The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part Four

Hey! I've got another blog you should go read! Justin over at The Declining is smart, witty, and observant, and he has excellent taste in music (go read about his self-designed Shuffle Challenge in particular).

In the spirit of Justin's discography analysis and musical comparisons, let's chat today about one of the songs I heard on the radio in the car yesterday. (Unlike Justin with his trusty ipod, I kick it old school and rely on my FM pre-set buttons when I'm driving.) My go-to station served up a nice little surprise for me, a veritable belated holiday gift for my ears: Cake's latest single, "Sick of You."

It's like a treasure trove of what I love about a good Cake song. Trumpet (of course... tug at those band geek heartstrings). Building layers of complexity, with harmonies on top of basslines and a little keyboard action. Awesome, awesome guitar riffs. Even that sproingy, ratchety thing (the technical term, of course). Interestingly, when the first chord left the speakers, I thought I might be hearing the Rolling Stones (odd, based on the radio station). A few bars in, though, the Cake sound was unmistakable. It actually made me happy to be stopped at a traffic light long enough to listen to the end.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part Three

It's the third installment of the Copycat Project, wherein I steer you to blogs you should peruse whilst stubbornly refusing to maintain an updated blogroll. Check out part one and part two while you're here as well.

So you guys all know that I knit quite a bit, even if the majority of the content around here is woefully off topic for what ostensibly once was a knitblog. Jstrizzy, on the other hand, has a much more respectable attention span. A knitblog about knitting (and some sewing for good measure). What a concept! Plus, she's got skills, especially when it comes to lace. Go read about what she's been knitting these days... and ooh and ahh and pick your jaws up off the floor. She's good.

To take a page from Jstrizzy's book, I'll do a proper post about the sweater I finished last week -- the one that two of you wanted to see in greater detail than just the button bands. There's realio, trulio knitting content today, folks.

Pattern: Maude Louise, by Kristen Hanley Cardozo

Yarn: Lett Lopi, by Istex (Yes, very itchy. This is a layering sweater, that's for sure.)

Modifications: I omitted the seed stitch on the shoulders and stuck with stockinette. Otherwise, I pretty much followed the pattern.

And now for the pictures. The first one highlights the stitches and is pretty true to color. The second one shows off the pattern detail around the waist. There's also a row of those diamonds running down each sleeve, as you'll see (barely) in photo three.

Small victories.

We may not have floor tiles installed... We may not have primer or paint on the walls (skim coat goes up today!)... We may not even have a sink set up...

But our eight guests on Christmas will be able to make the bathroom as dim or as bright as their hearts desire, thanks to our new dimmer switch.

We pull put all the stops around here.

Finished sweater. Bad picture.

It shows the color very well, at least.

This is Kristin Hanley Cardozo's Maude Louise pattern, followed relatively closely... though I did omit a section of seed stitch on the shoulders.  If I had it to knit again (and I suppose I could, but I won't), I'd work the ribbing along the bottom edge with smaller needles, because the bottom isn't as fitted as it should be.  A-line in a sweater is less flattering than it is in a skirt.  I might add some elastic, or I might just wear this one primarily around the house.  It's very cozy and our house is generally on the cold side, so that works.

I can't decide what to make next, which is probably a good thing right now.  If you see me knitting before the end of the year, take the needles out of my hands and give me a taping knife, a sanding sponge, or a paint brush, depending on the day.  I'm hoping we get to the paint brushes soon.

Open Letter to My Fellow Drivers

If you approach an intersection and find that without a doubt, you will not be able to fully traverse said intersection, it is not your right, by virtue of the green light shining in your direction, to proceed forward and knowingly block traffic.  Even if all the other drivers before you did this (and really, didn't you spend what felt like an eternity staring through your windshield at them, waiting your turn and cursing their self-centeredness?), that doesn't make it ok.   A lame move undertaken by a mass of people is still a lame move.  Yes, it's snowy.  Yes, it's the week before Christmas.  Common sense/courtesy still applies.

This post brought to you by my hour plus commute home from work today.  My three mile hour plus commute.

He's worth it.

This is what happens in a small house when last year's Christmas tree location is now home to a 3' x 4' dog crate. 

