Special Request: Picking Tulips

It came up in a conversation that I have in the past gone tulip-picking, so I thought I would revisit that here. I took so many dozens of photos, of the picking and of the tulips back home, and they should be seen again!

I went twice, in 2016 and 2017, at a place in Massachusetts called Wicked Tulips, and I highly recommend the experience (some words about that here and here). It's interesting to me to look at the two together: I think the fields looked better in 2017, but the tulips that I brought home did better in 2016.

Enjoy!

2016:

 

2017:

On a Quiet Mother's Day

My mother loves carmelcorn, so for Mother's Day, I bought her a tub of what I was told was really good stuff (I asked for recommendations on Facebook, and a couple of people said, oh, you want Garrett's). When I was a kid, I remember there was a place in Boston that made really good carmelcorn, but for my mother, the kind you can get in Syracuse is the best of the best.

She says this is as good.

It tastes really good to me, too (yes, she's sharing). It is Not Cheap, just to warn you, but it's actually worth it, for a once-in-a-while treat. If you know anyone who loves the stuff, keep this in mind.

We're having a quiet day here, of course. Not feeling up to the strain of trying to go out in quarantine-times, though some restaurants are starting to reopen here, at lower capacity. So we had French toast for breakfast, I'm going to make us a tuna noodle casserole for dinner, and tonight we're very much looking forward to watching the NHL Network special on Bobby Orr and the Bruins winning the Cup 50 years ago today (Big, Bad, and Bobby, on at 8!). It's supposed to rain on and off all day, but hey, at least it's not snowing here. Things could be so much worse. Which, these days, counts as positive thinking.

Yes, More (Yarn and Cat)

Details to come!

Meanwhile, Maggie has a bath:

90 Minutes of Morning Lap: A Photo Essay

Some morning Maggie graces my lap with her presence, some she does not, and once in a while, she really throws herself into the nap.

 

Whoop!

Sorry, I have other plans tonight!

Gotta go get my Murderbot fix. Later!

As Mentioned in Passing: Yarn!

I mentioned briefly that I was waiting for delivery of some yarn that I ordered, and the package arrived last night. Yay, squishy mail!

This order was from Coveted Yarn, the wonderful LYS in Massachusetts that I loved so much (mentioned here and other times as well). I still follow them on Facebook, and he mentioned last month that he was listing yarns on a new website and having a lot of sales, and ... well, he always had such good sales, and it's a good store, I want it to survive this. So I went shopping. (Such a hardship, I know.)

With online yarn shopping, as I've mentioned,  I mostly try to stick to yarns I've encountered in person before, and in this case I stuck with two lines I know, Juniper Moon Farm and Wonderland Yarns. The haul:

Original prices total $132, I got it all for $81. Nice!

The first is Cheshire Cat from Wonderland, a nice soft fingering-weight merino, in colorway Opal, from A Year in Color.

Next is Duchess, a lace-weight merino/silk with a nice sheen, in Looking Glass, a pretty aqua.

Next, from Juniper Moon, I figured how could I go wrong with camel? This is Dromedary, a wool-camel blend, in Wild Mallard, which is a sort of deep forest teal, if that makes any sense.

The color isn't quite as dark as it shows here, but when I tried to get a better one, it went too light:

Technology.

Now, I've mentioned this one before. To quote myself, "The yarn is Cumulus Dappled, by Juniper Moon Farm; it is 94% cotton and 6% nylon, and much softer than cotton I have encountered before." Well, this first one isn't Dappled, just regular Cumulus, but the second is, and they feel the same. Soft and light.

 So with the Cumulus I already had, I've got a few choices:

It was fun to shop the sale, even from afar; I will say, I sure missed getting lunch afterward at Woodman's, though...

No, I'm Afraid You're Wrong About That

Have you been thinking that with the repair work in my building coming to an end (why no, it's not done yet! yes, they've been here on and off since February), my noise complaints were going to be over?

Oh, no.

Let me tell you.

