WAH!

To my yoga friends in Philadelphia: Wahe Guru. The whole time I was in Washington, and I thought about the abreviation for the state, WA, I thought of WAH and wahe guru and wanted to sing the songs and chant the chants I knew from yoga class, but I knew none of my family would understand, so I kept my singing and chanting interior.

To my family in WA: hi! This is your big chance to live famously, in perpetuity, on my blog! For those of you who want to see ALL my Washington photos, click here for my flickr site.

For the rest of you, here are a few pics and a summary.

After flying to Seattle, I took the train to Bellingham WA

Waiting for the train to arrive, I wandered around the central part of Seattle, and found this beautiful sight


at the Waterfall Garden Park. The sign states that this park stands on the site of the birthplace of United Parcel Service.

The purpose of this trip was to spend time with my mother's side of the family. Here are a few of them




I saw lots more beautiful sights, including this view from near the top of Mount Constitution on Orcas Island


And about a gazillion tulips. April is when tulip bulbs are grown in NW Washington. They later ship these bulbs all over the world for other people to plant in their back yards.

My Aunt Lynnette's gorgeously huge tulips in her backyard


Of course, tulips were everywhere, decorating tables, making my Aunt Linda look even more beautiful than she already is.


Of course there was a lot of knitting. I like to call the below picture, "Non-still life with Tulips, Washcloth and Sock".

My mother was knitting washclothes for everybody she met


My Aunt Linda was alternately knitting a shawl and a pair of striped brown socks.


Here we are, the knitting Aunties, knitting on the ferry to Orcas Island (we also knit on couches, in cars, in coffee shops, in bed, and pretty much everywhere else inbetween).


We went to two yarn shops, the Wool Station in Bellingham (awesome, big shop, good prices, unusual choices)


And Poppie's Fine Yarns, on Orcas Island, where all the Mountain Colors yarns were on sale and the lady who owned the shop was very nice to let us stay a LOOOONG time.


Here's my loot from those two shops. I do like to buy yarn, my favorite kind of souveneir.


I have only one more thing to say: Don't step on the duck!

Surrounded by whales and children

My mother and I are visiting with her family in Washington State. We're remembering ancient history and being reminded that time isn't so much of a roadblock--we're here, with family I haven't seen in years, and yet it still feels like a version of home. At the moment we're at my cousin's home on Orcas Island. Ocean, seashells, tall trees. I've got lots of pictures (including many pictures of tulips--it is, after all, tulip season in Washington) but I can't get them uploaded because I don't have the proper equipment. I'll just have to wait a couple more days til I am back in New York.

Meanwhile, I am making great progress with my first toe-up socks, and I've also begun a new baby blanket. Wish I could show ya...

knitting pictures still delayed

I have been knitting industriously. But I can't post pictures of what's blocking because the recipient of the knitting reads this blog occasionally. However, I will tell you that the thing I am almost finished knitting is a lovely lilac color, similar to the color of these flowers (which as I'm sure you know are not lilacs--they have green centers and the petals of the flowers are these little pipey things--they are so marvelous and I don't know what they are!)



Also I will show you a picture of my nephew, who is playing with my cellphone at the knitting shop in Niskayuna, "Ye Olde Yarn Shoppe", where I bought pretty buttons for the thing which I am almost finished knitting.


My nephew has a thing for bling. He made some of these necklaces out of pasta and string. Others he commandeered from his grandma over the weekend. By the way Grandma, thanks for the Easter baskets! I guess I'm never too old for an Easter basket. Anyway, check out the bling:



I think the bling totally matches the Thomas the Tank Engine sticker, don't you?

Tulips

The most amazing thing: I brought these tulips home and they looked like regular, picture-book tulips. Then over the course of about an hour several of them opened themselves up madly.



I am so new to flowers that I do not know: do tulips do this ordinarily?

**edited to add: Last night the tulips closed themselves back up again. I didn't know flowers would do that if they weren't still attached to a tree or planted in the ground. Now this morning they are reopening, but more cautiously today--its still only the middle of the morning.

Cuteness cubed

Warning: I am taking the cuteness to a whole nother level in this post. Stop reading now if you can't stand it. (and forgive me for the use of the word "nother", I just like that expression.) Also, I regret to inform you that there is little knitting content in this post. All I'll say is I spent hours today going through all my boxes of books (which are still not unpacked from the move), trying to find my copy of Debbie Bliss' Simply Baby, so that I can look at the color pictures of a project I am working on, but I simply couldn't find the book. Aaargh. These are the things which make me want to swear like a pirate.

Anyway, back to the cuteness. To start, a gratuitous picture of my nephew. With the love of his life, his blankie.


Adorable! Now lets take it up a notch and add a kitty cat:

Oh, wook adda kitty.

Next, a picture of my friend Stacey. She's cute.

We went together on a road trip this weekend to see a band I never heard of, but loved in concert, the Decemberists,


And well, they were adorable, what with their dancing and their singing, and their show even included a giant fish puppet.

The next day Bill and I went to see one of the cutest folk singers around, Christine Lavin, together with Bill's daughter Kim who was visiting for the weekend. Ms. Lavin is hilarious. And she ended her show with baton twirling! Anyway, as part of her show she brought some volunteers up to the stage, and ended up picking Bill because he was one of the people in the audience whose birthday falls close to Christmas. That thing in his hand is a windchime which he was supposed to shake as a kind of buzzer, jeopardy-style, when he knew the answers to her trivia questions.

Bill came from behind and won the trivia contest, but it was neck and neck the whole time.

When Kim was visiting she brought her ferret, Zoe, and also her new baby ferret who doesn't have a name yet. This, together with our ferret Bodhi, makes three ferrets in our house this weekend, which resulted in much mayhem and a bit of stinkiness. (I considered titling this post "the three ferrets," in echo of the three tenors, but I figured that since our ferrets do not sing, they only giggle and jump around and nibble on one another's ears, the only resemblance they bore to Placido Domingo et al. was in the number three, and that was not enough of a reason to call up the ghosts of the opera world.)

Here's the cutest photo of all: Kim with the ferrets.


Ferrets play pretty rough with one another, but at the end of the day they always end up sleeping in the same bed. Here they are in the hammock of the ferret cage, just waking up. Ridiculously cute!


Kim and I wanted to do a photoshoot with all three of the ferrets, so first we put them all on our bed but they just wouldn't sit still in the same place long enough to have their pictures taken, so then we put them in the bathtub with the bathmat, so they would have a smaller area to roll around in. First, they just wanted to get out of the tub


But they they played around in the tub for a while

Until they lay down exhausted


You know, I'm not really in favor of cute, generally speaking, but its hard to resist three ferrets at once. I think the only one who resisted was our cat, who refused to let me take her picture and sulked in the next room. She'll have her day another time.