It's ok, though.  We have Billy Idol's Christmas album to keep us in the holiday spirit.  Yes, really.

Nice pipes.

That's where the Hated Sink used to be.  It's also where walls used to be.  Project "Make the Bathroom Less Ugly" has taken a turn for the ambitious.

Our original plan was to get the most aesthetic bang for our buck by doing the following:
- replacing the medicine cabinet, light fixture, and light switch
- tiling the floor
- removing the glossy, speckled wallboard (shudder) from about 60% of the wall space - the rest being passable tile - and painting the drywall underneath
- replacing the Hated Sink with a cute little pedestal number and a retro faucet
- finally putting up the new shower curtain and chrome curtain rings we got as gifts months ago.

And that was supposed to be the extent of it. 

But then... we realized that the wall tiles around the tub were set directly on the glossy, speckled wallboard (shudder), so that by removing the wallboard, we'll also be removing the tiles.  So we added wall tiles to the project.

And then... we realized that one of the bathroom shut off valves had corroded over time (three guesses how that became apparent).  So we added valve replacements to the project.

And then... we took down the glossy, speckled wallboard (shudder) and found that the lurking drywall was in bad condition.  So we added complete demolition and rebuilding of the walls to the project.

And by "we," I pretty much mean "the Best Husband in the Whole Wide World."  I'll help when we get to the priming and painting.

It's Awesome Husband Day!

And that's the birthday cake we'll be eating this evening.

True to his superlative Best Husband Ever moniker, he'll be spending the day traveling between our dismantled bathroom and the aisles of our local Home Depot. Well, he's also buying a tile saw (did I mention that we got more ambitious with this project?), so that's kind of fun and exciting.  But still.  Manual labor on his birthday.  He's an awesome husband.

Happy birthday, honey!

The Hated Sink

Alright, you guys.  I had three requests for pictures reflecting the Before status of Project "Make the Bathroom Less Ugly" and so I present to you The Hated Sink.  The rest of the Befores will be forthcoming, likely when I post the During and After photos.  (Can't wait for those Afters!)

Anyway, I despise this sink.  The back corners slope away from the basin, so water landing there either overflows to the floor (awesome) or simply stagnates (double awesome).  Hate.  And the vanity it sits on doesn't win it any points either.

I kind of want to Office-Space it after we replace it.  But I won't.

There's no turning back now.

Project "Make the Bathroom Less Ugly" is officially on.  We've purchased a sink. And, since we won't be having pieces of a pedestal sink collect dust in the basement, I guess this means we'll be moving from the theoretical to the practical pretty quickly.

Progress. Impressive.

We now apparently have matching pets. For a few minutes each day, anyway.

Never-ending Sleeves

I think I mentioned a while back that the latest of my long line of cardigan projects would be the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne.  I started it and found that the yarn I'm using (Icelandic wool purchased in Icelandisn't the best choice for that pattern. 

Instead, I decided on the Maude Louise cardigan designed by Kristin Hanley Cardozo.  So far so good, but I feel like I've been working on these sleeves forever.  FOREVER!

Ok, maybe not forever

.

Who needs turkey?

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are now enjoying a relaxing weekend with plentiful leftovers!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part Two

Yes, Part Two. For more on what the Copycat Project is all about, read Part One here.

A Practical Wedding has plenty of readers, so the paltry handful I might steer their way is sure to be a drop in the proverbial bucket in terms of a benefit to Meg, the driving force behind APW. But to the paltry handful themselves, I suspect the benefit will be substantial. I mean really, when has reading intelligent, confident (and witty!) posts that remind you that you're awesome and that anyone saying otherwise is insignificant -- when has that not been beneficial for you? Never? Ok then, go read.



I was prompted to use A Practical Wedding as my second Copycat blog when one of the anchors of the morning news (yes, I know, calling it "news" is a bit of a stretch) said this about the upcoming nuptials of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton:

"... he'll have no input on the dress, of course."

