Egham

Airport runs. That was what today was all about.

Ms Maus had an outbound flight at 0950 meaning she and I drove to Heathrow at 0730 and dropped her off at Terminal 1. Then I drove home.

Dr Beverly had an outbound flight at 1500, so she needed to be dropped off sometime between 1330-1400 as Scotland for the purposes of BMI is a domestic flight.

Did I mention that Mr Mole was inbound around 1700?

There was absolutely no way I was driving back home and returning to Heathrow (about 30 miles each way) a third time.

I went to Egham.

Plinth

Plinth

and wandered around. There is a small museum there; really a collection of stuff all run by volunteers.

Poster on Tudor in area

Poster on Tudor in area

which has an occasional bit and bob from early on, a large number of photos of the town from the early 1900s on and a discussion of Dr Holloway –

Royal Holloway College

Royal Holloway College

who, with his fortune made off patent medicines, established a rather fine women’s college. Go figure.

Other than that, Egham is probably noted for being near the M25 and Runneymeade.

After picking the young man up at Terminal 1 (no, not Terminal 4 or other confusions, Terminal 1), we went home.

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Leaving Dinner

Just a quick note.

Tonight was the farewell dinner for the [British] Army Medical Director General, otherwise referred to as DGAMS. This is the equivalent post of the US Army Surgeon General (not to be confused with the US Surgeon General who is appointed to the Publish Health Service. You know them, NIH? FDA? CDC? the Corps that also supports the Coast Guard and the Federal Prisons with their spare officers?)

Anyway, the affair began at 1930 and ended just a few minutes ago.

There were 80 some people there, all dressed up in their finest Military Mess Kit. The speeches were excellent, short and pithy.

I am wiped.

Obviously, there was no time for knitting today.

Posted in Military, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Pyramide – the problem

Sleeves

Sleeves

You see it, don’t you?

The sleeves just don’t match. Oh, the patterns line up perfectly, but the size is not right. I am going to frog the second sleeve and knit it again instead of fixing it by seaming.

Now, I thought I had the decreases down properly, but obviously it just was not happening.

Posted in Knitting, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Not much

So what did I do this evening? Knit?

Nah. I played a couple of stupid computer games, did laundry, dishes, and contemplated cleaning up a bit more of the house for inbound company.

I also sat here looking at this wonderful pile of books + that I picked up at RAF Croughton Library.

  • Fire and Ice by JA Jance
  • Smash Cut – Sandra Brown
  • Dreamfever – Karen Marie Moning
  • Gone Tomorrow – Lee Child
  • Lavender Morning – Jude Deveraux
  • The Perfect Poison – Amanda Quick
  • The Third Circle – Amanda Quick

Oh, yes. And Season 4 of the New Doctor Who. I have no clue as to whether or not I am going to like this particular assistant. What I saw of her in The Runaway Bride seemed to combine some of the worst traits of both Rose and her mother……  Did the ability to write the perfect side kick end with Rex Stout?

Posted in Books & Tapes, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

And another

Bites the dust was what I was intending. I have only 22 ridges to go on the second sleeve. Problem is that, for whatever reason, the decreases on this one are not matching the first. I have a choice – frog – or sew the sleeve smaller when I put it together.

The second was my original intention, but it wouldn’t feel as comfortable so a frogging I will go, back to almost the first pattern set on the sleeve. Blech!

Housekeeping instead. Ms Soprano’s pix doesn’t embiggen (I stole it from her avatar which is 32×32). If you want to see a variety of pictures, then trip over to her blog (which I just discovered this morning. Parents are always the last to know…..  And she actually does have a black hat, although she is currently wearing it without a hat band).

I spent a short time (actually several hours off and on) and managed to update WordPress and rescued part of the sidebar. The rest is down at the bottom. Not where I would want it out of choice, but at this point I am amazed to have anything at all.

Once I get the bread crumbs and Flickr under control I think I will just leave things alone for a while.

In the midst of all of this I finally beat my new UK military account into submission, helped a couple of people, got hooked into two official events this week and added two more journeys to Heathrow to the todo list.

Video

Finally got to Season 3 of the new Dr Who. All I can say is the new side kick is a real relief after the Blond (Rose) and traffic jams extend into infinity.

