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!