad for his birthday at the beginning of December. Here's what it looks like now:

Nothing to set the world on fire, and very time consuming, but very nice too. The yarn is Gloss from Knitpicks, which is also very nice. I like it a lot. It's an easy pattern to memorize so long as you don't get bogged down with line numbers and things. I knit a lot of it this past week while watching baseball games.

I'm also trying to start the Dale of Norway sweater I've been wanting to do. I've got the yarn, but the trouble is I can't seem to knit small enough. I could buy new, smaller needles (we're talking size 00 and 000 circs, which are only made by one company anyhow), or I could try and train myself to knit tighter. I'm afraid if I tried to knit tighter, I would get less even gauge. I don't know. I may just suck it up and buy the tiny needles, though it hurts me to do it! And the yarn will split like a bastard. Alas!

Buy local!

2007-10-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

My roommate and I have been getting a veggie share through the rather excellent Stillman's Farm CSA, and we have been enjoying it immensely although sadly it's coming to a close. They also have a meat share that I've been sorely tempted by, but it's a little spendy and I'm trying to cut back on meat anyhow, so I've stayed away. I love the CSA concept though, especially in places like New England where farming is not all that lucrative.

So imagine my delight when I heard about the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm Yarn CSA! First of all, there's a Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm -- I had no idea. Second of all, goats on the beach:

Goats on the beach, y'all, goats on the beach!

I have been trying to confine my spending to the first weekend of the month* but I'm sorely tempted by this. On the one hand, I might get yarn that's not exactly what I would choose for myself, but hey, I never would have tried beets if I hadn't got them in the veggie share, so I'm not that frightened. I think I will wait until my appointed spendy time and buy it then if it's still available.

Oh, shares are $100 and they estimate you'll get around 10 skeins of yarn -- not cheap, but not ridiculous. Not Martha says the yarn is nice.

*Long story, but basically it's a way to keep my spending and consuming urges in check.

Hanami, and new directions

2007-10-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

So, Hanami is blocked at last:

The good:

OMG, the fabric is so lovely. The drape! The silkiness! And it is so lightweight and non-bulky!

It looks basically just as advertised -- the petal effect is absolutely charming.

My "mistakes" in the final dense-yarnover portion totally worked -- the effect is much more random-looking than in the pattern photo.

It's done!

The bad:

I blocked it out to a rectangle, but because of the relative tension of the middle (low-yarnover-density) section and the end (high-yarnover-density) sections, it was really hard to block so that the width stayed even top to bottom, and I wasn't comfortable with the amount of tugging I had to do.

It's not as big as it was supposed to be. This is largely my fault, but seriously, I'm unconvinced of the utility of gauge swatches for lace. Maybe this is just because I don't like to swatch. But still! A 10x10" square of lace doesn't act the same as a 19x70" rectangle. It just doesn't! And I don't know how I could have gotten the same number of stitches/inch in both ends and the middle.

It's a little itchy.

If I had it to make again, I'd do something different in the middle. Maybe I'd go up a needle size or two, maybe I'd even increase a few stitches at the beginning of the petal section (leave out a few decreases?). I really like the finished object (wore it to work today, even), but I wouldn't make it again as designed.

New things
So, I said I was going to learn myself to knit continental. And it's going pretty well -- I knit another Bzzz Hat with the yarn in my left hand almost the whole time. I'm also working on a simple 3x3 rib scarf in Noro Silk Garden. I love Noro yarns -- somehow they manage to make hot pink and acid green look like earth tones, and it is so cool. I'm going to start a Wisp out of the mohair-blend stuff I dyed a couple weeks back:

I want to see if I can handle decreases in continental. (I did not have fun with the decreases for the Bzzz Hat, but partly that's because I was doing them on two circs, which I don't really like but I was literally too lazy to go in the other room to get my dpns. I know.)

Today I made myself a needle wallet, because I was annoyed that I couldn't find all my 000 dpns. So hopefully this will help me hold onto my needles. I'm also going to get rid of some older Susan Bates aluminum needles, in case anyone wants them (I don't).

