Fiber Fool

Probably 5 years ago or so DH and I flew into the Twin Cities for a mini-vacation. We opted to stay in the metro rather than go out to the farm to keep DH from being overwhelmed by my entire family. This way he got to meet my parents, my sister, and a few relatives I was closest to. On that visit we met up one evening with my mom’s cousin, Dawn Rae. Now, Dawn Rae is a free spirit and was attending the U of M in the women’s studies department. She took us to Gardens of Salonica in downtown Minneapolis and DH and I were hooked. We haven’t managed to make it back there before now and were happy read that they were still in business. So, when it came time to choose a place to dine on Saturday night there was no question that if our host, Rob, was up for it we would be headed there.

What I hadn’t planned on was being the one to drive us there so I hadn’t printed out directions or that, I just had their address and phone number. So, Rob was navigator and we got turned around a few times as I guess Rob usually hangs in St. Paul. But we found our way to 19 5th St NE (that’s across the river, if you are like me and not in downtown Minneapolis much). It looks like a bit of a hole in the wall and I’m not sure there any other eating establishments on that block, but the inside is very nicely decorated in an understated mediterranean manner. It gets a bit noisy in the first room, but the food and service was excellent!

Arriving a bit after 7pm on a Saturday night meant we had a bit of a wait for a table, but it was just right as we sat at the bar and debated on how to attack the menu to get the most exposure to the food as we could without bursting. It was decided the best way to attack was to order two appetizer combo plates. As a bonus, each combo plate held three appetizers of your choice and there were three of us so we each chose two from the menu. That gave us exposure to nearly all the vegetarian appetizer options. We ordered one plate of Piperies (marinated roasted red peppers), Tyro (a puree of feta, red and hot peppers, garlic, and olive oil) and Anginares (marinated artichoke hearts) and the second plate had Piaz (black-eyed pea salad with a lemon and olive oil dressing, onions, and parsley), Skordalia (a puree of potatoes, garlic and olive oil), Melitzana (an eggplant puree similar to babaganoush). These items were accompanied by all you could eat pita. I have to say the pita bread there was AMAZING! It was soft and moist and hot and it stayed hot until you had finished the plate. Being of German and Scandinavian farmers it made my bread-loving self soooo happy (though it probably wasn’t great for my weight loosing self).

At DH’s urging we also order a vegetarian mousaka to split. I wasn’t terribly excited about this, but knew DH was curious to have an authentic (well, as authentic as you get once you make it vegetarian) mousaka. Boy, I should have been excited! It was so good, filled with a complex combination of spices that you couldn’t quite pinpoint. We decided there was probably clove and perhaps nutmeg involved, but we’re not sure. You know the old saying “When in Rome…” Well, when in Minnesota, do as the Minnesotans… We kept halfing the mousaka over and over again until there were only two bites left and Rob finally just took that last little bit, LOL!

We also did a trio of desserts. It was great because the desserts are smaller and more appropriately proportioned so we each chose one. The one I chose was sold out so they advised me to try the lemon cream boughasta, saying it was quite similar. DH chose the figs and Rob chose an apricot cream boughasta. We of course split all of these too and every one of them was delicious!

Aside from the spectacular food and great service, it was *very* affordable as well. Our tab was around $40 and that included one beer, two iced teas, and a coffee. The entrees were mostly around $9-$10, the appetizer combos were just under $9. Very reasonable for a downtown meal on a Saturdy night!

If you enjoy Greek food I would highly recommend Gardens of Salonica in Minneapolis.

The road trip start with us leaving Fort Collins at about 10:30pm. We decided to stop for gas in Cheyenne as they would be the cheapest of the whole trip, but we got side tracked a little bit finding a station that we trusted for having good quality car diesel that ate up a fair bit of time. Around 2:30am we made a very quick stop and Drew took over the second leg. By the time the sun was up we pulled over at what I think was the Goehner rest stop (just west of Lincoln) for breakfast. We took our time so we refreshed and so that the sun would get high enough for the visor to do some good. There was some interesting litter in Nebraska - a gummy fry containing and the picnic table we went to as this lone gumball on it.

We then pushed right on through Lincoln, Omaha, and right on to Des Moines. We stopped briefly just to the east to pull out some soda from the cooler, then it was onto I-35 and heading north. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to start heading north. Even though the sun was high in the sky, driving east had it still at an angle that was driving my eyes nuts, even though I have high quality sun glasses. Switching to a northerly direction really gave me some much needed relief.

We made a final stop at the last rest stop in Iowa that is this big red barn that houses a large visitor’s center. It was feeling quite hot and humid by this point, but we put together some PB&J sandwiches at a picnic table outside and were soon on our way. We just pushed right on through the last 2 hours or so to Rob’s house in Bloomington. We had lefte at 10:30pm and arrived just before 1:30 (our time) so we made it in 15 hours despite stops at rest stations. I was quite happy. I also laid down for a little nap while Drew and Rob caught up on all the goings on and jammed on guitar a bit.
Tomorrow, check in to hear all about Minneapolis!

