Some photos

The camera is cooperating today, so I was able to take some photos of the finished socks, and download the photos from the weekend.

The socks helped me with some gardening today.



Zebra mom and her colt.



And a Saturday sky (okay this was on Sunday) for Sandy.

Todays sky:

I was happy Monday when it rained. Unfortunately it rained for about 3 minutes, much it like it did today. Just enough to get the humidity up there not enough to do anything. My laundry stayed out since by the time I went downstairs and got my shoes on, it stopped raining. The lawn will be watered again tonight.

FO alert

Yesterday, my brother, his wife, there 2 kids and my husband and I went to African Lion Safari. I haven' t been since I was a little kid (I barely remember the trip) so I didn't know what to expect. It is a fabulous experience. The difference between ALS and a zoo, is the animals have a very large area to roam, and you drive around the park. There are areas for the different animals, lions, cheetahs and baboons each have their own enclosure, as opposed to giraffes, zebras, and rhinos are in the same enclosure. A mother zebra stopped in front of our car for 10 min, at one point during this time her young came up and fed from her.
Unfortunately, half way through the day our camera gave us a system failure message which the problem has not been resolved yet.

I finished my pomatomus socks, however I was going to take the photos today, so I will post an old photo with the relevant knitting info:

Yarn: Koigu KPPPM
Colour: P519 dyelot 51
Needles: Bamboo 2.75 mm US2 dpns
Pattern mods: Two repeats instead of 3 on the cuff
Notes: I really loved knitting this pattern, and I also enjoyed my first experience with Koigu.

Also post some finished pics once I get access to a camera that works or if ours starts working again (it looked last night like it was going to)







I have been hearing from my east coast friends that they have rain - could you send some here. Last week it felt like it might rain - so I watered the lawn ( Murphy's law) but nope it didn't. Today I am going to hang laundry outside to dry that should do it (there are grey clouds in the sky.

edited to add: It is raining !!!!!!

Gray is the new

RED

My camera monitor hates red, everything looks purple so it is very difficult to get red correctly. ( scroll down for knititng content)

Whenever you paint with red you need a good primer. I was always told to use a tinted primer, until I went and bought this paint. They told me (correctly) that red covers gray better than pink (thats what happens when you tint primer it is not the actual colour). I knew I was going to get a good primer if I was going to paint with this colour (Rapture).

The living room now looks like this (it was taupe before). You can see the kitchen, I am thinking of going with sand in the archway.




I have done 1.5 repeats on the cuff of the second poma sock, seen here frolicking with some old roses.


And a final distraction - a peony that is almost done flowering.

Where have I been?

I have changed this

using this, with my handy helping socks

into this

Socks: Mistake Rib socks for my husband
Gauge: 11 sts/inch
Needles: 1.75 mm Susan Bates dpns
Yarn: Trekking colour 102 purchased at Rhinebeck in the fall

An Inconvenient Truth

I went to see this movie last night; it was opening night at the Princeton Garden Theatre and organized by the Association of New Jersey Recyclers. ANJR had a bunch of NJ politicians there (NJ DEP commissioner, NJ BPU president, other policy people, mayors etc) who discussed some of the happenings in NJ both at the state level and municipal level before and after the movie. For those people that have not heard of this movie it is a documentary by Al Gore on Global Climate Change*. I know Gore has a reputation of being boring but he has learned his lesson. He presents his arguments in a well thought out, yet entertaining manner. He is not Robin Williams, or Dave Chappelle, heÂ’s not that entertaining, he is just not the robot man everyone remembers from 2000.

Gore has traveled around the world speaking on global climate change, and the movie contains part of his presentation and other scenes of his travels. Some of the information you might have heard before, however there is some info that Gore convinced the US military to release. For example, the military felt that the thickness of the ice sheets in the arctic should be classified for national security (the issue that the US has these records and not Canada is a sore point for Canada). As you can imagine the thickness of ice has declined since they started keeping records 50 years ago. The movie is a good summary of the body of evidence that the earth's climate is changing and we are involved.

Go see this An Inconvenient Truth, and take someone with you.

Although the Crappy Conservative government has discontinued the 1-tonne challenge, in Canada, the calculators are still there. Even if you are not in Canada take the challenge there are a bunch of good energy saving tips on the web site and you can see the difference of using energy star appliances and fluorescent bulbs in your home. The goal of the One-Tonne challenge is to reduce your CO2 emmissions by 1 tonne, on average Canadians produce 5.5 tonnes of CO2 every year.

* in the movie and elsewhere people use the term Global Warming, I prefer using the term Global Climate Change since many things are happening besides an increase in temperatures. There are more cases of extreme weather, intense storms and droughts. Also with the term Global Climate change on a cool day - people don't say "I thought there was global warming, why do I have to wear a sweater in March."