Posted in family, Knitting, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Progress on WIP/UFO pile

I unearthed a couple more UFOs. The problem with stripey type yarns is that it takes a lot of effort to make the sides identical. These aren’t.

two partially started baby sweaters

two partially started baby sweaters

Next Step:

the yarn

the yarn

Twinings Shawl

Two balls of Opal and more than a couple of hours – one more UFO completed (well, not blocked) 50″ x 14.” Knit on a 4.00 Kollage square needle.

Twinings finished

Twinings finished

And this is what is left –

what is left of 200gm

what is left of 200gm

which is not bad considering that it is a 16 row pattern which can only be stopped at row 8 and 16.

And my WIP/UFO pile has decreased by three.

Left on the needles – my Faery Ring, Pagode, Katherine, Stillwater, Textured Sleeveless Pullover, and an ancient Norwegian Roses Vest. Since I want to join Jo and Dicksie in knitting Knitting Lavold’s Brage  starting 15 Sept I plan on having at least two completed (Faery Ring and the Sleeveless Pullover) if not three to decrease my guilt.

from the Viking Trail Exhibit

from the Viking Trail Exhibit

Podcasts

Catching up on Wait, Wait …. don’t tell me!

Posted in Knitting, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Home again

Most of the time, you hear me complain about journeys; this time it went rather smoothly.

The Mole came out of his cave to give me a hug goodbye, it was a nice walk to the train station. Arriving early enough, I caught the S2 promptly and an earlier ICE at Mannheim. There was  a seat on the train just waiting for me and a stop at the USO netted me a book to read on the train. Only three of the 20 books I had dropped off last time were still on the shelf. Unfortunately, few people, if any, seem to bother to go to Bookcrossing and make journal entries.

Security said nothing about all my knitting needles, extra cables or computer equipment in my carry-on at either the airport location or the second screening for the UK flights. The flight was fine, not full. The long term parking Custom Service issued me a new ticket when I could not find mine (pre-paying parking at Heathrow is the only way to go) and there were no traffic jams on the way home.

Ms Soprano had cleaned up the kitchen, including the dishes and recycling before leaving (she flew back to the US last Friday) and even left me a comment so I knew where to find one of the slithering tape measures. The Avatars show up in my dashboard, but not, apparently, where you can see them complete with new hair cut and color.

Ms Soprano

Ms Soprano

Women’s Textured Vest

This is the Fall KAL for one of the Ravelry Vest groups – Cascade’s Greenland Sleeveless Textured Pullover which is even available as a free download linked from the above page.

Textured Vest

Textured Vest

The actual color is dark orange. It is not for me – which should not be a surprise. The yarn is Smart from Sandnes, the needles are 4.00 and I am past the split for the front and back. Suddenly deciding that it would be smarter to knit both the front and back at the same time, I added on the second ball and will move on to three tomorrow so that both fronts are the same as well.

Audio

Finished Back on Blossom Street and moved on to Press Enter by John Varley (cheep download a number of weeks back from iTunes).

Posted in Knitting, Travel, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Knit and Sun

Can you think of a more lovely way to spend an afternoon?

There is Geollyn who braved the stares from other men walking by. There is Lia, Erica of the wonderful shawl, Julie (who you would never believe has been knitting for only three weeks), Donna (from Adelaide), Veronika (Bensheim -> Wales really soon now), Diana (who was kind enough to take a whole lot of yarn off my hands for charity knitting), and Cornelia – working on a mystery shawl. Of course, I could well have missed someone, and the names are not in the order of seating….

Café Maximo is a lovely place to sit outside in sun for most of the afternoon. What started as a 1400-1600 meet-up once a month last year or the year before is evolving into a weekly meet-up of whomever can make it, lasting how long people can stay.

I managed to pass along a good size bag and a half of yarn odds and ends to new homes, much of it headed to charity knitting, completed 10 cm more on the vest, devoured both nachos and some good Käseküchen, and managed to get home while it was still light.

Posted in Knitting, Travel, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

No clue

at all: not what so ever about what we might do with the Siebenschläafer. We have had the little beasties in the wall and between the attic floor and our ceiling for several years now.

They are moderately destructive, but don’t really have a fondness for wires. They have, on occasion tried to chew their way out of the built in cabinets. It is also known that they have an unerring ability to find their way back from getting trapped and moved (record so far is about 10km when crossing a major river is not involved). From my point of view, humane means that I survive the enterprise, not them.

We have tried trapping, poison and blocking every single last place where they could possibly manage to sneak in.