*record scratch*

What's this, now? If the bride- and groom-to-be have decided that she'll be choosing her dress independent of all opinions he may have, that's fine. More power to 'em. That's totally their call. The assumptions, though -- and forgive me, but I'm just going out on a limb here and guessing that Ann Curry hasn't popped in for tea and chatted with the happy couple about their wedding planning philosophy -- are what get under my skin: that of course the groom has no interest in what the dress will look like, and everyone knows that men are useless when it comes to weddings, and obviously, even if he did have some thoughts on elaborate dress vs. simple dress, his opinion doesn't matter because hers is the one that counts. Because she's the briiide.

Even with all the sarcasm, it still sort of gave me the heebie-jeebies just typing that. Who's with me?

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

I've been forced to acquire a new level of tolerance for typographical errors by virtue of the surroundings at my workplace.  I spend much of my day reading emails full of misspellings, instant messages with an alarming consonant-to-vowel ratio, and printed materials serving as cautionary tales on why spellcheck alone can't save you from yourself.  Careless errors -- particularly in venues where carelessness should not be present -- still irk me, and I've likely bored my coworkers on more than one occasion by sharing an exceptionally humorous (to me) typo, but for the most part I've realized that I kind of have to let it go.

What I saw this evening after I left work, though, was more than my little grammarian brain could handle.  I stopped at a gas station, pulled up to one of the pumps, and approached the automated screen. 

It asked if I wanted to use a "fule rewards card."

Seriously.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part One

I realized last week that my list of blog links (for the two of you not reading through Google Reader, please direct your attention to the left margin) is woefully out of date... and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Until I get myself in gear and revise it (more often than not, I'm posting from my phone), I'll have to spread the word about the fun blogs I frequent some other way, and I'm super excited about the idea I came up with to accomplish that.

Enter the Copycat Project.

I write about a fairly broad range of topics. (To those of you who miss the days when this was more of a traditional knitblog, I apologize. Also: please come back, ok?) I'll be using this disjointed, haphazard nature to my advantage -- aha! play to your strengths! or at least, to your unavoidable characterisitcs! -- and perhaps broadening my horizons as well, as I take a page from a fellow blogger, write a post of my own that ties in with the subject matter of their site, and link back to them so you all can enjoy their stuff done right. By them.

Make sense?

Ok, first up: Kelly over at Tearing Up Houses. Let me be clear: I'm focusing on a very distinct subset of her posts to imitate. I've not recently knocked out any walls or purchased any real estate (all of which is fascinating to read about, though). No, no, I'll be tapping into her charmingly random pet portrait concept.

And so, I present to you the Great Furry Peace Summit of 2010:



Not much happened after this photo was taken... which is exactly how it should always be.

Hopping on the Home Brew Bandwagon

We're many things, Best Ever Husband and I, but cutting-edge isn't one of them. It seems like everyone and their brother's been brewing beer lately -- or perhaps we just surround ourselves with especially awesome peeps
? -- and we jumped into the fray only recently.

The pints you see above are our inaugural brew, a porter. We brought a few bottles to a gathering at a friend's house, where it was given the name Dark Horse Porter (much better than its default moniker: From-a-Kit Porter). Dark Horse suits it nicely, actually; it's quite good, and I had set my expectations, shall we say, not decidedly high.

Our sophomore effort is brewing as we speak, and this time around we've got the name ready in advance: Christmas Cookie Ale. Take a kit for nut brown ale, add some vanilla and cinnamon, and (hopefully) you've got a tasty beverage that'll be ready just in time for the holidays.

Pretend you're reading this yesterday...

I'm wearing my new favorite pendant today, an iridescent seashell (I'm guessing) in a silver setting.  I love the look of it, but what really propels it to favorite status is its source.  One of my closest friends bought it for me when she was serving in the army overseas (yes, I should have posted this on Veterans Day) because she thought I'd like it.  Really, how thoughtful is that?!   Brave and driven and thoughtful and perceptive (she really was on target in thinking the pendant is just my style)...  I'm so lucky to have her as a friend.  And, of course, we're all lucky to have her and her colleagues working and fighting and putting their lives on hold for the sake of the greater good.

The cake. Oh, the cake! (and other wedding food...)

