melodyssister | Entries tagged with knitting

I suppose that if I've been insisting that A and S stay off their phones and off the internet over the past two weeks, it's not surprising that I have not updated my blog in that time.

Rosh Hashana was spent at ADC's parents. In addition to the five of us, and the three permanent residents in Omer, his brother's family and in-laws (4+4), were there, not just for the first night, but for all of the first day. Everyone gets on well, so a good time was had by all, until the septic tank gave up the ghost. Too many small children being too conscientious about cleanliness ... fortunately ADC's parents have an en suite shower and toilet that is on a different line.

Our pleasure was dampened by two deaths within two days of each other: my great-aunt N died almost a year to the day of his husband IG's passing last year. Her funeral was on Sunday, the day before Rosh Hashanah, immediately after her daughter from Australia - who had been on her way anyway - arrived. Auntie N had Alzheimer's, and she had not been a full box of chocolates for several years (she once actually gave me a beautifully wrapped box of chocolates which turned out to be partially eaten, and that was one of the first instances of her illness), but before that she had been a very outgoing person, the life and soul of every party. She had a song for every occasion, and always encouraged her grandchildren and great-nieces/nephews to perform, too. She had a good life, and her death was a relief, I believe.

Much more tragic was my mother's best friend, E, dying on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. E was my mother's age, not yet 70, and she suffered a series of three strokes over the course of the past month. Even one stroke is terrifying, especially as she lives alone and her only surviving son lives in Philadelphia (her other son was killed in a border skirmish while doing reserve duty a few years ago). She lost the sight in one eye in the first stroke and the second caused her to become completely blind. I don't know how she would have managed any kind of quality of life, because she would have lost her independence entirely - and she loved reading. My mother was exhausted by Yom Kippur, as she hosted some of E's relatives who came for the funeral, until literally the day before. Furthermore, Yom Kippur is a day that she particularly associated with E, since that was the anniversary of her son's death, and my mother used to visit her with whichever grandchild was youngest, instead of going to synagogue to say Yizkor, the prayer for the dead.

For me, Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement - is a day of identification with the Jewish people as a whole. I am not observant most of the year (being vegetarian, I keep kosher by default, but no observant person would consider my kitchen to actually be kosher), but on Yom Kippur I fast and spend most of the day in shul. It was a relief to be back home and standing next to my father, after last year in Takoma Park. On the downside, it was ferociously hot - over 35 degrees Celsius when we walked home after Mussaf. I managed to complete a wrap, knitted from the hand-dyed yarn I bought on Friday Harbor and ruffle yarn I bought at Joann in Wheaton, in time to wear in shul, since the AC assumes that you are wearing a tallit, anyway. I didn't have time to block it, though, so it looks at the moment rather like the feather boa Mick Jagger wears in Sympathy for the Devil.

While everything I've described so far was going on, on all the few working days this month I was on the phone and/or e-mail daily with the shipping company and their agents in Israel. Our lift finally arrived on September 1st, but actually reached our home in Jerusalem at 8 p.m. on the 24th - even with the many holidays, that is ridiculous. Apparently there was no problem with customs, but some miscommunication with the consolidators (we had far less than a full container) delayed the Israeli agents, as they didn't want to pay the extra thousand shekels being demanded. The children were overjoyed to see their things again, I was mainly happy that everything arrived the night before - rather than the morning of - our family holiday at the beach, which will be the subject of the next post.

I participated in the

sshg_promptfest for the first time this year, and would like to thank

mt_nestor for her charming interpretation of my prompt:

Title: Gifts
Type: Art
Prompter:

melodyssister
Creator:

mt_nestor
Beta(s): Jerusha
Rating: G
Warning(s): House elves may find some of these images disturbing.
Prompt: Hermione is knitting socks for Severus. They are not black.
Summary: Hermione is thrilled that Severus has purchased lightweight khakis to wear while they’re on their Christmas holiday in Australia. She is quickly knitting up a pair of casual socks for Father Christmas to leave in his stocking. Another surprise is planned for under the tree.

I also encourage you to read her other entry, Terms and Conditions. Don't miss the drabble at the end of the comments!

Woohoo! I have just finished uploaded edited versions of the nine articles I had to read while at FHL, and send a summary of my comments to my co-editors. That was a marathon ten days, during which I edited another article (I'll be paid for that one, though), but now I'm done! ADC also finished writing his article, up to and including figure legends an acknowledgements, so tomorrow our holiday can really start.

Not that this hasn't been a partial holiday, anyway, of course. On Saturday we took the bus to Limekiln Park, aka Whale Watch Park, where we had a very enjoyable time hiking. We almost missed seeing orcas, as they were not in the vicinity most of the time, and in fact we only saw a few in the distance just before we had to leave the lighthouse viewing spot in order to catch the last bus. ADC was rather disappointed, as the potential was much greater than the actuality turned out, but the rest of us were thrilled anyway. We also saw a golden eagle while we were hiking, which was almost as impressive.

We followed up the whale theme by going to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor yesterday (Tuesday). It was almost as much of a trek to get there as it was to the park, on the other side of the island, because we made the bad mistake of ordering sandwiches to go from a coffee shop, rather than the deli, in town. I've never had to wait 50 minutes for sandwiches before, and not been offered any kind of recompense or apology, not even a glass of water while we waited. The staff was overwhelmed by the lunch crowd (which struck us as being probably normal for the height of tourist season), and the single woman making the sandwiches was clearly not a professional: not only did she mix up orders (part of the reason for the delay), but she was incredibly slow and inefficient. I think that even S, who spends part of his time on another planet, could have worked faster. Adding insult to injury, when we mentioned how long we had been waiting to the staff, one of the women said "We're not a restaurant" - well, if you can't cope with a "to go" option, why offer it? And in the end, neither the sandwiches nor the cookies we bought were very good.

The Whale Museum was not what I expected. It was smaller than I thought it would be, a bit over-didactic and had almost nothing on the relations between humans and whales throughout history. I was expecting a museum with much more about whaling, but apparently that was never a major industry here, only further north, in Canada and Alaska. The in-depth studies and genealogical charts of the pods of the southern resident orcas were interesting, though, even though I felt that the anthropomorphism was a bit much: yes, whales are clearly intelligent, but they are not human.

After the museum, ADC went back to work, while the boys and I wandered around window shopping. We went into a place called Island Studios, selling arts and crafts made by locals. I was shocked to see ruffle scarves, made with the kind of yarn I had to match in the yarn shop here and which costs about $6 per ball, for sale for over $40!!

The boys have taken up geocaching with a vengeance: today they spent all afternoon wandering round town by themselves, looking for caches. They had a false start,as after they got to town A discovered his batteries had run out. When they arrived home, S discovered that his hat (which he had been wearing) was missing. He borrowed A's spare and they set off again, and found two caches and S's hat (it was next to the hutch where you could buy eggs on the honour system). Lucky boy!

This has been an incredibly productive week - ADC even finished the first draft of his article, and only has the figures and drawings to do, so coming to Friday Harbor has been very worthwhile for him, and I have gone through half of the articles for the special issue on medicine that I am co-editing. While the two of us have been at work, the boys have done a lot of exploring and holiday homework: A has made a lot of progress catching up on geometry, while S has listened to an audiobook of White Fang (an abridged version, by OxfordOwl) and written a new ending of over 600 words. This was his summer homework from his school in Israel, so I'm pleased that's done.

What else have we been up to? Last Sunday we walked back into town and explored what was there apart form the market and supermarket. We went down to the harbour itself and watched people setting off on a whale watch ($70-100 a person, I think we'll begin by seeing what we can see from land. Tomorrow we are going to a park semi-officially known as Whale Watch Park), before locating the San Juan Transit station, from which we would take the bus that goes to that park (the blue route) or to the alpaca farm (the green route), where I had been planning to buy yarn for myself and

eumelia, until we walked out of an ice cream shop and I saw a sign out of the corner of my eye: Island Wools. As you can imagine, as soon as I finished my ice-cream I went inside, and immediately became overwhelmed. The young woman behind the counter was very welcoming, and showed me the alpaca yarn she had: not from the farm on San Juan Island, but from the next one. The yarn was a bit disappointing to me, as it was much thicker than I really wanted - alpaca is really warm, so not that useful in Israel, and I was planning to use it together with another yarn, a ribbon yarn in a wine colour. As soon as she said that there was a range of yarns that were hand-dyed in the shop, I knew that that was what I wanted. I must say that everyone else was very understanding of me - not to say enabling; S found a pattern for a Robin Hoodie, and tried to convince me to knit his next Purim costume. However, the lack of space in our suitcases (to say nothing of the prices; that alpaca yarn was $34 for 100 gm) forced me to decide that I could only buy one skein. The colours available were all so gorgeous that it was clear that I would have to come back with a ball of the ribbon yarn in order to match the colours.

