March 2009 – The Knitting Doctor

The P Vacations

I started to post some photos of our Portland trip this morning and realized that I completely skipped over the Phoenix trip earlier this month.

Here’s Phoenix in photos:

This is one reason I love my sweetie. He makes me drinks on airplanes. He packed his own Grey Goose vodka for me.

First stop on the way from the airport:

The family Mexican Train competition.

I got to meet Lee Ann, who was in town for a conference. Here are two knitting doctors:

I’m pretty sure that the centerpiece on that table was inspired by yarn balls. Yes, there were martinis involved.

I finished John’s socks.

The girls all got pedicures.

We went to our favorite fast food restaurant.

We also went to the Desert Botanical Garden to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit. If you have any opportunity to get to Phoenix before this leaves, go see this. It is just breathtaking.

We went to see a couple spring training baseball games also, but for some reason there is no photographic evidence of this.

OK, that’s enough photos for one day. I’ll leave Portland for another post!

Lordy, where to start with this one. I liked this in some ways, hated it in others. I learned a lot of Hawaiian history that was new to me, but Michener’s writing style drives me a bit nutty. Any book that starts off with “millions upon millions of years ago” and ends in the 1950’s is guaranteed to get on my nerves after awhile. It ends up being a bunch of short family stories within the grander epic story, which left me feeling like I really didn’t care about any of them very much. Michener handles this format by making apparently everybody who ever lived in Hawaii related to the same three or four families, which I’m sure isn’t quite the case.

At any rate, I finally finished it. I almost threw it into the recycle bin a few times, but now I can move on to something more enjoyable, preferably less epic.

937 pages.

Finished Project!

I finished John’s socks while we were in Arizona a few weeks ago, and just haven’t gotten around to posting them. Here they are:

Project Details:

Yarn: Mountain Colors Weavers Wool Quarters, color Red Tail Hawk.

Needles: Ivore double points, size 2.75 mm.

Pattern: My own jerry-rigged sock pattern, on 60 stitches.

Started: February 7th, 2009

Finished: March 5th, 2009

For: John, to replace the first pair of socks I ever knit.

What I learned: Sportweight yarn knits up into socks faster than “sock” weight (duh!). I like knitting socks with nice yarn better than I like mending socks made from crappy yarn.

He loves them, and I think he’s finally given up on the old holey pair.
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Portland was a fun trip, even though we were there for just a short time. The train ride there is really the way to go. If you figure in the cost of parking a car once you get there, it’s much cheaper to take Amtrak, especially since Portland is such a walkable city. My sweetie surprised me with tickets to Wicked one night, which was fabulous. And I got to shop at Powell’s, and at Knit/Purl, so the whole trip was a success.

On the remodeling front, the floors are done, and now we are just waiting for the cabinets to be finished. Once those are installed, the guys can measure to cut the granite for the counter tops. We’re figuring about another three or four weeks before it’s back in usable condition. We’re already starting to plan what our first meal in the new kitchen will be!

Evacuating

We’re out of here for a few days. The kitchen remodel project has gotten to the “sand and repair the kitchen floor” phase. There are a few places that will need patching where we’re changing things, so most of the kitchen and part of the dining room have to be sanded, stripped, and restained. We knew from experience that none of us can be in the house during the finishing process, and the noise is really a pain in the butt.

We’re hopping Amtrak to Portland for a few days. We figured as long as we need to be in a hotel, we might as well have a little fun in the process. And I hear that there are some good yarn shops there. (Shhhhh, John hasn’t heard this part.) He wants to watch Carolina play in the NCAA game Thursday night while we’re there, so I’m planning on trading that for a trip to a couple of yarn shops. Anybody got any favorites??

The pets are all at Green Acres Pet Resort*. That is, all except Lucy. She disappeared when it was time to get them all in the car, and didn’t come out until it was way past the time for us to have to get them on the road. Of course she came out about 20 minutes after John was on his way, so now she’s corralled into the cat carrier for the second trip to Green Acres this morning.

I have a finished project to show, but it will have to wait until we get back. We’re off to the train station!

*”Green Acres is the place to be! Farm living is the life for me! Land spreading out so far and wide, keep Tacoma and give me that country side!”

You are very welcome. I couldn’t resist spreading the earworm.

But Where Do We Make The Cocktails, Dear?

We’ve decided to stimulate the economy in a rather spectacular fashion this spring. A kitchen remodel has been in our long-range plan for the house since we moved in here. It got sidetracked a bit when we had to rebuild one whole side of our house in 2006, but it was on the schedule for this year, economy be damned. Those ugly grey plastic kitchen cabinets have been on my hit list since I first saw this place.

Our kitchen appliances started to bite the dust last fall, and when we had to replace the gas cooktop ahead of schedule due to the death of the old one, the new one required a little chainsaw action so it would fit in to the center island. This left a gaping hole in the middle of the island. Then the old refrigerator died, and we had to get a new one. We measured the space carefully, and went to buy a shiny new refrigerator. Of course, since this entire house apparently was built from stolen plans for a Halloween fun-house, the new refrigerator didn’t quite quite fit in the space that the old one came out of. One side of the cabinet above the fridge was a little lower than the other, so the whole cabinet got emergently ripped out, leaving a second gaping hole there. We’ve been living with the gaping holes for about six months, but it was clearly time to proceed with the rest of the remodel.

Our contractor started work this week. We’re getting new cabinets, replacing the oven and dishwasher that are on their last legs, and new granite countertops. Right now here’s what it looks like.

The only solution to that mess is to leave town. Fortunately the house has a tiny “kitchenette” in the basement, so we won’t starve during the couple months that this is projected to take to finish. We’re leaving this morning on our annual visit to Arizona to compete in the Great Mexican Train competition, AKA the Knitting Doctor’s family reunion. I might be able to post from the road, otherwise I’ll be back next week!