Glimpse of Beach

Yes, More Cat Pictures

Listen, I don't know why Maggie is being so very, very photogenic lately*, but I just can't stop myself from doing it again.
*I had my phone in at the store to look into something, and the woman helping me asked what the cat's name was, and said she's really cute. Yes, she is.

The other night, snuggling up on the couch.

She looks like she's about to bite, but it was a solid few minutes of dozing in that position.

And then next morning on the lanai.

On the lanai again today, she first did the "I'm so calm and serene" thing:

So casual.

And then grabbed for my leg.

She's also helping me pack.

Speaking of which, I'd better get back to that. I'll try to post tomorrow night, but I leave Wednesday morning, so there may be enough headless-chickening happening Tuesday night that I won't get to it. In which case, I'll try to throw up pictures here and there on the trip, before I get back and drown you in trip stories.

A Lovely Day For It

Yesterday I joined a few new friends at the regularly held beach clean-up. I'm not usually up and out so early on a weekend, but it was a beautiful morning.

With pelicans.

And distant views.

And close-ups of water and sand.

And this oddball bird, doing a version of the cat-loaf.

(Thanks, Mary Ellen!I wanted to zoom in on him, but I'm trying to use Google Photos and editing won't work for me. It says I can edit it, and lets me zoom in, but when I hit Done, it reverts to the original. Any ideas on getting that to work?)

Beach clean-ups give me mixed emotions. It's nice that there are people willing to clean up after others, but it's sad that there are so many people who don't clean up after themselves. One can charitably imagine the wind grabbing that string-cheese wrapper, the child burying a toy, or a hair tie jumping away and not being found again. It's also entirely possible that people just didn't bother to pick up after themselves, or just don't care, which is aggravating.

But at least it might not have been intentional. I can't come up with a single charitable possibility for cigarette butts. You don't leave those behind unawares. Come on, smokers: this is a beach, not an ashtray.

Now Here's a Throwback

It wouldn't have occurred to me that there would be film of a hockey game taken in 1930, and yet here it is! With sound, even: hey, peanuts!



It's amazing what's out there, isn't it? Down the rabbit hole I go.

This one, from 1933, even has the play-by-play.



A few things:

• He goes into the dressing rooms between periods and interviews players and coaches.
• Who does? Oh, just the legendary Foster Hewitt, is all.
• The Rangers had a player named Ching Johnson! Who was given that nickname, according to Wikipedia, because (though he was a Canadian of Irish descent), "he was considered to have an Asian looking face"--what? He "earned the nickname "Ching" when fans of the defencemen would shout "Ching, Ching Chinaman" to support him."--support?!

Anyway, moving on. This one is a snippet of a documentary, so in addition to game action, there's some behind the scenes with the players and equipment, as well as some fun footage of kids out learning to play the game.



This is more recent, of course, being the 70s, but oh, that music takes me right back to watching games on TV when I was a kid.



Some great footage, too, including the flying Bobby.

What a fine rabbit hole, indeed. I have packing to organize! I can't be sitting here for hours, watching old hockey videos!

An Update to the Knitting Update

So last week, I wrote about what I was knitting, then cheerfully went off to the Thursday night knitting group. After I did some more rounds on the Cereus Cowl, I decided to put it on some waste yarn and try it on; the pattern calls for two repeats of the lace section, but I was thinking I might want to go on for more and make it longer.

Well. It doesn't fit the way I was imagining it would: it isn't wide enough to go over my shoulders as it is, and since it doesn't get wider, going longer would just give me more around my neck instead. Which, I know, it's a cowl, they go around the neck, I get that. I was envisioning more of the effect of Across the Waters I made, which is not a fault of this pattern in the slightest, I'm not saying it is! Not blaming the pattern for it, but it isn't being what I want it to be.

As I see it, I now have three options:

1. Finish it off as the pattern calls for, accepting that it is what it is, not what I imagined it would be.
2. Go on from here, but make it wider (somehow; math would be involved, unfortunately).
3. Rip back to before the lace, and work out making it wider from there.

And I have no idea which I want to do! So what I did do was put it aside for now, and cast on the shawl I mentioned in the post last week, so that I have that to take on the trip instead. Thus:

Reminder that the lace version of this pattern started as:

And, yes, I am considering if I should bring something else on the trip, in addition to the socks and the shawl, because sure, I might finish knitting the shawl (yeah, no, I won't: not 860 yards of yarn), and then what would I do? As far as I can find out, the Big Island doesn't have any yarn stores (though there is a quilting store whose website says they carry yarn).

(Really, the amount of yarn in this shawl, and a sock and a half, will not get done in 10 days, even with travel of this distance. But this is how knitters think.)

Looking Around the Curry Mansion Inn (Key West)

All right, let's wrap up the Key West posts, quick before I go to Hawaii! (Previously: main entry, treasure museum, Hemingway Home)

To recap, we spent our one night at Amsterdam's Curry Mansion Inn; I searched (and searched) for a place that both had availability that night, and didn't require a multi-night stay, and this was the winner.

Just lovely! (As I said in previous entries, if you want more concrete info about the place, beyond my font of randomness, start with their website.)

Let me start by saying that the brochure mentions a self-guided tour, so there was nothing weird about me wandering around and taking lots of pictures!

Given the age and condition of the place (old, and stellar), I was not expecting an elevator in the library, but there it was.

I actually wondered for a moment if it was an old phone booth with the phone removed, but the sign clarified that:

As did a look upward:

I coveted this gorgeous secretary desk piece in the lobby.

And the detailing, everywhere!

Look at that woodwork at the top of the doorway.

The phone/intercom thing amused me as well. In the lobby:

And upstairs:

And another! Though no handset on this one, so even if the others still work (doubtful, right?), this one wouldn't.

This is the second floor.

Where there was this neat sewing supply box.

And a ship's wheel tucked behind a display case.

Fuse box?

Interesting things tucked in every corner and on top of every piece of furniture.

Oh, look, another phone box!

The back stairs down.

Interesting corner case.

Stairs from the second up to the third floor, slightly fancier than the previous stairs.

Where I saw this neat old sewing machine.

And this traveling wardrobe.

More plebeian stairs behind it.

Leading to a ladder if you want to go up to see the view, ulp. I decided that I could do it, though I have a bit of a thing about climbing like that.

(I've had semi-recurring dreams where I get stuck in spaces that shrink while I'm going through them...not fun.)

The view in all directions was certainly worth it!

But I more or less took pictures all the way round and then headed back down, before I got too worked up about the descent. Hey, know yourself, right? I'm glad I did it, but also glad I managed how I did it. I mean, I don't think I would have gotten stuck and worked myself into a panic, but if I had, and had to send for backup, how embarrassing.

Back on solid ground, and admiring the stained glass!

Back on the ground floor, and in the music room there's this old thing: is it a record player? Not exactly.

More like a giant music box?

With a crank on the side.

As I said, there's plenty of information about the rooms and their contents* on their website, but these are the things that caught my eye.

*I take it back: there's plenty of info there on the Inn itself, but I don't see anything like the brochure that they had there, which was full of details, so let me throw some pictures of that at you: