road trip!

'Tis the season for outdoor events, the time of year when the folding chairs don't leave the back of my car because we're putting them to use at least four times a week. Between the live concerts and the Shakespeare shows and our usual evening activities, and the friends to meet at all, the calendar is plump with options.

Yesterday, kids and I decided at the last minute to do a road trip for our first Shakespeare show of the summer. It was Midsummer Night's Dream, one of our favorites. We had a few minutes before the show, so my favorite yo-yo guy started practicing some of his tricks and, as always, drew an audience for an impromptu performance

while I enjoyed the view from the park's edge. I guess they don't call these shows Shakespeare On The Sound for nothing.

No pics were allowed during the show, but this one from their site shows a portion of the four-armed curved runway/boardwalk stage. More pics of the stage at the website.

We've seen so many Shakespeare shows over the years, Midsummer Night's Dream the most often of them all, but every one has a twist that keeps them fresh and exciting. This one, besides having the very cool runway stage, had recorded instrumental music to go with the live songs. The musical score was beautiful, magical, haunting, perfect.

I did a bit of knitting during the show, before it got too dark (and cold!) to continue. My project looks exactly like the green leafy one in this blog post, only there's more of it and now there's an opening where a pocket will go. There was a traffic jam getting out of the park area, a nap at a rest stop so I could get us home safely, and a nighttime construction back-up, so we got home at nearly the time the baker was getting up to start his day. With three farmers' markets, three stores, two farm stands, and another account in the works, the beadmakerbaker is in full-on bake mode and we're all psyched. And finally, a forecast for three solid days of sunshine! Happy weekend, everybody!

the difficulty with scarves

It appears that this summer, my knitting is all about the scarves. This is all fine and well, as they're easy to take along to the bazillion fantastic events and work on while my attention is elsewhere, but they make very poor blog fodder. They're like the Energizer bunny; they just keep going and going. I'm probably 3/4 of the way through the scarf I was working on in Vermont, but a picture now wouldn't look much different that it did then, so instead of sharing a picture of the knitting, I'll share some pictures of places where the scarf was knat upon last weekend.

First, summer Shakespeare. Again! The weather allowed us to see two of three shows we planned for the weekend (chosen from at least five offered at different venues around the state!), Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing. We've seen the latter group of performers in the past and absolutely adore their riotous shows.

Met up with friends for a visit to a colonial encampment and farmers' market with friends on Sunday morning. Learned some interesting trivia while touring the Nathan Hale Homestead and couldn't help but notice the huge walking wheel and hand cards in a sparsely furnished room.

Leah and I participated in a customers' favorites trunk show at Creative Fibers on Sunday afternoon. A group of us brought our favorite projects for a show and tell about the pattern, the yarn, the challenges, the results. Visitors to the store during the afternoon each voted on their favorite. I entered my Garden Patch cardigan and handpainted gloves. Leah entered her Seven Sisters cabled mitts, wrap cardigan, and Imagine hat. We enjoyed the afternoon of hanging with knitters and one guy who visited the store with his family even commissioned Leah to knit him an Imagine hat, so she was thrilled!

Didn't make it to the third Shakespeare show of the weekend because of rain (upon snagging that link, I just noticed they had an indoor alternative in case of bad weather -- oh well), but the timely offer of a cookout was a yummy substitute. Between the two performances and the ukulele group's singalong(!), I probably added 7" to the Rivolo scarf. It's not possible to knit during the ballroom dance classes Leah and I have been taking, but otherwise, thank heavens for a hobby (obsession!) that's flexible enough to fit into so many settings while we're otherwise engaged.

hot fun

Edited to add: This post was written early this morning, then went kablooey when I tried to publish it. If the timing seems off, that's why.

Tis the season when we're just floating along from fun summer concert to performance to other outdoor event. Too many great options; can't keep up with them all, but we're sure trying! This week started off with jazz on Monday and blues on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Leah mentioned that she wanted to sew a bag for a reenactor friend whose current bag is too small for his daily gear. Next thing I know, she has hand sewn this fully lined bag from stuff in our stash (fabric was a freebie, also used in a dress Leah sewed for herself a few years ago; button snipped off something trash-bound).

At the Thursday farmers' market, she ran into another reenactor who agreed to model it. Just happened to match his cap perfectly!

Hey, when did she learn how to make buttonholes?!

Friday included a barbershop chorus performance and the beginning of outdoor Shakespeare season! Ooh, how we loves us some summer Shakespeare!

Midsummer Night's Dream last night, possibly will go to a diff. show this evening (after taekwondo this morning and a folk music festival in the afternoon), and then we'll have the option of 1-2 performances a week through August. Only a short bit of knitting time before the sun goes down, but such good fun!

randomness between the zap-booms!

The lightning and thunderstorms have been spectacular lately. When we're not in the middle of a downpour, I have tried and tried to take a good pic of the undulating waves scarf, but it's always too dark or the beads are sparkling too much or something. I haven't been able to capture the subtle iridescence of the yarn and the beads, so this post-blocking pic will just have to do. Trust me, though, when I tell you that it's a winner. The bit of weight added by the beads makes it feel incredibly good to wear and it goes with everything I own.

