Apple Season Begins!

Last weekend we visited Todd's family and, since the house is built on what used to be an apple orchard, we came home with lots of apples. So yesterday we invited my family over for the afternoon and might have gotten carried away with the apple recipes. We ended up making apple crisp, apple pie, apple walnut muffins, apple cake and apple turnovers (and we still have more apples).
My family left with the pie, but here's a picture of the muffins, cake, and turnovers.

Pyrapalooza 2007

Last weekend we went to Pyrapalooza, an event organized by NorthEast Pyr Rescue. After work we packed up the freshly washed puppies and headed to Westfield, Massachusetts.
We didn't make it to the hotel until nearly 2 am so I will admit that I'm glad that Todd convinced me to book a hotel room instead of trying to pitch a tent in the dark.
Although the event was geared towards Pyrs, there were some guest appearances by other dogs and their owners for the special events. Here is a beautifully outfitted Bouvier (with natural ears) with a custom made cart.
Buddy tried carting and he turned out to be a natural! Doesn't he look at home all harnessed up?In addition to carting they had an agility session. We hadn't originally signed up for this because we weren't sure that Buddy would be up for it, but it turned out that he did a good job for a first timer. After some coaxing Todd got him doing jumps.
Pyrapalooza was great fun and we got to meet the owners of lots of other Pyrs, many placed by NEPR. It was fun to talk to so many other Pyr lovers. They also had many Pyr-related things including Pyr beer, Pyr wine, and even items knitted from Pyr fur. All in all an exciting and exhausting day. Look at all the tired out Pyrs. And here is one last photo opp—here I am with Buddy and Magic, another rescued dog.

Loki gets a bath and goes to his new family

Today our two week puppy fostering adventure ended and Loki went to his new home. Thursday was a frenzy of grooming so that Buddy and Loki would look their best. Pyrs look big but under all that fur, the truth is that most pyrs are knobbly. This is what Loki looked like in his bath:












and here he is squeaky clean and all dry and fluffy:













On Saturday we drove up to Westfield Massachusetts and gave Loki to his new family. They seemed like very nice people and will be raising Loki to be a therapy dog. We will miss him, but puppies are lots of work!

Sea World at night

This past week I was at a conference and one night there was an event at Sea World. It was a very cool and unique thing to do. We got to visit several of the animals and see what they do when the public goes home. The answer for the polar bears is sleep.

The beluga whales were showing off for their fans.












And the penguins looked distinctly like we'd interrupted their beauty rest.

Look mom! They're wearing ears!

While we were in California we also went to the zoo and carried on the tradition my sister started: wearing tiger ears. It all started when we were at the Bronx Zoo when Tiger Mountain opened. Sofia goes "I'll buy you a pair of ears if you wear them for the rest of the day." I say no, but Todd goes "sure" and a tradition is born. I did end up joining in on that first adventure and we have since inducted other people. The great thing about the ears is that they're fairly subtle, but little kids get really excited about seeing adults wearing them. It is great fun and it's a shame that they don't make the ears any more.

Our other activities for the day included walking along the beach and visiting a cheese shop. New criteria for any new town we move to: cheese shop! Mmmmm cheese.

Knitting stores in Santa Monica

Last week Todd and I went out to visit our friends on the west coast. We had an excellent time!

On the flight out I worked on my second lion washcloth. I had already ripped it out once because I ran out of yarn and was trying to make the loops more conservatively. This time I got 3/4 of he way done instead of only 1/2 way before I ran out of yarn. I convinced my friends to add a trip to a yarn store to the itinerary and we ended up going to not one or two but three different stores.

The first was Stitches From the Heart, a nice little store that knits baby clothes for charity. At the store there were several nice older women helping out and knitting. It has some nice, interesting yarns, but the store is fairly small and doesn't have such a wide variety of yarn; I couldn't find another ball of the yarn I was looking for.

Our next stop was Yarns Unlimited. Here there was a much larger variety of materials, weights and textures, but sadly still not the one I was looking for.

