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.