Monday was a quiet day, as we were a bit exhausted from walking back and forth twice in two days, but on Tuesday the boys and I had a lot of fun: first of all, after a safety review on the docks, we were allowed to look at plankton that ADC had helped collect with the invertebrate embryology course. It was really fascinating, seeing all the tiny shiny balls that are actually real animals. After lunch, we walked into town, and while I went back to the yarn shop with the ball I wanted to match, the boys went geocaching. I will let A tell you all about that, and just say that buying yarn was even more fun than just looking.

eumelia also decided that she preferred colourful fingering-weight yarn to thicker alpaca, and I bought six mini-balls for her, and one large hank for myself, in a colour called Black Cherry. With excellent timing, the boys arrived just as I had decided what I wanted, and they were able to watch the hank being wound into a centre-pull ball. Not only did they enjoy watching that, they were relieved to hear that now they would not have to help me do the winding by hand :-) On the way home, we went past a second-hand bookshop that claimed to have 50,000 books and a computerised catalogue. Interestingly, the boys were not that keen - they preferred the new book shop we had gone to on Sunday. I think they lack the formative experience of second-hand bookshops being the only way to get books in English at a reasonable price. We are planning to visit what is supposed to be the biggest second-hand bookshop in North America, Powell's in Portland, on our road trip, so maybe that will help change their minds.

On Wednesday, the highlight of the day was the ice cream social at the dining hall, where you could have all the ice-cream you wanted, with all kinds of toppings, while on Thursday, the highlight was the farewell party for the invertebrate embryology course where ADC had given two talks. A helped grill (on a gas grill), and a good time was had by all. On Friday, we finally got on the water, and when for a brief practise row in the immediate vicinity of the labs, which are across the bay from the town of Friday Harbor. It was a bit nerve-racking at first, and S in the bow and me at the stern was the wrong way around for balance (and I got very wet from the rowers), but all in all, ADC and A gained enough confidence to row all the way across this morning. It is indeed quicker than walking, just under half an hour rather than slightly over 45 minutes.

We started a bit later than we had intended, so instead of beginning at the Whale Museum and continuing to the farmers' market, we started at the farmers' market, went to the San Juan Cheese Shop and ended up at the San Juan Island Museum of Art - the Whale Museum will have to wait for another day. I had wanted to go to the SJIMA from the moment I saw an advertisement for one of the exhibitions there: a photographer at the Whiteley Centre (where ADC has his fellowship now) had taken pictures of the invertebrates studied at FHL and printed them on blank backgrounds - they looked absolutely gorgeous. My favourite was the stalk jelly, which looked like something from a kaleidoscope. A liked the curly-headed spaghetti worm, which he believes proves the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. S's favourite was two starfishes touching each other, which he thought reminiscent of the Creation of Man from the Sistine Chapel. ADC refused to say which picture he liked best, claiming to be used to the animals.

After getting home, we went out again in the late afternoon, very kindly being lent a car by one of our neighbours, who is teaching at the marine invertebrates course, and drove off to explore some of the south coast of the island, via geocaching. We also took the time to watch the tide coming in, as high tide was at 5:45. I will now quote A on geocaching:
Geocaches are small caches hidden on trails in various places. The person hiding the cache opens a cache page on a geocaching website with the coordinates for the cache and a brief description of the cache and hints how to find it. If you want to go geocaching somewhere you search the websites for caches in that place and choose caches that look interesting and send their coordinates to your GPS. When you make sure the coordinates are on your GPS you can go to the place you are going geocaching and start looking for the cache. The caches are usually small boxes hidden somewhere not obvious but findable after a search. Once you find the cache you open it and see what’s inside. Common things found in caches are marbles, stickers and travel bugs*. In every cache there are a few pieces of paper for writing your name and the date you found the cache. Once you sign the cache you leave something in the cache and take one of the things in side of the cache. When you get back home you log your visit and write you found the cache (or didn’t).
*Travel bugs are small discs with a code you move from place to place and write on the website where it was moved and then you can track its trip.

My personal experience of geocaching is very fun and extremely fulfilling. it’s a very enjoyable extra to add to every hike. It was very exciting to find my first geocache with Shaul. While Mummy was in her knitting shop S and I went to look for an interesting geocache called “Quick Trail!”. We followed the directions in the description and what the GPS said was the right direction (it’s not a GPS like waze but a GPS for geocaching and tracking where you went and it has a compass and stuff) until we reached the middle of a short trail between two streets. After about 20 minutes of searching and S trying to persuade me the cache wasn’t there we found it between the bushes next to a broken cinder block (like the description said). When we opened the cache we signed our names, took a marble and put in a travel bug from a previous cache we didn’t actually find but just asked the people at the reception counter after looking for it outside and they pulled it out from under the table, so that’s not a real find after looking. S and I were very happy after finding “Quick Trail!” and kept talking about it until the end of the day.

I last posted while we were waiting for the shippers to arrive. They arrived within the time slot they had promised and were done - inventorying, sealing and some re-packing - in under an hour. A few days later, we were told that the shipment had been containerised and came within 5 cubic feet of the estimate, so no need to adjust the payment. All that was left for us to do in Takoma Park was to have the house cleaned, on the 8th, and to sample restaurants we had not got around to previously, since the house was completely empty - anything M and D had left, was taken by our next-door neighbours. All of that was highly successful: both Middle Eastern Cuisine, where we had supper, and Mark's Kitchen, where we had brunch, were excellent, and the cleaners left the house spotless. I think that the kitchen sinks were cleaner than they had been when we arrived!

The first leg of our journey was uneventful, apart from two suitcases being overweight. In the end, we underestimated what we had left to pack, and everything was a very tight squeeze indeed. We bought another small suitcase in Seattle - which added the excitement of taking the Monorail to our day there - but we really should have bought it already in DC. Not only would that have saved us $50 in overweight fees, Washington State has a 9.5% sales tax!! The only place we could easily find suitcases was at Nordstrom Rack, where the prices were higher than ADC had paid for a large suitcase in DC. Nothing to d about that now, and another suitcase had made things more comfortable.

Our day in Seattle was lovely. We woke up early, of course, and after breakfast made our way to the Chihuly Glass and Gardens Museum. After walking into Takoma Park mid-morning in the humidity and heat the day before, what Seattle considered to be a heatwave felt like perfect weather to us. ADC and I had been very unimpressed by the Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem installation at the Tower of David in 1998 (it was hugely successful, with over a million visitors, but I don't think I've met anyone who actually thought it looked good), so we were eager to see what the glass sculptures looked like on their home ground. And they were magnificent. Some pieces were better than others, but they all "worked" much more than they had in Jerusalem. I have come to the conclusion that the Tower of David was not green enough. All the other installations outside of museums have been much further north than Jerusalem (Finland, Venice, Kew Gardens), in places with much more water - much more like Seattle, in fact. I think that the lack of green, the different light and the dust in Jerusalem, were what subverted the installation. Anyway, we all enjoyed the museum very much. A took a lot of pictures, and S is convinced that Chihuly is a genius. We spent about an hour and a half in a rather small museum before going on to the EMP, possibly the strangest-looking building I've ever been in.

We spent most of the rest of the day at the EMP, which stands for Experience Music Project. The museum began as a collection of rock memorabilia, but has now expanded to all kinds of popular culture. We spent the morning at three exhibitions: First, we went to the special exhibition of costumes from the Star Wars trilogies. It was amazing to see the costume designer and her team of 60-100 people at work making all the varied costumes. So many different materials and skills were involved! It was rather funny to see a video of Natalie Portman enthusing about her exotic dresses while wearing a plaid shirt, too. And of course there were the costumes themselves, with swatches of the materials to feel, which was great. We then continued to an exhibition on science fiction and another on fantasy, where again we saw many props and costumes from movies. The children were particularly excited to see costumes from The Princess Bride. I feel that there was a typo in the note about David Bowie's costume from Labyrinth, which says "the legendary David Bowie in Jareth the Goblin King's costume" rather than "David Bowie in the legendary Jareth the Goblin King costume."