I persuaded my friends to try one more store so I got to visit Wildfiber. I learned about Wildfiber from the book that the former owner collaborated on: Knit 2 Together by Tracey Ullman and Mel Clark. I was very excited to go there and it turned out to be the coolest of the three. The space is huge, with comfy couches to relax on while perusing the books, or to hang out on while your knitting obsessed friends have a field day. I still could not find the yarn I was looking for, but I did find some needle point covers to hold my sock needles so that they no longer make swiss cheese out of the bag I've got them in and some shell accents for the table runner I'm working on.

ATA is an awful airline

I have been doing a lot of traveling for work, as the name of this blog might suggest, and the more I travel the more I realize that it is totally worth it to fly a reputable airline. This means somewhere where they understand the concept of customer service, the elite status is worth something, and it is actually possible to redeem your points. I used to fly ATA because I thought they were cheap and convenient, but that is really not the case. The flight crew is unkind and not helpful, and the staff at the check-in desk is frequently absent at important times, such as when you are trying to check in for your flight. If you do any regular (or long distance) flying it is totally worth it to develop a relationship with a real airline. I have been flying with Continental instead of ATA and am much happier: elite status actually means something, you can actually redeem your points fairly painlessly and the flight crew is professional.

The clincher is that as Todd tried to board his flight today and arrived at the airport 35 minutes before departure. After waiting in line for 5 minutes at the check-in desk for an attendant to appear she told him (and the three other people behind him trying to check in for the same flight) that "the flight closes 30 minutes before departure". He patiently explained that he and the others in line with him had been waiting in line for 5 minutes and were all on time for check-in, but that she had been absent. Her response: "I'm sorry, there's absolutely nothing I can do." After demanding to speak to her manager his response was to say, "the flight is closed," and simply turn his back and walk away. And to top it all off they were able to re-schedule the other three people for a later flight, but told Todd that "we have no more seats available in the Member rewards class for any other flights today" (there were 3 more to Midway).

Luckily ATA is partners with Southwest and the Southwest service desk kindly found him a flight leaving from Islip to L.A., and he arrived only 2 and a half hours later than originally planned. If you want to set Todd off in a tizzy ask him about his experiences with the kind folks at ATA. Just don't do it around anything breakable.

Needless to say I won't be using ATA ever again, not even for a reward flight. It was totally not worth the hassle and aggravation.

Lion washcloth

These cute little washcloths knit up very quickly. This is my first one, the single strand version here, and I am working on a double stranded one now.

The cutest house guest ever!

Todd and I are fostering a Pyr puppy! His name is Loki and he'll be with us for two weeks. He is only 10 weeks old and he already weights 26 pounds. He is going to be enormous. Buddy didn't know what to do with him at first but they are getting along very well now. The cat on the other hand was not pleased to see him at all, but I think she'll come around.

New York State Fair in pictures

Who're you callin' domesticated?

Our cat Ginger is anything but domesticated. She is mostly barn cat and a little Siamese and up until I adopted her and brought her to my apartment at college she had been running wild on my uncle's farm. Over the years she has mellowed out but she still is a vicious killer. At my parent's house she won my dad over by killing a huge NYC rat and also a series of mice and insects. Here in the wilds of New Jersey she has moved on to bigger and better things and here you can see her proudly displaying her latest victim. Fortunately for the garter snake we got to him when he was still alive - it helps that she likes to parade around meowing loudly to show off her prey before she's finished them off - and put him back outside and locked her in for the night.

New Toys! (I mean important knitting tools)

Recently Todd managed to convince me that out of my per diem for being in Chicago all the time I could splurge on a yarn swift and ball winder. So I went out and bought the swift and winder that I'd been drooling over. Before I knew it there were packages at the house and new toys to play with, I mean important knitting tools. This means that I can get my projects that have yarn that does not come in balls started without having to spend hours balling the yarn by hand. I kind of like balling yarn but it can get tedious.
Once we got the swift and the baller set up and I got out my stash of yarns that require balling and we got busy. Todd discovered that using the ball winder and the swift was a close second to his favorite knitting related activity: ripping out knitting mistakes. We even drafted some of our friends into helping.