Miscellaneous: April 2006 Archives
We'll be starting our Easter morning with a basket of simple foods that we took to John's parent's church to be blessed for a traditional (at least for my husband's family) Polish Easter morning breakfast . It includes bread (both egg bread and more traditional rolls), butter (in the shape of a butter lamb), salt, pepper, and horseradish (representing the the flavors of life), hard boiled eggs (we chose brown eggs, but the traditional eggs are white eggs boiled with onion skins which turns them a lovely brown/purple color and gives the eggs a light oniony flavor) and two kinds of fabulous kielbasa. The thick sausage is called wiejska (vee-ay-ska) and the thin sausage is called kabanosy (kah-bin-oh-sey), both of which are flavored strongly with garlic, though the kabanosy is a leaner sausage than the wiejska and is often served by itself with no more preparation than slicing, while the wiekska is often cooked a bit more. Some families will also take sugar lambs and lamb-shaped cakes to be blessed, but we stick with simple, non-sweet foods to have for breakfast.
Easter breakfast is meant as a simple meal, to be shared with family to celebrate Christianity's "Return of the King" and is generally a true "breaking of the fast" as good Catholics will have at least abstained from meat from Good Friday until Easter morning. I don't really fall into that good Catholic category, but I do enjoy this tradition. Easter is definitely a day of eating -- a big Easter dinner is also served later in the afternoon/early evening that is also usually a big family event. John and I are lucky this year. We'll be sharing the day with his family and my parents, which doesn't happen very often.
Happy Easter to those of you that celebrate the holiday. A beautiful spring weekend to everyone else.
There's not too much knitting, crocheting or any other fiber craft for me to show today. I would say that I have too much work, but it's not really that. It's more like too much emotional baggage from work that leaves me unmotivated to be productive and feeling a little blue. So today I decided to take my camera outside and take some pictures of things tht did make me happy. Things that remind me of spring and of the renewal process that comes as a part of the changing of the seasons.
John and I are not what you would describe as good or attentive gardiners. But we do enjoy having green growing things around us in our yard. So when we decide to get new plants, we choose perennials that come up every year and require relatively little care. It's always a pleasant surprise for me when our little collection of hardy friends pops back up to say hello, especially the ones we started last year that we were a bit worried might not make it through the winter.
Our little French Lilac bush is making a very nice showing in her second year in our front yard. We didn't get any flowers last year, but we're hoping that this year we might have some fragrant blooms. Lilac is one of my very most favorite floral scents. And they take me back to some of my earliest memories when my family was in New York and we had these enormous and wonderful lilac bushes in our back yard and a pair of cardinals that lived in them.
Some plants in our yard are all about wishful thinking. Our front yard is shaded most of the time because of the tall buildings on either side of us. But it gets a little light. My mother has had peony bushes growing around our house for as long as I can remember. I've always loved their big feathery flowers and as a kid I liked to knock the ants that always seemed to congregate off the buds. While shopping for some new perennials last year, I discovered some peonies that claimed they could grow in "partial sun" and decided that I needed to give one a chance and see. So this one is planted at the base of the steps that lead up to the door. It's a treat to see the plant coming back. We didn't get any flowers last year. Was it the limited sun or just the plant getting used to its new digs? Hopefully this year we'll get a little show.
One of the banes of urban existance is the trash that blows every where and under our fences and into our yard. We thought it might be nice to fight this problem with a pretty green solution, and went out and bought some hardy lillies that would spread out and cover the base of the fence with a shower of green leaves and colorful flowers. What a pleasant surprise to see that all the plants that we put in the ground last year made it through the winter and are coming on strong now that the weather has gotten warmer. I love the simplicity and pluckiness of lillies. They grow everywhere from the most lavish gardens to freeway medians to little cracks in the pavement between buildings and they come in delightful happy reds, yellows, oranges and pinks. We planted a patchwork quilt of miniature varieties here by the fence to help us keep out the trash and add a flash of color to our yard.
The very first plants I bought for the house after we moved here five years ago were three clematis vines from Home Depot. Nelly Moser, Polish Spirit, and one who's name I can't remember. Clematis are another childhood favorite for me. My mother has always had them around her home. I love how they grow bigger and bigger every year and the vines begin to take over whatever area you give them to grow on. After 5 years, these plants are finally getting truly comfortable in their environment. Once agian, it's rather shady in our backyard, so they have to work hard to get high enough to reach the morning sunlight. But they persevere and every year they've worked to each give us a few flowers. Well, except for the Polish Spirit plant, which gives us a crazy huge man-eating vine full of flowers. We figure it likes being near my Polish husband.
