Knitting Iris

SPL

I wasn't really even going to post about this since Blair already did such a fine job of it here and at Flickr here.  She inspired me to finally go see the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library and it was so very worth it.  It's an extraordinary public space.  I would recommend going there with children, in particular, and exploring it with them.  It was a treat to get to do this with E, to just follow him and to go at his own pace. 

Things I heard while there:  "Lets see where this takes us!", "How are we going to get back down there?", "I see the city and cars and motorcyles down there.", "These are weird stairs.", "Down, down, down.  It was a long ways down!"  We even found areas where the stacks were still empty, and a corner where piles of old, bound, newspaper publications were stacked taller than E himself.

Afterwards:  "My favorite part of the library was doing puzzles.  No, it was the [15 second, silent] puppet show I did for you."  Country boy that he is, he was just as easily impressed with putting coins in the parking meter, underground garages, taking elevators, and checking out manhole covers in the sidewalks.

 

Flowers AND an americano. What could be better?

We never made it to the arboretum or the botanical gardens, but we did do a bit of nursery-hopping.  Tell me, since when can you get coffee and lunch at the nurseries?  I have to say, I kind of liked that.  It allows you to stick around and drool over the plants for longer.  These were taken at Molbak's in Woodinville.  My mom, myself, and E met my aunt there and had lunch with her since it is just minutes from her house. 

It looked more like Spring than Fall there, complete with hundreds of pansies.  The plant in the top picture was called Pincushion Plant, Nertera granadensis. I thought they looked just like a batch of cupcakes.

Autumn Flower Socks

These are Regia Canadian Colors #4732, along with more dahlias in my parents' yard and fall mums that were potted up at their front steps.  Check out Jane's pair that she knit for her daughter and posted yesterday.  Please take a look at the way she photographed them.    Graceful I am not, a dancer I am not.  You'd never know it but I took ballet lessons for eleven(!) years.  Now there's something for a "hundred things" list!

Going over to Camp

"Going on the ferry boat, going over to Camp,

Play on the beach all day, and throw rocks in the water."

This is the song my mom made up and used to sing to my oldest brother while stroking his forehead when he was little and sick on the couch.  It always made him feel better.  Now, our boys request that song.

Forget the family conflicts, the deterioration, the fancy-shcmancy changes.  Ultimately, Camp doesn't really change.  It's all about the journey...and the beach.  It's merely a skinny, 70 foot wide stretch of rocky beach, but it's so much more: watching the changes as the tide comes in and out, seeing the sun set, running up and down the hill a hundred times, exploring, and overcoming your fears of all things muddy, slimy, gooey, smelly, and pinchy.  And of course walking and walking with your eyes peeled to the ground, coming back with your hands and pockets full of sand, rocks, shells, and beach glass.  It's difficult not to walk away with mixed feelings as well.

More than anything else, I wanted, for my birthday, to wake up here, to walk this beach, to not long for what it was nor wish for what it could be nor mourn for what it someday will be, but to enjoy it for what it still is right now.

It was a great way to celebrate my 37th birthday, though it didn't hurt either that, on the way back to the ferry I treated myself to an americano and a walk through a favorite nursery, Bainbridge Gardens, where, while I ogled all the beautiful plants, E ran around looking at all the different fountains and statuary and patting each of the many, many buddhas on the head.  Then, there was a quick trip into Churchmouse Yarns and Tea for a skein of Socks That Rock (finally) in Crazy Lace Agate, appropriately named after this type of agate.  I was only looking the colors, not the name, when I bought it.  The channel of water in front of Camp is called Agate Pass, named for the agates that you can find amongst the rocks there.

   

Camp

This is Camp.  It was family-owned land that my grandfather bought from the other relatives and built a cabin and a bulkhead on at the water's edge in the 1920's, I'd guess.  The cabin itself has obviously changed over the years.  A new, bigger bulkhead was built to ward off being washed away by waves in the winter storms.  A mudslide came through the back door at one time.  There isn't a level spot in the cabin anymore.  Although it looks as if you wouldn't even want to set foot inside, the floor is still surprisingly solid, at least where the holes aren't.  Despite appearances, this place is well loved.