Coming soon
I think I'm going to try a Dale of Norway ski sweater. I really like the women's Sapporo pullover in the red and gold colorway, as seen here. I've been wanting to do a big colorwork project, and this seems like a really cool one. Now there's just the question of yarn -- I could make it in the recommended yarn (Daletta, by Dale obv.) but I could probably make it cheaper in something else. But I can't find any local shops that carry Daletta to see what would work for a substitution. If, say, I made it in a Knitpicks yarn, it might cost around $30-$40, as opposed to $80-$90 for the Daletta. Assuming there's a sensible yarn to substitute, which is hard to say when you've never seen the other yarn. I'm going to check A Good Yarn tomorrow and maybe call over to Woolcott to see if anyone can show me some Daletta.

And another thing
I never posted my finished Blackberry Mittens!

Bonus points to anyone who notices the slightly glaring error...

Big Day Off!

2007-09-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took the day off for no particular reason except I didn't feel like working anymore, and it was lovely. I did lots of creative things! Some of them involving knitting. but it says "craft" right in the subtitle so I will have no qualms about posting non-knitting content.

I made prints!

The apples are linoleum prints, and the pears are some kind of rubbery block printing material. The linoleum is a lot harder to cut, but I can get nicer detail with it, and the edges don't break off the way the rubbery stuff does. I haven't made prints in years. I really need to get new cutting tools, because apparently last time I used them I put them away wet, and now some of them are a little rusty and I suspect all of them are duller than they should be.

I love making prints. They are awesome. I think I might start a series of prints of microorganisms. Geeky crafty fun!

I also kept working on a dress I've been sewing up for a while. I already had the front, and yesterday I did the back and started work on the facing, which was confusing and made me stop because I was so confused. But I have an actual dress than can be put on now, albeit a dress that needs to be pinned at the shoulders.

This is basically a trial dress in inexpensive fabric to make sure that I can handle the pattern and that it looks OK on me. This pattern takes a lot of fabric, and I didn't want to practice on something nice. The pattern is "Vintage Vogue" V2903 -- I got it at one of those lovely JoAnn sales where all the patterns are $2-$4. It makes me look a bit broader than I would like, but partly that's just because I although I would like to look like a 1950's dress pattern illustration, my body dimensions, underwear choices, and posture are non-cooperative.

Knitting-wise, I finished the Hanami stole. It still needs to be blocked, though:

I tried to start blocking it last night, but it was too much work after a long day of craftiness. The middle is a lot skinnier than the ends, and I'm not sure the best way to overcome that. Also it is going to be smaller than it was supposed to be, even blocked (checked gauge at the beginning, where it was wider than it is in the stockinette section in the middle -- I probably should have only gone down one needle size rather than two. But it will still be cool I think. I wish I had blocking wires -- I think I'm going to get some soon.

I made a couple of little changes to this pattern -- I left off the beads, and I deliberately messed up the final part of the pattern. The number of "petals" gradually increases until the end of the shawl, when there are 32 rows of yarnover, k2tog (or psso), which looked too even for me after the messier bits above (you can see it in the last picture on this page. So I just stuck in random knit stitches whenever I felt like it. I think it worked out nicely. When I started my abortive attempt at blocking last night, I noticed that I had dropped a few stitches -- it was not easy to tell as I knit since the alpaca has a moderately self-grippy quality -- so I had to go in and fix those.

If I had this to knit over again, I would go up a needle size for the middle portion. Or something. The stockinette portion is just a lot narrower than the yarnover-heavy portions, at least the way I knit.

And a couple of quick updates:

I finished the Blackberry Mittens, although I don't seem to have any photos of them handy.

Also, many thanks to Naomi and Robbyn, I think I have salvaged the green dyed yarn -- I will avoid green in the future I think, but as long as I wash this stuff with gentle soaps and detergents I think it will be usable. I'm definitely keeping it for my own use, though, since I worry it might just be waiting to screw things up the next time it gets in the water.

Experiments in dyeing

2007-09-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

So when I posted about my stash a few weeks ago, I noted that I had a big pile of oatmeal-colored worsted that I kind of hated and didn't know what to do with. Naomi suggested that I dye it, and what a bright young woman she is! I decided to use food coloring, because I didn't want to mess up my pots and pans with non-food-safe colorants. I used to have a pot I used for soapmaking which would have done, but I guess I got rid of that at some point (I haven't made soap in years) because I certainly don't seem to have it anymore.

Anyhow, I used the crock pot, roughly as described here. I'm very happy with the results overall.

Pretty!

These process pictures are from my second batch, which was royal blue with a bit of brown to soften it up.

The yarn soaking:

The dye stock mixture and food coloring bottles:

Dye and yarn in the pot:

After a few hours in the hot crock the dye exhausts:

And here's what it looks like dry!

