Month: February 2005

More Rogue

I’m back from the land of bluegrass. Wintergrass this year was wonderful, as usual. It was capped off by a truly marvelous performance by the Bluebirds as the closing act. The Bluebirds are Linda Ronstadt, Laurie Lewis, and Maria Muldaur, in their first and perhaps only performance. They packed the Pavilion at the Sheraton, and for good reason. I only hope that somebody thought to record it for a future CD.

The top name acts were wonderful as usual. There are always one or two bands that I haven’t heard of that turn out to be fantastic. This year it was the Grascals, and the Wilders. You can see the Wilders live over the internet…click on the “listen” link, and then the video link. They really do have that much energy in person. Both were dynamite groups, and I will look for them again. I’m already ready to get my tickets for next year!

The hours spent at the festival made for some good knitting time. I worked a little bit on John’s sock, but mostly on Rogue. Other than the cable bits, this made for good concert knitting. I finished the back last night, and am ready to work on the front.

Here is a photo of the cable detail up the side.

I’m a bit nervous about doing the front with the throat cabling extending into the hood, but will forge ahead. So far this pattern has had very explicit instructions, so I have no reason to believe that this won’t be the case for the next section.

In my blog travels this morning, I found two links that amused me. Of course it doesn’t take much to amuse me. They are both from Smatterings, a relatively new knitting blog. Check it out!

The first is the Numa Numa video. (Click on the “watch this movie” link on the right side of the screen.) I’m probably the last person in Internet-land to have seen this.

The second link is a medical one. Don’t try these things at home.

Wintergrass!

Tacoma has an annual bluegrass festival that I haven’t missed since moving here. Much to my spouse’s chagrin, I buy festival passes for every last day of it as soon as they go on sale. His musical taste, though somewhat eclectic, runs more to what I would call “music to drool by”. (Sorry dear, it’s true.) Wintergrass starts tonight, goes tomorrow night, Saturday from about noon to midnight or whenever, then Sunday all day. I get totally bluegrassed out, even for me. I have the pocket schedule printed out from their website, and have my game plan in place. I have my bluegrass knitting picked out. I have a sock in progress, but also that King Cole Mohair stole, which I’m doing in just plain garter stitch. The last time I tried knitting a sock at Wintergrass my gauge changed a bunch. Must have been the exciting music.

Here are my favorite artists from past Wintergrass festivals:

Country Current; the Navy Bluegrass Band. The Navy only hires the best, and these guys are no exception. I will travel long distances to see these guys. Keith Arneson is the best banjo player around.
Reeltime Travelers; back again this year.
Robin and Linda Williams; folk/bluegrass, great vocal harmonies.
Doyle Lawson and his band. Pretty much straight ahead bluegrass, but a lot of fun in person.
Rhonda Vincent; supposed to be back again this year, but cancelled due to illness.
Old & In the Way, minus Jerry, of course.
Blue Highway; their dobro player Rob Ickes is one of the best
Darol Anger, one of the world’s more innovative fiddlers.
Dry Branch Fire Squad; traditional Appalachain style bluegrass, the lead singer is a hoot.
Misty River, a local Portland based girl group. With an accordion, no less. Back this year.
Seldom Scene, back again this year.
Tim O’Brien; one of the best all around musicians I’ve seen.
Waybacks; play jamgrass that is definitely NOT traditional.

Besides the folks on that list that are  back this year, I’m looking forward to David Grisman, Tony Rice, and the Bluebirds (Linda Ronstadt, Maria Muldaur, and Laurie Lewis). But it frequently turns out to be the groups I’ve never heard of that I love the best. If you haven’t already got your tickets, you are out of luck. Weekend passes, and Saturday and Sunday are sold out. Come next year, and buy early!!

I’ll be back later, if I don’t run off with the banjo player.

Grandpa Tony

I’ve gotten several comments on my chair photo from yesterday. I never had the opportunity to meet my grandfather, as he died a few years before I was born. He was from all accounts quite a character, however. My mother gave me that chair one time when I was home visiting after I had gotten out of school and finally had a home of my own. We had an old Subaru station wagon at the time, and the thing barely wedged into the back end, but we drove across a couple of states with it to get it home. I have a framed photo of my Grandpa Tony; this was when he was quite young, probably early 20’s, if that.

Doesn’t he look like he owns the world?

He emigrated from Poland just before the turn of the century (the last one, not this one!), when he was barely 13. His older sister, Agnes, had been the first to arrive in the US, two years  before my grandfather. She came over at age 22 to be a housekeeper in North Dakota for someone that somebody in the family knew. She worked and saved money, and eventually brought the rest of the family over (and married the man!). Grandpa settled first in South Dakota for a short time, which is where this photo was taken. He was a bachelor at the time, and eventually married my grandmother and homesteaded land in North Dakota, where he farmed and raised 8 children. My parents moved back to the farm when my grandfather was dying so my mom could help take care of him, and just stayed on.

Here is a photo of Great-Aunt Agnes in her heyday.

I covet that hat more than I can say. Apparently she had quite a collection of hats, but unfortunately nobody thought to save them when she died.

