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Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 9 part 1 – 30:36

Last night I sat in the parking lot behing Henry’s kung fu school and watched the Lion Dance practice. It’s so cool! Here’s a video:

Henry is the head of the white lion on the right, in the back row. You can see his white tunic when he raises the head. Here are a few photos:

Preparing to march into the performance area:

Chasing each other:

The lion rears up!

Miss Strosser reminding the lion to look DOWN:

Lion heads:

The lions dance to the beat of a huge drum. Miss Edwards is drumming:

The team has several performances lined up for February, and Henry will be performing with them for the first time!

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 8 – 37:41

I love my new purse! It’s the Arden Bag kit from knitpicks. I over-felted mine by accident so it’s a bit lumpy but oh well. Just finished sewing the lining in last night and used it all day and I just love it. I wove the straps on my inkle loom. Here are pictures! And a Ravelry link.

I sewed a special iPhone pocket into the lining so my phone will never sink to the bottom and make me panic. There’s also a larger pocket for keys, pens, pocket knife, etc.

Inside-out to show lining and pockets:

It’s not huge but it’s bigger than my old purse, so I’ll more easily be able to carry along my camera, mouse, laptop power cable, or even a sock-in-progress.

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 7 part 2 – 26:06

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 7 part 1 – 23:44

Finally got a photo of Henry in the vest I made him for Christmas. He seems to like it a lot, wears it all the time and even to bed in our chilly house.

Here’s what it looked like blocking and before the buttons were on:

So hard to photograph reds — it’s a lovely dark red, not orange or pink at all. The argyle panel continues over the shoulder and down the back.

Yarn: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, Cranberry, 6 skeins. Needles size 4 (3 for ribbing). Quick pattern notes:

Starting with 75 stitches CO at neck (provisional)
divide in 3rds
4 sets of shortrows each side, every 5 st
argyle pattern on one side, 4 plain, 17 for pattern, 4 plain (obviously, add on st to left side of pattern to balance)
46 rows (at armhole edge) down back, then pick up fronts.
same short rows.
inc at neck edge until 29+29 then add 5 each side (68 total, remaining 7 will be button bands later)
(Add some stitches at underarm when joining in round, forgot to note this info)
vest is a total of 120 rows (near armhole, more down center back).
24 rows of k2p2 ribbing on size 3 needles
pick up 2 out of 3 stitches for front bands and collar
(inc 2 stitches at front collar corners every other round)
pick up 3 out of 4 stitches for armhole ribbing
8 rows ribbing for bands

More pics on my flickr or the project page at ravelry.

On Wednesday morning (Dec 30) Henry and I (and, apparently, everyone else in San Diego) went to the zoo! We had free bus tour passes that expired at the end of 2009, so we braved the long lines and took the tour. It really didn’t take that long to get onto the bus, and the tour was great — really long, and, since it was chilly, there were lots of animals out playing and doing their thing. Here we are waiting in line:

Here’s my handsome boy reading while waiting for the bus to start:

And then after the bus tour was over, we walked over to the Orangutans and Siamangs and watched them for a long time. Clyde, the 300-pound male, was resting under a burlap poncho, but two of the females were playing right by the glass!

Had a great New Year’s Eve yesterday with Henry and Dan. I went grocery shopping in the morning, and then I spent a long time cooking a big lovely Shepherd’s Pie for lunch/dinner, with tomato sauce from scratch and all, while Henry and Dan worked for hours on another of Henry’s adafruit.com kits. Dan says that Henry’s getting to be really skilled at soldering! Then we all lay around in the living room and watched the Victorian Farm Christmas Specials, which were marvelous, and even more interesting, I thought, than the main series, because they went into way more depth and detail.

And then I put on the 1951 Alastsair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, which was great! And then Henry and I goofed around on npr.org until midnight and then we all three sent Chloe simultaneous Happy New Year text messages because we were feeling silly, ha! And then we all ran out into the back yard and looked at the beautiful full moon and listened to the drunken neighbors setting off illegal fireworks, and then we went to bed.

I finished all the knitting on my Arden Bag kit and will felt it today.

I have still not blogged about Christmas, darn it. We had a wonderful time with Chloe and Bob and Kirsten and Marcos in the week before Christmas — ate, talked, played hours of Beatles Rock Band, and saw Avatar; and then we had a nice quiet Actual Christmas with just the three of us. Henry gave me two of my long-wished-for Betsy-Tacy reprints and Dan gave me a beautiful new digital camera, which is super-cool and suits me perfectly. And Dan liked his Christmas socks and nixie clock kit, and Henry liked his books and knitted vest and electronics kits. Here’s Henry doing some soldering:

And peeling apples for the pie he made to take to his Temecula Grandparents’ house

We had a very Merry Christmas and hope you did too!

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 6 part 2 – 20:44

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 6 part 1 – 19:07

Santa brought my 89-year-old Grandma an mp3 cd player, hooray! When I called her to chat the other day, I could hear my recording of A Postcard from the Volcano in the background. She says she’s really enjoying it.

I’m burning a whole bunch of librivox audiobooks to cd for her. So I don’t send duplicates next time, I’ll note the titles here:

The Wrong Box (Andy Minter)
Life on the Mississippi (John Greenman)
A Room with a View (me)
Helen’s Babies (me)
The Adventures of Sally (me)
Persuasion (Karen Savage)

It was a bit difficult to choose! I downloaded several more, but decided I’d better not send too many all at once.

Forgot to mention that we cataloged our 3,000th audio book a few days ago :)

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 5 – 32:29

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 4 Part 2 – 16:14

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 4 Part 1 – 22:18

My sister Kirsten and her husband Marcos are visiting, yay! The other night Chloe and Bob came over too, and we practiced making the strange face that our family likes to make. Kirsten can’t quite do it :)

And here is Chloe showing Kirsten and Henry stuff on her iPhone:

We’re having a wonderful time!

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 3 Part 2 – 27:45

In 2006, someone at LibriVox ran a Christmas Carol Collection. Those carols have become some of my very favorite Christmas music, so every year after that I’ve hoped that someone would come along and do another carol collection, but since no one ever did, I decided this year that I would be that someone. About two weeks ago I set up the project, our volunteers obliged me with song after song, and yesterday I finished cataloging our thirty free, volunteer-performed Christmas carols! That’s nearly an hour and a half of music.

http://librivox.org/christmas-carol-collection-2009/

I love this collection. Sure, there are one or two songs which are not quite to my taste, but that just means there’s something here that will please everyone. I’d list a few of my favorites but they are too numerous and anyway I don’t want to bias you. Go download our collection and enjoy the sound of your LibriVox friends singing Christmas carols to you. I guarantee there’ll be many songs there that put a big smile on your face.

Ok, I guess I can’t resist mentioning the multi-tracked, very traditional, all-male songs with which I placed at the beginning, middle, and end of the set list. And the Kunkel family’s “Joy to the World”. And Karen’s “Gaudete”. And my favorite version of “Carol of the Bells” EVER. And Ryan’s ukulele-accompanied “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”. And Bellona Times’ very appealing “Go Tell it on the Mountain”. And Mark and Laurie Anne’s “Lo How A Rose ere Blooming”… I could go on and on and on. Download, listen, and find your own favorites!

Amazingly, we already have two 5-star reviews at archive.org (they host our files for free): http://www.archive.org/details/carol_collection_0912.

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 3 Part 1 – 33:12

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 2 Part 2 – 29:23