I also did a couple of skeins of purple, and I dyed a skein of really hideous nylon/mohair blend grey laceweight red and black -- I think it is much less hideous now. I had a failure, though. My biggest batch turned out to not be colorfast. What do I do? I've been rinsing and rinsing, and the water's always green. I'm not sure whether it's salvageable. I'd really like it to be, since I'd like a third dark jewel-tone color -- I'm planning to combine it with the plain leftover oatmeal-colored yarn in a a hat and mittens, and a third color would be nice.

Fingerless gloves, lacey progress, knitting in public, and yarn lust.

2007-09-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

I just finished a pair of Hooray For Me fingerless gloves, which were a nice fun little pattern, and which allowed me to use that forlorn single ball of sock yarn that I was semi-despairing of finding a use for. The pattern calls for 1.5 skeins of Regia Multi Effekt, but I was able to do it with less than one skein of Trekking. I was ready to do the fingers in another yarn if necessary, but I ended up having more Trekking left over than I had of my accent color (leftover Jawoll from the Bayerische Sock -- that pattern devours wool), so I just did them in MC. Action shot -- they're comin' to getcha!!!

Very cute I think! I am not much of a fingerless glove person, but I may get a bit of use out of these in the fall and early winter. I do appreciate fingerless gloves on an intellectual level -- how nice to be able to wear gloves and knit and text and work my iPod without having to use my nose on the clickwheel! -- but I this will be the first pair I've ever owned.

Still plugging away on the Hanami Shawl. I've finished the basketweave section and have moved on to the free-form falling-petal section, which is mostly stockinette really at the moment. I kept having to rip back towards the end of the basketweave section -- I had just turned my brain right off or something -- but I seem to be back on the right track now.

Behold, the glory of unblocked lace knitting:

Well, at least it's getting longer:

I got a lot of knitting done last week on the train. I went to Rockport to go ocean kayaking, which was great fun, and I knitted up a storm. On the way back there was a little girl (she said she was four) out with a big group of her relatives, who I think were visiting from China. She was being a bit of a hellion and running up and down the aisle and being very loud and boisterous. She saw me knitting and she stopped dead for a second and said, "What you doing?" and I said that I was knitting, and that I was making a shawl out of yarn. Then she showed me a picture of her with Chuck E. Cheese, and told me she wanted to be a ship when she grew up, and we had a nice conversation for much of the rest of the trip back to Boston. Once she calmed down a little she was super-cute.

I've decided I want to try to learn to knit continental-style; sometimes English feels too stressful on my wrists, and I'd like to have another way. When I first started knitting, I knit English and purled continental, but that didn't work once I progressed beyond stockinette and had to switch back and forth between knit and purl in the same row, and for whatever reason, I chose to go English.

Anyway, since I figure I'll need an easy but interesting project to work on while I retrain myself, I bought some Noro Silk Garden on Thursday to make me a purty scarf. And I got some boring old stitch markers and needle point covers, too. While I was checking out, I noticed the Malabrigo laceweight they had at the counter. Ooh! I had previously been unaware of the existence of Malabrigo laceweight! While they were running my credit card, I was fondling the yarn. I love the Malabrigo worsted anyhow, and I now I can't wait to make something out of the laceweight, possibly something like Lacey from Knitty. I couldn't resist, and I ended up going back the next day for the Malabrigo laceweight in the Loro Barranquero colorway (I looked it up, and apparently that is a kind of Patagonian burrowing parrot that has historically been considered a pest but which is now endangered or threatened or something). So, in closing -- yarn porn!
Aww, sookie sookie.

Almost anticlimactic, but not quite.

2007-08-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

Guess what I finished while I was watching the Red Sox game this afternoon? I'll give you a hint: it was a curiously appropriate project. OK, I give, it was the second Bayerische Sock!

I believe the appropriate response is WOO HOO! They are lovely lovely socks. This is what they looked like yesterday:

Note the little gummi-bear thingy -- I got sick of the little 00 needles poking through the side of my purse, so I bought a set of sock needle protectors. Yesterday I was working on them on the train on the way to the museum where I work on Saturdays. You have to change trains at one point, because not all the trains go all the way to the end of the line. This can be confusing for some people, especially because many of the train drivers do not make very useful announcements.