So spring is indeed in full force around my house. And a nice breeze is blowing through my window. A reminder to me that no matter what is going on in my life, no matter what is happening at work, the world still rotates on its axis and nature still creates beauty out of the simplest things. And that I am truly lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy the show.
P.S. to my wonderful daddy -- Happy Happy Happy Birthday to someone who always reminds me that the most important things in life have nothing to do with being employed. Love you, Dad!
No knitting or spinning to talk about today. Today it's all about new toys. You see, I've been jonesing for a new camera for a long time. I know, I know, John got me that Sony T1 not very long ago, but it just wasn't the camera for me. Too many blurry shots in point-and-shoot mode and it really didn't reproduce colors well unless they were in the orange/yellow/brown color range. It was a real disappointment because I liked everything else about the camera. I tried to give it a fair shake, but I just couldn't make it work. So it went back in it's box and I went back to my Nikon CoolPix. My Nikon may be a bit elderly, but it still does pretty well when it comes to capturing color and texture.
Not so well when it comes to weight, taking pictures quickly and being carried in a small purse, however.
So with spring on it's way, a fibery woman's heart turns to thoughts of Maryland. And Maryland means interesting photo opportunities. Which brought me back to thinking about cameras.
So one weekend not too long ago, John and I set out on a mission to search out the best small camera. We were armed with a compact flash card, an SD card, a Sony memory stick, two skeins of brightly colored Socks That Rock (to test color) and two dragon socks (to test color and texture reproduction). We went to Fry's, Circuit City, CompUSA and Best Buy. We tested everything that was in the right size and megapixel range (greater than 5 megapixels) that had functional batteries and that we could put a memory card in: Nikons, Canons, Sonys, Kodaks, Casios and a Minolta (no Olympus cameras because they take a kind of SD card that we didn't happen to have, and I wasn't going to buy a camera if I couldn't closely examine the pictures I took with it). I tested with a flash and without a flash, regular mode and macro mode. Everything was done using the camera's "auto-everything" setting because, let's face it, I am not a professional photographer, I know very little about photography, and sheep won't hold a good pose while I try to figure out how to get the settings on my camera just right.
You might be surprised to know that no one seemed to find it too strange that a woman was taking pictures of brightly colored yarn in a Best Buy. You might also be surprised to know that Best Buy is the worst place to try out a camera. Their security systems block most of the digital media slots (Nikon was one of the few brands we could test there because their digital media slots were on the side of the camera instead of the bottom), meaning you can't put a card in them to take a picture. Probably the best place was Circuit City -- not only were their security systems test card friendly, in most cases the cameras could be turned on and used (Fry's cameras were also media accessible but many were not charged) and the guys behind the counter actually seemed to know what they were talking about.
What did I end up selecting?
Why did I pick the Canon SD-600 Digital Elph? First of all, it did a great job with color. It did well with blues, reds and yellows and subtle shading variations. Since color is important in a lot of what I photograph, it was important in my camera selection. Secondly, it took good, consistant pictures even in macro mode without the flash, which means I don't have to worry about missing an important shot or taking 6 closeup pictures hoping to get one good one. Third, it has a great user interface. The controls are easy to use and their positioning makes sense. Fourth, size does matter. This camera is about the size of a standard deck of cards and it packs a real optical zoom lens in addition to a digital zoom. And finally, it has a quick recovery time -- no more long waits between shots. And as an extra added bonus, it can also make little movies. Maybe someday I'll have some live action spinning here on the blog. Oh, and did I mention John got a great deal on it, too?
In addition to small cameras, we also got a new computer game not too long ago. If you like RPGs and you haven't tried an Elder Scroll's game, I can highly recommend Oblivion. If for no other reason than it is a very knitter friendly game. I used the Elph to help me show you why:
Pretty cool, eh? And he's animated well. These guys walk like sheep and move their little tails like sheep and generally have an air of real sheepiness. And in addition to the fighters guild, mages guild and thieves guild, there must be a spinner's guild somewhere. My evidence?
Now, when my dark elf female figher-mage take a break from saving the world from the demons of Oblivion, she can grab some yarn out of her pack and knit up the perfect sweater for her excursion up north or a nice shawl for a visit to the Emperor. Even if she has to use paintbrushes as knitting needles.
