Steam Engines, Chickens, a Band Organ, & Knitting

If you hadn't figured it out from this post or maybe this one, I love steam engines, and I usually go to the local antique engine and tractor show every year, to see what turns up.

This year, they had a pair of small steam traction engines sawing logs. Here's the first:Here's the second engine:And a view of the sawmill they were running between them:
Later in the day, they had turned the first one around, and I had to take a picture of that shiny blue paint.
Those were the little small engines, but there were bigger ones, too:
I love machinery where I can follow the logic and see how it works. And I love seeing it all so lovingly tended and kept in working order, instead of used and tossed out for next month's model.

A week later, we were off to the county fair, so I could practice my Occupation (see my Profile).


Of course, if there's anything geeky around (more geeky than figuring out the motion controls on the rides), I'll find it. I heard music and followed it to this Stinson Band Organ:Both sides of the trailer were open, so you could see the organ, and in back, the MIDI roll that controls the instruments. It was the coolest thing.

And did I promise knitting? Okay. Knitting.

My order came from Martinas Bastel- & Hobbykiste.I bought Spitzenstrickerei: Schöne Decken, ISBN-13: 978-3-89798-289-5 (five huge charts of seven Herbert Niebling designs) and Kunststricken: Decken, Garnituren, Spitzen (Bände 408 und 760), ISBN-13: 978-3-89798-269-7, reprinted this year by BuchVerlag für die Frau.

If you're not comfortable ordering direct from Germany, sometimes they show up on Powell's Books website. Powell's charges the Euro price at the current exchange rate, plus an import fee, currently $3 plus $4.50 per item.

Either way, the total price including overseas shipping ends up being about half what I've seen on other websites.

Someone reminded me that I had some older cones of size 30 cotton thread, and I pulled those out of the drawer to see what kind of shape they were in.

One was a 3000-yard cone, but it was brownish and spotted on the outside, so I went looking for a little pattern, 50 rounds or so, to use up the icky cotton on the outside and see how it knitted up.

I picked the small one on the upper left. (It's pattern 12, the upper photo on page 8, Fig. 28 if you have Bände 760.)

Nieblings always seem to have something I've never done in each one.This one has twelve yarnovers in a row to make those big holes. Ulp.

I don't know how that's going to block out, but I'll find out soon, as I only have a round or two left.

Summer Summary

So what did I do this summer, besides a little knit-a-square knitting and hardly posting at all?I worked the Broad Arrow at a little more appropriate gauge for the size of the thread I was using.

I took pictures of a tree frog in the phlox.

We went to the Binder Park Zoo and enjoyed the giraffe overlook again.The animals have so much space here. It's such a relief compared to some beat-up, tired-looking pens I've seen other places.


We dog-sat my parents' retired greyhound, Kasper, over Labor Day weekend.Kasper really enjoyed running in both sections of our fenced yard.
He liked resting on his bed afterwards, too.

On Labor Day, we got up and did the local Bridge Walk. It's nothing like the 5-mile Mackinac Bridge Walk - ours is a tiny 0.19K, led by the town crier with a brass bell and bagpipers, and with many people accompanied by their dogs.

This year as we walked back across the bridge towards our car, we heard a whistle and saw this coming down the river towards Kalamazoo Lake.We see a lot of different boats, from kayaks up to cabin cruisers and ore carriers, but this is the first steam paddleboat I've seen.


Tomorrow I'll be seeing more steam-powered machinery at the Michigan Flywheelers' Antique Engine & Tractor Show, but I'm still betting none of it will be boats!

Brain Goes Wandering

Another miscellaneous collection of stuff I've been Googling, reading, listening to

The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust is building a 50th Peppercorn Class A1 steam locomotive to enter main line service in Britain in autumn 2008.

I love steam engines in general and steam locomotives in particular. To me, the absolute coolest part of the movie version of The Polar Express was the steam locomotive. Warner Brothers based the engine on Pere Marquette Railway No. 1225, a real steam locomotive that offers rides in Owosso, Michigan.

There is absolutely nothing like watching a steam locomotive in operation, or hearing an engineer play a steam whistle. (Although the sliding-on-ice scene in Polar Express was a complete cg fantasy.) I could watch steam engine videos on YouTube allll day, but they don't capture the thunder of the engine that you get standing next to one.

When I was a very little girl, we lived next to the railroad tracks. And I do mean "next to". My parents could have thrown a stone out the window and hit the train without tossing very hard. As a baby I slept right through diesel engines rumbling by, and the three whistle crossings right nearest the house. So I guess train noises will always be comforting and not intimidating to me.

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And speaking of percussive sounds, why don't I have any Evelyn Glennie CD's?

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Submit your whale shark photos to the EcoOcean database >here<.

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Last, a question: Why is the blogosphere (among other virtual places) full of zombies lately?