One of my favorite songs is Emigrant Eyes, by Dolores Keane. It never fails to make me cry. In it, she sings about her “father’s own father” emigrating to the US from Ireland at the turn of the century, arriving at Ellis Island in a swarm of other Europeans, “decked out in the colors of Europe…turn of the century pilgrims… bound by the dream that they shared”.

“Through this sprawling tower of Babel, came a young man confused and alone. Determined and bound for America; carrying everything that he owned. Sometimes when I look in my grandfather’s emigrant eyes, I see that day reflected; I can’t hold my feelings inside. I see starting with nothing, and working hard all of his life. So don’t take it for granted, say Grandfather’s emigrant eyes.”

This is on her Solid Ground album. Give it a listen if you’ve never heard of her. I keep Grandpa Tony’s photo on my wall to remind me where I came from, and not to take any of it for granted.

91,955

That is just the most embarrassing number. I wrote a few posts back about my stash inventory system. This week I got the bright idea to add up all the yardage to see how much yarn I actually have. According to my database, I have 91,955 yards of yarn in my stash. That’s 84,094 meters for all of you from the rest of the world. Of course this doesn’t include the latest purchase.

This lovely pile of yarn is a Colinette AbFab Throw Kit, in Amethyst. I have just been coveting this (which commandment was that??) for a long time, but had not bought the kit. I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with “the look” that I get when yet another shipment of yarn arrives at the house.

My covetousness began in earnest when Kerstin posted this.  Then Crayonbrain had to go and suggest that they were taking these kits off the market. I took this as a sign and whipped out my credit card. I have no idea when I will ever get to this, but I just thank God that I didn’t miss the AbFab bandwagon.

Here are a couple of rare Willie sightings. (That doesn’t sound quite right does it??) I mean Willie the cat…get your minds out of the gutter, boys and girls. The boy cat howls like a maniac till we let him out in the morning, then about mid-morning he howls like a maniac to get back in, and occasionally climbs the patio door screen to let us know that he is serious. He likes his comfortable warm morning nap.

The rocking chair is one of my few prized possessions. Most of the furniture in our house is of the “I like it but wouldn’t be tormented forever if it disappeared one day” variety. My grandfather built this chair in the early 1900’s for the farmhouse in North Dakota where they lived. It is definitely not fashionable, though it is as solid a piece of furniture that you will ever find. One of the pieces of wood on the bottom of the chair looks like it was salvaged from a box used to ship farm equipment. I had it reupholstered a few years ago, and when I sit in it, I think of my grandfather sitting in the same chair after a long day’s work, playing his fiddle and perhaps sipping on a jug of whiskey if my grandmother wasn’t looking. I’ve mastered the whiskey sipping; someday I will learn to play the fiddle as well. Here’s a better picture of the chair.

Here are a couple of Rogue pictures. I haven’t done more than a few rows all week, due to work interference, but have made a bit of progress. I’ve attached the pocket to the body and am to the underarm section where the cables start to widen out again.

And a better shot of the pocket.

Knitting that pocket back on was just a barrel of fun. I took some pictures but they didn’t come out particularly well, so if you want to see what it looks like, you’ll have to knit it yourself. It is an ingenious pattern, and I could really see doing this again. (Have I mentioned that before??)

Rogue, Real Life.

I have been knitting on Rogue. I even took pictures of my progress. Unfortunately they all turned out to be crap, and I am not posting crappy photos today, even though I have done so in the past with impunity. It’s one of those famously gray western Washington days, and not very photo friendly. I suppose I could have fixed it, but I’m way too lazy. So you’ll have to take my word on it. I’m not making speedy progress due to the intervention of work this past week, but have gotten into the spirally cables up the side. This is really a hypnotic project to knit, as many others have found. Ei and Dorothy are making much better progress than I am. Go look at their pictures. Mine looks like that, only not as far along, and mine is pink. They also evidently know how to take good pictures.

I do have a picture of the pets doing what they do best. Daisie the Corgi was here visiting again, and I guess somebody must have tired them out at the park:

Note that Willie is on the dog bed too. My husband took that photo, which explains why it is not blurry.

I was going through my site stats and found a couple of things that amused me (it doesn’t take much to amuse me, really). I always look at the search strings in Google that got people to my blog. My favorite for the week is “graph paper knitting alien”. Right up there is “flannel sheets at Costco”. I was the fifth hit on that one. My flannel sheets are from Costco, actually, though I don’t remember ever mentioning it in my blog.

Work this week just plain over-ran me. I didn’t get much done except work, eat, and sleep, and not that much of the latter. I have a work schedule that most people would find nuts. I work 7 days in a row, then get a week off, which sounds great. The 7 days on basically put two and a half weeks worth of work in one week, and I sleep for the first 2 days I have off. Then about 4 days into my week off, I’m pretty excited about my work schedule again, and by Monday (my last vacation day), I’m all pumped up to get back at it again.  It sounds crazy, but it has its moments.  Anyway, I’m still in my jammies at 10:30 this morning, and would have no intention of changing that if I didn’t have a couple of meetings this afternoon. It probably wouldn’t do to go in my bathrobe. Though I might just take my knitting with me.