No luck. They may be tiny, but seem to be mighty.

on the road

The Mole got up this morning and came along to the testing day of ATLS. All moulaged, he served as one of the mock patients for the hands on portion of the test, talked to several of the docs and seemed to have a good time.

After several stops and hunting around, we managed to replace his old MacBookPro. With an operating system that refused to upgrade, 80G hard drive and continual freezing, I wanted him able to return to school on the 9th with the ability to handle anything his last year of A levels tosses at him.

and home

30 years of marriage, about 18 months of again running two households and the DH seems to have forgotten every thing about toilet seats.

What is it with guys? OTOH, I am not doing the cleaning…..

Posted in Home, Military, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Siebenschläfer

They’re back. Busy little creatures running up and down in our house walls. Activity increasing as the sun goes down, they dance in the ceiling, cavort in the walls, damage wires and otherwise keep me awake at night.

Knitting is much better –

Women's textured sleeveless vest

Women's textured sleeveless vest

started yesterday and messed up this morning with me crossing some of the cables in the wrong direction. The two affected rows (why do I never find the error immediately?) have been ripped and  I am over half way done with the repair row using a tiny circular as my cable needle. I do know how to cable without a needle, it is a good suggestion for when none seems to be found, but I find that my gauge is more consistent when I use one.

which reminds me – it isn’t often that I find someone who both reads as much as I and seems to have similar reactions to books. I find Melinda’s book reviews well written and extremely useful.

Books

I started the new J A Jance before I left home, finished #3 of the Lt Leary series in audio on the plane to Germany, started Mean Streets – anthology yesterday and am behind on most of my podcast list.

Posted in Home, Knitting, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Slithering under the couch cushions

Having read a post by Mary Scott Huff that she wrote last winter, I was able to maintain my cool when transitioning from ribbing to the pattern portion of a vest. A cabled vest, and me on a plane without a cable needle.

One of the smaller size KP harmony end that was just swapped off the cable worked as a substitute and I even still had both loose needles at the end of the flight.

Now, the previous evening I had dug change out of the bed (€, $, Sterling and a couple of Florints), tracked down needles hiding under the bed, collected yarn from a bin upstairs, and rescued pouches of stitch markers from two suitcases. Remaining on the must find list – after I had located one of the must be dozens of needle size gauges that I own – was a tape measure.

I think they are alive; capable of slithering off on their bellies to secret themselves in dark warm places. I buy tape measures frequently, but never seem to be able to locate a single one.

Unless, of course, I am have just returned from acquiring a tape measure. It is at that point that I will find a tangled nest of them in a knitting bag that I could swear was empty just hours prior.

I suppose I could solve the problem if I went through the whole house (which house? UK? DE? ) and collected all my knitting stuff into one location and spent the required time to sort things out. Stocked project bags with the required tools and placed all the extra in my nice wooded Lebküchen box.

Oh, wait. I did that once, right before I moved so that everything was organized. That was Jan 2008. I wasn’t two weeks on the ground in the UK and didn’t have a tape measure in sight.

Two of them that I located last night were still in their original packaging. I have not a clue what one was doing in the kitchen service manual drawer or why the other was hanging out with candles in the dining room. But certainly, they did not fight me when I placed them in my project bag.

I did make a significant mistake: I unpackaged them. Tonight I find that both had vanished, slithering out of sight sometime in the last 24 hours when I was not looking. I hope they are having a good time, perhaps exploring a Lufthansa flight back and forth over the Channel.

Posted in fiber toys, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Just passing it along

A married couple in their early 60’s was celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in a quiet, romantic little restaurant.

Suddenly, a tiny yet beautiful fairy appeared on their table. She said, ‘For being such an exemplary married couple and for being loving to each other for all this time, I will grant you each a wish.’

The wife answered, ‘Oh, I want to travel around the world with my darling husband.’ The fairy waved her magic wand and – poof! – two tickets for the Queen Mary II appeared in her hands.

The husband thought for a moment: ‘Well, this is all very romantic, but an opportunity like this will never come again. I’m sorry my love, but my wish is to have a wife 30 years younger than me.’

The wife, and the fairy were deeply disappointed, but a wish is a wish. So the fairy waved her magic wand and poof!…

The husband became 92 years old.

The moral of this story: Men who are ungrateful morons should remember fairies are female….

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Packing is such not fun. Flight tomorrow for Germany.

