P is for…

Powderhorn Art Fair. (Let’s just move right along and ignore the fact that I’ve skipped “O,” shall we?)

I posted Saturday about the crowds of the Uptown Art Fair. If crowds aren’t your thing, you have two additional art fair options on the same weekend. The first is the Loring Park Art Festival, which is located around the shores of the lake in Loring Park. I haven’t been to that festival for a few years, mostly because I can only handle one art fair in a weekend.The second alternative is the Powderhorn Art Fair, which is located around the shores of a lake in Powderhorn Park. I love this art fair! I think it’s much more pleasant wandering around a lake looking at art than it is shoving your way along a crowded street looking at art. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

So on Saturday, Jeanne and I headed over to Powderhorn Park. (Look! More Saturday skies!) This picture was taken facing away from downtown (click on any picture to see a larger version):

And this picture was taken from the other side of the lake, facing downtown with the Midtown Market (a renovated old Sears building) looming between downtown and the park:

A band played jazzy oompa music, which provided the perfect soundtrack for art shopping.

We saw some wildlife…

Although we couldn’t figure out what that turtle (on the far left) and the ducks were sitting on – a submarine seemed unlikely!

This puzzled me no end – if you can’t read the lettering, it says “ICE WATER DEVICE.” Huh.

Sorry – no pictures of my purchases, since most of them were birthday and Christmas presents for my family!

Chaos kept busy while I was gone:

“…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”

Saturday sky: Uptown Art Fair

Here’s the thing – if you live in Uptown Minneapolis, you dread the annual Uptown Art Fair because streets are blocked off, traffic crazy, parking nonexistent, and crowds formidable. Today was no exception as I ventured two blocks into the madness to return some library books at Walker Library (exciting library moment – I actually had a brief conversation with Cute Library Guy!).

Anyway, I present to you – Saturday skies of the Uptown Art Fair. First – the warning sign:

Next, the Uptown icons – the Uptown Theater and Calhoun Square (middle back), with bonus airplane! (Remember, you can click on any picture to make it bigger.)

Want to get a better idea of the crowds?

The sky over the Uptown Transit Station as I headed home again.

And an amusing billboard (plus sky, of course) at the corner of Hennepin and 28th:

Ready for Roswell

I am really enjoying the haiku you’ve been writing – they definitely brightened a mundane Thursday! Still plenty of time to submit a haiku for the contest if you haven’t already.

Scout challenged us all to show off our UFOs (unfinished objects). Yikes. As I mentioned a few days ago, I posted about my WIPs last winter and all of those WIPs are still UFOs. Really, doesn’t work-in-progress sound much better than UFO?! Anyway, I shall review them here for your amusement. Please note that the older pictures were taken with my former camera, which I do not miss at all… You will perhaps be amazed at how Project Spectrum most of my projects are!

The tank that will be ripped out as soon as I find it again, as it is chunky and unflattering and it’s all too clear where I switched to new balls of yarn… Note the phantom paw!

A petal washcloth, intended as only one of many for Xmas presents year before last. There’s a peach one that only has one or two petals somewhere (oh, and a missing needle is there, too, I bet!). This exceeded my Allowable Knitting Fiddliness Level (AKFL) at the time, with all the cotton chenilley ends.

Next is Door County Cable in black Cotton Fleece. The body was knit in the round up to the armpits. When I started to go back and forth, I got really confused and put the project away in a snit. Two years later, I might not find the directions as confusing… or I might still. I did find some errata that could help the situation.

One lone sock of a pair that I promised my dad several years ago… He has challenging feet, darn it.

A fingering weight tank top out of black Fortissima Cotton (75 cotton/25 nylon), knitting on Addis 0s. Started last summer and abandoned when I realized that, in picking up stitches for the first armhole, I had made a tourniquet. (Hmm, more missing needles there…)

A mobius cat bed for Chaos. Since it still has a hole in the bottom (and is definitely not felted yet), he found the row counter much more interesting. I put this project aside one hot and humid day last summer – it filled my entire lap with its way too warm self and then lured Chaos in for a nap. Since Chaos has most of a down comforter as a cat bed – do you think he’d enjoy this at all??

Out with the old and in with the new… Clockwise from upper right: a hat from some handspun that someone gave me. Started in, um, March? April? Eventually it will be donated to a local project for the homeless. Next are my 1.3 Trekking socks. Then a sock yarn baby sweater from KnitPicks something or other, abandoned in December for unremembered reasons – perhaps because I was winging it on the sleeves (more needles!). Then the first sock of a pair (bulky – yay!) promised to a co-worker a year or so ago as barter for bike repairs. Finally, underneath it all, my moderne log cabin baby blanket – still chugging away on that one.