As a result of this, I often end up advising families of tourists on how to get to the museum, and I did so yesterday, with a rather confused French family. After I told them I was going the same place and they could follow me, one of the girls in the family said something to her father about a chaussette, and I held it up and showed it to her, and this led to a whole long conversation in bad English (theirs) and worse French (mine). Sadly, I didn't remember the word for knitting (tricoter, of course! Je suis tricoteuse!) until about three hours later.

This is not the first time knitting on public transportation has led me into conversation with people who do not speak my language -- I remember one time (at this same station, actually, although I was going in the opposite direction, from a different home to a different job) I was knitting an afghan and these two Asian women were very interested in it. I got the names for knit and purl from them -- it was something like jo and lai, I think, but I've forgotten which was knit and which was purl.

OK, in closing, one more picture of the socks. Check out that toe!

FO! It's been a long, long time...

2007-08-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Do I grin maniacally? Very well, then I grin maniacally, I have knit a damn hat! This is a fast fast project -- I knit it in just over 24 hours, 24 hours during which I slept, worked, prepared three meals and ate four, played Wii Sports for more than an hour, and did two loads of laundry! I need to knit more stuff with worsted weight yarn.

Pattern is the Bzzz Hat for Queen Bees from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, and I used Araucania Nature Wool in color #37. I loved this yarn for this project because the subtle variations in the yarn give a very organic pattern/texture to the finished hat like a beehive. I guess like a beehive -- I don't think I've ever actually seen a real beehive now that I think about it (I mean I've seen box hives and I've seen hornets' nests but I haven't seen a honeybee nest in the wild, which is unsurprising really given the decline of the European Honeybee in North America over the course of my lifetime).

Anyway! The bee buttons are from the inimitable Windsor Button Shop, where I think they had four or five different types of bee buttons in stock. Check them out up close:

For cute! They're some kind of plastic. Given the extreme feltability of this yarn and the fact that these buttons are plastic and possibly soluble in dry cleaning liquids, this hat is going to be strictly hand wash in cold water only, which I hope is OK with the eventual recipient. If not, oh well, it only took me a day to make it! I will be making another one of these for myself, because look how cute I look in it, I mean really.

Why don't I knit more easy stuff?

2007-08-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

A long, long time ago a friend of mine asked me to make her a Bzzz Hat for Queen Bees from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. A slightly less long time ago (a monthish), she turned 30, and I thought I should have given her the hat for her birthday. And then last night, I cast on for the hat. I think this should be some sort of lesson for me, because look where I am on the hat as of quarter to nine this morning:

Good heavens, what was I procrastinating about? An excess of fiddly socks and shawls and cables and lace has blinded me to the delights of easy knitting! I should do more mindless knitting in front of the television (last night the MST3K movie Cave Dwellers and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby). The yarn goes so fast, though! A ball of laceweight or sock yarn or even the sport weight I'm using on the mittens would last me so much longer than the Araucania Nature Wool I'm using on this. I guess that's part of the reason I like knitting the fiddly things -- good value for money and portability of small quantities of yarn.

I think my camera is broken (not so my phone, hence the hideous hideous picture above), otherwise I would take pictures of the Bayerische Sock and the Hanami Stole, which are both coming along nicely.

The project I haven't been talking about

2007-08-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

Well, that title makes it sound awfully dramatic, but actually it's just a project I rediscovered half-finished and have been working on off-and-on but never really posted about here. It's the Blackberry Mitten from Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill.

I like them. They should go faster than they do, but I keep getting poor gauge (too big! still too big! too small! still kind of small! screw it!) and ripping the mitten back out and starting over. I know, I know, I should swatch -- but it would take me almost as long to swatch as it does to knit the whole cuff of the mitten. I rarely bother with swatches for small projects and unsized projects. Sweaters, absolutely. Tricky lace patterns that I'd like to get right before I cast on 200 stitches, sure. But seriously, the thought of ripping out four inches of mitten holds little fear for me.

One thing I like about this mitten is the braid detail. Check it out -- it's created by purling in alternating MC and CC with the yarn floated on the right side and twisted. On taking this picture, I notice that I've messed up the twist direction -- see over on the left-hand side? Maybe I should rip them out again -- that would make this the fourth or fifth time I've started this mitten. Imagine how quickly the left-hand one will go.

One thing I don't like so much about this mitten is the fair isle pattern. The floats are as much as nine stitches. I know that once I finish this will felt a bit and that won't be a problem, but I don't like it while I'm knitting. It does weird things to my tension.