Milestone in Jesse's life: He's now taller than Scott. My 13-year-old is over 6 ft. tall, just a wee bit taller than his dad. Just for the fun of it, I looked up the average height chart for adolescent males. See that blue star? The one that's about 5" above the 100th percentile for 13-year-olds? Yeah, that's my mutant moose boy. Sheesh.

We saw two more Shakespeare performances last weekend, bringing the summer 2008 total to four Shakespeare shows to date, with at least two more still on the calendar. One was a modernized Midsummer Night's Dream version that included break dancing and rapping mixed with the original language. As if Midsummer Night's Dream wasn't already enough hilarious fun, this took it to the next level. Fantastic! The thunder rumbling outside the auditorium was a nice bonus while the fairies made their mischief. Raucous good Shakespearean fun.

As far as I'm concerned, every day is knit in public day, but Saturday was the official World Wide Knit In Public Day, so we spent a couple of pleasant hours in the shade of a big tree, near a fountain on a town green, knitting with new and old friends. I didn't get a shot of the whole group, but here are a few of the folks at the gathering. Again, rumbles in the sky as the afternoon was coming to an end, and we weren't quite ready to go home yet had taken a poor new-to-Connecticut knitter under our collective wing and were showing her the paths to yarn in the area, so most of us moved the party to the nearest yarn store for a while longer.

Scott's been fishing just about every other day lately, including on a friend's boat for Father's Day and along the CT River with friends, followed by free salsa dancing lessons (kids and I went along for that evening). We have had no fish dinners to show for it, but there are a lot of other benefits to these outings, like strolling in a park along the river and taking time to notice the setting sun through a heart-shaped hole in an enormous gnarled tree.

Simple pleasures, summertime happiness.

Shakespeare, shots, and shrooms

The weekend in pictures:

Friday, Shakespeare's The Tempest, performed on the pier in New London, shown with my current sock-in-progress, which I think is just about ready for casting off.

Saturday, Rebels to Redcoats at Old Sturbridge Village. One of my kids was there for the military history and one for the textiles/fashion history. Leah was in full costume and fit right in with the many, many reenactors who contribute to the weekend. She had just finished sewing a bag on commission for a reenactor friend, so she gave it a test run on Saturday and it worked out well.

It was also the biggest number of attendees I think I've ever seen at Old Sturbridge Village. This is a portion of the enormous crowd gathered for the battle (you can see gunsmoke to the left) on this spectacular day. It's like old home day for us too, running into people we know from high school, from being longtime members at OSV, from hanging out with reenactors, from participating in military history miniature gaming groups, from here, there, and everywhere. Interesting conversation about whitework embroidery and spent a good while chatting with the man who was the leader of the British troops x 16 years.

Sunday, Fungus Festival at the Coventry Farmers' Market, including all sorts of mushroomy foods, a surprisingly large group of mycologists offering and participating in lots of mushroom-related activities, and a steady stream of happy customers.

Today, back to work. So I can rest. ;-)

R2R + (MND x 2) = 4:-)

Ahhh...Rebels to Redcoats weekend at Old Sturbridge Village has become one of our favorite annual events. This year there were over 600 reenactors in period costume participating in formal events and also staying in encampments throughout the village for informal interaction throughout the days. As has been the case for at least three years now, Scott, Jesse, and Leah spent all day Saturday and all day Sunday there and came home thoroughly jazzed.

Because the reenactors are passionate about history and especially the time period they've chosen to recreate, they are thrilled to interact with kids and adults who are honestly engaged and inquisitive, and will often become increasingly open and sharing as they realize the extent of interest. Jesse was, as always, entranced by the historic weaponry. This year he focused on the Gatling gun and became an assistant for the reenactor you see to his right in the picture above, eventually earning the opportunity to clean the gun and help carry the ammunition box. He was greeted like a member of the reenactor group when he returned for the second day. As usual, he fell into his spontaneous docent role in the blacksmith's shop too, with the blessing of the blacksmith himself. :-) Leah found her niche on Saturday when she took her turn at the spinning wheel of someone doing a demo and was recognized by the demo'er as a fellow member of Nutmeg Spinners Guild. They arrived home Saturday afternoon just long enough for us all to head out with my mom to the New England Shakespeare Festival's performance of Midsummer Night's Dream. Yes, we just saw one version of Midsummer Night's Dream a couple of weeks ago, but we've seen about five versions all together now and each one has a completely different flavor from the others. This particular version was rollicking, informal, and often downright hilarious. Like when the whole shebang paused for the "flying machine" to pass, while the Elizabethan players looked quite perplexed by this contraption and the audience joined in on a quick round of singing "I'm leaving on a jet plane. I don't know when I'll be back again." Good raucous Shakespeare for the common folk!Back to Old Sturbridge Village for day 2 of Rebels to Redcoats today. Met up with friends, as planned, and more friends, unplanned! Above is Jesse enjoying a walk in the company of General Grant, with whom they had a picnic lunch last year. And here you see Leah (in blue) and her militia friends parading around the common. That's Molly Pitcher behind her, in the bonnet, and crisp militia-woman Emma in red, marching in step with the commanding officers. They came home thoroughly wiped out, treasuring the small mementos gifted to them by reenactors, with many stories to share and the glee that comes from a weekend with family and friends, and boundless enthusiasm for history brought to life. 

snapshots from Saturday

Oh yeah, yesterday felt good.

