Saturday

I realized today I have been slacking on my Saturday aerial post since the spring season ended. Here is a fun picture for you guys!

Step 1: Admitting You Have a Problem

I am trying to get ready for knit night.  After a long  and stressful day in the office, my sanity requires that I knit.  It’s for the safety of others, you see.

So, I am now at home, and wandering  the house in a quandary, when the following  dialogue occurs:

Boy: What are you looking for?
Knitter: The project I was working on before I  went to Seattle.
Boy: (looks in a bag) This one?

Knitter: No, the green one.
Boy: This one?

Knitter : Not that one. That’s the chess board. The other one.
Boy: The red one you were working on last night?

Knitter: The green shirt that I was trying to get done before I left, remember?
Boy: This one?

Knitter : Umm… No.
(Both stand around staring at the room)

Knitter: Honey, I think I have a problem.

G’bye Seattle!

I am home now, rather reluctantly.  I felt like I hardly was able to explore the city!  There is still so much I want to see and learn about.

That just means that I am planning a return trip.

This was the perfect time of year to go, with beautiful weather the entire weekend.

Everything was in bloom, and the colors were mesmerizing.

Everywhere I turned there was a beautiful view.  This one was the best.

 

 

What I enjoyed most was the time I spent with family and friends.  There was much-needed laughter and catching up.  I miss them all!

And of course, nice, relaxing knitting.

Flying Trapeze (or) Crossed Off the Bucket List

One of the things I have been looking forward to the most about my trip has been exploring a bit of the local circus and vaudeville community. It’s fairly vibrant, I must say.

The night I arrived, I met up with a high school friend of mine who was starring in a wonderfully rendered Indiana Jones themed burlesque. It was a brilliant way of beginning my adventure.

Yesterday, I headed to Emerald City Trapeze School for a drop in lesson on the flying trapeze.

This is the aerialdrome. It is huge. And they have an observation deck for people to watch and take wonderful photos from.

The students warmed up and went through ground school before getting strapped into harnesses. We were grinning idiots, as you can see by the photo there.

The very worst part of this adventure was climbing the ladder up to the platform. It was thin and liked to bow a little with every step. After that, standing on the sturdy platform felt so much safer. One of the instructors hooked us into the harness and held us steady until it was time for the jump command,  or ‘hep’.

Then you have to trust everything and everyone around you and take the small leap off the platform. It has about the same level of adrenaline and anticipation as jumping off a diving board, only doing this I wasn’t afraid I would belly flop.

One the first peak, you curl your legs for a knee hang.

Then, you let go of the bar and arch your back, lifting your head to look at the other end of the net.

Then, you grab the bar, unhook your legs, and hang out for a second. We were doing cannonball back flips to dismount, which sound so much more difficult and look pretty amazing, but with simple physics they were hard to mess up.

The really cool, breathtaking, adrenaline pumping thing we did in the class was to actually let go of the bar to be caught by someone else.

That happens so suddenly. I went through the moves they had drilled, only at one point there w someone else swinging toward me, he grabbed my wrists and I grabbed his. Without thinking, my legs let go of the bar and I had to trust him to hold me.

It was pretty unbelievable. At this point, when I realized I had let go of the bar, I was filled with satisfaction and confidence. I was excited and relieved. I started grinning and laughing, before he even let me go for a dismount.

Everyone in the class was super beginner level. Most of them had no prior circus experience. And most of them reached this level by the end.

Seriously, you need to try this!

In Seattle

I have been in Seattle since Thursday and I don’t think I have stopped moving since I arrived. This is probably the best weekend I could have come; the sun is shining brightly, there is a beautiful breeze and a warm atmosphere. This is the kind of day the locals don’t tell you about.

I can’t get over the mountains. I have lived among mountains before, when I ran away with the circus to Arizona, and I have missed them ever since.

Yesterday, I got to watch the sun set over them as we had our dinner at the waterfront. It was breathtaking.

I have been hustling from adventure to adventure, catching up with friends or here and spending time with my sister, who I haven’t really gotten to hang out with since she moved here nearly ten years ago.

She took me to Pikes Place Market and Pioneer Square and we had a blast.

This fish was connected to a strong that the guys would pull when someone got close. Funniest thing to watch!

After the market, we continued exploring down the waterfront and into Pioneer Square.

There was a curiosity shop which was more than a little disturbing.

Yes that is a disco moose. It was in a saloon that we went to for a drink and I couldn’t get over it.

There is more to come; I have a few more days here and done fun things planned. I am trying to remember to take pictures, but I find myself getting distracted by the sunshine.
I love this city!

One Fish Two Fish

The business of the past few weeks left me with an intense need to craft.  I clocked out of work, got home, and the rest of the night was consumed by scissors, fiber, sewing machines, and expletives.

Water soluble stabilizer that I have had in my craft area for several months now, combined with:

Pounds (about 8-10 pounds, I kid you not) of tangled fiber.  Basically, I received a shopping bag of fiber and told that if I wanted to go through the trouble of untangling everything, the yarn was all mine.  At this time, I had an idea for a project that this sort of gift was perfect for.  I had no desire to untangle it, I merely sandwiched a bunch of it in the stabilizer and added a bajillion pins (yes, that is a mathematically correct phrase.)

I’m still picking pins off the floor and have warned my housemates against walking around barefoot.

I took it over to the sewing machine and spent the next three hours stitching, and swearing, and slapping the table, and cleaning the machine, and fixing the thread, and retucking and pinning, and swearing some more before bringing out the bottle of whiskey and glaring at the mass of tangled yarn and thread.  I am lucky to have roommates who happen to find my moods and crafty notions amusing, so they poured the whiskey and watched the project progress, not minding that over time the volume and creativeness of my cursing increased.

Once the main stitching was done, I headed to my fabric stash .  I have had this bolt of fabric for a few years now – it was a freebie from a neighbor.  I find it charming, yet too gaudy to really do anything with.  I love the images of the koi and lotus though, so I wanted to utilize them in my project.

There were even seahorse!

The whole thing then took a bath in warm water to get rid of the stabilizer and spent the next few days hanging over whatever I could drape it over without it being in the way.  It was so thick – too thick probably for the project really – it took ages to dry.

And then it took a while to photograph, but here it is! Thanks to Ellette, I have some modeled shots.

This makes the fiber look more brown than blue.  I wanted it to look like the shifting waters of a stream.

There are different sized koi, a couple of seahorses, and a few lotuses hanging out as well.

It measures about nine feet and weighs a pound or two.  It needs another warm bath to get rid of the last bit of stabilizer residue, but after that it should be beautiful.

And now that the weather is in the 80s, it will really come in handy (she says with just a hint of sarcasm.)

Not There Yet

On Sunday, I really tried to hammer out the last rounds of the Roundabout Leaf tank.  I worked until the linen made my knuckles sore.  I very rarely experience the knuckle pain that many knitters/crocheters complain of when working with inelastic fibers such as cotton or linen, but this tank is giving me the worst.  I think it is because I am knitting at a slightly tighter gauge than called for.  I know for certain that the tighter gauge is the reason it has taken me so long to complete.  If I had knit to gauge, my bands would be wider, requiring less of them to reach the desired length.  As it is, I’ve added two extra to give me the hip long tunic length I am hoping to achieve.

I am on what I suspect is my last go-round before decreasing.  Then it is the blocking and picking up for the straps.  Two days left before I fly to Seattle and I really hope this is done and in my bag before I leave.  Overall, this has proven to be a rather mindless knit, which makes the going easier because I can chat or watch a movie while I work, and it has been fairly transportable, although at these later stages it has become a bit cumbersome.