My mother outdid herself. The six test cakes she slaved over (of which at least two were multi-tiered) were worth the effort. The frosting was perfectly executed, and the cake topper took about as much money, time, and effort as I think any cake topper should take (which is to say, very little), but still managed to be a perfect visual addition.

More importantly, the cake was delicious. Like, the venue staff was amazed how little was left at the end of the night, it was so delicious. I know for a fact that one bridesmaid had three slices (if that's not validation of yummy cake, I don't know what is). Said bridesmaid's husband also apparently had a hilarious conversation with my mother wherein he caused her to be thoroughly flustered -- and likely red as a boiled lobster -- because of 1) well-deserved compliments on the cake, and 2) profanity for emphasis as to just how very impressed he was. Mom's a little faint of heart with the language...



During the reception, The Amazing Husband and I each had about as much cake as one can eat in the time it takes a group of family and friends to snap a few photos. Not surprisingly, we didn't really consume much of the non-cake food while mingling and dancing and taking in the evening, either. I suppose we could have set up a table for us to make sure we got some sustenance, but then we would have missed out on a lot of really fun conversations and interactions with our nearest and dearest. (Plus, everyone would have been watching us eat. No thanks.) The Amazing Husband, it should be noted, needs vast quantities of nutrition to appease his overachieving metabolism, so just "not eating" wasn't really a good way to go.

What's a freshly married couple to do?

You book your wedding at a venue where the staff is so awesome, they'll pack up leftovers for you (and surprise you with two complete, unrequested meals, in case the leftovers aren't sufficient) and let you hang out with your spouse in the industrial kitchen after the festivities have ended, eating phyllo-wrapped asparagus, priscutto-wrapped grilled peaches, and pieces of mangled wedding cake with your fingers. And you talk and you laugh and you rehash the previous ten hours, and you enjoy the most memorable meal of your entire life.

That's what you do.

Super Secret Gift Knitting

If you hadn't already surmised, the super secret gift knitting project I spent the late winter and spring working on was wedding related: I knit a shawl for each of the lovely women who served as my attendants.  That photo up there shows the finished product, an aggregate twenty-plus feet of shawl.  The photo quality leaves a bit to be desired, but take my word for it that they're a nice shade of pale pink, to coordinate with chocolate brown dresses. 

There actually wasn't much need for the shawls at the wedding (as we had pretty much perfect weather), but hopefully they'll be worn and enjoyed for years to come.  I certainly enyoyed making them... Any moments of monotony (I'll admit, it was an awful lot of stockinette) were more than worth the looks on my friends' faces when I was finally able to give these puppies to their rightful owners. 

Eventful Morning

The gubernatorial race is still too close to call, so that's definitely not what I'm talking about.

Nope, the morning was eventful for an entirely separate reason (unless you consider a symbolic connection, if you believe the natural world has an awareness of current events as well as a bitingly sarcastic sense of humor).



If you look closely, on and next to the fence, those are wild turkeys. There were six of them walking across our neighbor's yard this morning, but all but those two had become shy by the time I grabbed my camera.



I also learned, despite my previous assumptions (based on what exactly, I'm not sure), that wild turkeys are capable of flight.



Hmmm. Who else is ready for Thanksgiving? I feel a sudden desire to incorporate cranberry sauce into tonight's dinner...

So the flowers worked out ok after all.

Hey, guess what I realized? If I wait until I can post organized, logically mapped out thoughts about the wedding, it'll nearly be our first anniversary before I get to share any part of that fantastic day. Haphazard and lighthearted and interspersed with other posts it is!

I mentioned a few times that our hope was to grow our own flowers. It went about half according to plan, but the result ended up being just what we needed and (didn't know we) wanted. It wasn't the best year ever for flower growing: a lot of dry, sunny days went a long way towards a fun summer for people, but a less pleasant time for thirsty plants. Thankfully zinnias, cosmos, anemones, and sedum are drought tolerant, so we had a sizeable crop of those to decorate the reception tables.







The bottles, incidentally, came with the house I bought in 2005. They were on a bookshelf in the basement, and they were covered in dirt (some of their more stubbornly filthy friends weren't included in the decor). I'm very glad that my internal packrat insisted on salvaging them when I sold that house about a year prior to the wedding, although the idea to use them this way didn't come up until months later. The table runners have been used in two friends' weddings already, and I was excited to continue their tradition, too.

