Found Squirrels: Basket Squirrel

We went to a lovely wedding this weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'll have to put up the rest of the pictures from the wedding on Facebook when I get a chance, but I wanted to share my squirrel sighting from that wonderful day.

This little guy was carved into the basket of hand towels in the restroom at the reception venue. And let me tell you, it was not easy finding a moment alone in the restroom to get a picture of it. I spent at least two hours running back and forth to the restroom trying to get a photo (and let's be honest, I was drinking beer too so there were many reasons for the many trips).

Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn

So I'm a little behind in keeping this thing up-to-date. We visited Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn a few weekends ago. It's apparently quite famous, and has lots of famous dead people interred there (I think most of them were historic sports celebrities, and I'm just really not familiar with them). It was a VERY nice cemetery, probably the nicest I've ever been to. It was filled with trees, green grass, and lots of squirrels.

They have lots of great sculpture, and tons of family mausoleums dating back to the early years of New York City. I love peeking into the mausoleums for some reason. Some of them have chairs and flowers scattered about so you know people have been there in the last six months. And some look like they haven't been opened in decades.

But, as I said, the sculpture was awesome. They just don't make cemeteries like this anymore, it seems! And maybe I'm particularly entranced by it because where I great up nearly all the cemeteries just had the flat headstones, and they were nearly all the same. I was told this was to make mowing the lawn easier, but I'm not sure that's true. Anyone have any insight into this? Is it just the cost?

I did notice that in this cemetery, as in many cemeteries out here on the East Coast, there are big family plots, and a big family plot usually calls for a large and costly monument of some sort. Seems to me that back in Eastern Washington even if a family does have a whole plot, everyone still gets their own headstone and there isn't necessarily a large, shared monument. What sort of zany conclusions about culture can I draw from this?

Anyway, there were a ton of squirrels, but I didn't manage to get any squirrel pictures. We did walk on Nut Path for a bit, which was quite exciting for me.

This is still not a knitting blog.

So I recently took up crocheting, which seems (at least in knitting circles) to be the older, dirtier, and less popular sister of knitting. I kind of like it, because it's REALLY easy and moves along very quickly. I finished my first crocheting project a few weeks ago, a sushi scarf!

When rolled, it looks like a nice maki roll, with fish on the inside, caviar around that, and some sort of green thing (avocado? celery?) stuck in there. Of course, when you unroll it it just looks like some crazy color-blind person's crochet project.

Yeah, not very attractive. I made it for my friend M (of the swing blog; you remember him) who loves sushi and give it to him when he was here a few weekends ago. I do not expect him to actually wear it, for the record. It was a great first crochet project, and I think it's pretty awesome.

The pattern can be found here if anyone is interested.

Governors Island

Well last weekend B and I went out to Governors Island with a small group of friends. Governors Island has a long history of use as a military facility, and was used as a Coast Guard station (I think that is what they call their bases?) from 1966 to 1996. It's now open to the public and accessible via a free ferry during summer weekends so we went to check it out.

The coolest part about the island is probably all the old buildings. While some of the structures are being put to use as museums or cafes or storage space, many of them are just totally abandoned, left as they were in 1996. Here's the old library on the island, neglected. (Don't cry, A!)

They have a huge range of building styles on the island! There is a large fortification called Castle Williams on one corner of the island which dates back to its earliest use as a military facility (it was covered in scaffolding when we were there so I didn't get a picture). And they have some fantastic old officer's housing, also abandoned.

They also have housing that is not... quite so stately or beautiful.

It's really cool to me, though, that this is all abandoned. Like in the picture above, they now have this chain-link fence to keep the tourists out, but if this picture had been taken 20 years ago I'm sure this area would have been crazily bustling with children and Coast Guard parents and diaper delivery trucks and whatever else happens in large buildings with lots of children. And how cool would it have been to grow up in this tiny island full of greenery and quiet, and yet be just minutes away from Manhattan? Very cool.

They have opened up the commanding officer's house, which is a nice big mansion. They've renovated it a bit, I think, but it's lovely. You can tell it was build for entertaining. And it has a great view of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Governors Island was very cool, and although I'm sad that they intend to tear down many of the old buildings, I'm excited to see what they end up doing with the island in five to ten years. It's kind of a hidden gem of the New York City area, in my opinion.

Found Squirrels: The Tudors

So we've been watching The Tudors lately, although we're only in Season 3 as we don't get Showtime and we're watching it on DVD.

Anyway, there was a squirrel in the most recent episode we watched!

This is on a dish of quail eggs that Queen Jane was enjoying at dinner with the king. I got excited and rewound the DVD just so we could see it again. And now I'm posting about it in my awesome squirrel blog, because that's how I roll.