Sugar Glass and the Tooth Fairy

So last weekend was a long weekend for both Nico and I, and this is rare. We wanted to do something special. We thought we'd drive the Olympic Peninsula on Monday as a last summer hurrah and get it neatly crossed off the to-do list. But when I was telling a friend about the plan, she made a teensy tiny comment: "Oh, that's a lot of driving for one day." Hmm. It didn't make much of an impact at first, but it stuck with me and kept ringing in my ears until Sunday night, when I finally decided to Google the route and found out that it would be 8 - 10 hours. Of driving. Oh, and then the next day? I'd be getting my wisdom teeth out.

Yeah. Not so much.

So we decided to drive to Tacoma instead, which is only about half an hour away. We went to the Museum of Glass. It was pretty awesome. If you're not familiar with it, the Museum of Glass is this very cool but relatively small art museum devoted to (you catch on quick) glass. There's a cone-shaped room called the Hot Shop where you can watch glass artists actually making and working with the stuff, then there are a couple of galleries and a number of installments. Outside of the museum is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, which is like a gallery in and of itself. All of this has to do with the fact that Tacoma is Dale Chihuly's hometown.

Here's the Hot Shop as seen from across the bridge:


Here's part of the Seaform Pavilion on the bridge. These are actually looking up, at the ceiling:



And here are the Crystal Towers, which are not actually glass but are instead a synthetic (Polyvitro). They make me think of sugar crystals. If I remember correctly, actual glass would've been too heavy to achieve this:



And after that my camera crapped out, so that's all you get. No pics of the Venetian Wall or of anything inside the actual museum.

I had seen photographs of Chihuly's work before and even though I thought it was impressive I never had gotten too excited about it. I thought glass was, well, maybe just a little bit boring. Paintings I can get on board with, sculpture and photography? Sure! I just never thought that glass was that interesting. But I was wrong. I found myself pretty intensely fascinated the whole time, and it wasn't all about Chihuly either. A couple of the galleries were closed because they were in transition, but I'm looking forward to going back again. I would very much recommend this museum to anyone in the area or anyone who makes the trip out here. And if you're arriving by car? The best thing to do is get free parking at the Tacoma Dome and take the Link lightrail (also free) to University Station, walk across the Bridge of Glass and you're there. Beautiful.

And then on Tuesday I had my wisdom teeth out. They put me to sleep, which was pretty awesome. One minute they're putting the IV in the back of my hand, and the next minute I'm waking up in a dark recovery room with my mouth packed full of gauze and Nico at my side. I couldn't have asked for anything easier. Hopefully this will be my only medical adventure for the year. The oral surgeon as Tooth Fairy was easily a million times better than the podiatrist as Toe Butcher, which was last year's adventure. Eaaugh.

So, mostly all week I've just been hanging out on the couch and crunching down the Vicodin. Which I love. I finished knitting some cabled wristies for a friend in AZ:


I'm also working on a good wool garter-stitch scarf, because last winter convinced me that all those pretty, flimsy scarves that worked so well in an AZ winter? Not cutting it in the Pac NW. I have big plans for this scarf. Secret plans. Secret, secret scarfy plans. Shhh.


And I started a new sock last night. This is the Pumpkin Pie yarn I bought last fall. I want to be wearing these socks in plenty of time for pie season this year. So far it looks less like pie and more like Tigger. Oh well. I've got a good pie-like stitch pattern planned for the cuff.


And the last thing is that yesterday, I. Well. I sort of ... signed up for a sock club. Over at Cables & Lace. This was totally unplanned, because I'm supposed to be on a budget, dammit. A simple little moment of weakness. I blame the Vicodin.