Field Trip to Bryn Athyn.

Red Sox Nation.
Fenway Park still seems to be out of reach, but for now I'll settle for walking down to the stadium to see them play the Nationals. Grab a beer, chow on a bratwurst, and of course - knit.

Walk it out.
Last week's metro crash sent a surreal shockwave of "wow, I could have been on that train" to most Washingtonians. We all put our trust in the system, so it's a little befuddling when something like this happens. The incident also sent a shockwave of aftermath clusterfuck across the system. Each day there have been countless delays and closures, further complicated by the number of people who have jumped onto the tracks. I'll keep my comments on that out of type.

So last week I decided to walk to class. Unfortunately I picked the day that was 95 degrees, without a whisper of wind. But it seemed better than getting stuck on a train somewhere. So I trekked the 2.5 miles across from SE to NW to get to class. Along the way I checked off a rite of passage for any DC resident: happening upon a random monument.


Field Trip!
There are few things on a Saturday morning that I'd rather do than get up before my normal workweek time to drive down to Virginia to pack in a car with strangers and drive up to north of Philly for a class field trip. OK, so there might be more than a few things that rank higher. The really good part about this was that I had 3.5 hours of devoted knitting time each way, allowing me to knit up this little number...a halter made from two tones of a nylon fiber that reminds me of pantyhose.

Oh, and we learned a lot about glass. We visited Bryn Athyn, a New Church complex including a house (think...castle) and a cathedral. This is the entry way of the home:
And one of the doors:
There were intricate details all around the grounds; the architect was a true craftsman.
We wandered all around the home, finding beautiful pieces of glass everywhere - some authentic medieval glass, some manufactured in the glass shop that was set up on the grounds during construction.
We walked through tiny little secret passages...
...and up onto the roof.
from the rooftop you can see the pattern of the beautiful green grass...

and the skyline of Philly in the distance..

each of the roof tiles were formed from terracotta, and then coated with layers of blue to attempt a slate color, resulting in this beautiful array of shades:

And we saw lots of old stuff. like this old giant book

and some family photos in the master suite, including this old bitty who is KNITTING!

Brunching with the ladies.
Some of the ladies from intro came over on Sunday for a little brunch action.
One of the things that I love best about Caroline and Leah is that they are no-bull shit kind of people. They'll call it like they see it, even if it means calling me or my cat fat. Don't be fooled by this innocent-looking photo of Leah...

We popped open a few bottles of champagne, ate lots of food, and gabbed away.

Despite his heft, Caroline made a new friend in Ringo.

And Leah even paid attention to most of the conversation :)
Too much girltalk scared away even Ringo, but he stayed near - watching over us. This is kind of creepy, actually.

Eventually it was time to get some actual homework done. Unfortunately these didn't photograph well, but I finished up the eye fuck eeer, I mean birdseye mirrored business:

and did the contour line of my work building

along with the beginnings of color for it

Happy Birfday, Kelsey!
Yarning hasn't happened a lot lately. But I am a little insistent upon hand-made gifts, so Kelsey's birthday gave me an excellent excuse to spend some quality time with some beautiful Chilean cotton to make this little purse:
We went out for 25 ¢ wings and $5 pitchers at Rafters for Kelsey's birfday. Of course her outfit totally showed up my little birthday present. She saw my crochet-top tank from a tshirt and upped the ante with this little number:
Holy AWESOME!