After lunch (hot dogs in the park - with a vegetarian option! The West Coast is clearly much better at catering to vegetarians), we went to the music side of the EMP, where we saw exhibitions on Jimi Hendrix, the development of the electric guitar and ended the day with learning to play drums and a jam session. After a brief detour to buy a suitcase, we met ADC's second cousin once removed, JG, for supper. He took us to a Cajun restaurant, although none of us ended up ordering things that were specifically Cajun. JG struck me as being something of a combination of my father-in-law and his older brother, although not as tall. He was very enthusiastic about Friday Harbor, and very unenthusiastic about Chihuly.

On Friday we got up at the crack of dawn, missing breakfast, in order to be at the pier by 6:45 in order to catch the 7:45 Victoria Clipper to Friday Harbor (a catamaran that goes between Seattle and Friday Harbor once a day, and to Victoria in British Columbia several times a day). The idea had been to have the best view of seabirds and possibly whales, and to get to Friday Harbor fairly early from a conveniently central location. However, it was not to be. The clipper was cancelled due to mechanical problems (they had sent out an e-mail to that effect at 6:15, but considering that the shuttle had been canceled on Thursday as well, I think that they could have made the announcement earlier). We received a full refund, of course, and coupons for coffee, and they paid for a taxi to the Seattle convention centre, where we could get the 11:30 shuttle to Anacortes, where we could take the 2:00 p.m. ferry to Friday Harbor, arriving at 3:00 rather than at 11:00, as planned. We waited until the luggage storage opened, and then improved our mood by going to Pike Place market, where we bought excellent build-your-own sandwiches to eat on the way to the ferry. We arrived at the convention centre about half an hour before the shuttle was due to arrive, assuming that it would arrive early so as to allow luggage to be loaded. Wrong! It arrived 40 minutes late, with not a word of explanation or apology. When we discovered that we had to move to another minibus to actually get to the Anacortes ferry terminal, it was clear that we were not going to make the 2 o'clock boat - and the next one was at 4:45, arriving at Friday Harbor after six - seven hours and much irritation later. At that point, however, our luck began to change. As the ferry had been having its own problems, the 2:50 ferry to Sidney, BC, was making an unscheduled stop at Friday Harbor, and we were able to embark almost immediately. The voyage was very pleasant, we had a good enough view, and we got a taxi immediately as we walked off the dock. We were at Friday Harbor Labs before the office closed.

Once we arrived at FHL, we were able to book supper at the dining hall before we went to unpack at our cabin. The cabin is great. We were surprised at first to realise that there was no air conditioning, but since then we have realised that heatings and fans are all you need. The kitchen is about triple the size of the one we had in Takoma Park, with a table that seats 4-6 which is where we will be eating most of the time. The crockery, cutlery, pots and pans are a bit random, but sufficient. The children each have a single bed, and the pressure in the shower is good. In short, we have all we need.

Once we had settled in, we went to the social hour and ate popcorn and met people. I am proud to say that I was able to ask people about their work and carry on an intelligent conversation, understanding almost everything (or at least, the words were familiar and I have a vague idea of what they mean). We had supper at the dining hall and then breakfast yesterday. We were advised that the best meal of the week is Sunday brunch, and we duly registered for that (which is why I am writing this in the morning rather than the evening, as we are still waiting for brunch).

Yesterday (Saturday) was largely spent shopping. We walked into the town of Friday Harbor - which is significantly further away than we had understood, 45 minutes rather than 20 minutes - and shopped both at the grocery store and at the farmers' market. The market is all local, and there was far less fruit available than we are used to, only berries - but they were some of the best raspberries and strawberries we've ever eaten. We planned well in having brought along a cooler bag and two shopping baskets, as we needed all of that as well as our backpacks to carry everything home. Of course, once we got back we realised we had forgotten some vital items, like serviettes, but the plan today is to go back into town after brunch today, to explore the town itself and visit an art fair.

After lunch and a rest, the boys went back to the dining hall to play ping-pong, and ADC and I walked around FHL, identifying the trees (there weren't many birds around). We found ten different species in the short distance from our cabin to the Whiteley Centre where ADC has office space to the actual labs themselves. As we approached the labs, we met one of the people teaching there, who invited us to come and see the sea creatures. The boys turned up just then, and we had a very interesting half hour looking at the weird and wonderful invertebrates being studied. On one of the benches I saw a copy of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a particularly appropriate choice given the amount of time he spent investigating marine invertebrates with Theo.

ADC then went to play pool with the boys, while I continued knitting. I may want to complete this cardigan as soon as possible and actually wear it - it is currently 15C outside, at 9:30 a.m. I am very glad that I insisted that we all bring two sets of long clothes, rather than shipping all the winter clothes.

The weekend has been boiling hot, and spending Saturday on the Shenandoah River was a very good idea. We reached the rafting company at Front Royal around 10:30, and were on the river just after 11:00. We floated along until 15:30 - the Shenandoah was much wider and slower than the Jordan was when we went rafting there, and we got stuck at every "riffle" - places where rocks are high enough to cause very mildly choppy water, but it was still great fun. ADC and A did most of the rowing, and every so often we stopped at an island and had a dip in the lovely cool water. I am still trying to get the algae out of my shorts - admittedly I made them for this kind of activity, but still, I'd like them to look newish after only one wearing. You can float so well when wearing a life jacket! The boys insisted on racing the other people who had been in the shuttle to the rivers with us - two men who were camping with their six-year-old sons. Unsurprisingly, we reached our end point - 7 miles from the start - before them. On the way back, we decided to take a scenic detour along the Skyline Drive, in the Shenandoah Valley National Park. We had been there before, in early October, and this was our last chance to be there again. Unfortunately, I think we were too tired to appreciate it properly - and also the view, when we stopped at overlooks, was quite hazy.

After such an exhausting day, we had a much quieter time yesterday. ADC finally went to buy bagels for Sunday breakfast. He said that he was one of the few male customers not wearing a kippa, and that all the staff were clearly Orthodox Jews - which to my mind seemed a good indication of quality control, and indeed the bagels were delicious. I wonder why American bagels are so much softer than the ones Granny and Grandpa used to make - a difference between Polish and Lithuanian traditions, perhaps? We then slowly wended our way to the weekly farmers' market and listened to a few acts at the Takoma Park Jazz Festival. It was incredibly hot and humid - Tel Aviv seemed cool and dry in comparison - so we didn't stay as long as we might have. We ended the day by watching Flash Gordon, which A had been very eager to watch due to the soundtrack being by Queen. I saw sometime in my childhood, but remembered very little of it. It was quite hilariously campy and bad, with enough woodenness to furnish a carpenter in every scene with Flash and Dale Arden, on the one hand, and Brian Blessed chewing all scenery he came within point blank range of: "Hand me the remote control!!" sounded just like "Release the Kraken!!"

Today was the first day of the summer holidays. The boys and I have begun packing - in the sense that they went through all their school stuff, and there is now a pile of paper almost 23 cm high waiting to be recycled - and I began inventorying which of the things we bought for the house we plan to send in a lift and which we plan to leave behind as it's not worth sending them, when you factor in the cost of shipping and customs. Tomorrow a rep of one of the shipping companies I contacted is coming to do an in-home survey; another company estimated (based on my very preliminary listing) that we had about 5 cubic metres to ship. I think the cost of shipping will come to almost equal the value of the things that we are shipping, and that's before customs is calculated. The state really wants you to buy things in Israel, rather than importing them personally!

Today was the last day of elementary and middle school in Mayland. Since A has finished 8th grade and S has finished 5th grade, today was devoted to their promotion ceremonies - a new usage to me, BTW. I had not previously run across "promotion" in this sense. I would have just said "finished primary school" and/or "finished junior high".