We didn't end up growing quite enough flowers to create five respectable (whatever that means) bouquets, so a friend and I spent part of the morning touring grocery store floral departments hunting for things in pale pink and white. We were prepared for a grand adventure, but we only needed to visit two stores, where we grabbed a few armfuls of pink carnations, pink roses, baby's breath, white spider mums, white daisies, white roses, and these gorgeous, delicate (and maddeningly unlabeled) white flowers with mauve speckles.

One of the few regrets I have about the wedding in general is that I don't have any photos of the bouquet assembly process. A bridesmaid and I weilded some fierce floral tape and wrapped, wrapped, wrapped our way to what I think were some pretty awesome bouquets, and a friend of The Awesome Husband used her skills as a former floral shop employee to cover the stems in brown ribbon. Here they are hanging out on the cake table while everyone danced and mingled. (Note: the cake topper is made of grocery store flowers, too; my mom stuck a bunch of rose buds in a half-circle of floral foam.)



While I didn't jump on the two-dress bandwagon, I *did* have three bouquets. Sort of. I created my bouquet as three small, separate bouquets that I carried together as one. I figured the best way to hand off my flowers during the reception (bouquet toss? no thanks. given to the winner of a dance-off for all the married couples? awkward, given the crowd. languishing, ignored, on a table? passable, but anticlimactic.) would be to give them to the demographic that would most appreciate them: there were three little girls in attendance between the ages of 4 and 6. And so, I made three mini-bouquets that looked like one bouquet.

The monolith being carried back down the aisle.

My cousin's daughters enjoying their respective third each.

And that's how we ended up with semi-home-grown flowers for the wedding. Blooms, floral tape, ribbon, and seeds for planting couldn't have totalled more than $100, and the result was perfectly suited to the day.

Boo!

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Proud of Me

Let me just throw this out there: I've been hitting it out of the park lately at work.  Putting in a lot of time and effort, pointing out problems, suggesting solutions.  For the most part, it's been recognized and acknowledged.

That's not what I'm really posting about, though.  I'm proud of myself for *not* working right now.  Instead of caving to pressure and hints of guilt-trip attempts to make me forfeit my weekend to make up for time lost by others, I stood up for myself.  At the same time, I stood up for the fact that my happiness and my marriage are just as important and deserving of my energy as my workplace is.

I'm proud I'd me, and I'm having a great weekend.

SuperTomatoes!

I think the garden heard me talking about how I was on a cooking kick over the weekend. That's the best explanation I can come up with for the last, sputtering efforts of the tomato plants... and the fact that the fruit on the vines somehow managed to make it through last night's sub-freezing temperatures.



It gets better, though. These tomatoes weren't thriving in the confines of our raised beds and chickenwire fencing. Oh, no. They're from a very prolific plant that grew directly out of our compost bin.



They also look like plum tomatoes, which means they wouldn't have grown from a tomato seedling that got thinned from the garden and put in the compost, but from a seed of a plum tomato that we'd purchased from the grocery store. Crazy and impressive! SuperTomatoes! I feel like I should put little capes on each of them.

... Or I could figure out what to cook with green tomatoes. Any ideas?

Probably shouldn't take the same approach to running...

Guess what's a thousand times tougher than planning a wedding?  Incorporating a dog into your household when your workplace implodes (not really, but it feels that way) and you end up working tons more hours than you did when you didn't also have to schedule 4 miles of walking every day, no exceptions.

You could say I'm a little frazzled.  And grumpy.

I miss lots of stuff I don't have time for right now.  I've made up for lost time in one area, though: cooking. In the past 24 hours, I've made:

pizza with mushrooms and caramelized onions (yummy)

chicken, leek, and potato soup (good, but nothing to write home about)

Black beans and rice (always good, even, apparently, when you're out of onions)

stuffed shells (to stock the freezer of some new-parent friends)

string bean ricotta casserole (ditto)

And we've still got ingredients to use up for ham and swiss quiche and shrimp scampi later this week.  Well, more likely this weekend, to be realistic.  I don't expect to be home from work in time to make quiche any night this week.

