Climbing Adventures

Steven and I signed up for the lead belay class at the climbing gym. It took about 2 months to get into the class, apparently they are very understaffed. For those of you who are not climbers I found this cute picture on the internet.

Lead climbing is more likely what we would be doing most with most outdoor climbing. Planet Granite has two different certifications. One for lead climbing and belaying, and the other for just the belaying. I opted out of the climbing part for now. Unlike that lovely picture above where you would fall and land on that spike of rock sticking up, most lead climbing is done on walls with overhang. I don't like those walls because they make my arms hurt too much. 

On Monday we both got our official cards. 

Not lead climbing, but Steven was accidently posing for this picture. :)

My poor shoes are dying...

Book review

I have mixed feelings about this book. It has a lot of information about a lot of things to do with food and babies. Which is in theory good, because knowing things is generally good. That being said, I have a few friends who are planning to have children in the near future and I wouldn't even think of giving it this book to them. It has so much information about so many things that could go wrong. It goes into a lot of detail about very rare allergies. For a new parent who is prone to hypochondria it would be a horrible thing to read. 

There is despite all the very likely unnecessary information about rare conditions some good information in this book. This information seems somewhat buried in all the question- answer formatting. There are some useful charts, but you can't flip through it easily to find them. It would be more useful to read while you are making your first child, than wondering what you should feed your child of X months. 

Once past the first year or so of feeding suggestions, this book turns more into a basic nutrition book. Toddlers that are eating regular food apparently have the same nutrition concerns as adults. Limit excess sugar and salt, eat vegetables... 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Book Review: Broth and Stock

My first impression of this book was not good. Based on the title I was expecting a cookbook of broths and stocks. Most of this book appears to be soups. Those do use broth and stock, but that isn't the same as making your own.

The first third of the book has useful information about broth and stocks. There is some history of it and a few a bunch of recipes for various types of broth. It was a little disappointing that all of the vegetable broths contained chicken bone broth. 

The rest of the book is just recipes. Most, but not all of these do use some amount of broth. I doubt I will be making anything from this book. There is not enough variety of recipes that it will be something I pick up when I am looking for a soup recipe. The broth recipes that it has are very basic. So I doubt that I would use it for that either. 

The most useful thing I got from this was to try adding wine when making a broth to a flavor and as an acid to bring out more nutrients.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Steven's replacement shirt arrived recently and required a trip into SF to pick it up. Last time I went for him, and didn't notice they got everything wrong when they made it. This time Steven went to check it in person. Since we were going all the way to SF we wanted to do something else while we were there. Steven suggested the SFMOMA, which happened to be within walking distance of the shirt place.

Normally when going to SF we take 101. It usually the quickest way. We were heading to do just that, and Steven noticed right before the 880N entrance that the 101 route was 45 min longer. We had enough time to change lanes. I tried looking up accidents on 101, but I couldn't find anything. There must have been something for that kind of delay. It didn't take too much longer to change routes.

Steven had found a parking garage that was in between both locations we wanted to go to and also offered 4 hours of free charging. We had originally considered taking BART to avoid dealing with parking, but it is still more expensive when you have two people. I don't understand how people can do that everyday. 

When we finished parking and were walking to the museum we found this performance of Balinese music and dancing. I'd never heard of it before, but they seem to have semi regular free performances in this area. I took a look at the schedule, and it is my opinion that we got lucky and stumbled on the most exciting one. 

Mini and Highly Biased SFMOMA Digital Tour

I will start off by saying I am not a fan of modern art. A lot of it seems completely ridiculous to be called art. A lot of it seems to not show any actual artist talent. Also this happened recently. I think it says a lot about modern art, and is also hilarious. 

Some of my favorite moments today in this museum were overhearing other people talking about things not making any sense. 

The first thing we saw was this metal sculpture. You are allowed to walk around it. It's pretty neat. I think they would frown on you actually climbing the walls, but I think it is possible on the inside areas. A friend on facebook described it as giant ski ball. I think it is an excellent description. 

This piece was untitled. I decided to name it "Cardboard Mummy Bird."

This was a funny looking statue of some guy. I have no idea if he is based on a real person or not. I wanted Steven to take my picture mimicking him. Apparently I started a trend. Two other people did the same thing while we were still in that room.

This statue is creepy. It would be much less creepy if it was on the ground. Being on the wall is not unlike a creepy horror movie. Also it had very realistic eyes, which greatly added to the creepiness.