Also in the up-close picture, I notice how hairy this mitten looks! Partly this is just the yarn. I like Blackberry Ridge yarns a lot -- they are wonderfully springy, the colors are nothing crazy or exciting but they're very attractive, and the yarns are both spun in the US and reasonably priced, which is nice -- but they can be a little on the scratchy side. Part of the hairiness is that I left this project out on the couch, with predictable results re: cat hair.

I was looking at the Blackberry Ridge website right now, and I noticed this pattern, which I am instantly in love with: Pine Tree Double Knit Mitten. It's a pretty obvious pattern, and I could do it on my own. On the other hand, I do like to support designers.

That's why I bought a totally adorable pattern yesterday at The Yarn Basket in Portsmouth. Check it out: Child's Kitty Cat Pullover. I just thought that cat had so much personality. I could have made something similar on my own but it might not have quite so much personality, and again, I hate to copy, especially from small-time people (I would have much less guilt about copying from commercial RTW designers, although I almost never do this, because usually the RTW patterns I like would be really boring and/or expensive to knit myself). Anyhow, I have no particular child in mind for the sweater, I just thought it was cute. And the yarn store woman said that the designer used to work in that very store.

Sadly, I didn't think to ask the yarn store to validate our parking, so we had to pay the full $1.50 on exiting the garage. Traumatic!

The Great Yarn Audit

2007-08-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm in a yarn-acquiring mood -- I want to get started on a sweater to wear this fall and winter, and I don't have anything right now that is screaming to be incorporated into a sweater. Part of the problem is that I like my sweaters lighter-weight, and a lot of my yarn is heavier, but also I just have a lot of yarn that I know I no longer need or want or even like. So I went through the stash -- my stash is pretty tame, since I'm a cheapskate with limited storage space -- and photographed everything so that I could see what I had, what I needed to get rid of, what I couldn't wait to play with!

There were nice things, ugly things, useless things and, I'm afraid, quite a lot of boring things. What's with the gray and beige?

Some things made me sad, like this:

One lonely ball of Trekking in a colorway I absolutely loved (it says 33 on the label, but I think it's a discontinued 33, sadly). I remember what the first sock looked like knitted up -- it was like flowers in a forest, all dark green with little bright-colored spots. I lost that sock, or something bad happened to it... I don't remember, it was at least two years ago and possibly I have PTSD about it. But now there's just this poor little ball left. I haven't given up, though; I think I can still make socks out of this, perhaps in stripes with a dark green or even brown. Heels and toes and cuffs in solid, and the rest of the sock in this pretty, pretty Trekking? Or maybe some nice knee socks with the cuffs, heels, and toes in Trekking and the sock body in something else? It could work.

Some things made me confused, like this bunch of gray yarns.

What made me want so much gray yarn? It doesn't even match itself! The top stuff looks like a cheap wig! I think I bought all of this around the same time; I guess I was just in a gray way. Actually, I can be even more specific about what caused me to buy the two Katia yarns: they were on sale. This was at a time when I had a somewhat different attitude about stash. A long time ago I knitted the Grecian Plait pullover from Knitty in the fuzzy yarn, but it wasn't a good substitute for the yarn in the pattern and the fabric was sloppy, and then I did an awful job of sewing it up, and then I washed it and it looked like a wet Westie. I think I gave that sweater to Goodwill, which is a sad ending for a handmade sweater, but there you go.

Or how about this:
That's about a third of the front of a big aran sweater I was going to make. It's way too big. It's way too oatmeal-colored. If you look closely, you'll see that I became so disgusted and annoyed with it I stopped IN MID-CABLE (the little green bit up in the corner is my cable needle). So now I have 13+ skeins of oatmeal-colored Elann Highland Wool and 9 inches of sweater I'll never wear.

Some yarns made me happy, although I have no more idea what to do with them now than I did when I shoved them under the bed:

These are from a purple period, I guess. The stuff on the top is bulky handspun something, and on the bottom is some kind of big huge yarn. I believe it's wool and it would probably get you three or four wraps to the inch. Fun stuff! There's some of it in my Afghan of Doooooom, but I have no idea what to do with the rest of it. It might make a nice hat.

Anyway, you can see the full extent of the carnage in my pics labelled yarn-audit at Flickr. And I am up for swapping much of what's there -- more pics and labels will be added over the next couple of days.