I need to catch up on some things and further sort through pictures and such so keep checking back this week for more about the photos above as well as more photos of our whirlwind weekend road trip to Minneapolis and back.

Pattern: DK Balance Socks
Yarn: Trekking XXL color 109
Needles: Set of 5, US 1 Metal DPNs (Susan Bates probably)
Gauge: 9 sts and 11.5 rows/in in stockinette
Size: Adult Medium
Recipient: Me, Myself, and I :-)

It took me a week per sock to knit this pair. There was just something that really came together on this one. The yarn, the stitch pattern, the amount the stitch pattern was repeated etc. Making the mini-cables can slow you down some so I used it as accents around the leg near the top, down the sides the leg through the instep and down the center back of the leg, and finally across the instep right before the toe. It made for an interesting knit as things were changing along the way, but not so drastically that you always had to have the pattern within arms reach. I also love the geeky reflective symmetry of the socks where one has right crossing cables and the other has left :-)

Because these socks ended up being so well balanced between ease and interestingness of knitting, and balanced in looks between the varigated yarn and the mini cables, and finally the symmetry present in the pair I had to go with Julie’s suggestion for the name of the pattern - Balance (Julie, your copy of the pattern should be waiting in your Inbox and three others of you who made musical suggestions got chosen via the random number generator). Some of the other names that were suggested are so inspiring I think there may be future patterns designed to fit the names!

The pattern for the DK Balance Socks is available now, though do be aware that I am leaving town and will not be available for download troubleshooting until Tuesday. As soon as you place your order and it has cleared PayPal your pattern is available for up to 5 total downloads over 10 days by accessing your order history page. You may need to temporarily disable firewalls or virus checkers to get a clean download and it also helps to just right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As” to save it to your hard drive rather than opening the PDF in your browser window due to the size of the file. 99% of the downloads work if you follow those suggestions. Oh, and for whatever reason, the downloads don’t look obviously like downloads, but just click (or right-click) on the name of the pattern and that should start the download. I’ll get to any questions on Tuesday.

I also wanted to gush about this yarn. I love the ombre striping effect of many of the Trekking yarns and I was almost pouty about the fact that this particular color (109) had short color changes. However, now that the socks are completed I am sooooo happy with them! You know how varigeted yarns usually look funny at the gusset (and sometimes the toe)? This yarn magically did not do that! I’m amazed! I’ve only had one other varigated yarn behave so well and that was some Regia I used for DH’s Camo socks. I did find the yarn a tad bit splitty so I had to pay a bit of attention to it, but it was pretty easy to speed along through the stockinette sections on these. Now that I’m working with one of the barber pole ombre colorways I think my 109 felt a bit thinner than the one on the needles now, but then again last night I noticed that my ombre one varied a fair bit in thickness so who knows. I also love the overall color of this pair of socks as it contains my favorite colors of green and purple, but it pushes me a bit beyond that with a fair bit of pink, yet that pink is tamed with a tad bit of a neutral khaki in there too. But it will go with the vast majority of my wardrobe which is quite exciting!

We’ll be hitting the road for Minneapolis sometime late this evening so wish us well on our road trip that has us on the road for about the same number of hours that we’ll actually be in Minneapolis *sigh*. To all you Minneapolis area gals, I’ll have to try arrange some sort of gathering the next time I’m out and have more time (and money) to spend there.

Despite the fact that Coyote Ridge is about 5 miles from my house it took me 30 minutes to get there this morning. The straight forward way to get there is under construction until the end of September and both ways to easily get around that area of construction are also under construction so I had to go all the way to Loveland to get to Coyote Ridge which is really about half way between the two cities. Fortunately I was only about 5 minutes late and my hiking partner for the morning, Cathy, also got caught up in the construction craziness. So, about 6:45 am we set out on this fairly easy trail in a balmy (well for that early in the morning) 73 degrees.

I captured that panoramic above while I was waiting for Cathy. It captures the vast majority of the natural area on the east side of the ridges. It was quite the site!

Both the current trekking SIP and the FO socks (yet to be named) went on this roughly 2 mile trek. The first part of the trail that Cathy and I took this morning was quite wide and graveled. It wasn’t grated real even, but it wasn’t precarious for ankles or knees as long as you watched what you were doing. There were a couple short areas of semi-steep climbs, but easily doable.

Along the first mile of the trail you get to see a lot of high plains and montane shrubland plants. This included a lot of yucca, mullen, a couple different shrubs bearing berries, and some cacti of course. There was also wildlife to be seen such as this little cottontail having breakfast right on the edge of the trail. The prairie dogs were all over, but were very active so not particularly photogenic on this visit.

Because we got a bit of a late start and I was under time constraints due to my final root canal appointment (yes, it is all over, except the payments of course) we only hiked in the first mile to the bathrooms and a cabin that I guess can be rented out for parties. There was the log above nearby that would make a nice spot to stop and knit sometime when we aren’t on a time schedule. I don’t know what it is, but I love taking pictures of old logs, LOL! Then we turned around and took an easier trip back to the trailhead that allowed for some photo opportunities with the SIP…