ravellenics

The start of another Olympics can only mean one thing to an obsessive knitter: it's time for Ravellenics. In case you are not a knitter and unfamiliar with the event, it is a personal knitting challenge, to be chosen by the knitter according to skill and time, and completed during the Olympic games.

Spotted at a Walmart, made entirely out of cases of soda.

Coke gets mad props for this.

Now, lest you think that this is silly and who could possibly participate, at last count there were over 7,000 people signed up on Ravelry to take part. The "event" is so big that use of its former name, which I cannot mention here (except to say that it was a combination of the words Ravelry and Olympics), was banned as a result of a cease and desist letter from the IOC. That's right. A little knitting fun and games became the target of legal action by the International Olympic Committee.

So onto my personal Ravellenics. It is my own version of the triple axel, focused exclusively on finishing three works in progress: one very old (over two years), one somewhat aged (over six months) and one of recent vintage.

The first project is my color work mittens. Right now, it is only one mitten, without the thumb. If I had finished them several months ago as hoped, they would have been crazy warm during the polar vortex we "enjoyed" the past four weeks. Heck, if I had finished them two years ago I could have had two good years of use out of them by now! Never mind. I'll have them done for next winter.

Second project is my little brown vest. I don't know why I am knitting cotton sweaters back to back in the winter, when I should be all about the wool, but that's how the projects roll around here, all impulse and no practicality. It is halfway knitted at this point. I hope to have it completely finished by the end of the games. This is probably the easiest of three, because there are no seams and very little finishing required.

The last project, of course, is the mystery knit-a-long shawl. I still haven't started clue four. As a matter of fact, this week has been so crazy, that I haven't knitted one stitch on any project this week. Still, I hope to finish all five clues and bind off the shawl by Sunday February 23.

The suggested time to start your Ravellenics project is while watching the Opening Ceremonies. I was nowhere near a television at any point during this day. However, I did manage to knit will sitting on bleachers and observing a sporting event.

Iphone couldn't capture fast runners in relatively low light.

It could somewhat capture knitting on my lap.

I think this counts in the general spirit of the games.

facebook movie

Have you watched yours yet? (Assuming you are on Facebook of course.)

I was doing my best to resist the hype, plus not as much computer time these days, but then this video convinced me that I needed to watch mine, just so I could get all the jokes. The starting frame of the satiric video is "As far as my friends know, my life is perfect."

Umm, yep, that summed up my video perfectly. Sappy music plus pictures of me looking happy, plus tons of pictures of Primo and a couple of Terzo. As far as Facebook is concerned, Secondo doesn't exist. I am a bad mother of a middle child. So here is a picture of my wonderful, kind-hearted, well-loved (I swear!!) middle son with his rabbit Oreo.

Just to prove that he does exist. I posted the same picture on Facebook to assuage my motherly guilt.

Facebook also thinks that I run All. The. Time. I don't. I just run a few events here and there and then post my picture to make it seem that way. For the record, I haven't run for almost a month. I am resisting a 5 am alarm, plus there is no place to run with all these plowed snow mountains on the side of the road. But now I feel like Facebook has called me out on that too.

Damn you, Facebook. You were already a giant time suck. Now you have to be a guilt factory, too?

froze up

The ice storm arrived as promised. Very neat photo opportunities, such as binder twine on a gate, unless you had to actually deal with it. (I must be very clear here: my husband took this picture, AND dealt with it.)

The commute to work was a pain, with wires and trees down all over the place. Poor trees!

Same spot as yesterday, but today the trees were so weighed down

with heavy ice that I had to duck to get under them.

I was particularly nervous about about this storm because Primo had a huge commitment this afternoon/evening, in Atlantic City, which is about a 1.5 hour drive away. Atlantic City, being well south of us, had no problem with the storm. It was just a matter of getting him there.

He was co-speaking on behalf of the NJ 4-H program. Luckily we had no problem once we started down, and I delivered him on time and ready to go.

Unlike the weather, no freezing up for him. He did a great job. His co-speaker is to the left of the picture, and NJ Secretary of Agriculture Douglas Fisher to the right.

Once he cleared that hurdle, it was onto the youth reception, complete with sash and agricultural product from Mercer County. This is a high pressure commitment! We ended up with honey. I was hoping for something a bit fancier but the storms closed all the local farmers markets.

All the youth representatives, again with Secretary Fisher. County ambassadors and dairy princesses and state equestriennes galore. Note all the tiaras and evening gowns! It was quite the affair. Primo barely held his own in a blazer. Should have rented him a tuxedo. And a tractor.

here we snow again

This morning was breath-takingly, heart-achingly beautiful. Bright sun, clear blue sky. Dazzling white snow coating everything with a layer of sparkle. Even the droop of the weighed-down limbs lent a certain grace to the tree forms. It was magical.

Of course, I have no pictures of it. No work yesterday meant I went in early today to try and make up a few of the hours I missed, and traffic was so snarled that I couldn't pull over for my photographic pleasure—and I probably wouldn't have been able to capture it anyway. I had to enjoy it and try to commit it to memory the old-fashioned way.

I did manage a quick shot of the trees 

overhanging my work entryway.