(Note:  Yes, The Awesome Husband is more than capable of cooking.  Yes, he has dinner covered most evenings of late.  My point is that I enjoy cooking, and *I* want to have time to cook quiche.  Harumph.)

... and then we got a dog.

I had big plans to do another Iceland post, but it's just not gonna happen. And I think that's ok, because all it would've been, to be honest, can be summed up as follows: "You should go!  Oh, and we saw the building where Reagan and Gorbachev met to discuss nuclear disarmament in 1986."

See?  You're not missing much.

It makes so much more sense to show you the picture above and let you know how well Mr. Cecil is doing with us.  We were a little concerned when he arrived Friday night that we'd ended up with more puppy-esque energy than we bargained for, but he's mellowed out remarkably in two days. 

Of course, there's room for improvement.  For instance, tomorrow's lesson will be "don't raid the cat's food dish and proceed to throw up on the living room rug." 

Baby steps.

We interrupt this radio silence for a brief announcement.

I'm realizing that if I wait to do another post on Iceland, it'll be several days before any new content shows up here.  Not ideal. Certainly not ideal when I have a fun little announcement to share:

We're adopting a dog!  Later this week, a two year old beagle/hound/border collie mix named Cecil will be joining our household.

Hooray (and wish us luck)!

Iceland Intermission: Finished Sweaters

You wouldn't know it from my posts lately, but yes, I'm still knitting. Knitting up a storm, in fact, and I've got two finished sweaters to show for it. There's the sweater that I procrastiknit-ed when I didn't want to tackle the wedding planning task of the day (the purple one) and the sweater knit nearly entirely in- or travelling-to-and-from-Iceland (the green one).


Ok! First up, the honeymoon sweater:
Trina, designed by hilary Smith Callis over at The Yarniad. Ravelry page is over here.



And the "Ack! Don't make me think about how many chairs we'll need!" sweater:

Tailored Cardigan, designed by... some nameless person over at Garn Studio, I suppose. Ravelry page thisaway. This might actually be my favorite handknit item ever, even though it doesn't have the intended buttons because I... forgot to knit button holes. Yes, really.







Next up: Pamela Wynne's February Lady Sweater. After this, I really need to stop with the cardigans.

... and then we went to Iceland: cuisine

Our culinary tour of Iceland was fascinating. There's really no better way to describe it.

We'd read in our trusty guidebooks about the country's infamous specialty, hakarl (the short version for those who aren't clicking through for a description: aged, putrified shark). Call me crazy, but we steered clear, although one vendor at a fish market offered us a sample. Tempting, but no.

We also bypassed menu offerings of whale and puffin. What we did try was Icelandic lamb, which -- lemme tell ya -- was delicious. (Interestingly, I've heard no fewer than three people react with alarm to the prospect of eating puffins -- "but they're so cute! -- and not bat an eye at the idea of eating lamb... which is odd because lambs are pretty darn cute as well, no?) I also took full advantage of the plentiful, fresh, and affordable smoked salmon supply.

It wasn't all native fish and meats, though. We also kicked off our first day of exploring Reykjavik by stopping at a random deli and stumbling across The Best Pizza We've Ever Tasted. It was so good that we had to (a) take a picture of it, and (b) order another one on the last day of our trip.

Pesto. Parma ham. Parmesan. So good.

We stopped at a bakery for lunch another day, ordered a sandwich and baked good each, and people-watched for a couple hours (turns out, high schoolers are pretty much the same in any country).



That sandwich there, the one that looks all unassuming and full of lettuce and tomatoes? It actually had your standard lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers... plus three strips of bacon and a fried egg. It was tasty, but highly unexpected.

Probably the most fascinating of all the Icelandic cuisine (and I know what you're thinking -- "more fascinating than rotten shark?" -- but stick with me here) was the obsession they as a nation clearly have with Coca Cola and hot dogs. One of our tour guides said that Icelanders drink more Coca Cola per capita than any other nation; if supply is any indication of consumption, this could plausibly be an accurate statistic. Hot dog, or pylsur, shops were everywhere.

