Old Timey Train

We went on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad last weekend. Jersey family was in town and Jersey Baby is a big fan of all things train. It was an hour-long ride from the small town of Cumberland to the even smaller town of Frostburg, which I knew of mainly because the Redskins used to train at the university there. It was hot and disgustingly sunny, so I only explored about 1 block of Main Street before hiding out in an air-conditioned cafe surrounded by cold beverages.

The railroad was indeed scenic, though we seemed to be on the slightly less scenic side, so there was a lot of craning to see past riders on the other side of the train. Here's a pretty picture from Cumberland, when we were on the more scenic side.

I started the O w l s sweater and worked on it through during the trip. I decided to go sleeve first to try out some gauge-related pattern changes.

Nationals Stitch 'n Pitch

What's more disturbing? The massive size of this nacho plate:
Or the the fact that it matches the color of my sock?

Weekly Update

It was another weekend of semi-random crosstown rambling. My friend Kim and I went to the Greek Festival at St. Sophia's.It grows a bit each year though it's still a pretty cozy event. The food is good, but if you want the gyros and souvlakis (Of course you do! You're at a Greek Festival!), come early or be prepared to stand in an insanely long line.

After the festival, we explored the newly re-opened Social Safeway, which was amazingly amazing! It had an unbelievable prepared food section, with sushi, gelato bar and, of all things, a nut bar:

Pre-packaged peanut butter just not doing it for you? No problem! How about some freshly ground honey roasted cashew butter? That's so much nicer, so much more worthy of the Social Safeway. Despite the name, we didn't make any new acquaintances, but we did get to lounge in the living room, er, I mean, cafe seating area.
Don't you wish your living room opened into an amazingly amazing grocery store?

On Sunday, I ran into an Asian festival in Silver Spring, which had a tinikling demo.
Tinikling is a Filipino dance that's kinda like the hokey pokey, only bad dancers are punished by having their ankles whacked. I didn't have enough free memory on my camera to get video, but fear not, there are plenty of fine examples on Youtube.

I haven't posted much about knitting, since I haven't really done too much lately. Most of my knitting time has been spent on this scarf:

It's a modified Loopy and Luscious, knit in the round, forever and ever. I'll finish it someday, though it's getting a bit bulky to carry around to all the weekend festivities.

Locomotion

I had a busy Saturday. I went to Union Station to see what National Train Day was all about. It was about a whole lot of families with double wide urban combat strollers waiting in very long lines. This was one of the few things (apart from the gift shop) that had no line:They had lots of trains going at once. It looked pretty neat.

Then I went down to the mall to the much more sedate Smithsonian Garden Fest, which had no lines whatsoever.It was a nice spot to be on such a pretty, if windy, day. I picked up tidbits on chocolate production (the pods come in different colors and grow in clumps out of the bark) and Sweet William (they're related to carnations). They also had some cool gourds on display:
On the way home, I stopped by the DC Streetcar Showcase, where one of the city's new streetcars was setup for people to visit.They're a lot like the ones I rode on in Portland, though I think the TriMet cars had a different seating arrangement and bike hook/hanger things on the inside too. A couple of the DC streetcar routes are supposed to be up and running in a few years, with other lines to follow.

Sheep!

Yup, it was Sheep and Wool last weekend. Mom and I went on Saturday. It was ridiculously hot, even in the shade of the exhibition buildings, so we left a few hours earlier than usual. I managed to make the rounds to all the stalls, even the ones moved to the upper field. There was plenty to see:

Squares of the month? I think these are Squares of the Century! Can you believe the square that has a little sweater in it? Speaking of sweaters, how about this wee one made of sock yarn at the Three Waters booth:
As always, the t-shirt line was long and winding. I was content with watching the samples waive in the wind.
By the end, I'd bought a bit to spin and a bit to knit, but happily not enough to have to rearrange my stash. So it was a pretty low key Sheep & Wool for me!

