Glass and Snow

So this weekend we took a little mini-vaca to our rival to the east to visit my husband’s brother. Don’t get me wrong – I like Pittsburgh. I even supported Matt’s team and wore black and gold when they were in the superbowl. But I’m still a Cleveland girl and they are still our rival.

One of the main reasons for this trip was to see the Chihuly exhibit at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. I’ve wanted to go for months now. He is one of my absolute favorite artists and not just because I have a thing for the Bellagio. I also happen to have a thing for Venice.

We decided to go Friday night so that we could see Chihuly Nights (same exhibit, different lighting).

It was so interesting


And beautiful


And surprising


And so very worth every second of the 2 and a half hour drive.

I love how the sculptures fit with the plantings and mimic the shapes around them:


And become a part of them as well:


The free standing pieces were spectacular:



As well as the full room instillations.


Each area has a completely different feel:

From the glowing tumbleweeds – which are visible from pretty far outside of the conservatory:


To the glass spheres and boat:


To the floating chandiliers:


I think my favorite pieces, though were these:

They are outside in the Japanese tea garden and appear to be jumping out of the icy koi pond:

Simply breathtaking.

After we took a few goofy pictures


And a posed picture:

I had a little time to play with my 50mm lens:



Experimenting with framing, and depth of field.

If you are anywhere within driving distance of this exhibit I highly recommend going – and going soon. It only runs through Feb. 24th. But if you can’t see it in person there are even more pictures (believe it or not) here on my flickr site.

From there we went to Redbeard's Mountain Resort & Yacht Club – a little dive type bar up on Mount Washington – for dinner and a few drinks before calling it a night. And yes, I did make the bartender switch the TV to the X-games. Heh.

The next morning we left bright and early for Seven Springs to get our ski on.

The mountain is divided into a front face and a north face – the front being closest to the lodge… Yeah. It was super-crowded. Everyone must be taking advantage of all of this snow! So we hung out mainly on the North Face which has some nice views:

Joel and Ellen were experimenting with the whole snowboard thing (Joel is a skier, Ellen is new to both) so we only stayed with them for a couple of runs…

Matt “helped” Joel get down the hill faster.

Heh.

By the time the front faced closed and the lights were coming on for the night ski we were all pretty tired. So we headed back to Joel’s place where he made us a tasty taco dinner

And we spent the rest of the evening playing Guitar Hero III

The guys were really into it. Ellen and I both liked to play but weren’t nearly competitive about it. We figured out that “pride and joy” is the funnest thing to play ever and just rocked that like 3 times in a row – and one time this happened:

Our scores are one point apart. I don’t think we could do that if we tried.

And since I don’t think I’ve ever had a cat on the blog here’s a picture of Apollo:

She liked me because I talked to her. A lot.

All in all it was a very fun weekend!!!

Random.

I’m exhausted from a weekend trip and it’s Monday so I’m just going to post some random before I do the weekend recap.

1.) Although Dexter’s Twin on YouTube is pretty fun I thought this was hil-ar-ious:


2.) I’m sure everyone knows that Lost is coming back on Thursday. I swore that if they killed of Charlie the show was Dead To Me and we all know how that went down …. On the other hand Sawyer is still pretty hot. Might be worth it just to watch him.

3.) Today is the 50th anniversary of the best toy ever. I was able to visit the original Legoland in Denmark on my study abroad. Apparantly part of the interview process for getting to work at LEGO is that they lock you in a room with a pile of LEGO’s and see what you come up with. I would rock that portion of the interview.

4.) Who the hell let this happen:

New Kids On the Block Stage a Comeback

Yup. They are getting back together. And while I may have swooned over my life-sized poster of Joey while pledging to battle to the death in the who’s cuter Joey vs. Jordan battle showing my unending loyalty by writing “I heart Joey” all over my trapper keeper in hot pink pen I got over all of that once I moved up to the 6th grade. Also I don’t think New Kids on the Block is still an appropriate name…

5.) So I think that the dining scene in Cleveland is pretty outstanding. It's good to see Chicago has realized this fact. And can I just tell you how hip I feel that I was at the Velvet Tango Room - which is listed in that article as a "must for any visitor" last weekend?

6.) I have an obscene amount of the Xgames DVR’d from this weekend (ironic that I was actually out skiing instead of watching the skiing.) I love the X games. Love. And the coverage is just so refreshing – where else do announcers say things like “me likey!” or after a spectacular wipeout “give that dude a round of applause for even trying that!” Plus stuff like this happens:

That guy jumped over a 30' canyon. On skiis. Backwards. Everything about that is awesome. I'm going to go watch the highlights of this years games now...

Fire keeps me warm

So I’m finished spinning the fire fiber.

Well not completely. I still have to ply it all.

And yes, I took A LOT of pictures (believe it or not there are even more on flickr).

But it’s not every day I get to see this much handspun – 1lb 3oz - in one place!

Plus I’m pretty proud. This was my first big spinning project. When it’s done I should have quite a bit of yarn - I have no idea exactly how much but hopefully a lot.

