Yup, I'm back....

The Parade of Finished Stuff will probably begin tomorrow. A little trip wrap-up:


Generally vacation was pretty good. I didn't do a whole lot of unusual stuff - went to the farmer's market in my parents' town. (Whoa, hipster overload. It's funny how some places become popular with a certain crowd and it becomes almost stereotypical that they're there.)

Went to the newly-refurbished Kroger's that they have. (The Kroger's near me - where I just shopped this afternoon - looked very VERY sorry in comparison. Also apparently some of their refrigerated cases were leaking, there were those absorbent cloth "noodle" things (like giant draft-stoppers) everywhere. I also went to the Fresh Market up there. (I think I am going to, as much as possible, shift my grocery allegiance to the Brookshire's that is only slightly farther than the Kroger's....well, until the Brookshire's becomes sad and run-down, which seems to be the fate of grocery stores unless they are specifically refurbished every 10-15 years). But yeah. It's kind of odd to go grocery shopping with my parents and have my mom go, "Oh, I don't like the brand of (whatever) they have here....we need to run over to the Jewel (or whereever) for it."

Here, if I don't like the brand, I'm kind of stuck. Grocery stores are pretty far apart. (And also, it's so much hotter, so the milk you bought one place might well curdle while you were in buying chicken somewhere else).

And I still am envious that the Fresh Market plays quiet chamber music rather than the Muzak or ads the stores around me play. And yes, the ambiance of a grocery store matters to me; some weeks the only "out" time I may get is at a grocery.

I will say I don't envy the traffic at certain times of day. Or the now-and-forever road construction which people are inadequately warned of. ("OH HAI, ONE LANE ROAD STARTS NOW!!!").

Also, the old downtown (Sorry, I will NEVER call it "Uptown," which is what the movers-and-shakers want it called, presumably because it sounds tonier...and I wonder if there isn't a little prejudice hidden way down in that insistence that it's "uptown" and not "downtown.") is almost unrecognizable. (I once commented that it was like that old Simpsons' episode where Monty Burns wanted to blot out the sun from Springfield - there are so many huge buildings that have replaced the mostly-two-story old downtown buildings).

And lots and lots of ugly student apartment blocks trying to look like hip downtown-Chicago loft buildings. (I wonder: does architecture become dated faster now than it once did? Coming through St. Louis on the train, we passed an old closed-up building - I think it might have been an electrical works - done in that old baroque, monument-to-progress style of the turn of the last century that Steampunk artists like to copy now, and I can still see something cool and interesting in it. I could even see, were it not in a rather blighted area, it becoming lofts or studios for artists or perhaps even home to several shops. But the new student apartment buildings in my parents town already look dated and ugly to me. And the 1970s - there is a building on my grad school campus that is essentially Brutalist architecture, and while I guess that style has its place....if I ran the zoo, its "place" would be to become a pile of rubble that was replaced with something that felt less like a prison or fortress, something more on a human scale. The building in question suffers especially by comparison; it is next to a castle-styled building from the previous century. Yeah, my grad school is a real mishmash of building styles, and I think it makes the ugly ones seem even uglier, and the slightly ridiculous ones (like the castle) seem even more ridiculous)

I mostly stayed home and knit. And I made a dress, pictures and details will come later. I wasn't planning on it, but I saw the pattern written up in the new "Threads" magazine and decided I wanted to make it.