Remedial posting

I was thinking the other day that there are several finished knitting projects of which I never posted pictures on this blog. I decided that I would post remedial pictures, but because I am lazy I would use my "kitchen computer" camera to take the shots. Yes, I have a "kitchen computer," a little old laptop (in a house like ours, there are old computers lying around because my technologically-savvy husband must periodically get newer, faster, more amazing computers). The kitchen computer is mostly used to play internet radio stations and podcasts while I wash the dishes and cook. Sorry about the computer camera, no flash, no focus, but you'll still get the idea about the knitting, and better some bad pictures than none at all.

Here is what the kitchen computer usually sees.

Today, however, it got to take glamourous shots of my high-fashion knitwear.

getting the angle right takes some doing with this little camera.

This is a hat I knit out of yarn I bought in England over a year ago. I've lost the label, so I can't tell you which yarn it is, but I pulled it out of the bargain bin at a department store, John Lewis--department stores are apparently the only places you can buy yarn in London. I think this was some Debbie Bliss yarn that has now been discontinued.

The genesis of the idea for the pattern was that my friend Sarah had this really cute hat on a while back, and I was admiring it, and she said, "thanks! I bought it at [some boutique in Brooklyn] and it only cost me [what I perceived to be an obscene amount of money]" and I said, "my goodness, I could make one of those," and I devised the pattern for the above hat, after studying her hat. Sometimes I call this my kitty cat hat, and sometimes I call it my Brunnhilde hat. Ohmygoodness, the flak I got from my husband for wearing this hat this winter. He thought it was just too silly. I don't care, I like it because its warm and I can tie it on when its cold outside

like this. Also it doesn't mess up my hair terribly when I don't tie it on.

The other remedial knitting I have to show are the gloves I knit last fall some time. These I knit using the garter-stitch glove pattern out of that ubiquitous book Weekend Knitting, by Melanie Falick. Nice, relatively easy pattern. The yarn is from Mountain Colors, and the colorway is called Crazy Woman, isn't that great? The yarn made wonderful gloves that kept my fingers warm all winter.

Aaaargh, I'm comin' to get you!

I have to say, I am really proud of these gloves. If you had told me a few years ago that I would knit gloves, I would have said "never". Gloves seemed to me to be the pinnacle of knitting amazingness. Now I know that gloves really aren't all that complicated, it's just a whole bunch of circular knitting on double-pointed needles, all it takes is some basic knitting skills and bits of bravery and coordination. But I am still pleased with myself, because the gloves fit and they function well to keep my hands warm. They do the job they were designed to do, they are a successful, happy little item together. This is nice for me to know, as some of the things I knit are not so useful. My long-term knitting goal is to increase the percentage of my overall knitting which is useful and completed. I think that's possible.

A word about boundaries and self-revelation

Hello, dear ones.
A friend of mine recently decided to make her blog private, meaning, accessible only to people she has specifically invited to read her blog. This has got me revisiting the choices I make in writing here.

Let me be clear: I share very little here. Very little. I show my knitting--that feels safe to me--and I also tell little bits about my life. But I decided early on that I wouldn't share much about my job, because confidentiality is a big issue for chaplains. And I wouldn't talk much about my personal business, because I am on a basic level uncomfortable with the wide-openness that blogs have. Its one version of a larger problem that many church people face--how to be transparent without sharing too much, how to be available without leaving oneself open to attack? How to be honest without scaring people? How to model freedom and self-acceptance without self-absorption and navel-gazing? I've turned out to be a fraidy-cat, too bad. I tend to err on the side of careful.

Now on the other hand, I love to read the blogs of courageous people who do talk about their problems, their relationships, their struggles with their children, their politics, their spiritual experiences, and yes, the joys and frustrations of their knitting etc. The sharing is what makes a blog interesting. My blog in comparison is boring--happy happy--limited--not even all that interesting to myself. Thats the price I pay, because this blog is read by my family and my mother's friends, people from our new church, not to mention strangers. I have a strong sense of self-censorship. I apologize to any of you who are bored by my blog. (I know you're out there, because you tell me you read the blog, but don't leave comments.)

I recently revisited a blog of an old friend, and I was struck again by how much he shares of himself, how much of him is available to me and to the world, just laying there on the internet for anybody to access. I want to thank him and the rest of you who feed my emotional life through your regular writings, you are precious to me.