A year ago, a couple bought the penthouse, which is just above us, and since it hasn't been truly renovated since the building went up 30 years ago, we were not at all surprised that they would want to have a lot of work done on it. We were pleased, though, that they were planning to live there for two years (or the snowbird portion of two years) in order to decide exactly what they wanted to do.

Except that they changed their minds, and they're doing it this year. They expect it to start in June, and hopefully .... hopefully! .... be done by November.

November.

Six months.

During the pandemic.

And I work from home.

I had the worst time staying polite while she was telling me about this, since I wanted to wail and snarl and howl, but I got the feeling she was hoping I would tell her that it was okay, not a problem, it will be fine. Yeah, no. I kept up the good face of "oh of course, if it has to be done," etc, but it's going to be terrible for us, basically, and I couldn't get past that to reassure her.

We have a hope that after the initial cacophony of demo, it will only be annoying, and not unlivable. But really, given how 2020 has gone, how optimistic can one be?

And when she asked me, hopefully, if maybe Mom and I were planning any trips this summer...well, no, we weren't planning any before the global pandemic started, and we certainly aren't planning any now. Sheesh, woman.

I Forgot to Tell You This Part!

I had a vague feeling when I wrote about going to the trunk show that I was forgetting something, and this morning I remembered! (This morning ... at 6:30, when the alarm cat woke me up to eat ... and my body was so tired, and it's Saturday so I could sleep in, but my brain started clicking...)

There were a few other customers at the trunk show when we were there, and I started talking to one woman; I don't even remember if it started as "Can I squeeze by behind you?" or "Oh, pretty yarn!" but when we looked at each other, she exclaimed, "Don't I know you?"

She didn't really look familiar to me, beyond a very vague 'she might remind me of someone,' so I said that I get that a fair bit, which I do. But she looked right at me and asked if I was from Charlotte NC.

Now, as I've no doubt mentioned, I did live there, but it was years ago, from 1994 to 2002 in fact. So I told her that I had, but a long time ago, and that I worked for Barnes & Noble most of my time there ... and she had worked there, too. We established that she and I had only overlapped at the same store for about a year (B&N had three stores in CLT, and I worked in one and then moved to another). And she recognized me.

Frankly, I was and still am kind of stunned by that. She said it was the eyes, as soon as she saw my eyes she knew she knew me. I do have the big brown eyes from my Dad's family, but still, how wild is that? I don't think I've ever been recognized by someone 20 years later.

Have you? Been recognized, or done the recognizing? Any good stories of running into someone years later?

I Have Been Led Into Temptation

I'm waiting for delivery of a yarn order that I placed at the beginning of the week, and in the interim, I have run into some mighty temptation (which I no doubt deserve: more than one friend in the past has called me an enabler in terms of yarn shopping).

First off, this weekend would have been the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and since it is obviously not happening in the traditional sense, they are putting together a list of the vendors who want to take part in a virtual festival, which will go live in the morning. I'd like to go to MDS one of these years, though I hadn't planned it to be this year, but I've still been having a good time looking at the posts in the Facebook group about it, while reminding myself firmly that many, many yarns I get to see and touch at festivals and yarn stores is lovely to look at but doesn't feel like I want to work with it (you know how I am: "it's so soft" is my motto). I may just buy from a vendor or two whose yarn I'm familiar with, though... We'll see.

Meanwhile, my local knitting friends were saying at SnB last night that the Canadian dollar is making the exchange rate good for the US right now, so it's a great time to buy from Canadian dyers...I know of Sweet Georgia and Tanis Fiber Arts, but I wasn't familiar with MidKnit Cravings, and they have lovely stuff! Plus I signed up for their newsletter and they sent a 15% off code to use, so ... I spent some time poking around, looking at different combinations for possibly making Casapinka's Magical Thinking. This and this and that? No; how about you and you and you? I ended up sending them a message through their Facebook page to ask if they thought a certain three went together, and heard back quite promptly that they would suggest switching out this one for that one, even sending me a photo of them together (!), and asking what pattern I was thinking of, and it was just a nice little interchange.

And this might just work:

Update: this!