lolajl: November 2004 Archives

Hubby and I went up to Newark, New Jersey Friday as I wanted to to go the Nicholas & Alexandra exhibit at the City Museum. I'm fascinated by the Romanovs, and I feel that Nicholas and Alexandra did not deserve the treatment they received near the end of their lives. They were so much in love, to a degree that was quite unusual amongst royalty at the time. This exhibit had items that would have been found in their family quarters at Tsarskoe Selo.

In any case, we had a nice drive up there and I got to do quite a bit of knitting on my socks. We stayed at Holiday Inn right next to the airports. The highway interchanges are very confusing and we missed exit (as in, we never saw that blue sign that was posted very close to the ground. The next day we went up to the museum. It would have been nice to show off pictures, but unfortunately, the museum does not allow pictures. It was so frustrating because I saw quite a few items that would have been of interest related to fiber. So . . . I'll just have to list what objects were of partiucular notice:

• a Gobelin tapestry copied from the painting of Marie Antoinette with her three children
• a hand-knotted oriental rug portraint of Nicholas and Alexandra, with Alexei, in commemoration of the tricentennial anniversary of the Romanovs' ascent to the throne
• a crochet hook
• a chatelaine that was used by Tsarina Alexandra for her needlework
• a picture of Grand Duchess Olga wearing her nurse uniform, knitting a sweater
• two loose-fitting gowns that the Tsarina would have worn in the morning in her mauve boudoir
• a Cossack cloak that looks like it was made from felted black wool
• a truly gorgeous christening gown worn by Tsarevich Alexei, along with the pillows covered with cloth of gold and silver

I did buy the catalog, but unfortunately, only the loose gowns, and christening outfit, I think, are pictured in the catalog. I'm sure they wanted to keep the costs low on the catalog. But I think if they aren't going to allow people to take pictures, they should at least make the effort to have every item in the exhibit photographed and recorded in the catalog so that people can remember what it was that they came to see when going to the exhibit.

A very happy Thanksgiving Day to Americans celebrating the holidays! I'm thankful for my husband, my fiber stash, and the fact that I can still knit with my two hands!

I love this time of the year - I get to work just 3 days and Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season. There's nothing like hearing the festive music, the emotional feeling one gets, and looking at how people are decorating their homes.

There's also food - it's really interesting to see how people follow their traditions and at the same time create new ones. One can now find lots of interesting recipes. Ever since Curlypurl started her blog, I've been a devoted reader. She has been posting great recipes lately and I've saved a couple of these into MacGourmet. Go check Curlypurl out.

I've been working like gangbusters on my socks. I just picked up the green speckled sock, since I'm close to starting on the foot and I have the other one already made. Nice to be able to change between the socks.

At long last, class dismissed! And I think I'm going to get an A. One thing I've learned - I very much dislike taking a class that requires great thought at night. Now, taking class in Russian is a different manner, because it's very simple (really). Being a glutton for punishment, though, I almost immediately signed up for another class, this time in Perl. However, this is an online class offered through Ed2Go. What they do is to affiliate with community colleges through which students pay their fees. You pick up the lessons after noon on designated days, and you have multiple quizzes and assignments that you work on at leisure, within a time period of course. This should suit my need for the winter so Bruce doesn't have to worry about me out there driving in the snow.

Today I'm going over to Yarns International. I got a gift certificate for my birthday, so I'll go and see what they have. Decisions, decisions . . .

Yayyy . . . next to last class tonite, and last class on Thursday! This is a basic programming class that I'd signed up to learn more about fundamentals such as flowcharts, logic, and so forth. In the beginning, it was not so bad. But now I find it really excruciating, especially as this class is from 6 to 9 in the evening. I do programming during the day, and then I gotta think more in the evening. Some of the stuff I knew already, so that may be part of why I'm getting bored. Now, if it was Perl or PHP, I wouldn't be so cranky. As it is, I'm going to do the happy dance when I get home Thursday!

While browsing epicurious.com for recipes to add to MacGourmet, I came across this curious recipe . . .

GRILLED TEA-BRINED TURKEY WITH TEA-AND-LEMON GRAVY Recipe at Epicurious.com.

Huhhh? Tea and turkey? I wonder what this would taste like. But I think I'd stick with tradition and try this later in the season with a small turkey. Then if it turns out horrible, I won't feel so guilty about throwing out the turkey.

I came across an entry about sources to order shalwar kameezes and sarees that are tailor-made to your order. These outfits are based in India, and they seem to have auctions on eBay from time to time where you can put in a bid and if you win, you just send off your measurements to them and they'll make it to your specification. I'll have to try this out - I'm hoping to find 100% cotton outfits, especially those that will be warm enough to wear during the winter.

Yes, I do intend to make my own something, but sometimes one just has to indulge in custom-made outfits.

Oh, forgot to ask . . . got any favorite knitting and spinning blogs not on the list to the left that you like and think I ought to visit?

Nothing about knitting in particular . . . well, actually, yes. I've been going through the blog roll today whenever I need a break from work, and I'm noticing that one blog has closed down and a couple others are not as active in the past. So, it'll be time to prune the list, and add new blogs. I haven't visited the knitting blog rings lately (especially as I replaced the index template and forgot to copy over the html snippet).

Meanwhile, there's a new book out for those of you who use Movable Type to power your blogs. I finally got my pre-ordered copy from Amazon. I know the basics, of course, but it's good to have something to refer to, especially if you want to know what these MT tags mean or want to install plug-ins like the one that will automatically close comments after a certain number of days. I'll be installing that one soon, especially since I've been bombarded with spam comments for weeks and weeks lately.

Oh, and knitting? Making some progress on the socks . . .

I haven't been posting for a while, because I've been so distracted by, ya know, The Election. It was just so nervewracking and made it really hard to concentrate. Now that it is over, I hope we all can move on and come together as Americans. I try not to talk about politics here as I know not everyone reading this blog will agree with me. Let's just say that some of my viewpoints will surprise you. Eventually I'll be setting up another blog where I can be more free to discuss my viewpoints, and to provide a ready link to other blogs that I comment on. Actually, it's been in place for a while, but I just need to tinker around some with the look.

Lately I've been getting tons of spam comments and it is really irritating me. I'm going to start closing comments in a timely manner, and I need to find a way to do a mass comment closing on my previous posts as that's where the spammers (die, die, die spammers, DIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!) leave their droppings.

Yesterday I picked up the winter issue of Interweave Knits. This promises to be a really good issue as it looks like there will be quite a bit of classic sweater designs. Also, I picked up CastOn and it looks like they've gone through yet another makeover. We'll see how that pans out.

I've been playing around with Tungsten T5, which I treated myself to as an early gift. I have eKnitKard, but it's an old version as I downloaded the wrong one. I did get the correct version, but the Mac .sit package is corrupted, and I haven't gotten around to trying to unstuff the windows version (which is an .exe file). I was planning to go to my share directory via my PC at work and unstuff it on my laptop but I forgot to do so. Hopefully I'll have time to do it via Hubby's PC. Also waiting to hear back from Nancy on what her husband has to say about this issue. I do look forward to playing around with it.