Where was Chaos in that final, current WIP/UFO picture?

Hmm, you don’t think that all those bibs scared him off knitting, do you?! Oh dear. For the curious, you can see my dining room in the background, upper left. It’s not waiting for a coat of plaster – that’s how the walls are finished. That empty wine box middle left is a cat hidey hole, not evidence of debauchery! 🙂 And the massive living room mirror can be seen upper right.

Did I distract you from the massive number (11? 12??) of UFOs you just saw? No? Darn it… Have a good weekend anyway!

Official Blog Opening Contest!

Woo-hoo! Now that it’s all personalized and starting to really feel like home, it’s time for me to throw a contest. I actually had a hard time picking a contest, because Jeanne came up with quite a brilliant one that I think I’ll save for Chaos’ Birthday Party Contest next month. So, in lieu of a brilliant contest, I present to you the Chaotic Haiku Contest. Um, yeah, so maybe I was inspired by the Amazing Lace Poetry Challenge. 🙂 But I actually have written a haiku about Chaos on this very blog (which I’ll reproduce below), so some sort of precedent has been established, right?!

The details: Leave a comment below with a haiku about Chaos. At its most basic, a haiku is a three line, nonrhyming poem that should paint a picture in the reader’s mind. The lines are five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. Would a few examples be helpful? Here’s the one I wrote last November about Chaos:

Silhouette in black
Pointy ears twitching, watching
Dreams stalking snowflakes

And a non-Chaos knitting one that I wrote a few years ago:

Snow falls silently
as I sit by the window
knitting, watching, still

Yeah, there’s obviously something about snow that inspires me to write haiku. Maybe this contest will have a cooling effect on the weather… Anyway! Leave your haiku below before 6 pm CDT Tuesday, August 15. At that point, I will use my favorite random number generator to select a winner. If the winner is a knitter, the prize will be that skein of hot pink and black yarn (the skein on the far right in the linked picture) I recently dyed, along with a few other goodies. If the winner is not a knitter, the prize will be unrelated to knitting and a second (hopefully knitting!) winner will be drawn.

“Shhhh… I’m hiding in this box. Why do you guys always pretend that you can see me? That freaks me out!”

Wandering through Wednesday

Thanks for all the kind words about the new look! Things are mostly as they will be, although the banner isn’t displaying correctly in Firefox yet. Soon.

EDIT: I think it’s all set. If things look odd, please try hitting your reload button. If they still look odd, please drop me an email and let me know the details. Thanks!

The heat finally broke yesterday! It’s been raining off and on ever since. Hopefully the humidity breaks soon…

Scout’s challenged us to out our UFOs. *gulp* I posted about UFOs/WIPs back in December. Scarily, everything I mentioned in that post remains a UFO! Whoops… Sounds like I need to rip a few things out, doesn’t it?! And of course, I have new UFOs/WIPs, too. I’ll look around today and take some pictures.

SRP update: I made my fiction goal of 30 books! However, I still need to read two non-fiction books this month to meet my bonus goal.
Unhinged by Sarah Graves, 332 pages. Yet another Home Repair Is Homicide mystery! I’m not reading these cozies in order, but I’m enjoying them anyway.
Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaze Clement, 261 pages. This is the first (and only, so far) book about former sheriff’s deputy, now petsitter, Dixie Hemingway of Sarasota, FL. I’ll definitely be on the look out for additions to this series – it was more compelling than many such mysteries and kept me guessing up to the end.

I finally got a picture of the “Gateway to the North of Nashwauk” sign last weekend! What I find very interesting about this sign is that you see it when you are driving south, not north. Hmm.

I’m a sucker for amusing wine labels, so how could I resist this one?

Chaos apparently wonders why “smell no evil” wasn’t addressed in the pictorial proverb.

*sniff sniff* “I sure hope you weren’t hoping for great taste from this wine, Mom…”

Under construction

You might’ve noticed that things are changing around here! Missa of MoonArts has been working on a new banner, new button, and some color changes for me. When all the tweaking is finished in the next few days, I’ll be having a Happy New Blog Look contest!

Darn bloglines is acting up and is showing updates for some blogs and not for others. I’m one of the lucky ones who isn’t showing as updated… Hopefully they get things corrected soon so I can catch up on what all of you are up to!

Chaos has a late entry for Project Spectrum purple (sorry, Marina, I know you thought it was safe again). Apparently his purple mouse is no more colorfast than his hot pink mouse. (Oh, and the plant that is industriously growing into the cat feeding station is a purple passion – green leaves covered with purple fuzz. Missed that for July, too, darn it.)

*crunch crunch crunch* “Mmmmmmmm… cat food…”