It’s not the most perfect or even but plyed it’s around a worseted/aran weight.

Which leaves me lots of possibilities … Perhaps stripes in a sweater?

Perhaps a Clapotis?

Perhaps something a little more lacy?

Not sure what I’ll use it for yet but I’m sure I want a pattern that will show off the yarn!

(Because in case you can't tell I seriously love this yarn.)

Blue Monday

So yesterday, Monday, January 21 was officially the Most Depressing Day of the Year. No seriously. Psychologists have figured out that the combo of credit cards from Christmas being due, failed New Years Resolutions, and bad weather with no end in sight make this the saddest day possible.

So instead of being depressed how about a list of 11 things that are making me happy?

1.) Wearing handknits. Currently I have on both my Wicked and my Thuja almost knee socks. Nothing is more warming than handknits!

2.) This picture:

Dexter looks so very ferocious! But in truth he was just yawning between naps:

So not ferocious at all. The fun part here is that he is wearing the sweater I knit for him. He loves it now. No, really. I take it out and he gets all excited and he totally lets us put it on him w/o biting or complaining at all. I think he’s realized the association between sweater and warm. The poor little guy gets all shivery when it’s this cold out.

3.) I finished spinning the fire fiber - all that's left is to ply it. And yes I took eleven million photographs of it. But I think they deserve their own post.

4.) Recreational Basketball leagues:


Well really that’s something that’s making Matt happy but if he’s happy I’m happy, right?

5.) Crockpot dinners. I made a full chicken with veggies and potatoes and all sorts of good stuff on Sunday. The leftovers are just awesome (and are heating up for dinner right now!).

6.) I found this on YouTube:


Man I loved this show. Sadly I couldn’t find the Hunting for Muppets sketch. But $240 of Pudding? Goodstuff.

7.) Friends who also knit and will reasuure me that yes, Juilet looks good, and yes, I should finish it. Even if Matt was laughing at me when I tried it on.

8.) New Yarn. I’ll post pics of what I bought on Saturday soon - I may have to bust out the ghetto lightbox tonight to make that happen, though... how long until the sun comes back?

9.) The most relaxing weekend ever. We did nothing. No really. NOTHING. It was so great. We haven’t done nothing in for-ev-er. Literally every night (not just every weekend but every night) in December was booked solid. I think we had out of town guest something like 5 out of 7 weekends? And that bled into January. It was so nice to have a weekend to just hang out and not worry about being anywhere/doing anything/getting ready for anything.

10.) Stranded Mittens. The one thing I did this weekend was knit alot of this:

So very amusing.

And pretty.

Also? Those would be in progress pictures - meaning I'm keeping resolution #5.

11.) Surviving the most Depressing Day of the Year. Because if yesterday was the worst than 2008 can only get better from here, right!

Socks are Love.

Ok first of all. You know that point on the drunken continuum where you think you’re really clever and amusing and maybe talk a lot? That’s exactly where I was with the last post. I was going to delete it but eh. It happens. And despite having a headache I totally made it into work on time and was a productive member of society today. Good thing I didn’t have any meetings. Actually to be completely honest if I did have a meeting or design review or anything that I needed to be extremely sharp for there’s no way I would have drank last night. That is NOT the way I roll. Responsible boozing is the only way to go.

Ok enough of that business on to the real content of the post – the last of the Christmas Knits. Remember these?

Those would be the Swirl Socks in Cider Moon Glacier in the colorway Lower Wacker Drive. They’ve been on the blog before… Anyways these were my traveling socks. I started them waaaay back in July on that trip to Toledo/Detroit and basically knit them wherever I went after that. Including all over Peru. I gave them to my mom for Christmas because I knew that she would appreciate both that they are knit out of a wonderfully rare yarn and that they were traveling socks.

And how fun it is that the swirls line up.



Plus last year she gave me her travel socks.



And she’s knit something crazy like 20 pairs of socks and has given all but a very few of them away (I think only one pair? That can’t be right. Mom do you seriously own only one pair of hand knit socks?). I actually own 3 pairs of her socks including these that she just gave me for Christmas:


Those would be some pattern from either Sensational Knitted Socks or the sequel knit out of Knitpicks Bare that I dyed for her last Christmas.


See how it all comes full circle?

I called the colorway Smashed Plums.

The toes are a different yarn b/c this is actually the second pair she got out of that skein. That’s A LOT of yardage!

They are completely beautiful but I was bit afraid to wear them because they aren’t superwash – mainly because this was just a test skein to learn how the whole dying process works – I figured this would be a throw away skein. Then I ended up liking the color so much I gave it to her anyways. I wore them for the first time yesterday to the cake/knitting/wine extravaganza and everyone was very impressed.

Thanks, Mom!

Ok I’m going to go curl up into a still hungover ball on the couch now and watch many episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philladelphia. Perhaps even spooning the dog. Oh and if anyone is going to the Soft ‘n Sassy annual sale tomorrow say hi! I’ll be there at like 10:30ish!