Regrettably, we missed Ciclavia Iconic Wilshire Boulevard so that we could help Iris get settled into CTY (sleepaway) camp the day after we got home. We got home around 6 PM Saturday, registration for CTY camp was the next morning. I performed a heroic laundry feat to get everything unpacked, washed and repacked. I'm not sure if anyone noticed; no one thanked me.
She babysat her 5 yo cousin so that all the adults in our cabin could go on the hike to Sword lake. Notice that the flowers are just coming into flower at this elevation.
Her independence also provides us with independence. It's a bittersweet feeling, though.
It's hard to convey how much joy that gave me, discussing and observing waves with my daughter. I worked as a teaching assistant for Quantum Mechanics for three semesters and work as a meteorologist now. Wave mechanics is near and dear to my heart and it warms my mommy cockles to see that they fascinate my daughter, too.
Certainly today we take for granted things that we never imagined in our own childhoods, like child car seats, bike helmets, bottled water, security guards, sunblock, hand sanitizer and childproof bottles. I mentioned my childhood memory that we boys would pee behind trees, shrubbery, or garages ("If you run home, your mom might grab you and make you do something"). I forgot to mention that one of the reasons we needed to pee is that when we got thirsty we drank out of garden hoses--our own, and anybody else's.Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood awakens a yearning for the wilderness of my youth. Again, read the whole thing.
...
I don't know what the solution is. I really don't. What I do know is that something fundamental has disappeared from the American landscape, and that is the sight of girls and boys running around and playing. In 1957, there was a best-selling memoir about childhood titled, Where Did You Go? Out. What Did you Do? Nothing, by Robert Paul Smith. These days, a kid had better have an answer ready for that question.
Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That's because every story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings (or Hobbits, as the case may be) and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale. But I think there is another, deeper reason for the reliable presence of maps in the pages, or on the endpapers, of an adventure story, whether that story is imaginatively or factually true. We have this idea of armchair traveling, of the reader who seeks in the pages of a ripping yarn or a memoir of polar exploration the kind of heroism and danger, in unknown, half-legendary lands, that he or she could never hope to find in life.What frontiers will my daughter map? I guess that is why I take her to Lair of the Golden Bear each summer.
This is a mistaken notion, in my view. People read stories of adventure—and write them—because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map—marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle—that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.
Afterwards, one camper told me that I was a good mom for going up there and singing in public with my family. The song was well-received. the audience laughed at all the right places. Leave some comments at Bad Dad to convince him to post the lyrics.
The pattern's armscythe depth is shorter than I normally like, but it is still very wearable.
I shortrowed both the shoulder slope and the back neck edge curve. The pattern bound off the neck stitches straight across. I noticed the Vera jacket rides backwards off my shoulders. That doesn't happen with Eileen Fisher sweaters that also have extended front bands that meet in the center back. When I looked at them, I realized that they have a curved, rather than straight, back neck edge.
So I added some short row shaping at Manon's back neck. Problem solved. The collar band lies more smoothly and it is more comfortable to wear.
Manon received Iris' seal of approval. She asked me to knit her one without sleeves. Now that she is 75% of my width, I think a switch from aran (4.5 sts/in) to DK (5.5 sts/in) yarn and knitting the 30" size instead of the 34" should produce something in the right ball park.
We thought they meant this.
When they were really visiting the cataract
via the culvert under crabtree road.
We love our free range kids.
We returned from our annual week at Lair of the Golden Bear to reliable coastal June Gloom. A true child of San Francisco, I feel at home in fog.
The cool water beckons during a heat wave.
I threw the cereal bowl and Iris threw the cup. She painted the first layer of glaze before running off to a Little Oskis event. I finished up with two more layers. Mark and I wonder if children ever write #2 Dad on Fathers' Day presents?
I finished the Ribbon Lace scarf. (2 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Silk and a bit of leftover Artfibers Golden Chai.)
I started the Vera jacket from Mags Kandis' In Living Color.
I forgot to pack #7 double pointed needles for the sleeves. That necessitated a stop at By Hand Yarn down the valley in Sonora. I was low on cash and would not expect them to pay the credit card fee just to sell me <$10 worth of needles. 
My sister has been tempting me to create my own triangular lace shawl. Now, which pattern should I pick?
Mark and I debated the merits of returning to vacation spots versus exploring new places. We decided that we couldn't decide. Well, he is more for the latter and I am split evenly. I don't find revisiting places boring at all. There are always subtle changes. The lupines, and all the wildflowers, up at Sonora pass look so dessicated this year, compared to last year (normal precipitation) or the year before (record high precipitation).
Almost every day, I hiked up (and up!) to Vista Lodge.
Usually, I joined others for yoga, Pilates or dance class. Sometimes, I would arrive early with a book. Always, I stayed late, dragging my mat to my favorite corner of the deck. I lie in the dappled alpine sunlight and look at this.
My mother says that I should be able to meditate while staring at a blank wall. I prefer to look at the branches of this tree.
For me, and many others, Lair is about reading actual print (books and magazines that have piled up around our homes) and talking face to face with other engaged readers. I want my uninterrupted reading and chatting time. I do not want to be wired and connected.Every summer, I go to the Lair of the Bear, a camp for University of California alumni in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The entire idea of the Lair is for families to spend a week in the forest, away from the insanity of our busy lives. And yet, over the years, that retreat into the woods has become less of a retreat.
We’ve all got our cell phones. There’s wireless Internet access at the main office. Even the sounds of the forest have been augmented by iPod speaker systems.
Do I exaggerate? Only a bit. In reality, Lair of the Bear campers tend to keep their gadgets under control. I rarely see campers talking on cell phones. (It helps that only one carrier provides reception at the camp area.)
Italy has no more childless women than France and Sweden, countries with much higher fertility rates (see table). But more Italian mothers have just one child. The pattern is still more marked in Russia, where a third of mothers have a single child. One possible explanation is that, squeezed between family obligations from the past and current social arrangements which limit job flexibility or cheap child care, many Italian and Russian women are reacting by satisfying social pressures to produce a family to the smallest possible extent—by having one child. Such a reaction may be hard to change.
...
Though it is hard to be sure, the most plausible explanation is that some countries have struck a successful balance between life and work that enables parents to raise children without sacrificing their careers, and that this encourages child-rearing. If the explanation is right, it does not matter that France doles out presidential medals. But it does matter that it has an excellent, state-subsidised system of creches, to which mothers are happy to entrust their offspring.
keywords: knitting nature, swirled pentagon pullover, lair of the golden bear, Norah Gaughan