Anyway, we split up, with ADC attending A's ceremony (12:30-14:00) and me attending S's (11:30-12:30, clap-out at 15:15). It sounds as if both ceremonies were very similar: the children marched in, speeches by the principal and student representatives, a musical number, prizes, names of each student read by homeroom teacher. A's ceremony, from his report, was of course more elaborate, with a PowerPoint with pictures of all the children and a short film with all the teachers wishing them luck. The TPMS principal apparently spent her day going to various promotion ceremonies, elementary schools in the morning and the middle school in the afternoon. S received his certificate in his classroom. While everyone was milling around before the children had a picnic lunch (parents were sent home and returned to clap the mortarboard-wearing children out of school at the end of the day), I took pictures of S and his teacher and best friends on my cell phone. I hope they are viewable. ADC said the same for his pictures of A's ceremony, taken on a real camera and by a far better photographer.

On another note entirely, I spent my free minutes today and yesterday crafting: I finally finished my Tofino shorts, which I decided to lengthen by adding a cuff (just in time to go rafting tomorrow), and I swatched my next Miette cardigan. It seemed oddly appropriate to be knitting while watching Brazil. Very excitingly, when I logged into Ravelry, I saw I had a message from the designer of the baby blanket I knitted for my latest neice, asking permission to feature my project on the pattern's main page. Admittedly, I knitted the blanket in December, but only added the pictures (again, ADC must be credited) a few days ago. What a compliment!

ADC went off to a meetup this evening, so for a change I cooked. We had half a bag of potatoes (about 6 medium ones) and half a bag of slightly elderly spinach leaves, so I decided to combine them and make sag aloo, which I always enjoy at Indian restaurants but have never actually made.

After reading some recipes on the Internet, this is what I did: I cubed the potatoes (I do not think that Professor Snape would have been happy with my technique, as the cubes were decidedly uneven) and steamed them while I did the washing up - about 15 minutes - and left them covered. I chopped the spinach, sliced three carrots, and chopped an onion and two cloves of garlic. After putting on a cup of Basmati rice to cook, I fried the onion, then added large quantities of cumin, ginger powder, Ras el-Hanout spice and salt - I literally unscrewed the tops of the jars and shook until it looked like enough - and stirred until it was well mixed. I loweverd hte heat and then added the carrot, the potatoes, the garlic and finally the spinach. When the rice was cooked and waiting to be fluffed, I added a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt and stirred it through for a few minutes. The sag aloo was ready when the rice was fluffed. The children were very pleased with it, and so was ADC when he got home. A new addition to my repertoire, it seems - not as obvious as mejadara (rice and lentils), as we don't always have potatoes and spinach to hand, but a nice change.

The children finished off the grapes for dessert; for a dessert that requires a bit more effort (and TBH looks a lot tastier), I refer you to

teddyradiator's post of today. While they were eating, I sewed on the final buttons on my Miette. It fits a LOT better now, but still is a tiny bit too tight. Maybe I will manage to loose some weight by next winter? In any case, I'll make another one in large rather than medium, and see how that looks.

Tomorrow I will write my letter home, filling the different sides of the family in about what I did in Israel, and reporting fully on Philly; unless I finish it, my SED post will be REALLY short.

Today was a very productive day, both in terms of editing (finishing an article, taking anoter step towards submitting a grant), finances (getting the ball rolling on money owed - both reimbursement from the Rutgers visit and an editing job back in January), A's Arabic lesson (revision, but hopefully things have now sunk in), and most of all: sewing!

I am making myself badly-needed hiking shorts, using view B of the Tofino elastic-waisted shorts pattern by Sewaholic. As this is going to be a wearable muslin (I hope), I have not done any serious fitting, apart from cutting the front pieces a size larger than the back pieces, in the hopes of disguising my tummy somewhat (or at least not having fabric straining). While I skipped the piping and the fabric belt, in the interests of simplicity, I have added pockets to the side pieces, in the interests of the bird/plant/butterfly-sighting notebook I usually carry when hiking. Before leaving for Israel I cut out everything and sewed the pockets. Today I sewed all the seams, up to and including the crotch, which latter involved a great deal of head-scratching until I reached a Eureka moment. I've decided to reinforce the crotch seam with another line of stitches, just to be on the safe side. Tomorrow I have less paying work today, so I'll try to finish these shorts - all the remaining steps seem to be obvious.

Surfing Ravelry today, I noticed that my cardigan was started on February 27. All I have left to do is sew on four buttons, so I MUST do that tomorrow - 3 months is a good time to spend knitting an adult-sized garment!

Yeterday was all about jetlag - although I woke up what seemed like a reasonable time, I was completely washed out the whole day, and found it difficult to concentrate well enough to work. The heat didn't help, although at least our AC is working, unlike A's school ... It was such a relief when the heavens opened about 8 p.m., and it continued raining at least until I went to bed at the absurdly early hour (for me) of 10 p.m.

Today was a much better day. I filled in my bimonthly income tax and VAT reports for the Israeli tax authorities, finalised a grant proposal (but can't submit it yet, as the admin people have to first upload the sections they are responsible for), put the final touches to the book I was editing before leaving for Israel, and began peer-reviewing three articles for a collection to which I have contributed (and will be paid for). So a very productive day all round. Now to make supper, and afterwards to sew buttons on ADC's trousers, a top of mine, and the cardigan that will be M's.

The flight was OK in the end - the boys were not bothered by sitting apart from me, but I got a bit claustrophobic towards the end, sitting between two men larger than myself, and the person in front of me leaning back. It was lovely to see my parents, siblings and nieces and nephews. Everyone was very pleased with their presents, and very impressed with my sewing and knitting. After my sisters tried on the Miette, I decided that it fit M much better than myself, and I would give it to her, and reknit it with a needle one size larger.

The only irritating thing was that I have mislaid my Israeli phone - I thought I had left it with my parets, but it can't be found. Maybe I did take it with to America, and it is now inside the box in which my American call phone came? That would be such a smart and obvious place to put it that of course it would be forgotten ... at least there is a place that sells SIM cards just down the road, and I'll go there first thing in the morning.

... but a productive one. I completed about a quarter of the remaining part of the book I am editing, so I am well on track to finishing it by Friday. After supper I sewed for an hour, and then completed the neckband of my cardigan, and wove in all the ends. Only the buttons left!

The children had more exciting days. A's English class had their dramatic readings today, and apparently he did quite well. He chose an abridged version of Pirate Jenny from the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weil Threepenny Opera (the link is to Judy Collins' performance of it). Not being very musical, he had to work quite hard to learn it by heart and to be able to recite it not in a monotone. S, on the other hand, registered today for a MOOC run by the Smithsonian, called The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact on American Culture - right up his street, and I'm glad ADC knew about it. He is very enthusiastic about it, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was the youngest participant.

This is almost the first moment I have sat in front of a computer today (can't compose a whole post on my phone). Today began with Skype conversations with both sets of families back in Israel, continued to Free Comic Book Day in Silver Spring, then while ADC made zucchini salad and onion bread for the departmental picnic, I completed the second sleeve of my cardigan. The departmental picnic was followed by a Mozart concert at Strathmore. I'm exhausted!

I have been thinking for a while about making this more of a blog and less of an open archive of letters home, so when

teddyradiator announced a challenge to post Something Every Day during May, I jumped at the chance for a framework. This is a good month to do something like this, as I will be spending a week in Israel, so less letters home will be written in any case.

I will start with the list of the things I want to do before the 9th, which is when I will be travelling with A and S to my nephew's bar mitzvah. Workwise, I have just finished editing one book-length manuscript and already started another. I will be meeting both authors in Israel, so I definitely need to finish book two, but instead I cleaned the house and went shopping. My supermarket trolley was a bit schizophrenic: healthy fruits and vegetables for us to eat over the coming week, and chocolate bars, ice cream toppings, peanut butter and maple syrup to take to Israel (well, the last two are OK, I suppose).

Craftwise, I want to complete my Miette cardigan (only the second sleeve ribbing, buttonbands and neckbands left, and my Hollyburn skirt (only the hem left). This is the first time I have made any kind of garment - knitted or sewn - for myself. I've only been knitting for 17 months, and I got my sewing machine in March, so I think I can allow myself to be very pleased with myself. If I have time, I want to make drawstring pouches for some of the presents I'm bringing, and maybe a pair of shorts.