2007-08-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Ooh, new Interweave waiting for me when I got home today! (It's not mine, it's my roommate's, but she's out of town, so ha!) I've been in a sweater-knitting mood the last couple of days and I'm thinking I may make the Tangled Yoke cardigan and/or the Mirepoix bodice. I think the Mirepoix is awful cute, but I suspect that the fair isle section would end right in the middle of my boobs -- in this picture it's hard to see, but in the magazine it seems like the band is a little too short at least for the model in the picture. Of course it can be made longer, but I worry.

Any designers/fashion consultants out there? Where should bands like that end, for ideal fit? If a band stops immediately at the bottom of the breasts, that can look a bit matronly and over-emphasized. Should the band stop just short of the bra band line? Or is this just a difficult thing to wear, especially for large-chested types?

Ha! I just went over to the designer's blog and she thinks the model is a little too large for the sweater. But she also says the sweater was designed for her daughter, who is "a little stick of a thing." So I'm thinking some alteration would be necessary for non-little-sticks-of-things.

Pic pic pics

2007-08-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

So, since I last posted, I have been on vacation!

(Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains, taken in Burlington, VT, which was not my final vacation destination but which was nonetheless a lovely place to stop for dinner.)

We all know what vacation means, right? Time for knitting! (And reading, and, you know, vacation fun.) I brought along all my current knitting projects -- this is actually just the Hanami stole and the Bayerische sock, and they're both very compact (the stole should be 19" by 70" complete and blocked, but the yarn is fine enough that it doesn't actually take up all that much room in the purse).

Unfortunately, I drove to my vacation destinations (Montreal and Mont Tremblant), which meant no plane/train/bus knitting, but I got in lots of hotel and pool knitting, which is also good stuff. I also did some car knitting, even though I was ostensibly driving -- there were serious delays at the border on the way home and I spent close to two hours going the last 1/2 mile to the customs plaza. Since I was in Park most of the time, I had no qualms about whipping out the knitting. A woman in a minivan I kept passing asked what I was making, and I held it up to show and said it was a shawl, and her husband/whatever said, "By the time you get to the states you'll be able to wear it!"

It wasn't quite stole weather by the time I got to Vermont, nor had I finished the shawl before my exciting interview with the customs guy (I nearly forgot to declare my Wheat Thins), but I got a pattern repeat or two done, and here's what it looks like now:

Not too bad-looking for unblocked lace! I'm on the fifth of seven repeats of the basketweave pattern; after that it turns to an every-row faux-random pattern of swirling petals. I love this baby alpaca yarn; it is super-soft and silky and I just want to rub my face on it. But I don't.

I also got some good vacation knitting done on the second sock (I'm determined to cure myself of second sock syndrome, and I've instituted a rule for myself where every time I finish a pattern repeat on the shawl, I have to work on the sock for a bit). Here's what that's looking like now:
Note that these photos were taken in natural light! It's an exciting breakthrough. This still doesn't look quite like the color looks to me -- it should be a bit darker maybe. More importantly, you can see the twiny stitches much better in natural light than with the flash or the assy camerphone.

Also, I should mention that I never turned comment notification on the Seven Year Sock, so I wasn't noticing when people were commenting. But now it's on! So I will notice and may even respond.

Sort of FO! Pictures to follow! Also new project! Also, why do I knit so loose?

2007-07-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, I finished the first Bayerische Sock! I took some pictures a couple of days ago, but 1) it was dark and they didn't turn out so great and 2) my incredibly messy apartment was hiding my camera cable from me. But finally I found the cable, and given the excessively crappy weather we've been having I'm not going to be able to take any pretty well-lit pictures of it any time soon, so I shall post: And it only took me 3 months! Well, 3 1/2. Sigh. It actually looks even better in person. I'm delighted. I've cast on for the second sock but haven't even finished the ribbing yet.

I've cast on for the next sock, but I've also decided on my next/additional project (also in a fiddly smallish gauge -- what is wrong with me?): this Hanami Stole. I just happen to have some laceweight alpaca, and I just happened to see this stole mentioned in this post. (I feel some trepidation for the original poster, who wants to knit a wedding shawl for a friend, and wants it to be a cobweb-weight kind that you can pull through the wedding ring, but doesn't want it to be too difficult/complicated. Best of luck to her, I say!) I've got maybe 15 rows knitted on that so far; I left off the beads, because I just wasn't crazy about them as a design element and I feared that if I went into the bead store I might come out with more than I had bargained for. But it's shaping up really nicely.