And I apologize for this pretty boring, infrequently updated blog. Its a good thing my career or my identity don't rest on it, or I'd be in poor shape. If you want to know more, or are looking for more honesty, email me, or better yet, come by for coffee. xoAbby

Our house in Niskayuna

Finally I am getting around to posting pictures of the house. But first: gratuitous nephew pictures.

Kari and I went to a local Japanese place for lunch last week. We had sushi. Alex had miso soup, and tea. Read: messy fun. Alex also enjoyed looking at the big goldfish in the pond. There were so many of them, lazy, hanging around, scratching their bellies on the rocks, never minding the toddler who was pointing and chirping at them.

Now down to business.

Above is our sunroom. Its a lovely space, with radiant heating in the floors (which the animals LOOOVE). Note the mass of white stuff through the windows.

The room is full of matchy-matchy plastic rattan furniture, which came with the house. Yes, it was listed on the brochure for the house as a selling point. At first I couldn't stand it, and I kept threatening to sell it on ebay, but Bill kind of liked it, and I've come around somewhat. Once I put plants all over the room, I started to like it better.

This room has inspired me to start collecting plants. My old friends will know that is quite a change for me. I never used to keep plants. Now I own FOUR potted plants, including that huge one in the corner, which my folks gave me and Bill as a housewarming gift, and I love it. They also gave me a wierd looking stalk plant that I will post a picture of at another time.

Above is our dining room. We just got one of those counter-height square tables, not because they are all the rage but because the square room holds it nicely and we are tall people who appreciate tall chairs. We stole the idea from Kari and Dan, who got one first.


This is our living room. I especially love the red chair on the left, it is very good for knitting in


And this of course is my pride and joy, the kitchen. My friends with sharp eyes will notice something else: I have flowers in vases in many rooms. This is a new thing for me, I was never one for buying flowers as I considered it an extravagence and also silly--why truck flowers up from some faraway place?

But since we moved to Niskayuna I have been buying them, mostly from the local natural foods co-op, because I have been enjoying the experience of lingering with them, as I cut them and arrange them in vases. And I love taking care of them, culling the wilted ones and changing the water, trimming them every once in a while, so they maintain their beauty longer. I suppose I am continuing to change. I am a person who never cared for plants or flowers, and now these days I am caring for both and also considering how and where to plant a garden.

I am still knitting, by the way. Current projects on the needles:

1. Shawl for church ministry (about 10% finished)
2. Toe-up socks (about 45% finished--I actually bound off the first one, loosely as Wendy from WendyKnits recommends in her generic toe-up sock pattern, which is the pattern I am using, but I still didn't like how inflexible the top of the sock was--just not stretchy enough. So I am going to rip out the cast-off and use a picot edge instead)
3. Secret knitting project--90% done--I know, I know, I need to finish it!
4. Yet another secret knitting project--80% finished--what is it about this projects, when I get so far on them, you would think I could just push through and do the last little bits! Ah well. Maybe I ought to set myself some kind of goal, like finishing 3 and 4 before Easter. I think that's doable.

I will try to post some knitting pics in my next post.

Malta, part III: Stranger in a Strange Land

Hi, y'all. Any of you who are still out there. I think I'm pretty much back to blogging to myself, except for my mother who still checks this blog. That's okay with me.

I knitted with my next door neighbor today. She is a lovely person, who is putting herself out there to be friendly to me and Bill. And she has a handy 15 year old son who ferret-sat for us when we were on vay-cay and did a nice job. She is making a felted bag which should be very pretty. I continued to work on my sock I started in Malta, and began to turn the short-row heel, which, if its anything like the short-row toe, should be very exciting.

More about Malta: want to see more pictures of the Tarxian temples? (that's plural because there are actually ruins of several of them, all sitting next to each other.) By the way, I could not get over when I was there that "Tarxian temple" sounded sort of Star-Trek-y, and then I finally remembered there was some alien race in one of the newer series called the "Tlaxians," and that must be what I am dredging up from my subconscious. That and the fact that "Tarxian" when spoken rhymes with "Martian". Ah...Star Trek. In our new house we have cable, for the first time in my life, and that's sucking me in sometimes. The frequent availability of Star Trek is problematic, as is the home-redecorating channel. And last night I discovered Six Feet Under for the first time. What a great show! I appreciated the darkness of the drama, and it reminded me of my past, working in hospice and all.

