ZEKs LITE

The Mother's Curse, and the Lucky Mother

To all who have been like mothers to us, or who are now in the position of mothering others, Happy Mother's Day!

This morning I received a cleared-off kitchen table with a pretty table cloth, an african violet, and a back scratcher.  Currently Z is baking cookies.

I feel a little funny about my delight upon receiving the back scratcher.  It's something my own mother would want, and like my mother, I was tickled about the price tag that got left on which revealed how inexpensive the back scratcher was.  My mother is a part of me, in so many ways.

I was not sure I deserved mother's day today, having cursed Z last night with a twist on the traditional mother's curse.

Usually one says,
"I hope you get a child just like you." Instead I said, "I hope you get one just like me."

(Incidentally, I love "The Cursing Mommy" humor pieces in The New Yorker.  But that's a different thing altogether.)

If Z does get one like me, she will know what to do.  A woman at church, who works with Z in the Sunday School, told us that Z had a natural intuition for working with children; that she is kind and friendly, able to redirect and manage disputes in positive ways, and works well with challenging kids.

That made me feel very lucky.  Certainly I never had or modeled that skill; it is hers, and I'm so proud to be her mom.  Any kid would be lucky to have her as a mom.  So our next generation is taken care of, whatever it may be.

Tablecloth skirt #1

While visiting sister B in Prague, we got out some of her textiles from her various travels. 

She asked if I could make some skirts from them.  Mix and match! she said. 

It's taken me a month to unpack them and get to work.  Scary to cut them up! 

This one has a drawstring, but I think the next one I'll make a little more tailored, with a zipper on the side.  It's not perfectly symmetrical in pattern, but alike on each side.

I do like these angled side pockets though.  The next one will have deeper ones, more functional than these.  A teacher could perhaps stuff a few tissues in these pockets, but not much else.

It's a lot of fun to rearrange the borders with the background pattern and make something new.  I wish I'd photographed the "before" of the table cloth.  I'll do that for the next one.

Here's Z looking lovely in the new skirt.  I'll have to make some for us too!

 

Sheep and Wolf

That's what L calls the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival.  We arrived early enough to get good parking and to enjoy the place before it got too crowded.

The Sheep-to-Shawl competition was in full swing.  Everyone had a role -- the carders, spinners, weavers and all.

Folks were wearing their knitted things, and their dyed things, and they dyed themselves as well.

Some very strange new knitting fibers are out these days.  I can't exactly call this yarn, but you can knit it.

Lace and shawls were capturing us this year.  Many glorious stitches!

Many wonderful colors!

Some time with good friends, some funny faces (little E was good as gold for several hours, what a trouper!).

I left with a bag of yarn for knitting a fat cabled sweater.

 

Silly thing

It is possible to felt things in a front-loading washing machine. 
I have been putting off that experiment for some time, but finally gave it a try. 

Felting is not my favorite in terms of the actual knitting, but the process itself is interesting. This bowl will be a bed for some guinea pigs who live far away.

If I'd been so inclined, I could have shaped this into a royal-looking hat.

Look at all my color cards

They were laughing at me, E and Z.  "She can't stop!"  It's a form of affection, I'm sure.

Today was Design group, and we had to bring in our study project for Color Interplay.   

I needed to show how colors change relative to where you put them.  This is useful, because I have many mitts to knit, and I spend way too much time choosing colors. 

It's hard - colors in large skeins of yarn change when when broken down into stripes.  In Design we learned that's due to "optical mixing."  So what if I make up striped color cards and then mix and match?

Oh the fun.  The art ladies did exactly as expected: they lept upon the pile and began combining colors and comparing the effects of one upon another:

"This blue looks warm when paired with this color, but cool when paired with this color."  "This red looks pink next to the green and orange next to the blue." 

This is only one third of all my colors.  There are so many more cards to make...

 

And a lot of other stuff, Prague

There's just way too much.  I give up.  Here's a random assortment of things Prague.

Zip lines.  Oh yes, the parks have several, even for grown-ups.

The metranome installed to take the place of the Stalin monument. 

It's now a youth hangout, with skateboarding, shoe-hanging and street art.

Also it's got a fantastic view.

We hadn't known that the Golem was a Prague story.

It was good times. Thanks so much, B-O-P!

Things we didn't expect to see in Prague

Yes, we saw castles and eggs and the old astronomical clock, but we also saw things we didn't expect.

The enormous telecommunications tower, crawling with enormous brass babies, whose faces have been stamped in with something like a barcode.

Seriously, these are scary babies.

Speaking of scary, if you peek through the telescope at the top of the castle wall, you see odd things off in the distance.

We saw what looked like a wall of hardened lava, or the inside of a cave that was right out in the open.  We had to go investigate.

Turns out it's in the Senate couryard, an art feature that spans one enormous wall, and concludes with an aviary of owls. 

The Grotto is a fake dripstone wall full of ghastly faces and creatures.

Who knew?  Aunt B was heard to say, "That wasn't in the Rick Steves book!"  Well, it might have been, who knows.  If not, it should be.

 

More sights in Prague - town and Park

In Prague one must visit the John Lennon wall, with its ever-evolving patterns of graffiti.

And a trip into the Old Jewish Quarter is important.  It is a lot to take in.

There's a lot to eat.

If you are age 2, none of this matters.  You care more about ants.  O told us not to eat them.

Then there's that elevator that never stops moving, with no doors.  You just hop in.

This is why it is fun to visit locals.  If B and P hadn't had to come here to file their taxes, we'd never have found such a fun thing. 

We feel a little silly for finding such simple differences as fascinating as the wonderful old architecture, but we do.

Castle and Clock

Certain things one expects to see in Prague. 

The castle, with
St. Vitus Cathedral.

The cathedral has some wonderful gargoyles.

We expect to cross the Charles Bridge and take in the view.

We travel to Old Town Square with the astronomical clock (so old the earth is still the center of the universe, sun revolving around).  We watched the hour strike and Death rang his bell while the Apostles toured past the opened windows, giving us their blessing.

We checked out the Easter markets, ate trdelniks (one must!).

Generally, a lot to see in not a lot of time!

Photos from Prague

Oh my, the catch-up week is longer than expected.  But finally I have some photos.

We had a fantastic time in Prague!

We had the best hosts.  B and P greeted us with beer cheese (mash the stinky cheese with onions, paprika, beer and I don't know what else) and took us on wonderful walks, showed us sights. 

Little O, who turned two while we were there, was a very good traveller.  He told us what was safe to eat and what wasn't.  "Don't eat dog poo!!!"

In the neighborhood, we visited the grocery store (where Whip Man presides, apparently) and the local farmer's market, where you can get wonderful pastries, chickens that haven't been bread to absurd proportions, and fantastic salami. 

B can pack a lot in that stroller.  Groceries, extra clothes, a bicycle... everything except little O.

Knitters, pay attention to that bowl of eggs on the left.  Wire mesh knit around the eggs!

More to come, day by day.