My dad and his brother came here as children.  My brothers and cousins came here when we were children.  Sometime in the 1970's we found that a hippie named Jessica was living there.  In the 1980's some new-agey guy had discovered it and had moved in.  It was in my grandmother's name at the time and apparently she just let them each stay there for awhile.  If there was any rent involved it had to have been minimal.  There was likely not much in the way of running water and electricity inside it by that time, but at least the doors and windows were still intact, a shower hung from a tree outside, and an the outhouse (still there) was half way up the hillside.  I still used to stay inside the cabin during college, shoving a picnic table against the door to keep it shut and setting up my sleeping bag on top of the table to stay out of the wind and the rain.  Some of us still bring our children there. 

My dad and his brother didn't speak to eachother for about 5 years regarding something to do with this property.  My dad's cousin, who has no vested interest in the property, probably spends the most time there of anyone and does most of the maintenance, keeping the blackberry brambles at bay, mowing the grass at the  top of the hill, building the latest set of 117 steps from the top of the property where you drive in down to the beachfront.  He keeps a tent set up, half way up the hill in the summer.  This was where E and I camped this time, listening to raccoons scamper by in the night.  My dad went with us and spent the day there leaving for the ferry back home just before darkness set in.

It's a bit odd to camp there today, within yards of million dollar houses and old farmsteads worth even more, I'm sure.  What was once remote is now within a ten minutes drive of a Thai restaurant and it's only a few minutes further to even fancier restaurants, shops, and the most fabulous of all grocery stores I've been to.  If there was any place on this planet I'd like to live as much as where I do now, it would be at Camp.  Oh, the garden we could grow!  I have daydreams of a greenhouse down by the beach.  You can no longer get a permit to build down on the waterfront but this property is grandfathered in so you could "remodel" the cabin below as well as build a house on the hill up above.

Of the 5 cousins who stand to inherit this property, the two who could afford to buy it aren't interested in doing so.  The other three of us could never afford to even pay the taxes on it.  It seems inevitable that eventually this property will have to be sold.  There has been talk for too many years about my dad and his brother rebuilding a cabin there but personally I don't think it's worth their sacrificing their relationship over it.  It's too heartbreaking for me to even think about it anymore.  It gets my hopes up for a place to go and stay there, warm and dry, even in the wintertime.   Inevitably, my hopes are soon dashed every time so, for now, I just try to enjoy this place for what it is.

E and I collected and strung clam shells on twine and he wanted to leave one hanging on the cabin "to decorate it."   We sought out some of the last of the summer's blackberries.  I swear that Bainbridge Island has the sweetest, juiciest blackberries of anywhere, by the way.  My dad told us of memories of his grandmother canning blackberry jam on the old woodstove there when he was a kid.   We rebuilt the campfire pit, had dinner, and toasted marshmallows together, the three of us, and then E and I crawled into sleeping bags, on cots, in the tent for the night.

Aquarium

Bear with me, still more pictures from our week away.  More knitting/yarn pictures from during that time will come soon.  Can you spot E in the very top picture?  We rarely miss visiting the aquarium when we're in Seattle.  At least a half an hour was spent watching someone feed the two octopus while listening to another person talk about them and answer questions.  We never even made it to see the the big animals like the sea otters and seals.  Two hours there flew by in a blink.

After returning home, I woke up the other morning in the middle of a dream about crustaceans, the size of large hermit crabs that looked just like the one   in the bottom left picture, that I found crawling around in our bathtub.  And, doesn't that sea anemone in the bottom right picture look an awful lot like a the dahlias in my parents' yard?

Thank goodness for modern, fireproof hotels...

...because Seattle is crawling with beautiful, fire-breathing dragons.   One morning, E and I stopped at Uwajimaya to see what a gooey-duck geoduck looks like out of the mud.  Unfortunately, they didn't have any in stock in the fish/meat department.  We did get to see many other kinds of fish, shellfish, crabs and lobsters, and even octopus legs there.  The man behind the counter joked with E, taking off his cap to show that his bald head looked just like an octopus' head.  We walked down the aisles with E frequently asking, "Mama, what's this?" and me responding often with, "Hmmm, I'm not sure."  I briefly browsed but resisted the craft books, walking away with only edamame, kim chee, wasabi peas, Botan rice candy, and our first ever Pocky sticks.  Yummy treats!

Then, we were off to the Aquarium for more fish viewing and even more dragons:  dragon fish, a relative of sea horses.