The Hanami Stole is supposed to recall falling cherry blossoms, which I like. I have a fond memory of a lovely spring day out with friends strolling around the cherry blossom trees in Washington, DC. For those who are unfamiliar with this part of DC, the trees are in a park on a sort of peninsula out into the Potomac, and you can get quite a long way from the nearest Metro stop while you're walking. Just as we were getting about as far as you could from the Metro, a storm whipped up out of nowhere. It got dark, and the wind was blowing cherry blossoms everywhere (I kept getting them in the mouth), and everyone started running back off the peninsula -- thousands of people, all trying to beat the storm to shelter in the Metro and the museums and things. Long before we made it, it started pouring rain. People were huddling under bridges (just right out in the street), under/up against little monuments and in statue niches and things... it was pretty hilarious (it was a nice warm day, so hypothermia risk was fairly low). I ended up buying a new t-shirt at the Air and Space Museum because I was so soaked. I considered buying new pants, too, but couldn't find any I liked. Anyway, that was a fun day, I thought (and yes, I do also like piña coladas).

Further evidence of my excessively loose knitting: the pattern calls for size 3 American needles. I started the shawl on size 2s, but it was way big, and I went back and re-started on 0s, which seem to be just about small enough. "Making socks?" the woman at A Good Yarn asked. Yes and no, I said.

But take the socks, for example. I have gone down three needle sizes for those socks, from the recommended 2 to 00. And I feel like I'm knitting incredibly tightly! The twisted stitches and frequent cabling on the sock mean that it feels tighter than plain knitting, to the point where sometimes I can hardly squeeze my needle into the stitch! I don't understand how it would be possible to knit to gauge on the size needles recommended, and yet plenty of people seem to have done so. I am clearly freakish.

2007-06-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

You know, I am still working on that same damn sock. The first sock, even! Last weekend, I went to the Big Apple to audition for Jeopardy (as you do), and it kept me company on the bus and the train (bus out, train back; I am more tolerant of annoying bus travel at the beginning of a trip than I am at the end of one). Except I lost my copy of the pattern and my train ticket! Now, I don't know about you, but when I have just lost a train ticket, I need something to calm me down. Something like knitting, or a good stiff drink. Having just spent an unexpected $100 on a train ticket, I did not care to shell out money for an overpriced Amtrak drink, so knitting it was.

I had turned the heel and picked up the gussets on the bus, so I didn't have anything too complicated to do, but I still managed to screw up pretty royally, and I ended up having to rip all that out last night. But it was easily resumed (I probably only knit for the first hour or so of the train, so there wasn't too much to redo) and I am well into the decreases now. I still love the pattern, and I still haven't memorized it, sadly (now that I'm into the foot one of the patterns is sort of split up and altered, so it's a new chart to learn, not that I ever quite got the full pattern memorized).

Oh, and also I got my train ticket back, and it's still good! So that's nice. Who says New Yorkers don't care.

A new beginning

2007-04-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

This blog isn't going to be just about socks, I swear -- I'm really not that into them. Mostly. But I am starting a new pair of socks -- Eunny Jang's Bayerische Sock. So pretty! And I had the exact right yarn on hand (from the last pair of socks I started, two and a half freaking years ago). It seemed fated. As usual, I need to go down a size or two in the needles; this was a problem because size 0 needles were the smallest I had on hand. I called A Good Yarn (motto: we're the LYS on Kyle's way home from work), who had nothing between a size 0 and a 0000. But Windsor Button (motto: we're the most dangerous of all yarn stores because we also sell notions and embroidery stuff and lots of shiny buttons!) was able to hook me up with a Susan Bates sock set with four sets of needles, size 000 to 1. My inner knitting snob is all, "OMG, Susan Bates needles? Why don't you just knit up an afghan in your school colors from Red Heart acrylic while you're at it?"

But actually, they're not bad at all -- much quieter than the larger sizes, for one thing. I hate noisy needles! And they were $10 for four pairs of needles (and that's at Windsor Button, which isn't exorbitant or anything but isn't a big box bargain store either). Win win! My roommate has a needle sizer that goes down to 000, so it was extra easy to figure out which size was which (as a wise poster on the advanced knitting livejournal community pointed out, they can't exactly print the size on the shaft of a 1.5mm needle).