Iceland gets bonus points for the cute glass bottles, for sure.

One hot dog vendor in particular, a little free-standing cart on a streetcorner, is what Icelanders proudly cite as the most popular restaurant in the country and the home of the best hot dogs in all of Europe.

So of course we had to check it out.

Taking a self-portrait and not ending up with ketchup all over myself = victory.

I'll say this, while the food we had in Iceland was delicious, we could almost feel our blood pressure getting higher each day (did I mention that breakfast included ham, salami, and cheese?). Walking several miles each day provided a perfect and necessary balance.

What's that, you say? What about the beverages? Yes, we sampled Icelandic beer made -- according to the label -- with Icelandic barley.

I'm classy.

... and then we went to Iceland: urban aesthetics

Sure, the waterfall and the volcanic crater and the geysirs were all great, but one of the things I liked and noticed most about Iceland was the societal emphasis on aesthetics. While I may not share the fashion sense of most Rejkyavik citizens -- skinny jeans and 80s boots were *everywhere* -- I do give them credit for putting in the effort to wear what they find stylish. More to my liking, there was an impressive array of museums and galleries within the city limits; most were free of charge, and were presumably run by the government. It warms my heart to see art valued so highly by a society.

Throughout the city, even, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a sculpture. It would have been hopeless to even try to photograph them all, but here's a sampling:

Viking ship, near the harbor.

In a beautifully landscaped park, next to a duck pond.

It was everywhere, I tell you. Everywhere.

My favorite part, though, was the architecture. Many of the buildings in downtown Reykjavik are made of corrugated iron because of its availability in Iceland, its resistance to damage by salt air and wind, and its strength in earthquakes. Especially when most of the buildings have been painted with vivid colors, the effect is quite different from any city block I'd see at home, and (perhaps because of that?) quite charming. The buildings that weren't made from sheets of wavy metal seemed to be carefully designed and interesting to look at.

Reykjavik's city hall. And look, another sculpture (the anchor coming out of the water).

Gorgeous. This church took 40 years to build.

Somehow I don't think this look would work quite as well on our street.

This is at the geothermal power plant we visited, for crying out loud. Everything was pretty!

... so have I convinced you to go yet?

... and then we went to Iceland: Golden Circle

There are several bus tours available in and around Reykjavik, but the one that seemed by all accounts to be a must-see was the Golden Circle tour. So we signed up. By the time we got to Iceland, were picked up at our hotel for said tour, and were about ten minutes into the journey, we realized that the marketing hype was legit. I think it was about the time that we looked out the bus windows and started seeing stuff like this:



The first major stop on the tour was a national park and UNESCO world heritage site called Þingvellir National Park (that first character is pronounced like a "th," I believe). It features a canyon and wall of rock created by the shifting of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Thanks to the acoustical features of a great deal of vertical rock next to an expanse of flat ground, the area was the location of Iceland's parliament when it began in 930 AD (it's the oldest functioning parliament in the world, although it now convenes in Reykjavik).

It really does reflect sound quite well. The flag, I suspect, is a more recent addition.

If I were a chieftan, I wouldn't have minded meeting here.

The next stop on the tour was Gulfoss, a massive, impressive, seriously-you-should-have-seen-this-thing waterfall.

A little soggy, but happy.

We picked our collective jaws up off the ground, got back on the bus, and headed off to go look at geysers. One of them, called Geysir, was the source of the English word "geyser." It's no longer active, but others certainly are.

Fields of near-boiling ponds and puddles. Crazy.

The day wasn't over yet, though! We stopped at a church -- the second oldest in Iceland, I believe -- where excavations have uncovered tombstones and a cement coffin from the middle ages. I, personally, found most fascinating the tunnel entrance to the museum portion of the building, formerly used for worshippers to get from their homes to the church.

So much better than walking in through the front door.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea.

And then, our collective tourist saturation points drawing near (as I'm sure your attention spans are as well, you lovely readers, you), we stopped at one more fascinating locale: a volcanic crater.

Yes folks, it's dormant.

It was an overwhelming but fantastic day. And I've had a few of those recently, so I should know.