The Adventures of Zoë

Belated Happy Birthday to Me

Since my birthday was last week, my sister drove out from Pittsburgh this weekend so that we could hang out. We actually didn't do anything crazy, for once, but it was still great to see her and we did have a good time. The weather was gorgeous - a little cool, but sunny. Saturday we wandered around Lakewood, the little town just outside of Cleveland where I'm living until the end of August. We hit every thrift shop we could find; I scored a pile of vintage German laceweight yarn. The pink is cotton and the rest is all wool. After that, we headed to the beach nearest to my apartment and laid out for a while. Between the cool weather and the less-than-perfect reputation of the beach, it was nearly deserted. (My first full day here, I walked around the park for a little while, and when I got to the beach area, the first 3 people that I saw were all men sunning themselves. In their underwear. I didn't need to see that.)

Sunday we went to a different nearby state park and walked around a bit. There isn't a beach there, but we could walk down along the breakfront and look over to the city. After that, we wandered over to Aladdin's, where we had an extremely tasty Mediterranean meal, and I finally got to have some birthday cake!

We also got Oliver to pose for a picture - Oliver is one of the cats that lives in my apartment, and he's a polydactyl kitty. He is also extremely friendly and helpful; he supervises my tooth-brushing from the sink counter, and would climb up and sit on my shoulder if I'd let him. Cute kitty. And yes, mom and dad, that really is Jo holding a cat.

On tap this week at the internship... lots of fun stuff. I'm working on some crochet swatches in handspun overtwist singles. I'm also working on an article on the Ohio Knitting Mills and its reincarnation for modern times. Steven very kindly showed us some really cool stuff...he has swatches and samples of raschel knitting from as far back as the 40's. The colors on the older stuff were just amazing - since most of the photography from that time was in black and white, we don't really think about how much color they actually used in their clothing, and how bold they were with their color combinations. These are some actual swatches of fabrics made at the factory...

posted by Zoe @ 10:13 PM