So I've started the Bayerisches Sock, and it is a... a challenge, let's say. The increase row between the ribbing and the beginning of the pattern is scarier than most sweaters. Seriously:

*(K1tbl, p1) 7 times. M1 purlwise. (K1tbl, m1 knitwise, p1, m1 purlwise) 2 times. (k1tbl, p1) 7 times. K1tbl, m1 knitwise. Purl into front and back of next stitch. M1 knitwise. K1tbl, m1 purlwise, p1, m1 knitwise, k1tbl, p1. Repeat from * for other half of sock. 20 stitches increased, 96 stitches total.

Tell me that's not disturbing and frightening. It took me three tries. Then it took me two more tries to establish the pattern, but finally! There it was, ending at the end of the fourth needle and everything. I had to take a break after two pattern rows because I had a death grip on my poor little aluminum needles (in my set, the 00s are hot pink, which is clashy but kind of awesome with the red yarn).

The sock pattern involves four cable charts, three of which are eight rows long and one of which is 16 rows long; after eight rows, the pattern is really starting to come together and I'm getting much more relaxed about cabling without a cable needle, and just more relaxed about the pattern in general. My knitting has really loosened up a lot, which makes me worry that I'm going to have to go down another needle size, but anyway this is good practice, right?

Here is a terrible, hideous, fluorescently-lit camera-phone photo of the Sock So Far:

We had a rough patch during that increase row, but I think I love Eunny Jang.

Late to the bandwagon

2007-04-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Suddenly I realized how incomplete my life was without a place for me to talk about knitting (and other crafts)! Let's start, shall we?

Friday I decided I hadn't been knitting enough, and that the things I had been knitting were largely crap (this is, in fact, true; I am a few inches into an enormous aran sweater that I will never ever wear, and have a few feet of a tiny-gauge seed-stitch scarf that I hate more than I can say). So I decided I would do something new and different -- a fair isle baby sweater! I have never steeked, and I'd like to try it out on something small and defenseless.

Anyhow, I knew I had some Dale BabyUll somewhere in the house, so I dove into my under-bed yarn storage facility, and I did indeed find some BabyUll. I also found five pairs of socks in various stages of construction:

Half a toe-up sock in red Lang Jawoll;
One-and-a half twining cable socks from a pattern in Knitting on the Road in a pink-and-navy colorway of an unknown yarn;
One complete plain sock in a dark bluish-greenish Trekking (I could identify this one because the other unused ball still had the label on it);
A pair of Regia faux-fair-isle socks, one with afterthought heel, one with no heel at all (never got around to the "afterthought" part), both full of mysterious crunchy holes;
And a pair of loon-patterned socks that need new toes because the old ones have gone a bit holey.

The last sock I started was the toe-up red one, and if I recall correctly I started and quickly abandoned it in fall of 2004, when the Red Sox won the pennant (it was going to be a commemorative sock). So I have not knit socks in about two and a half years. I have not knit socks since I moved to my current apartment (my roommate, also a knitter, was shocked -- "I thought you just didn't like knitting socks," she said when I dragged them all out from under the bed). I have not knit socks since I started my current job. In short, I have not knit socks in a damn long time.

What happened with me and socks? I think it was a combination of a lot of factors. I don't really wear wool socks all that often -- I'm the kind of person who's usually too warm when everyone else is comfortable, plus at work I usually just wear tights in winter (maybe I should knit myself a pair of tights or thigh-highs -- those I might get some use out of). I was also maybe more than a little disheartened by the mysterious holes that developed in the toes of the loon socks, even though they'll be easy enough to fix once I get down to it. And last but not least, I only have one set of 2mm needles, and anything bigger than 2mm is too loose for a sock for me (I like my socks firm and I'm a loose knitter), so I couldn't conveniently work on more than one pair of socks at a time.

What's become of the socks? I ripped out the red half-sock and the dark blue-green sock. They were boring, and I had no interest in finishing them. I threw away the crunchy, holey Regia socks. I don't know what went wrong there, but it's not worth fixing. I'm holding on to the loon socks and I have every intention of re-toe-ifying them in the near future. And the twining cable pink-and-navy socks are my great success story! I ripped back to the beginning of the heel flap so I knew where I was and then I finished them. One of the ankles is a bit floppier than the other one (curiously, since I probably did the ankle of the second sock pretty close to when I did the first sock), but they're pretty and totally wearable (and given that we're having an unseasonably chilly April, I may actually get to wear them for real, and soon).

Hooray for socks!