The Downside of Literacy

Text of note discovered last night in Thing 1's bedroom doorway:

THiGN1

iSS BEd

dAMM

A check with the author this morning confirmed that it says what I though it said. Apparently, T1 did something to tick off her newly-literate younger sibling, and the note was the response. I love how she not only decided to swear, but also decided that "damn" has 2 m's. Can you imagine what notes she'll be writing in a few years?

Scarf

Dinosaurs roamed the earth the last time I had a knitted FO. So here's the scarf I finished last night. The yarn is lovely, lovely Malabrigo Baby Merino laceweight, and the pattern was a freebie from Imagiknit. It was a perfect pattern for knitting in front of Buffy (and we're now finally in the 7th season).

I adore this yarn. It took only one skein for this scarf--in fact, I have a little left over. And of course, the scarf will come in very handy, now that it's 89 degrees outside.

On an unrelated note, thanks for the Croatia tips! I don't know yet whether I'll get to go, but it would be exciting. It would be a business trip, but that's fine. I'd still get to see some sights, I'm sure. I've been to central Europe before--6 years ago I was in Hungary and the Czech Republic--but never Croatia, which sounds like a very interesting place. If I do go, it'll probably be a short trip, because I already have some other travel booked for June. I doubt I'll have time to visit Annecy, alas, Emily. :-( Would love to visit Trieste, too, which is only about 100 miles from Zagreb.

Croatia

Do any of you know anything about Croatia? There's a chance I'll be going to Zagreb in June.

Yosemite

We spent yesterday at Yosemite. Even though it's less than 2 hours from our house, we haven't been there since the Things were born. That's silly.

They're doing some road construction in the park, which meant at one point we had to stop the car and wait for nearly half hour. It wasn't torture, though, because this is what it looked like where we stopped:

The Things managed to amuse themselves for 30 minutes. Then we had a picnic on this beautiful beach, and Thing 1 attempted to throw every last rock back into the Merced River. Meanwhile, T2 practiced the art of log walking:

Later, T2 made John Muir's acquaintance:

And then we walked up to the bottom of Yosemite Falls.

It's a great time of year to visit. Highs temps were in the 60's, it wasn't too ungodly crowded, the falls are beautiful, and the trees are just leafing out.

More Pottery

I'll bet you're dying to see more of my ceramics masterpieces, right? Here ya go. This first one is a wall pocket. I think it looks kind of ogre-ish. One of my classmates said it reminds her of a character in The Goonies.

Next, we have a pair of little cups. I think they look like they need ice cream in them. Or maybe a frivolous liqueur. Once, on a hot, muggy day in Germany, I was served mango sorbet with a little champagne poured on top. These cups would do for that, too. This is as close to a matched set as I'm ever going to produce. I like how the glaze turned out.

My final item was made at Thing 1's special request. She wanted a mermaid to hang in her bathroom. I was skeptical about my abilities in this regard, but I have to tell you, I really am very pleased with the result. I think it's my favorite thing I've made so far. She's happy with it, too.

Quizzes

I got 7 out of 8 on this geography quiz. Oops. I misplaced Afghanistan. And I got 7 out of 10 on the Dead Quiz. I guess it's a good thing that I know more about geography than about horror movies.

Relativity of Time

Yesterday I spent just about two hours in a department chairs' meeting, and then almost exactly the same amount of time in my ceramics class. Guess which two hours lasted forever, and which just flew by. Too bad I can't play with clay during meetings.

Done Stuff

I feel buried in work so today I took a Mental Health Day and made a doll instead. Here's Princess Thing 2. I guess she likes cactuses (cacti?):

And I brought home several ceramics items this week. I'm working on an outerspace theme for a bathroom wall. Here's the rocket and a planet, which T2 has decided is Saturn:

These are just some miscellaneous little dishes, because you can never have too many places to collect broken toys, marbles, beads, spare change, keys, and other miscellaneous crap:

One of my classmates decided that the blob in the center of the larger bowl, which is actually just a random splotch of melted glass, looks like a Scottie dog:

What do you think? Hey--it's a Rorschach Bowl!

I haven't finished any knitting lately. I've been working on a scarf, which is exactly what I need, since it's in the 80's this weekend. We just watched the last few episodes of Season 5 of Buffy, which were too exciting to pay too much attention to the tricky parts of the scarf.

Tuesday

I was kinda having a crappy day. Nothing awful in particular, just one of those drudge-filled days where not enough gets accomplished and everybody seems discontented. And then I heard about Improv Everywhere, which "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." Basically, they pull pranks, but they're funny and often really good-hearted. They've had several no-pants days, and recently made some Little Leaguers really happy. They made me smile.

Also, late this afternoon I got an enigmatic email from my Dean asking whether I have a valid passport, and if so, whether I might be interested in going to Croatia for a week this summer. I'll have to wait for the morning to find out what that's all about, but it does sound promising. Or maybe she just wants to get rid of me for a while? ;-)

Saturday Fun

On Saturday, I spent a lovely day with a friend in Petaluma. We just just hung around downtown Petaluma, gabbing and shopping. There is a really good bookstore there, Copperfields, and also a very nice yarn store called Knitterly. I may have come home with some books and yarn. One of the things I like about that town is that, except for an inevitable Starbucks, all the stores and restaurants downtown are independent rather than chains. It's refreshing.

Meanwhile, Hubby took the Things up to the mountains. Thing 1 knows how to ski, but Hubby couldn't ski with her due to his still-healing broken foot. Instead, he signed her up for a snowboard lesson. She loved it.

And while T1 snowboarded, T2 and Hubby threw snowballs and made snowmen and sledded.

It was the last weekend of the season at that ski resort, and, as you can see, the snow is getting sparce. In fact, Hubby and T2 apparently spent an hour watching an event in which people on snow skis attempt to water ski:

So a good time was had by all.