Still doing some vacation catch-up here, and then you will be returned to your regular crafty programming. One update though, the link to the Diane Rehm show featuring Alex Vernon is up, and after the show you can listen to the podcast after the show tomorrow.

On our way to upstate New York, we cut across Ontario and stopped at Niagara Falls. We were surprised to see all of the casinos on the Canadian side. They have the classic honeymooner part of town that is slowly giving away to high-rise luxury.

We were glad to be on the very wet Canadian side, where there are more views of the falls. There were so many international tourists there, and everyone was very dressed up and soaking wet.

We weren’t sure how to read the gas station signs in Canada. I think this one means beaver is $13 at the 7-11.

On the American side, a tower was built so people could actually see the falls. We crossed back into the US right next to the tower.

One of Tyrone’s colleagues at Hendrix College is going to be on NPR on Wednesday. Alex Vernon will be on the Diane Rehm show at 10AM central time.

Sorry Nebraskans, this one won’t be on the radio, but you can click on the internet radio feed in the top left hand column. Arkansas (and apparently many other places) actually play NPR talk shows all day, unlike Nebraska’s switch to classical music from 9AM-4PM.

Anyway, I got to talk to Gulf War veteran Dr. Vernon this weekend about this upcoming interview. He’s got a book on the cultural significance of Tarzan coming out October 15, 2008. We started talking about Tarzan this weekend. Whenever anyone starts talking about Tarzan, I try to change the subject to Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Men of Mars” series because I find it much more interesting. I’m pretty embarrassed about that right now, being unaware of the upcoming _On_Tarzan_ book.

On Wednesday, Dr. Vernon will be using his Hemingway expertise in the _A_Farewell_to_Arms_ book discussion on the Diane Rehm show. His book, _Soldiers_Once_and_Still_ examines war veteran writers including Hemingway, James Salter, and Tim O’Brien.

Just to make up for that whole “Men of Mars” gaffe on my part, here’s a link to Dr. Vernon’s first book. His memoir, _Most_Succinctly_Bred_ has a blurb by Tim O’Brien, so I’ll just let that speak for the book:
“Beautiful and smart and original, Alex Vernon’s memoir is a wise, honest, and tautly written account of a man’s journey from youth to West Point to the Persian Gulf War to the world of academia. Beyond that, it is an intensely passionate exploration of the struggle in a young man’s soul between the biddings of Eros and Thanatos, duty and conscience, commitment to ideal and commitment to self.”

Note to RSS Feed readers: I’m working on getting the books to show in the feeds, but you probably want ad-free feeds. If you’d like to click on the book links, open blog entry in a new window.

One final note, now that I’m apart of the Hendrix family, I’d like to brag that the college has been ranked one of the nation’s top 100 colleges by Forbes.com.

This week Tyrone and I had a visit from my mother, and the french foreign exchange student, Mathilde, that my parents housed 7 years ago. Mathilde also brought her parents along. They are on a 3 week vacation of the mid-west, starting in Lincoln, with a detour to the Arkansas/Tennessee area, and then finishing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

We visited the Clinton Library and the Arkansas River playground area and river market.

We also went to Graceland. Little did we know it was “Elvis Week” and the place was packed!

We also made it down to Beale Street.

The next day we took a tour of the Conway area, visiting a peach orchard and Lake Conway.

The highlight of the entire trip was meeting JR of www.jrenterprises.com.

He was spraying alligator weed on Lake Conway, and brought in his air boat. He asked if any of the ladies wanted a ride. The men were the ones who really wanted a ride though. Pascal and Tyrone both went out on the lake with JR.

Here are some other pictures you can click through.

When someone gives you the pick of a huge lot of cone yarn, and someone else gives you a knitting machine, you would think fate is speaking to you, “You should knit on a knitting machine.”

At Christmas, I picked up 40+ cones of mostly acrylic (some wool blend, some cotton blend) yarn. Each cone ranges from 1000 - 4000 yards! In April, a friend gave me her British Bond knitting machine.

Last night I drug the two out in an attempt to appease fate.

For someone who is pretty good with machines, I found this knitting machine to be the most counter intuitive bucket of bolts I’ve ever encountered. Even worse, the instructions were extremely vague, and there were a few broken parts. There are some internet sites that detail how to use a knitting machine, and they explain how to start the first row of knitting, or “cast on”. These sites allowed me to get around a few of the weird broken parts, and get started knitting.

Despite the “ease” and the “speed” of the machine, I managed to completely fail at this task.

A second attempt is in order. The first and last stitch of every row began falling off. That is probably a weighting problem. The two white objects hanging off the bottom, and the purple clip are all weights. The broken part is a weight that goes between each stitch to evenly weigh down with each row.

I also tried changing plates in the middle of the work and that failed miserably too. It’s not all fun here craft blogging.

I’ve got a bunch of vacation photos to go through. For the 4th of July we stayed at Eddie’s Cottages. Neal found the place on the internet, and we got the sailboat cottage with two beds and one futon.

The cottage was decorated with antique tables, wall hangings, and an awesome flyswatter.

Something curious happened the night we stayed, the 4th of July Fairy showed up and decorated the entire place with flags.

We spent some time on the beach, but the water was very cold. Eddie’s had plenty of lawn swings to just enjoy the sun and breeze. Ty took advantage of the setting to take some of his artsy mask shots.

I took an artsy shot of Lake Huron myself.

Overall, the cottages were excellent. We had a good time at the campfire at night, and the bedrooms were so cozy and paneled with wood that I wondered if we were on a ship once or twice. The mosquitoes were huge, and hard to kill, unless swatted at very slowly.