Tonight we are on standby again for another storm through the night into the morning. No one can agree on exactly what we will be getting but it sounds like a nasty snow-ice-rain mix. Everyone is on edge, more so than usual with winter storms, and it may be due the one-two right hook/upper cut combos that Mother Nature is throwing our way in such quick succession this winter. The sole topic of conversation is weather, and I am obviously no exception. I can't even think about what is supposed to happen this weekend, but suffice it to say it's not good.

beauty and the beast

A wet, heavy, fast snow today, with accumulation of over an inch per hour. My best guess is about 8 inches of snow, on warm wet ground. What a mess.

But beautiful... oh, so beautiful, as wet heavy snows always are with the way they cling and pile on every available surface.

Thank goodness the beast is back in working order.

The snow's charm quickly melted away the moment you tried to move it. We have our fingers crossed that our trees won't suffer too many broken branches from the weight.

caught up, but just barely

Whew. That was a close one. I finished Clue 3 yesterday, but then counted my stitches and found I was off. Way, way off. I started to try and fix it mistake by mistake, but soon had a mess that looked like this.

I decided it was better just to suck it up and do this.

Then I started all over from the beginning of the clue. Luckily it was only 12 rows.

The problem was that I was trying to watch the Netflix series Orange is the New Black while I was knitting. Though I normally watch and knit at the same time as a matter of course, this series was so engrossing that it completely prevented me from doing that effectively. This may be a good way to rate a show: so good that it prevented knitting.

Whether or not it is an accurate reflection of prison life is beside the point. I suspect that life behind bars is both one thousand times more mind-numbingly boring and one thousand times more randomly scary and dangerous. However, the setting allows the plotlines to reflect on what happens to people when everything they know and love is stripped away, and they are left with nothing but themselves—and it is the worst part of themselves that landed them there in the first place. Piper, the main character, says it best near the end of the series: 

"I'm scared that I'm not myself in here, and I'm scared that I am. Other people aren't the scariest part of prison, Dina, it's coming face-to-face with who you really are. Because once you're behind these walls, there's nowhere to run, even if you could run. The truth catches up with you in here, Dina. And it's the truth that's gonna make you her bitch."

Be forewarned: it is extremely graphic. More graphic than I usually watch in my (admittedly) sheltered life. So graphic that when my mother told me she had watched it, I was temporarily stunned into silence. If that doesn't bother you, or if you can cope with it for the sake of a heck of a good story—actually stories, because Piper's story is just the gateway; it is the other inmates that really grip you—then don't miss this series.

Once I had finished it to the end so it could release its hold on me, I managed to get through Clue 3, all the more quickly because I had already, sort of, worked it once before.

I can finally say that I am fully ready for Clue 4 tomorrow morning!

moravian tile works

On my trip home from Bucks County Fur Products, I passed the Moravian Tile Works, and remembered that I forgot to blog about it in December. This place is definitely worth a post, and a trip.

The building sits along County Route 313 in Doylestown and is eye-catching due to its unique structure—concrete in a spanish mission style, not your typical northeastern PA architecture. For years, as I passed it on my way to and from the tannery, I wondered about the building, but never took the time to stop and see if it was open. This year, the presence of a giant tour bus in the parking lot was a clear signal.

After finding the parking lot, which is behind the building and somewhat hidden from view when you are on the road, I realized that the site was even more unique than it appears. The chimney pots and eaves are decorated with colorful tiles. My iPhone had trouble capturing the detail but every niche is a treasure trove for the eyes.

When I wandered into the entrance—again, on the backside of the building and not visible from the street—I discovered that it is a factory built by Henry Chapman Mercer in 1912 out of hand-mixed concrete (that fact alone boggles the mind) when he realized that the art of tile-making was fast disappearing. His vision led to both his preservation of the traditional patterns and skill sets as well as the building of a thriving industry making the tiles.

The floor of the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in Harrisburg is tiled with products of the factory, as are innumerable homes in the Bucks County Area. The picture above is the entry hall of the museum, where visitors are shown a video. It was hard to pay attention to the screen in such surroundings, and I wish I had spent more time in this room examining the different patterns, as well as the antique furniture and implements (not necessarily related to tile-making) that were intermixed with the pottery. It was a Cracker Barrel on steroids. Come to think of it, Cracker Barrel probably got the idea from Henry Chapman Mercer. The Mercer Museum, another of his creations and around the corner from the tile works, is chock-full of such treasures.

All of the tile forms used in the factory through the years have been carefully catalogued and stored. If you so desire, you can commission the reproduction of any one of the patterns by the skilled artisans and interns that still work there.

If you go: The site is run as a historical site as well as a working museum. The $5 admission fee includes a short video on the history and self-guided walking tour of the factory, with tiles and other objects, as well as antique photographs and equipment. Depending on the time of your visit, you may also be able to see artists and interns working the clay and producing or painting tiles. The gift shop is full of the tiles they make, in a wide price range.

Fonthill, Henry Mercer's home, pictured above, is located in the same park as the tile works. though run by a different entity. I didn't have time to tour it but I hope to remedy that this coming year, when I drag my family back to see this amazing place. We will certainly be including enough time to tour the Mercer Museum on the same jaunt.