Wow. This has suddenly reenergised my editing mojo - maybe I should start my work day like this?

Chag sameach! I hope you all had a lovely Seder. We were at the Ps, where the usual chaos was "enhanced" by an extra dog: another retriever, visiting from Boston with GP's family. The was at least one dog under the table at any time. It was strange to have a Seder which was read almost entirely in English, after so many years of everyone being able to follow the original text. And we skipped a lot more than we do at home, except for singing Echad Mi Yode'a twice, once in English with a weird tune.

The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of travel for me, some of which was on domestic flights where there is not enough elbow room to knit, so I have finished two books which I read purely for enjoyment: Evolutionary History by Edmund Russell, and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Evolutionary History was one of a bunch of books that ADC received from Cambridge University Press as payment for reviewing a proposal for them, and he read it first. In a way, the point of the book is to take the ideas of books like Guns, Germs, and Steel and show how evolutionary biology can help understand historical processes. One of the major case studies is a new interpretation of the Industrial Revolution, where the emphasis moves from English exceptionalism and ingenuity, to the importance of the evolution of cotton - both before and after domestication - in the New World. It turns out that New World cotton has a different genotype from Old World varieties, enabling extra-long staples, or threads, that can be woven by machine without breaking. In other worlds, New World cotton had to arrive in Lancashire in order for it to be worth anyones while to invent the machines that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. A Discovery of Witches was quite different. It is paranormal fantasy, set in a world that is identical to ours except that in addition to humans, there are three races of "creatures" - witches, daemons and vampires. The author, like her heroine, is a historian of science, specialising in the early modern period (that, in retrospect, is why her name was familiar), and the first scene takes place in the Bodleian Library, consulting a 17th-century alchemical manuscript.

On March 20th it snowed, for the last time this winter. Despite that, next day we went to the National Arboretum. Very little was actually in bloom yet, apart from crocuses and snowdrops, but we still managed to spend a long time there, enjoying the first warm sunny day in a very long time. We were all very impressed by the extensive bonsai collection, some of which - presents from the Japanese government - are hundreds of years old. My favourite, though, was a pear tree, which was blossoming. You could smell the pear blossoms as soon as you entered that part of the display, and it took a while to realise where the scent was coming from. As well as the usual Japanese trees, as you can imagine there were also native American trees that had been trained into bonsai. The bald cypress (complete with knees) that we had seen full size in the South Carolina swamps in December was very cute!

I have also had my second sewing lesson, in which I learned to make pyjama shorts (which most of you saw me wearing to clean the house). It was a very simple pattern, and I was surprised at how easy it was to sew a more-or-less straight line even over longer distances. I imagine that this feeling was very much influenced by the fact that the previous night, I had cannibalised one pair of S's tracksuit bottoms to make knee patches for another - which involved sewing two pieces of knit fabric (much stretchier and less stable than the woven material I'd used in my previous lesson) AND having to scrunch each pant leg beyond the needle, so as to actually be able to access the knees! The result is not something that I would wear out of the house, but S seems very pleased.

The next day I set off to Conway, South Carolina, where I participated in a colloquium on Coastal Carolina University on disease and society throughout the ages. I spoke for 20 minutes on the image of the pharmacist in medieval Egypt according to non-medical sources (this was basically a section of my dissertation, so I really did not have to prepare very much, apart for looking for images for my PowerPoint). Another speaker discussed the day of thanksgiving in February 1872 celebrating the Prince of Wales' recovery from typhoid, and what that can teach us about the construction of disease and the construction of empire at that time, while the last one spoke on her experiences as a medical anthropologist working in Sierra Leone during the outbreak of Ebola last summer and after she returned to the USA. I learned a lot from both talks and my own one seemed to fascinate the audience (I think my accent did too - most people once again assumed I was British). Coastal Carolina was formerly a two-year college and is now reinventing itself as a four-year university, including graduate programs, with the help of which they hope to increase enrolment by 50% over the next five years. A very different world from the research universities I've been to up to now. The conversation at dinner was fascinating: I was the only non-South Carolinan, as the other speakers were from the College of Charleston and CCU, respectively. A lot of time was spent on the local sailing options, and whether it was was better to own a boat or to belong to a club and have use of one when you wanted. invited by Eliza Glaze, a thoroughly nice person whom I met last July at the Leeds conference. I hope I will be able to host Eliza in Jerusalem some day. Not only did she fully fund the trip, she also sent S a box of comics abandoned by her teenage son when he left for college, and is planning to send us a box of South Carolina delicacies to make up, as she put it, for missing a trip to Charleston. As I had an almost absurd amount of free time, I took advantage of the spa packages offered by my hotel, and had a facial and head/arms/foot massage in the morning before I gave my talk. It was a nice surprise to be told that I clearly take care of my skin, seeing as I haven't had a facial in ten years or so, and especially after all the teenage years of being scolded for having oily skin and blackheads.

I got back from South Carolina to a terrifying cold snap, and to ADC's cousin from San Francisco and his family - none of whom had really sufficiently warm clothes. Fortunately I could lend LC a scarf, but the others had to shiver (well, mainly JC - the little boys seemed quite happy). The main thing we did with them was go out to St Michaels, an almost self-consciously quaint village on the far side of the Chesapeake Bay, which involved crossing the local Bay Bridge. A and S had fun riding in the rented van, while LC enjoyed riding with us, without any children. St Michaels was rather reminiscent of Zichron, with the same kind of boutique-y shops and restaurants. We had crepes and hot chocolate for lunch, after a freezing walk (it was about 10 degrees, and windy) through the town to the old harbour. After lunch the weather warmed up considerably - mainly because the wind had dropped - and we walked in another direction, admiring the nineteenth-century houses. Owning a house like that is a full-time hobby, I should think. Many of them looked as I would imagine the houses in Anne of Green Gables would have looked, except with electricity instead of gaslight.

I didn't really get to spend much time with JC and LC this time, as I was away for so much of the time there were here, but it was clear that the four boys picked up from where they left off at Thanksgiving, and no doubt will do the same in August, when we get to San Francisco, the same way they picked up where they left off with GG and AG just before we left Israel. I should add that we now have firmer plans for the summer: ADC got approval for two weeks at Friday Harbor Labs, from July 10-24, and we are flying back to Israel on August 7 - so we have two weeks to get down to San Francisco and spend time there.

The busy week continued with a fascinating seminar at Johns Hopkins on the matatu minibuses of Nairobi on Monday, and finally, my talk on Galen at Rutgers on Tuesday (it was postponed from January due to snow). My talk, which I had been a bot worried about, as I had no idea what to expect from the audience, was very well received. The Q&A afterwards was very different from The Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton: most of the audience were Europeanists, and I was forced to admit that not only was everything after 1500 rather fuzzy, so was everything west and north of Istanbul (except for Spain). I had decided not to stay over in New Brunswick, and got home at 11:00 at night, having made by that time significant progress on my cardigan.

All that academia was great fun, but rather exhausting, which is why I did not write this letter on Wednesday and send it out before Pesach. Since then, I've been dividing my time between cleaning the house and completing the editing of a dissertation that had to be submitted immediately after Pesach. Since I will be away most of next week, and in any case my client needed time to reread everything, ask questions, and print it out, that took up most of my time the last few days. The dissertation was very interesting, on the sacred stones of Jerusalem in the Crusader period from an art-historical point of view. It is nice having a non-university client from time to time, as I finished that on Thursday and have already been paid!

It has been blizzarding for the past five hours as I begin to write this letter, and ADC and the boys are baking a cake together, after a morning spent playing board games and Skypeing family. It seems that here, too, winter only begins after Christmas, and February is the coldest and wettest (well, snowiest) month).

So, what have we been doing? It seems like a very long time ago that we went to the National Gallery of Art, but really it was only two weeks ago. We had a great time there, beginning with a special exhibition of eighteenth-century American furniture. There were some really lovely pieces there. I particularly liked the the ladies' worktables, which had a soft-sided basket below where unfinished knitting/sewing/embroidery could be left when it wasn't being worked on. I could really use something like that, as I have been knitting a lot - I've made a hat, neck warmer and hand warmers for myself, finally completed GB's vest and sent it off, and almost finished my mother's legwarmers-for-next-winter in the past six weeks, almost entirely on the weekends. We then went to the sculpture galleries, which were most impressive and then had lunch. To our surprise, lunch was excellent and very good value for money: $14 for ravioli or roast chicken or a trio of salads AND the receipt gave a 10% discount at the museum gift shop. ADC and I bought mugs - his in the shape of a camera, mine with a Qing dynasty pattern, based on a vase that I had stood in front of and admired for several minutes in the exhibition of French pre-revolutionary rooms - and S bought coloured pencils. We finished the day by going to a special exhibition on Piero di Cosimo, and a quick look at nineteenth-century American landscapes and portraits. We will have to go back to look at the American material properly.