The fishy day was finished off with halibut and edamame for dinner. 

Big Brother's Blue/Grey Birthday Socks

Socks for my oldest brother's 43rd birthday.  Opal Magic #1040.  (I've used this exact yarn for a taller pair for C's sister a couple of years ago.  It was the first locally available sock yarn then.)  #1 dpn needles over 64 sts(?).  One of his feet is a little smaller than the other.  When the first socks turned out the tiniest bit too big, rather than rip, I knit the foot of the second sock 5 rows shorter.  An "L" is duplicate embroidered with some leftover orange sock yarn on the toe of the sock for his bigger, left foot.  The socks are fraternal and, speaking of which, I have yet to knit the two matching sweaters for C's brother's fraternal twin baby boys.  I'm planning on knitting them in two shades of grey, one lighter, one darker.

Seattle, of course, has it's fair share of blues and greys.  We even had blue skies with a decent view of Mt. Rainier the last couple of days.  I think the only picture needing an explanation is the rack of slate from old school chalkboards at the RE Store in Ballard (It's one place we all love going to: C, me, my dad, my brother.  The boys got to pet the cat and feed the fish and look at all the stuff.).  C would someday like one to use for the panels in a set of cabinets.  e's already done something similar with the local flagstone/slate here.

Jiggety Jog

E's Burr Oak tree that we planted for him in the springtime after he was born.  This picture was from before we left.  All these leaves are brown now, lovely in a different sort of way.  The colors were just starting to turn in Seattle.

Yesterday was a day to spend with my family.  C and R were back with us.  My oldest brother flew in from NYC.  My next oldest brother who lives in the area came over to my parents' house with my SIL and my nephew.  We celebrated my parents 75th birthday (a couple of months early) and their 45th wedding anniversary (a couple of months late) , along with about 50 of their friends and family members.   

For the first time ever, my mom hired a caterer.   She wouldn't get anyone to come in to clean the house before the party but she did hire an accordianist to play during.  I've been doing the "how-much-should-I-try-and-do/how-much-will-they-let-me-do/how-much-should-I-just-step-back-and-let-them-do-it-their-own-way dance the past few days, trying to help out with preparations where I could, staying out of the way when it seemed to be needed.

Today, we drove from my childhood home in Seattle, to our own home, above.  As the saying goes, "There's no place like home."  Here, or there.  Even after 55 years, my mom still calls her visits to Norway "going back home."  As for my dad, he's a Pacific Northwest man through and through.  Seattle has always been and will always be his home. We need to get back there more often.

"Dragons live forever..."

An old friend of mine once said of a trip to France with her 2 year old daughter:  "We saw a lot of playgrounds in Paris."  The same is true for our trips to Seattle.  The boys could almost care less about anything other than playing at my parents house and going to the great city parks here.   Being the nostalgia freak that I am, I like to take them to the ones I remember playing at when I was a kid.  This park has a new name, Deane's Childrens' Park, dedicated to a former local pediatrician and his wife.  Of course,  it's "real" name is "The Dragon Park."  It's been there since the early 1960's.  Parts of the playground have been so-called "upgraded" in recent years.  Most of the funky structures tucked away in the trees have been torn down.  Of the newer "safer" style of playgrounds, the ones they've installed here are some of the more interactive and creative ones that we've come across.  The beloved concrete dragon remains the same, only getting a new paint job every year or so.  It's green now.  Before that it was purple.  It's had polka dots at one time or another.    I was surprised to find I could still fit, laying down, deep inside the dragon's belly.  Climbing around ontop and inside there with E the other day was just like stepping back into time.

Later that evening, my dad told me about the man who originally designed the park and the dragon, about how he had gone sailing with him and some others when they were young men on the guy's parent's boat up to Nanaimo in the early 1950's, about how the cotton sails had been ripped to shreds crossing the straits in a storm and they had all had to work throughout the summer to pay off the cost of new sails, about how the guy went on to become a designer and architect travelling and working worldwide, about how sometime in the past 5-10 years ago that same man had been crossing another strait in the same area solo and had fallen off his boat and drowned.

I'll never look at TheDragon Park the same way again.  It's truly a magical place.  Not only will I see it through my childhood and adulthood eyes but I'll also see it through my dad's and sons' eyes, too.