Yeah, I know, ADHD, Malta. Tarxian temples.

I have about a dozen cool shots along the lines of this one. Rocks, piled on one another in interesting ways.

I was also fascinated, as I said in an earlier post, by the juxtaposition of these ancient stones together with the plants and cats growing and living among them.


These round rocks were just sort of lying around the perimeter of the temples. Its believed that they were used as wheels of sorts to move these big rocks around as the people built the temples.

One of the strange things about visiting these temples is that we could actually get close to them--some of the more unusual elements were kind of roped off, but certainly not in any way that would keep us from touching things if we had any interest in doing so.

Like my bad husband, who was fondling this round rock, which it is believed was used for grinding grains in this round-rock-shaped hole.

We met this lovely girl Naoko (above, left) from Japan. She was travelling in Malta for a few days. We took her picture, she took our pictures, we all had our pictures taken by the little guy who minded the entrance of the temples. A brave woman travelling through Europe by herself, she was friendly and talked with us a while. Anyway we ran into her again on the bus the next day, and then again on our flight to Milan. Three times is quite a bit of a coincidence, wouldn't you say? Naoko, if you stop by this blog, it was ever so nice to meet you!

By the way, the other people in the above picture are myself, my husband Bill, my sister-in-law Kari and my brother Dan. We left their toddler at the hotel with my folks and took the car (Bill driving, of course) over to the temples. This was an experience in itself. On the way home I took pictures of buses.

Boy did my family make fun of me for taking pictures of buses. But they were all so neat, all different, clearly old but well-maintained. Below are more bus pictures I took at the central bus area in Valetta:

It was neat visiting a place where you could really take a bus anywhere. They had bus routes to every single place in the entire island. A tiny but beautiful island.

Well, I think I've finished talking about Malta. Next: I'll finally post pictures of our new house.

Just the teensiest bit famous

I forgot to mention in my previous posts--I wrote a note to Brenda Dayne of Cast-on, a very cool podcast for knitters. For those of you not familiar with podcasts, they are like personal radio shows broadcast over the internet, and Brenda Dayne makes one of the most popular podcasts in the very small world of knitting podcasting. I dashed off the note in a heated moment, when I heard her talking in a previous podcast about the possibility of throwing away yarn, in the interests of creating a simpler life. You all know how I feel about throwing away yarn, however--BAD IDEA, give it to Interim House if you don't want it! So I wrote this note to Brenda telling her about IH, and then I forgot all about it and went off to Malta.

Then Brenda read a piece of my note in episode 45 (you can listen on your computer even if you don't have an ipod, by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking where it says "download episode 45"). And all of a sudden Brenda's listeners started writing to Kathy Duffy, the social worker at IH, and sending packages of yarn and knitting supplies from all over the world. Isn't that cool? The generosity of you knitters continues to amaze me.

As promised, Malta part II: the cats of Malta

There were cats just about everywhere we went in Malta. These are sort of pets, sort of feral cats which are fed and stroked by people regularly. The weather never gets too cold in Malta, my impression was that these cats live pretty free, sleeping whenever and wherever they want and getting fed by people in the neighborhood.

For example, there were a bunch of cats that just sort of lived around our hotel, petted and fed and tolerated by the hotel staff. The cats would laze by the pool and the cafe, coming in and out as they wished. My nephew thought this was really exciting. I wish I had some pictures of his enjoying the cats of the cafe. Maybe my sister-in-law does--I should ask her. The above cat in the plant was one of these hotel kitties.

The below cat I found just hanging out by the sea, at a restaurant where she was eating some cat food someone had left out on a stone wall. Isn't she pretty? Don't you want to take her home?

Then I discovered a whole clan of mysterious cats living at these ancient temples we visited, the Tarxian temples. My brother found nice short little video about the temples here, but for some reason the video doesn't include my favorite statue


Wow--I don't think they had cats on the island back when this lady got carved, but she looks like she could mother a whole brood of them, doesn't she?

It was strange and wonderful to visit these temples, which I will post more pictures of tomorrow. They were so very old (estimates are between 3000 and 5000 years old) and yet they were full of life--the cats, plants growing everywhere--it still felt like a place full of energy to me. Perhaps its the ghosts of all the sacrificed animals still hanging around.

Here's my favorite Tarxian temple cat, sleeping on top of this pillar. It must have been warm and safe up there for her.