Maryland Day

Maryland Day was this past Saturday. The turn out was good despite the gray skies and on-and-off sprinkles of rain. The scary looking weather probably contributed to the unusually short free ice cream line at the agriculture school. I got my usual chocolate.
Yummy! They also had ice cream-related paraphernalia on display this year:
I know the whole "farm fresh milk delivered daily" idea is supposed to instill nostalgia, but I don't really see the appeal of dairy products being driven around town for hours before being left outdoors until you retrieve them. I'll stick with the constantly refrigerated kind.

There were the usual Maryland Day staples, like a selection of turtles:
The hand-made country fair games were really impressive, in all their sack toss, roulette wheel, pin the tail on a Plinko glory:

The 4-H lollipop clover was especially creative. There were some variations on putt putt too, but I somehow missed taking pictures of them.

We got to see a how strong eggs are:
This egg crusher (it was actually has a label that says that) holds the egg vertical while some evil mad scientist piles on 25lb lead bricks (repurposed from the university's cyclotron, per said mad scientist). So how much could this egg hold? Somewhere between 100 and 125lbs.

There were some surprises this year, like *gasp* misleading advertising!

They were trying to save people's hearing though, so maybe the end justified the means?

And I got to see the local rink's zamboni in a non-ice rink setting.

I guess it doesn't get much use in the off season, unless it has a feature that lets it teach swimming. It does remind me that I haven't gone skating in a while. Hmm, where did I put those skates?

The Good Ol' Hockey Post

I got my Ravelry hockey swap package this week! Isn't it lovely? My swap pal was Lisa (Ravelry login required). She sent a roomy red Capitals bag, pretty Knit Picks sock yarn, a cute tape measure key chain and lots of candy. A sweet swap package indeed! The little green cylinder next to the tape measure is a kaleidescope, which multiplies the awesomeness. Wanna see?
Even more Twix! Nice! I should use this with my knitting pics too, so I look ten times more productive. Thank you Lisa!

Birthday Fun

It was my birthday recently, and a bunch of my friends and family celebrated by going to a Caps game. It happened to be the night the team received their first ever President's TrophySorry for the crappy picture. Somewhere in the big bright spot is the trophy and Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin. It was a nice moment, but hopefully they'll have another big trophy to celebrate soon!

I got some knitting done during the game.This is All Things Heather sock yarn in the colorway "sunflower." It's a bit of fall to offset the fast approaching summer heat.

And yes, there are even more hats.
I will move on from tweed hats soon, I swear. There's enough tweed left to make five more hats. After that, I spy some stranded knitting in my future.

Good Sock, Bad Sock

I made a pair of socks a few weeks ago with some Colinette Jitterbug I'd recovered from a botched Jaywalker attempt.
Here it is at a sparsely-attended Spring Break Hoyas game. The socks knit up very nicely, and quite quickly too.

Good Sock! Yay!

I was kinda stuck in a rainbow rut, so the next sock was similarly colored, only striped.

This is RegiaThings went wonky though because I was curious about how a different heel would affect the striping.
Apparently this new-to-me-heel and I were just not gonna get along. Bad Sock! Very bad! So it was back to the old standby heel flap/gusset method. After much ripping and cursing, it all came out right in the end.

(Also, I made some more hats.)

Back on the Air

And I'm back, after a really long time of not blogging! I went absolutely no where and did not much of interest. Just the usual knitting, working, going to plays, vegetating in front of the TV etc. We have had an unusually snowy winter in Washington:I like the snow, even with all the shoveling and potential loss of electricity. It just looks so pretty.

I attempted to knit 3 pairs of socks in 17 days for the Knitting Olympics.
And I finished them on time! It's my plain ol' stock stitch sock "pattern" in (from left to right) Tess' Designer Yarns Super Sock and Baby, Schoeller and Stahl's Fortissima Colori, and Liberty's Yarn Jabbersocky. The Fortissima Colori was really harsh. Blech! I was pleasantly surprised that the Jabbersocky socks turned out so well matched. I set a low matchyness bar with hand-dyes, but these came out almost identical. Nice!