I'm a meme, you're a meme...

I love these cute little “Take a survey!” sites. I find the notion that my entire life's experience can be captured in 20 questions amusing and somewhat disconcerting. Here’s one I took recently.

You Know You're From Maryland When...

• You know more than 10 people who own boats and they all park them at the same marina in Annapolis • You can pronounce and spell "Pocomoke," "Mattaponi," "Accokeek," and "Havre de Grace" [and Chincoteaque and Monocacy too!] • You prononce "Bowie" BOO-ie not BOW-ie or BAUW-ie • 1 hour is an easy commute to work • You have more than three recipies for crabcakes • French fries just don't taste right without Old Bay [or an ocean view] • There are more than two crab places in your town • Even your high school cafeteria made good crabcakes • You got your first lacrosse stick before you were six years old • You call all turtles "terrapins" • You refer to your state as "Merlind" • Your mother shops at Hecht's • You still call Six Flags America "Adventure World", or even "Wild World" • You still remember the Wild World commercial (Wild World's the cure for the summertime blues!) • You can tell the difference between the smells of septic and marsh. • You not only know how to eat hard crabs but you also know how to catch them, cook them and tell the males from the females. • You don't think that Assawoman Bay is a strange name for a body of water. • You know perfectly well why Rehoboth is called "Little San Francisco" • M R Ducks makes perfect sense. • So does C M Wangs. • You think Salisbury is a big city. • You think of dumplings as wet slippery squares of boiled dough. • You think of "Dairy Queen" as a pageant title and not a place to get an ice cream. • You still root for the Orioles even when they suck • You'll never understand why tourists come to DC. • When in Florida, you can only laugh when you see signs saying "Real Maryland Blue Crab Cakes!" • Your whole family lives within a 200 mile radius of your town. • You plan for "The Festival" a year in advance. • During the summer, you spend more time in Ocean City than at home. • Margret Heater, Hedspace, Jepetto, Outside Joke and Mary Prankster are people you think are "Famous" • Your radio dial is stuck on 99.1 [alas,not anymore] You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Maryland.

Get Your Own "You Know You're From" Meme Here

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Blogthings

Separated at birth?

I’ve discovered that Smarty McYarnpants and I have something in common.

Our cats were separated at birth.

This is Kiah (pronounced "kee-yah"). We took him home in a moment of weakness back in 1998. He was so small and so cute back then! Now he is 13 pounds of cranky. His hobbies are eating, sleeping, and nuzzling knitted blankets.

He also puts up with the attention of Little Brewers 1 and 2.

Camera Cozy

I think my digital camera needs a cozy. It looks so lonely, sitting there in its silvery nakedness without a coat. I want to create a felted bag for it, but I can’t decide if I should knit one or just felt an old wool sweater and sew one.

Sweater Method Pros:
Immediate felting gratification. Mmm. Felting.

Sweater Method Cons:
I would have to dig out the sewing machine
No knitting required

I just realized I've managed to use the words nakedness and felt in the same paragraph without being lewd. Hey! I used them again! My blog hit count is going up even as we speak. :-)

The Gates

I saw The Gates two weeks ago, just before they dismantled them. I thought it was very interesting, but I expected to feel more of an emotional punch. It was nice, it was pleasant, it made for a neat walk through Central Park. I would have loved to see it from above. I wonder what the view is from the apartments surrounding the park?

The impermanence of Christo’s work has generated a lot of discussion about the purpose and value of Christo’s works. I suspect its value is in getting people to discuss the nature of art – does art have to have a purpose or can it just “be?” How do you assess the meaning of transient art? Should we equate Cristo’s dismantlement of the work to works lost through time or war? Discuss amongst yourselves.

For many gazing
in orange there is no rhyme
and reason eludes.

Baby Sweater Set

At long last, photos of the sweater and hat set I made for Engineering Goddess' baby-to-be. This is a photo of the entire set. Photo size fixed, thanks to El Jefe!

This is a photo of the hat, showing the cute little curlicue topper.
The sweater is knit in straight stitches with a seed stitch bottom border and cuffs. The hat is crochet using Brewgal's hat pattern. The topper is one piece of macaroni fringe from the book Illustrated Patchwork Crochet by Bella Scharf.