The following week, ADC went to Connecticut for three days, to give talks at Trinity College and UConn-Storrs, where he saw snow six feet high, and everyone used snow tyres. This was good mental preparation for the last week or so: After a day for ADC to recuperate, we set on last Sunday midday for West Virginia. We decided to celebrate President's Day and the long weekend by going to stay at a B&B - the first English-style B&B we have found here. The plan was not to do anything too energetic, because the forecast was for extremely cold weather, and to stop at a steakhouse in Front Royal where we had bought excellent wine on the way back from our previous stay in a cabin in the woods. We set off later than we had originally intended last Saturday (only a week ago!), as we waiting for the wind to die down so we could clear the driveway and put down salt before setting off. It took us nearly three hours to reach the Breath of Heaven B&B outside Peterburg, WV, and as we got higher and higher the temperatures dropped - but there seemed to have been less snow there than there had been in Maryland. The geology of WV seems to be quite different from Maryland the rocks were a different colour) and we saw several frozen springs, that at other times of the year would have trickled down the mountainside.

The B&B itself was lovely. We had the upper floor - two bedrooms and a bathroom - to ourselves. Everything was beautifully set out, and the decorations included a guitar and a banjo, which ADC and S jammed on for a good half an hour, before we went back downstairs to the main room, where we were plied with tea and homemade chocolate chip cookies by Geri and Ed, our hosts. This was very lucky, because when we set out for supper, the only places we found open were fast-food joints, and we took Dairy Queen over Macdonald. We retreated to the B&B and played a card game, Duco, that we bought from its developer at I-Con last year. That was very enjoyable, although I think that A should have a time limit on his turns ... Once we finished that, we finally took out the art puzzle that we bought at the MFA in Boston. We decided to recreate Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the isle of La Grande Jatte from 130 cubes, as it looked like the easiest of the six choices. It took all four of us just over an hour, but our hosts were also fascinated, and took down the name of the puzzle, since they have grandchildren who are keen on art.

Next morning we began the day with crepes, scrambled eggs and toast (and bacon and sausage), and met the other guests, who included an American journalist working for an English-language Russian newswire in DC (kind of a mirror image of ADC's cousin who used to work for Dow Jones in Moscow), who had previously covered the Middle East, including spending a couple of years in Iraq. We stayed away from directly discussing politics, apart from agreeing that anywhere else in the world was probably less crazy. After breakfast, we decided to book another few days during spring break, when it would be warmer and we would actually be able to go on some of the very interesting-looking hikes in the area. The forecast at the time was for snow to begin "in the evening" and move south, so we decided to stick with our original plan and visit the Smokehole Caverns - a stalactite cave which remains a balmy 13 degrees Celsius year round (I remind you that it was at most 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside at the time - the oranges that we left in our car overnight had frozen). The drive to the caverns was very scenic, and full of riverside cabins advertising trout fishing and honeymoon suites. We got to the site as the giftshop opened (we stocked up on jams, but decided to pass on the moonshine), and had a semi-private tour of the cave: just us, and a young couple from Calhoun, WV. The guide was quite excited to hear that we were from Israel; we are probably the most far-flung tourists they've had in a while. The stalagtites were very impressive, and much more active than any other such cave I've been in: I was dripped on several times during the 40 minutes or so that we were inside. As we came out of the cave,just after 11:00, it began snowing, and it was clear that the storm had arrived ahead of schedule. We got into the car and began our journey home, that ended at about 6 p.m. First of all, we debated how best to get back to the main highway to Virginia and Maryland, and ended up driving on a section of the WV-55 that was still partially under construction and thus little travelled. The road was covered with ice, and ADC went down to second gear; the "Runaway truck ramp" signs did nothing to improve my peace of mind and I may have actually prayed for a few minutes. At one point the car told us that it was 5 degrees Fahrenheit (= -15 in real money) outside. It seemed like forever before we saw signs for Moorefield and Petersburg again ... we stopped at a petrol station to refuel ourselves and the car: there was no way we were going to go to Front Royal. We got back to DC in time for the evening rush hour to begin, although presumably the fact that it was a federal holiday made things easier, and were lucky to reach the supermarket while there was a brief respite, so that we didn't have to dig the car out of the parking lot. Next morning, Tuesday, was a snow day, of course, and on Friday (yesterday) the boys started school late due to the dangerous cold: -15 before wind chill. ADC didn't go to work, either, as he had really suffered walking to and from the Metro on Thursday. It's now after supper, and the snow has begun to give way to icy rain. Hopefully this will wash away the snow covering the car, so we can possibly go to the farmer's market tomorrow.

On Thursday night ADC and I began to take advantage of the cultural opportunities afforded by a big city, and went to see a fringe production of The Tempest, with an all-female cast. The actors were excellent, especially Miranda/Tirinculo (apart from Prospero and Alonso, each person played two characters). I thought that having the same person play Ariel and Caliban was inspired (although I had thought that there were scenes in which the two interact, but I suppose that these were cut). The play was performed in an arts centre in a DC residential neighbourhood, and we sat in what called a "theater in a box", and what I would call theatre in the semi-round. The two island sprites were constantly in movement both on the stage and on the steps alongside the audience's seats, where some of the action also took place. It is quite amazing the difference that changing a costume and a hairstyle can make - and I had forgotten how idiotic Shakespeare makes teenage girls seem. We drove home in driving snow. I had to scramble through snow to get into the car (the driver side is next to the cleared street, while the passenger side is next to the pavement, of course, and my boots - while remaining dry inside - did not hold up to the cold. I think that my mother made the right decision not to come visit at the beginning of March - the forecast is for another arctic blast late next week and more snow and ice next weekend. I am looking forward to winter being over, and cannot say how glad I am that we did not go to Boston, say, for sabbatical.

Being somewhat housebound, we have been watching quite a lot of movies. We saw Singing in the Rain on the snow day after returning from West Virginia, and agreed that The Sound of Music was a better film - because it had a bit more plot, and the songs advanced it, rather than being showstoppers, as in SitR. It was still very enjoyable, though, and an important part of the children's ongoing education in classic films (we have booked tickets for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Folger Theater in May, so will have to see Hamlet before that. Any thoughts on whether the Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson or Kenneth Branagh version is preferable? I think that the Laurence Olivier one will be too stagey for the boys). Today we watched Last Action Hero, which I don't think I had seen before. It had surprising similarities to the film Ariel and I watched last night, Adaptation - both deal with the relationship between films and reality, sometime literally breaking the fourth wall. I don't want to say anything more about it, as it should be seen when you have no idea what is going to happen. We also saw a few episodes of classic Star Trek last week on Netflix; so far, our favourite is The Trouble with Tribbles. A and S are finding the 60s imagining of the future quite fascinating.

Stay warm, everybody!

This post is bracketed by snow: The first serious snowfall of the season occurred almost immediately after we returned from the south. While ADC was enjoying Florida, the boys had a snow day after one day back at school. The day before yesterday (January 27), as I set off for Princeton, they had another one. My talk at Rutgers has been postponed to March, due to the storm - which in the event didn't affect places south of New York as much as was forecast. Still, it would have been difficult to get to Rutgers (even leaving in the afternoon, it took longer than usual to get to Princeton, as the commuter rail was far less frequent. I ended up taking a bus from Trenton, where I was the only passenger most of the time, and the only non-person of color all of the time.

Going back, on January 9 I spent the morning with my cousins SG and her sister JG, who was visiting from London. We visited Kreeger House, formerly the home of David and Carmen Kreeger, that was specifically designed to set off their collection of art, which ranges from the Impressionists onwards. There were some very lovely pieces there, and I was sorry that it was too cold too see the sculpture garden properly: the grounds were covered with snow, making many of the sculptures inaccessible. It was nice spending time with JG, who I hadn't seen since we lived in Cambridge, and she brought Smarties for the children, which they are taste-testing in comparison with M&Ms.

Last weekend was Martin Luther King Day, and the boys had a day off school for teacher training. With a four-day weekend, we decided to set off for New York. We stayed in a mid-town hotel, the Grand Union, that suited our needs perfectly. Unfortunately for us, it is about to be renovated and will probably be priced above our means when it reopens (We were told this by a lady we met in the lift, who has been staying their for decades whenever she visits New York. She also identified the neck warmers that were all wearing as having been home knitted, and complimented me on my work!). But in the meantime, it was very pleasant, and had really excellent croissants at breakfast.

We arrived in New York on Saturday afternoon, and almost immediately went off to the High Line park, before it got dark. We were expecting a place where you could see views of New York from above, and were severely underwhelmed by what we found. Ignoring the fact that it was freezing there, the view was completely blocked by a variety of high rise buildings going up. I think that even if we had gone at a warmer time of year, this is a place that New Yorkers appreciate, rather than visitors. After recovering with large bowls of hot chocolate, we took the subway to the Guggenheim, which has semi-free entry on Saturday evenings. We stood in a fast-moving line for a while, and had a restorative experience once we got inside. Only part of the museum was open, because they were between exhibitions, but there was just the right amount of art for us to look at. We saw an exhibition of early Kandinsky, another of the Justin Tannhauser collection (some really lovely Impressionists), and of a modern Indian painter, Gaitonde. Interestingly, even before looking at the labels, it was clear that this was Indian-influenced art. We then returned to the hotel and ate at a neighbourhood Korean restaurant, which specialized in dumplings. We had fried and boiled vegetarian dumplings as starters, and I liked them better than most Chinese dim sum I've had. In fact, after this trip, I have come to the conclusion that Chinese is my least-favourite Asian cuisine. It's simply the worst option for vegetarians, it seems to me.

On Sunday we experienced possibly the worst weather so far: freezing, driving rain. We went to Queens, to see the street in Rego Park where my parents-in-law grew up, and were thoroughly soaked. Even the best coat has a limit - and we also walked through slippery slush, which was quite scary since I felt that my boots were not really up to the job ... Had the weather been better, we might have considered knocking on the door and seeing if we could see the inside of the houses, but we felt that we could not drip over the furniture of complete strangers. We then continued to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we tried to meet up with another cousin, OC, and her family. Unfortunately, museums are not really a good place to meet up unless your children are exactly the same age. We did manage to talk a bit, when the children were all involved in activities, but most of the time we were going though the exhibitions at different speeds. S was in heaven, and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We spent over 5 hours in the museum, first at a special exhibition on Chuck Jones, who directed most of the Looney Tunes cartoons, and then at the permanent exhibition, which described the development of all aspects of movies and television, from actors, scripts and costumes, through special effects, make-up and merchandise, to different kinds of cameras and screens. The children experimented with stop-motion animation and played Pacman on an arcade machine. ADC and I particularly enjoyed two collages of famous scenes and famous words from the movies, trying to identify as many as possible. Just watching all the movies in those collages would be an education in classic film. We tentatively agreed to meet OC after supper (they left the museum much earlier than we did), and we even ate at an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side - not the one they recommended, though - but by the time we finished, we were too exhausted to be sociable, and went home without seeing them again. I hope we will be able to find another occasion, but if not, we are all going back to Israel in the summer, and apparently they are considering moving to somewhere in the Jerusalem hills.

On Monday the weather was much better, and we spent the day on the Lower East Side. We began by taking the Staten Island Ferry back and forth to see the Statue of Liberty. ADC and I had been to the Ellis Island Museum when ww visited New York in 1996, and we decided that the Tenement Museum would be more enjoyable for the children. We booked two tours - a walking tour, at 2 p.m., and a house tour, at 4:45. Before the tours, we met ADC's cousin (we have so much family here it's unbelievable) LS, who took us to a Chinese place for lunch (which was where I came to the conclusion above. It was't that the food was bad, it was just boring. There were about 3 vegetarian options in a list of lunch specials that ran to close to 30, one of which was plain steamed vegetables.) Anyway, it was very nice to see LS again, she seemed to be enjoying her life. The Tenement Museum tours were for me the highlight of our trip (thank you, Daddy, for suggesting it). The walking tour was led by a woman originally from the Netherlands, who had come to New York to study American history, and the group was multi-ethnic. We saw many different styles of buildings, three synagogues (one still working - the Romaniote Kehillat Kodesh Janina, one that is now Seventh-Day Adventist church, and one - the Erster Varsha - that is now a sculptor's studio. I wonder which alternative the founders of the congregations would have considered worse), a Chinese temple to the god of wealth and business, and walked through a few different parks, of which the largest was the Sarah D. Roosevelt park, named after FDR's mother, parts of which have been taken over by the community, in one case for a community garden like we have in Beit Hakerem, and in another case by Chinese men who bring their birds to socialise in a specific spot. The tour ended up at the Essex Street Market, but unfortunately for us, many of the food places were already closed. We had some time between the two tours,so we backtracked to a cupcake bakery I had spotted, and had amazingly good cupcakes and hot chocolate, before going to learn about life in garment production in the Lower East Side. The Tenement Museum offers a number of building tours, we took the Sweatshop Workers ("Pay a visit to the Levine family's garment workshop and the Rogarshevskys' Sabbath table at the turn of the 20th century, when the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place in the world. Explore how immigrants balanced work, family and religion at a time of great change.") This time, the guide and all the participants were clearly Jewish, and had ancestors who had lived in similar tenements. We saw a census from 1900, and all the names there were from ADC's family album. There was even a brother and sister called Fanny and Abraham, just like his grandmother and her brother. The census was fascinating in and of itself: the difference between children who had been born in the old country and had gone to work on arrival contrasted with the American-born siblings, who were in school or college; the men all spoke English and could read and write, while this was not true of all the women. We were there in the late afternoon, and the Levines' back room which served as a sweat shop was already quite gloomy. I was very impressed by the weight of the coal press - no wonder a man was employed to press the garments! I would have liked more time to wander around the other rooms, especially the Rogarshevsky family's other rooms, which we got to see only quite briefly. We did see, however, a special additional prayer that women would say while lighting candles, in which they hoped that their family would be able to earn a living while being able to observe Shabbat - as people moved from backroom sweatshops where the owner knew you and was most likely Jewish himself, to factories that had to abide by New York state blue laws forbidding work on sundays, it became more difficult to keep Shabbat, and for many people this was a serious problem. The last thing we did there was hear an oral history, taken from an elderly lady who had lived in the building, Josephine Baldizzi (her family's story is the subject of a different tour). She described how she would be called to light lamps on Saturdays, and how proud she was that she was able to help by doing that. All in all, it was very moving, and I'm glad the boys are old enough to have enjoyed it, too.

Our last day in New York was spent at the American Museum of Natural History. One of the perks of ADC's job is having friends at all the major natural history museums, and not only were we able to get in for free, we saw an IMAX show and a special exhibition for free, too, thanks to the curator of invertebrate zoology. We didn't have enough time at the Museum. We saw the dinosaur exhibition, which is very up to date, and which was a must because the Smithsonian's dinosaur hall is being refurbished, then hurried to the IMAX. I felt that we could have done without this, in retrospect, but S really wanted to see it: "Tiny Giants" was a heavily anthropomorphised story of the challenges facing chipmunks and grasshopper mice, which I found a bit too cutesy. After that we went to the special exhibition on natural disasters, Nature's Fury, which was really quite scary. I am very glad I don't live in the tornado corridor of the central USA. By the time we were done there, we had to start counting down to catching the train home and we went to see the dioramas of American nature. I think I saw a (stuffed) real road runner for the first time, and I was surprised at how different they were from the Beep-Beeps we had seen on Sunday. We nearly missed the train home, since for the first time we approached Penn Station from street level, rather from within the subway system, and we had difficulty finding the right entrance. Luckily, with a burst of speed we made it, and we even managed to sit together.