After we left the temple we went next door to try to see the local Catholic church. I am not certain but I believe the church was built prior to the finding of the archeological remains of the Tarxian temples (some farmer literally found them while he was digging in his fields). We couldn't get into the sanctuary but we enjoyed exploring the graveyard--funny how this old institution, the church, felt so young to us next to the even more ancient goddess-worshippers' temple next door.

They don't have a lot of extra space on Malta, so they bury whole families in single plots in their graveyards. Witness a random grave

And if you look carefully in that picture you'll see a little orange splotch sitting on the top of the next grave. The splotch is a cat, which you can see more clearly in the picture below

Oh what a pretty boy. This cat goes back and forth between the Tarxian temples and the Catholic graveyard, I'm sure. He doesn't care which religion he's keeping company with, so long as the stones are warm and in a sunny spot.

Malta Part I

Warning: if you have no interest in Family-Vacation-to-Malta pictures, skip this post. I have stretched Blogger's capacity to upload photos here. But what's the point of taking pictures if not to share them?

My mom and dad are celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary this year and they wanted to celebrate by taking the entire family someplace exotic. My husband suggested Malta, because it's a relatively inexpensive and interesting place to visit, where there are wierd ancient ruins and where people speak English everywhere you go. That's how I ended up on this trip with my folks as well as my brother, his pregnant wife and their 2.5 year old.

First, a picture of our view from our balcony. We stayed at a fairly nice (they call it a five-star, but we weren't quite sure how they got all the way to five) hotel called the Corinthia Marina, and somehow Bill talked them into upgrading our rooms to suites on the top floor. Yeah, the view is pretty sweet.



Here's a fairly typical picture, of a fairly typical activity for the Norton-Leverings on the trip. Elements to notice: toddler (my nephew Alex, who commanded at least half of the attention expended in entirety on this trip) holding a train (he's always holding either a train or a truck, a Thomas-the-tank-engine train is usually preferred) and eating a cookie, while his grandma and aunt, both drinking their pretty good coffees, look on. We did this every day, several times a day, in multiple locations.

We rented a car, but often we took the bus, due to the fact that they drive CRAZY in Malta, on the left hand side of the road, very fast, around the rotaries which are at pretty much every single intersection. And they only have standard transmission cars in Malta. The only person who dared to drive was my husband Bill, and the only car we could get sat only 4 people, so we couldn't all fit in the car and go someplace together. So below is a waiting-for-the-bus picture, with one of my rare knitting pictures. Look, knitters, I am KNITTING while waiting for the bus.

Here Alex is doing what he wanted to do as we waited for the bus, which is pushing his stroller around. The child is fanatical about anything with wheels--trucks, trains, strollers, cars, you name it. People have no wheels, so they are of little interest from Alex at this point in his development. Unless they are holding a toy car, or a cellphone, which is just as interesting because it makes beepy noises and has buttons on it.

We took the bus our first day to Valetta, which is this ancient walled city in the north of Malta. It was the weekend they were celebrating Carnivale, which is sort of like Marti Gras crossed with the Mummers day parade. So lots of people in a walled city makes for loud and crowded and wild, which was a bit difficult for the introverts in our party to tolerate but somehow we made it through the day.

One of the more bizarre elements of the day was our lunch at the Labour party headquarters of Valetta. Yes, they have a restaurant open to the public. The food was pretty good

but we had to eat our entire meal while these guys looked on

Kind of like eating in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, only in some wierd parallel universe where the labour party is in charge. I guess that's how people in England and Malta feel all the time. See that labour party guy sitting behind my mom? I guess that's how he feels. Wierd.

We watched the Carnivale parade (don't Mom and I look cool in our sunglasses?)

Which included float after float painted in horrific neon colors--this is the mother goose float, I believe--



And the above float is meant to portray Aslan, the lion of Narnia. All the floats were accompanied by people in various states of costume, some fairly elaborate and some simple. These people were charged with the task of dancing very lame dance routines for long lengths of time. Witness below.

I think these are grown women in schoolgirl outfits, dressing and dancing provocatively with the "school days" float. I think some of them are grown, anyway. Those women need to knit themselves some midriff covers!

Well, that's about as much blogging as I can stand for the day. I'll probably post a couple more times about Malta. Next up: " The Cats of Malta, An A-mews-ing Tail".