One stop along the way was an art museum

where I noticed a few
fibercrafty tidbits within the art.

(Yes, the spool is carved from the pencil's wood
and the needle from the graphite!)

A little raucous Shakespeare and
some good knitting in the sunshine
to round out a glorious day.

Ahh...

whoosh!

Wowza, I love times like this, where there are options galore on the calendar. Makes me tired, but there are so many good things going on out there.

Leah's solidly into the lily of the valley section of her Swallowtail Shawl now. She's using iridescent beads in place of the nupps, to add a little sparkle. Can't see them in this pic, but they're in the spaces at the lower section.

Shakespeare performances abound. There are no less than five shows on my calendar for any given weekend evening for the remainder of the summer. After a riotous ukulele band gig on Friday, we headed out for Taming of the Shrew. Big fun for all of us, especially a certain scene involving a ukulele.

While Leah and I were at a bbq at a friend's incredible property (20 gorgeous wooded acres with pond) yesterday, our guys were psyched to meet their peeps for a rocket club launch. Jesse's rockets flew beautifully. He learned a bunch from guys who are more experienced, was able to help some newbies, sold something he made to modify a launch system, and came home excited about new rocket ideas and inspiration.

Quick dinner, then out for fireworks last night. Good fun, as always!

Business name that made me laugh out loud:

even better

What's better than an evening of spirited performance of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, on a pier, with the moon rising over the water, and my two favorites munchkins psyched to see it (thank you, Jim Weiss)?

Meeting another knitter at the show and discovering that her kids were homeschooled too.

And realizing by the end of the evening that, if I play my cards right, I could have TWO scarves blocking today!

puff

Jesse and Scott spent Friday evening at a parent-teen glassblowing workshop in MA. They each made a drinking glass and Scott also made a glass flower.

Above, Jesse's reheating the gather of molten glass. Below, he's increasing the diameter of the blown glass as it's being rolled to maintain shape.

They both came home totally psyched! Their work needed to stay at the shop for annealing and will be picked up later this week. Since it's difficult to tell what the finished pieces will look like while they're still glowing hot, it'll be a fun surprise for all of us to see the results!

Meanwhile, so far this weekend, Leah and I have attended two Shakespeare performances, The Winter's Tale (outdoors on a beautiful evening) and an adaptation of The Tempest, in which some of our friends were actors. We even popped in for the tail end of a knit night gathering on Friday. Plans for today include a farmer's market (with handpainted fiber!), ice cream social, and day of romping in the woods and by a pond with friends. Yay, spring!

yo mama

Saturday was the International Yo-Yo Open and New York State Yo-Yo Contest, so kids and I were up bright and early to head into the city. The event was held at the South Street Seaport, which was a perfect place to spend this beautiful summer day, on the waterfront with skyscrapers behind us and tall ships all around.

Yo-yo competitors were there from around the world, doing some of the most amazing tricks. If you haven't seen what yoyoing is lately and still think it's either up-and-down or walking the dog, take a look at this video for an example of the kinds of tricks we saw. Radical!

It was kind of crowded with a few hundred spectators to the front of the stage area, so I parked myself in a good spot off to the side, where I could still see the performances, and took advantage of some knitting time in the sunshine. Between the train rides and the yo-yo time, I'm now 1/3 of the way through my lace ribbon scarf -- yay! I was joined by Cindy, the dyer of Apple Laine yarns and mother of Devon, Canadian yo-yo champion, while waiting for his turn to compete.

We walked along the waterfront, checking out the Brooklyn Bridge and two of the New York City Waterfalls.

Eventually made our way to Playing The Building at the Battery Maritime Building, where David Byrne from the Talking Heads has rigged up an old organ so each key actually plays a part of the big empty building -- tinking a radiator, vibrating a metal beam, blowing air through a plumbing pipe.

Back to Connecticut on the train in time for yet another Shakespeare performance. This time, it was Much Ado About Nothing, with a Flower Power twist. Leonardo daVinci from Kathleen Krull's Giants of Science series, book on CD borrowed from the library, provided entertainment during the car rides. I saw a rainbow while on the way home on Friday afternoon and a shooting star on the way home on Saturday night, perfect bookends to an awesome day.

Met up with some friends at the farmers' market on Sunday morning for a corn roast and contra dancing. By Sunday evening, we were all toast and the threat of rain would likely cancel the performance we were hoping to see that night, so we settled in for a movie and some mitten knitting. I was happy to get back to work on Monday so I could rest. :-) Who knew those first yo-yos from the kids' Grammy last Christmas would lead us to such fun?!