Posted in Home, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Fixing UFOs

Don’t ever stop knitting in the middle of a row of lace. Unless that row happens to be the one with the life line – you just might be in for a world of pain. I looked at that UFO which has been sitting on the needles for several months now. I could not tell where I was in the pattern – the number of stitches in the row gave me a couple of possibilites.

where was I?

where was I?

The end result was that I decided to do this –

ready to go

ready to go

It was such fun that I decided to be honest about the following –

turning this

turning this

into

this

this

and this

this barely started

this barely started

back into a

ball of yarn

ball of yarn

All of this means I really need to decide about

Katherine

Katherine

and

Stillwater

Stillwater

Posted in Knitting, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Stones not in the road

Thanks so much for the interest, condolences, and comments on the house. We have backed off for the moment on house hunting.

Better we should keep the money in the bank, investments and current property.

Meanwhile – Ms Soprano has been entertaining herself

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Pyramide revisited

Rather than give in to temptation, I pulled out one of my stagnant projects. The first sleeve is now finished.

first sleeve complete

first sleeve complete

Since garter stitch is great video watching knitting, I kept on going and completed almost two repeats of the pattern on the second sleeve.

and progress on the second

and progress on the second

Why was I watching video’s?

The Croughton Library has the new Dr Who series on the shelf……

Posted in Knitting, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

No House

Neither the DH or I are sure if we are disappointed or relieved. We both loved the house and, believe it or not, had already had a two year rental contract offer.

But someone outbid us for the house. By a lot (well, I consider $100,000 at lot) which put him well over asking price and cash at that. Must really need that particular house. I shudder to think what it is going to do for house pricing in the area.

On a better note –

Marching down the road

Marching down the road

my drive to work this morning was delayed. After five minutes of watching them wander back and forth in the road I finally got out and snapped the picture. Since that had no effect I swallowed my pride and went after the trio of pirates yelling and waving my arms.

They finally conceded me the right of way.

Posted in Home, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Almost awake

This has been one of the roughest time zone wipe outs for me yet.

I don’t think it was the long flight, broken by a plane change in Minneapolis (long enough to buy another thermos mug from Caribou Coffee and not much else), or waiting for our ride at Heathrow Terminal 4.

Never mind that the plane was full and I hardly slept or that I haven’t slept regularly since getting home. Managed to make a dental trip for Ms Soprano on Tues without running off the road (close but made it) and got to work although I am not sure that I really accomplished much of anything.

It must be the house.

You see, one of the things we were doing in San Francisco was house pricing. Not intending to buy, mind you, just looking. Unfortunately we found what just might be the perfect house for DH. I like the house alot, even though it is in the East Bay and want to be in the city.

It is just that house prices are so horrible in California. Our first three houses (ok, Minnesota but still) were well under 6 six figures. DC was more expensive, enough so that I was willing to freak out on a house costing double what our last house had cost. We sold our last stateside house in 1997 (ouch, 11 years ago) and have owned in Heidelberg since 2001.

The good thing is that this house is less expensive than the house we now have (currency changes and inflation have worked in our favor) but still. It means that if our offer is accepted we won’t have a lot of cash for the next year or so and will have to find a one year tenant so as to avoid any unpleasantness at removing a renter.

I will know tomorrow. Meanwhile, knitting has given way to mindless computer games in an effort to zone out and not panic.

Posted in Home, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

New Toy

She arrived while I was on vacation. I could call her Victoria, or come up with a better name. Weighing in at slightly more than 3kg, she is lighter than my laptop…..

Posted in fiber toys, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Circles in the Grain

Dandelion Wine – A book by Ray Bradbury, a beverage, and a Canadian Group from many years ago that has a wonderful album titled Circles in the Grain (music sample here).

I am originally from the Midwest, crop circles mean one thing. Flying over large areas of the US – it means something else.

irrigation circles

irrigation circles

showing that there is life and future after passing over the majesty of the Rockies

and on into the sunset

toward my current home.

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Stash

There is a lovely small yarn store on Solarno in Berkeley called Stash. Carries all sorts of essentials, like Cascade and Harrisville. The people are wonderfully friendly and the sit and knit area is really comfortable.

Article Practical in Oakland has lace yarns, choices and choices. It also has more pretties. Not the basics. I think the two store inadvertently complement each other well.

I will not talk of spending hours in Bead stores nor Jo-Anns Fabrics with an old army friend.

Other than that, I am at my same two knitting projects, Ms Maus is not feeling well, the suitcases are packed and I am for bed.

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment