buttons, bikes with bridges and burns, fairway, and a bit of knitting
Warning, this is a pretty long meandering post.
I finally made a button. It’s bad, but I’m not good at gimp. It’s currently on the sidebar mixed in with the other links. PLEASE download it to your own server if you use it. I don’t want to make htaccess links to torture you if you steal it. 
. In other button news, I’d love a 1″ button maker but they are mad expensive. Lastly, another of E’s shirts fell apart and I’m finally (at age 26) starting my own button jar. It won’t be anything like my grandmother’s or mother’s, but I do miss dumping the whole thing on the floor and sorting through it for something fun. Dress shirt buttons aren’t very fun though.
Yesterday we went for a 44km bike ride. I neglected to sunscreen a few parts of my body (the helmet will shield my forehead, why bother?) and I’m quite sore today.. from the sunburn, not from the ride. E says I’m in better shape than him. Oy, I haven’t run (seriously) in 9 years (meep) and I’m still scaring people off? I am NOT in shape people!! I would keel over and probably DIE if I attempted any of the workouts I thought nothing of 10 years ago. Anyway, IF you by chance saw an idiot slowly walking her bike over EVERY bridge on the Belt yesterday morning, that was me. I am still scared of bridges over water (only. I stopped to admire traffic while crossing over those. They don’t scare me in the least. Which makes no sense, I figure if gds forbid I fell, I would have a higher rate of surviving if I fell into the water than uhm, concrete and traffic zooming by but I digress). At the draw bridge I almost completely lost it and if there wasn’t some poor guy stuck behind us I don’t know what would’ve happened. It was a narrow bike path anyway and there was lots of loose gravel (maybe one day I’ll explain why loose gravel + me on a bike is not good, that’s a twenty year old phobia). Anyway, I was doing ok until we made it to the minder’s station on our side before the middle (it’s not a big bridge, maybe 200 meters TOTAL). There was a concrete traffic barrier there (on the path) and at the same time another biker RIDING in the opposite direction. THUS the path was even narrower. And it was a bit windy. Oh and the traffic thankfully wasn’t blowing past at 65 like it was today, but on the left-most lane there was a disabled car and someone waving a flag for people to move away from that lane. *not* good. I made it past there by some miracle and what greeted me on the path? Metal plates, not really bolted.. AND WOOD! Once we got over I got as far as I could from the bridge and stood until I stopped shaking enough to get on the bike. The guy behind us I think realized I was NOT happy, he never said a word and he stopped a distance away to readjust his bike and then went on. E did say he wasn’t very happy with the conditions and didn’t really blame me for freaking a little. I made it over MANY other bridges as we rode to Howard Beach area (even one E didn’t realize passed over water) and we took a meandering ROAD route back. I told E that there was no way I was riding back. He’d have to figure something else out. So we had fun riding. He found a few fun things to take photos of, when they are developed maybe I’ll link them. Today we drove most of that same route and I still wasn’t very happy.
E has brought me a long way as far as me + bridges. He forced me to walk over London Bridge (I cut off circulation to his hand). He took me to Venice. There is a picture of me standing on some small bridge. I couldn’t WAIT to leave. I’ve walked over the Brooklyn Bridge many times. I even did it all by myself once. Just to prove I had broken my fear. We shall see. I’m tempted to force myself to walk over it tomorrow on my way home from work but I’m not sure. There will be a nice farmer’s market waiting for me on the other side so that is very tempting.
Last night we walked 6 miles in the city to see what we could of fleet week. It was nice. On the way home we went to the new Fairway in Redhook. *DROOL*!! The kosher selection beats what I’ve seen at the Manhattan locations. They had the awesome British cheddar I love (I am looking for a sharp cheddar. Does anyone make this? all i find is mild (the british) or medium. I’d prefer for it to be cholov yisrael but it is not an absolute). They had a TON of amazing everything. The kosher bakery looks better than anything on avenue J. The prices were great, except for the cherries we bought which were (gasp) $8 a pound (or close) [we bought $3.50 worth].
Ok, back to knitting. I made some progress on the jaywalkers and am trying to knit up a bag I can use from yarn I have in stash. Which is difficult because I really love the Monk’s Travel Satchel from Interweave’s Folk Bags book but have no yarn appropriate for the task. The PDF is available here. We’ll see. I have bag lust again so we’ll see what gets made. I would like a smaller bag for lighter day to day stuff (and a sock). Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some photos to share. The jaywalker is brilliant in it’s simplicity yet stunning design. Thank you Kathy (Grumperina)!