ADC stayed on in New York to give talks at the AMNH and at NYU, and by the weekend, we were all exhausted - besides, it was supposed to snow then, too. We spent a peaceful weekend, without leaving the house. On Saturday KM and his family came to visit from Baltimore. The plan was to eat cholent and then go to a museum, but by the time we finished lunch (this involved a 45 minute break while vanilla soufflé was prepared and baked), the four boys were resistant to going anywhere and they spent the afternoon playing board games in the basement, joined at one point by their fathers, while AM and I talked and played with baby CM.

On Sunday, the main thing we did was watch The Sound of Music, which was surprisingly long, and very enjoyable. S has been singing bits and pieces of "The hills are alive" and the Do-Re-Mi Song ever since. Both boys had fun pointing out the tropes while we were watching. I completed the back of GB's vest over this weekend, and I will finish it - seaming and neck/armhole bands - after I get back from Princeton. [In the meantime, the vest has been completed and sent to Tel Aviv.]

Princeton was really fun. Sabine Schmidtke picked me up from the bus stop and I slept over in her enormous house - where she lives alone most of the time, as her partner works for the World Bank and spends Monday to Friday in Washington. I had lunch with Patricia Crone!! I still can't get over it, it was so thrilling to actually meet someone whose books have blown my mind. When I was practically learning some of them by heart for my MA exam, I never thought that someday I would actually meet the author. She was delighted to hear that ADC and his father had read and enjoyed her book Pre-industrial societies. the talk itself went well, I thought. Heinrich von Staden, a classicist who specialises in Galen, came too, and I nearly had a panic attack. But he was very kind about my lack of Greek, and thought that I was doing interesting work, so that was great. He had to leave before the end of the session, and after he left, the others asked questions more focused on the Arabic texts I was using, and I came away withholds of ideas for going forward.

It took a long time to get home. The train from Trenton to Washington was half an hour late, and I think went more slowly than usual so that I arrived home a good hour later than I had expected. I got a lot of knitting done, though. Luckily I brought it along, as I finished my book while still at Trenton. No more travelling for me for the next month or so - I'll be glad for some weekends at home.

It's been so long since I updated here ... probably because all the festivities have meant more frequent Skypeing with Israel.

It is already three weeks ago that we went to the National Mall, finally. A has been reading a book on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln for a book report, so we aimed for the Lincoln Memorial. On the way, we went through the World War II Memorial, and on the way back we went through the Korean War Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial. All the memorials were impressive and moving. The World War II Memorial has two arcs surrounding a central fountain. The eastern side is devoted to the European theatre, and the western one to the Pacific theatre, and right at the back is the Wall of Stars, with a gold star representing each thousand Americans who fell in WWII - I can't remember the precise number, but it is slightly less than those that died in the Civil War. When you consider who much smaller the population was in the 1860s compared to the 1940s, it really hits home quite how bloody the Civil War was, making this a fitting preparation for the Lincoln Memorial. It was very interesting to read the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Speeches, from which we all know a few phrases. I can't imagine any current-day politician using such complex sentence structures, and being remembered, rather than mocked. At the Korean War Memorial there was a group of veterans having their photographs taken with their families, all white, while at the MLK Memorial, all the families having their pictures taken were black.

The rest of that weekend was very social. After returning home from the Mall, we recrossed DC to Arlington, where ADC's host D was having a barbecue for his group. Very nice people, and D has a wonderful library, with a section devoted to spycraft and cryptography, so of course I said I would give him an e-print of my article on medieval Middle Eastern cryptography. I don't often get the chance to offer my articles to ADC's colleagues! Next day was spent in Baltimore, finally getting together with KM and AM as a family. The four boys, as usual, acted as if they had never been parted. After lunch, we had a great time just hanging out at their house, while CM, the baby, had her nap, and then we went to the harbour, where ADC took the three older boys on a paddle boat in the shape of a purple sea serpent.

Rosh Hashana was once again supper with the Ps on the first night, followed by supper with the Gs on the second night. Both evenings were very enjoyable, in their different ways - the Ps chaotic as usual (and with two cakes for dessert, to S's delight; A was more excited about the green beans - IP prepared 5 pounds, and A and YP ate most of that). At the Gs, we met their younger daughter J, who is also at the State Department, and who was very quiet. H was very happy to explain the American system of government to A, who is learning about the American Revolution (he's just had a quiz on the French and Indian War, and I must say that I never expected to know so much about the importance of the Ohio River). G was very pleased to hear about S's ukelele, and made him promise to bring it with next time we visited.

The boys had school on Friday, breaking up a long weekend, and then we had a strenuous couple of days. We spent Saturday at the Shenandoah Valley National Park, listening to The Seeger Sessions on the way - the same way we used to listen to Songs from the Wood in England in the spring. We had planned a route for a hike, and were shocked to arrive and discover that the relevant parking lot was tiny and completely full! We ended up walking along a random section of the Appalachian Trail, and enjoying ourselves, but overall it was a bit disappointing. We also saw lots of farm stalls on our way to Shenandoah, but on our way back, taking a different route, there were none. So, next day, on our way to Calvert Cliffs State Park on Chesapeake Bay, we stopped at the first farm stall we saw, and bought - among other things - corn that was still wet with dew, and red potatoes to make mashed potatoes for S's first birthday meal. Calvert Cliffs was great. We had been warned of insect bites, since it is a wetland caused by beaver dams, so we worn long pants and covered arms, necks and face with both Sano-Dy and Autan. This proved to be a successful strategy, as no one was bitten at all. We didn't see any actual beavers, only dams, but we saw terrapins, herons, water lilies and cardinal flowers. We took a meandering path to the beach, which is a major fossil site, where the boys paddled in the water and collected shells.

The next two days were spent on field trips - A went to Annapolis on Monday and S went to Mount Vernon on Tuesday. It sounds like S definitely had a better time, since he returned clutching the visitor's map and insisting that we should go there again as a family, whereas A came back and announced that there was no need to go to Annapolis. Tuesday also saw the beginning of S's birthday celebrations, which are not yet over, in fact, as I think that some presents have not yet arrived. So far, he has received a ukelele and accessories from both sets of grandparents, a video camera from his parents, earphones from A and games from his uncles and aunts etc. Everything has been received with gratifying enthusiasm, almost as much as the two birthday meals - breaded chicken with mashed potatoes on Tuesday and home-made pizza with green olives on Wednesday. The birthday cake was brownies, as we discovered too late that we had no cake pans. Can cupcakes be baked in the paper cups without a pan to support them? We weren't sure, and decided not to experiment, but brownies can be made in pyrex dishes, of which we have a plethora.

Yom Kippur felt rather strange, as it always does for me outside Israel. A and I went to hear Kol Nidre at the Adas Israel Conservative synagogue, one of the biggest in Washington, which has a free outdoor service. It rained on and off, during an abbreviated service (as usual, I was not happy with what was left out and would have chosen to keep other piyyutim), that still managed to go on for nearly an hour and a half until it started raining so hard that we were allowed into the synagogue building. At that point there were about 3 pages of the photocopied handout left, so we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated to the Red Line and took the metro home. Next day, the rest of the family enjoyed a fry-up and joined the IPs for their traditional Yom Kippur hike, this time to Sugarloaf Mountain. I stayed at home, read the machzor and knitted. In retrospect, seeing as a cold snap started, and I normally walk to and from Hod ve-Hadar twice while fasting, in much higher temperatures, I probably could have participated in the hike. When everyone got home, we watched The Incredibles, and then rejoined the IPs for breaking the fast. We met several nice families there, one of which has two boys - one of whom is in A's US History class, and the other will be in flag football with him. ADC and I spent quite a lot of time talking to the parents, so we have probably made new friends.

As I said, we are having our first cold snap, and yesterday (Sunday) we all left home wearing sweatshirts. We spent most of the day at the Takoma Park Street Festival, which incorporated our weekly market shopping. Music played on three different stages, and there were all kinds of stalls, selling a wide variety of gift-like things. I bought a pair of purple glass earrings, ADC bought two serious handmade wooden cutting boards, we bought two ceramic bowls and the boys jointly bought a Lego set. I ate a vegan crab sandwich, with coconut meat instead of crab - obviously, I have no idea how close it was to the original but it was tasty!

Knitting update: Since the last time I wrote, I completed a baby sack and matching hat for my newest cousin, in New York. 20140928_084437