We also watched the 4th of July parade in downtown Cheboygan. It was full of hoop dancers, politicians, fire trucks, and Shriners!

Now to the wedding, where it seems I couldn’t take an in focus picture even in the best light.

It was a very fun wedding, complete with roasted hog, bluegrass band, quanset square dancing, and a very starry moonless sky.

It is that time of year again. Getting close to our anniversary date, I start thinking about gifts for Tyrone, my friend Katie’s birthday in September, my mother’s birthday in October, and my sister’s birthday in November. It is that slow uphill road that leads us all to Christmas gift-giving.

This year I am way ahead of the game. I found Katie an awesome Miller High Life clock at a yard sale in upstate New York, and have already gifted it to her. On a shopping trip with Katie, I found my sister’s birthday gift, and it is even very shippable to her new address in Valentine, NE.

The gifting season also means my birthday, and I get asked what I want. The truth is that I’m never that sure most of the time, but when I see something, I know, and usually I just buy it myself. It may be a piece of art or a tool or a piece of technology I’ve been wanting. Yesterday was one of those moments.

My favorite painters are bizarrely all guitar players and vocalists and songwriters who have been in a number of different bands: Jon Langford, Wendy Bantam, and former Guided by Voices band member Tobin Sprout.

Buying art can be complicated, there is usually a big upfront expense, followed by a necessary reorganization of wall space. I feel I’m finally at a time in my life where I know what I like, but the paintings I like were sold years ago. This brings me to prints. Yesterday I found out that one of my favorite paintings was available as a print!

The print is “Ten After Four” by Tobin Sprout. The original painting is a photo surrealistic. The watermelon at the top makes me happy, the General Electric stove reminds me of my childhood, but the painted metallic reflections is what really attracted me to the piece. Years ago, I printed out a really terrible copy from a gif online, had it laminated, and hung it above my desk at home and work. It will be so nice to have a real print.

This weekend we walked across the block to St. Joseph’s school. They were having their yearly fundraiser featuring an extended flea market and “old fashion midway”. We had seen them setting up behind the church for weeks and we were glad to finally walk over.

There were no thrill rides, but there were many “games of chance”. We had no luck with bingo. We also had no luck with “Ham & Bacon”.

How does “Ham & Bacon” work? There is a wheel of fortune marked with all sorts of numbers. You buy a paddle or two for two spins. Each paddle has at least one number on it. All of the booths had different prices. For pork products (and cheese), two paddles for two spins were $1, but for the cake booth, you could get six paddles for two spins for $5.

We spent way too many spins at the “Ham & Bacon” booth then went over to the cake booth and promptly won. We walked by the hat booth they said we should go over and win a hat. Then I put the lemon cake with cardboard doily platter and cellophane wrap on my head as we walked by. There were also raffles and a silent auction going on. We ran into our landlord at the “Cheese and Sausage” booth, where he just kept winning.

Finally, the food was awesome. The BBQ was tasty and the carnitas burritos were so juicy. Sorry no pictures of that, my camera batteries died. We had to take these cake pictures when we got home.

I found some pictures my sister scanned and posted on the internet. I’m organizing photos to frame and hang on the wall, and want more of these to look at every day.

Also, seeing all of the happy pictures from the 70s at Sarah’s service just made me long to look at my own more.

While we visited my parents last Saturday, they offered up bucketfuls of produce, but we still had to pick our own asparagus and green beans. Ty started at one end and I started at the other. He made some sort of mention about being a good bean picker, and that I should try not to miss any beans. I told him I had to come over and watch his technique because mine was rusty.

As I placed my hand on his back, I engaged him in an old family tradition. Surreptitiously placing a green bean leaf on his back, I pretended to observe and learn from his technique. At that moment, my mother laughed, “I remember when the kids were little and would go out to pick beans.” She was about to tell the rest of the story about how we would try to tag each other with the leaves without the person being tagged knowing.

I bolted up from the patch, and placed a hushing finger to my lips. She walked around behind Tyrone and looked at his back and just started laughing and laughing and laughing.

Ty unknowingly wore the leaf all night, even to the horse track. I just told him about the leaf last night, and he says he found it. In running a load of clothes 5 minutes ago, I found him to be incorrect. The leaf was still stuck to his shirt! So here is the warning: if the leaf is still fresh, it comes off in one piece. If the leaf is a week old, it will crumble in to hundreds of pieces and litter your laundry. The joke is on me.

In this picture the joke was on Jen, but she was in on the joke:

Today I was doing a lot of going through pictures, trying to figure out which ones to put in frames and hang up. Ty left the ladder in my studio so I’d put up some pictures, but it is taking me a long time to chose them, much less actually print them and cut them to size for the frames.

I’ve uploaded some pictures from our Michigan and New York vacations, but there are so many pictures that I’ll start really early tomorrow morning on the blog entry. But…Since Ty is on the phone with his friend Jeff, I’ll see what I can do…. early tomorrow morning that is.

I did get an email sent out to Arra saying her wedding pictures are up, and to another friend Adam to show him the Jake Scott cups we used at the wedding. He is a big Dolphins fan.

Today we went to Jerry’s True Value across the street and got an 85 inch long aluminum tube to hang the quilt.

Ty decided he’d help. He brought up the ladder from storage, and even measured everything out.

Yesterday I cut a piece of the backing, pinned a two inch tube, and stitched it closed with a basting stitch that didn’t cut through the top layer of the quilt.

Another final shot!

We used two of those 5 lb picture hooks. Ty bent the hook out so it could accommodate the tube. The quilt and tube was 7.2 lbs total.

It is really nice having it up. I knew the walls in this place were pretty tall, but now they feel even taller.