This is a sketch of a old man vomiting. Someone spent a lot of time drawing this. It is very well done and large. 

This was my personal favorite piece of art there. I had Steven take my picture in front of it. It may become a profile picture in the near future. Despite being my favorite, I think this piece makes no sense. It is blue. Solid blue. One solid shade of blue. No special textured effects. No special completely smooth lack of texture effect. It is blue oil paint on a canvas, and nothing else. 

This next exhibit is literally a pile of dirt. It is dirt piled around a cross section of retro reflective mirrors. 

This exhibit is old cardboard boxes on a wall. There isn't really anything special or clever about it. It is just ugly boring cardboard boxes stuck on a wall.

I liked two things about this painting. First it was hung right in front of a bench. Second it has pencils. I like pencils. 

In the coffee shop I found this interactive exhibit. It has a table you put things on. Where you put things the camera located above the table can see through. Steven and I made a cute selfie. 

This is called "Woman, Sitting". It is a brown rectangle framed in a white matte. If you read the last card of the series it explains that the images are unfixed photographic prints that disappear in a few hours. So you go through all the trouble of making your own photo, and then don't finish developing it, frame it anyway and this is art? Maybe he was tired and forgot one day and went with it?

This is one of the outdoor sculpture. They are horribly mean and do not allow you to climb on this. Which is absurd, because it looks exactly like a climbing wall.

This is wool and sheep skins hung on a wall. They did sort them by color... 

Earlier we saw a pile of dirt. Now we have a circle of rocks. No fancy mirrors this time. Just rocks in a circle...

Next we have this partially tiled floor. This is not like the glasses in the article above. This is actually an exhibit. You are not allowed to walk on it despite it being a floor. It also contains lead, so that's bad.

The light fell down! Nope more art...

This is another tiled floor. This one you are allowed to walk on with shoes. No bare feet, because the silver squares are lead. Lead is bad. We stayed on the copper, just to be safe.

This is a close up shot of a permanent exhibit. The artist drew lines with pencil on the wall.

This was a neat looking thing. Not sure what it was supposed to be, but it was neat looking.

This is a photograph of people visiting the Musée d'Orsay in Paris looking at art. I made my own more complicated art by taking a picture of Steven looking at a picture of people looking at art. I should frame it and hang it next to this piece.

This is neat looking, and also near a bench. I would like this painted on my garage wall.

This lucky statue gets to take a nap. Most statues have to stand posing all day...

I guess they ran out of nails?

This is a neat hanging wire thing.

Far

Near

This was a silver ball thing displayed in a room with a strobe light. It has some sort of oozing effect. Weird, but fun to watch.

This painting is just silly. Please read the text for the full effect.

This is a sideways broken TV, apparently this is art? I personally think it is just a broken tv.

Outside they had a weird reflecting thing. It was in the sun so I didn't go inside it. Normal Steven is taken from the outside. Funny looking Steven is what you see reflected on the inside.

That is the end of my mini tour. There is a lot more to see there. 7 floors of it. Some of it even looks like it took effort. There are also some video art exhibits. There is a very suspenseful film about a bubble floating around an empty house. There is also a time lapse video of a dead bunny decaying. I think that is kind of icky and I would be happier if it didn't exist.

Latest projects, neither of which are hats.

Awhile back, probably years now, a friend in my knitting group inspired me to hunt for yarn in thrift stores. You do this by buying sweaters, and deconstructing them. It is always a mystery of what you will end up with. My first go I happened to find to brand new, matching, men's XL sweaters made of a wool cashmere blend. I bought both and made an absurd amount of yarn. I figured two sweaters should make a blanket easily. I didn't account for how much looser hand knit items tend to be. I finished the blanket 47"x53" with a lot of yarn to spare. I easily could make a big shawl and a few hats with what I have left.

The pattern I chose was called Umaro. It is a very complicated chart. Many charted patterns have you do just purling on the back side, or knit the knits and purl the purls. This one you read back and forth, and there was a cable that used two needles. At least the repeat was short so you didn't have to stare at the chart the entire time. The pattern makes a beautiful blanket, but not the most relaxing to knit. I am glad I have finished it.

Of course the cat had to lay on my project while I was blocking it. He only lays in that spot when I am blocking a knitting project...

My second project is my level 2 embroidery kit. It is another very colorful floral pattern. This level starts getting into a lot more three dimensional stitches. The white bit in the middle is very fluffy and made from about 20-25 cut loops. The green swirly parts in the middle are loops with 20 wraps around each one. Next step level 3!