wanna see what I got in Laos and Cambodia? Do ya? Huh? No? Then can I interest you in a WIP?
This’ll be a me-heavy post, so apologies for the seeming-narcissistic episode of me! Me wearing this! Me wearing that! Hi, it’s me! Enough about me, here’s a shot of my earrings…..on me! Anyway…..
I picked up a couple of small souvenirs on our recent vacation; I always buy a pair of earrings, and every time I wear them I get a rush of the place. The cool black ones I bought in Diocletian’s Palace, in Split (Croatia); the onyx and mother-of-pearl ones I bought in a little shop in Cusco; the heavy ones I bought in Udaipur, in India…such wonderful memories. This time, though, I bought two souvenirs, one from Laos and one from Cambodia.
my Khmer kroma, and Lao earrings
The scarf is called a Kroma, and you see them everywhere in Cambodia. They’re always checked, like this, and they’re quite often red. They’re always wrapped around people’s heads, to keep them cool, but they’re multipurpose items. They can be rolled into a pad and placed on your shoulder to cushion a yoke, or on your head to cushion a heavy basket; they can be used to carry babies and fruit; they can be worn around your neck, like a regular old scarf. It was the most distinctively Cambodian thing I could think of, that I could incorporate into my everyday life. I bought this at the big Central Market in Phnom Penh, and I have already worn the hell out of it.
lao earrings
These are heavy, and I’m having to train my earlobes to wear them. I’m definitely not a Buddhist (or art) scholar, so I’m absolutely guessing here, but I do wonder if there is some kind of Buddhist symbology in the design. Maybe not, but the wheel makes me wonder. I bought these in Luang Prabang, from a woman who sold her handwork on the sidewalk.
And now for the &c. Here’s where I am on my wonderful sweater (excuse my wet just-out-of-the-shower hair):
hi! look at my sweater!
(oh! see my earrings there?!) I’m at the waist now, so I’m hauling. I spent yesterday knitting, so I got a lot done. Here’s the back:
look at the pretty cables!
I’ve got another post percolating in my mind, but I probably won’t write it today. Yesterday, I watched a bunch of movies while I worked on my sweater: M, by Fritz Lang, Elf (for a complete whiplash-inducing change of pace), and three about Joseph Cambell. One of the Joseph Campbell movies was called Sukhavati, which means the place of bliss. So I’ve been thinking about a lot of the things he talked about and have something to say, but will do that later.
follow us to laos and cambodia!! here’s our travel blog -
click here to visit our travel blog!
We’re en route to Laos and Cambodia, y’all – you may not know this, but we’re good about keeping up our travel blog while we’re traveling. As long as we have a connection, we try to post every day. Pictures, stories, even little bits of video. We’ve done this for all our travel blogs – vietnam, croatia, peru, holland, honduras, india, everywhere.
We’ll land in Phnom Penh Saturday Nov 20 around 6am (NYtime), so we won’t have any posts until later that day, at the earliest. But do check in with us now and then – we’ll be seeing some amazing things and we love to share! I’ll be back to Thrum-ming on December 5.
(four words to tempt you – Thanksgiving at ANGKOR WAT)
Angkor Wat at the approach of sunset - incredible....
Choum reap lia! and La gohn! (goodbye, in Khmer and Lao) See you from the other side of the world.
xoL
i love cee-lo green, and i love brooklyn brown ale, and i love my family. wait, that’s not the right order.
- Cee-Lo Green. Maybe you caught him on The Colbert Report, singing a modified version of his big hit (replacing the “f*^ you” with “Fox News”). I’m not embedding the video here in case you’re offended by the F word (in which case don’t click his linked name….but really, you’re missing SUCH a great song, maybe you can just pretend he’s saying Fox News or something).
- Brooklyn Brown Ale – man, if you like a very hoppy beer, this one is GREAT. I don’t drink much, never more than one drink of anything, and this one will be my new go-to ale. YUM.
- anticipating my trip….I leave Thursday morning for Phnom Penh, as I keep saying. Because I am so so SO excited!!
- knitting. See posts on this blog for evidence. I don’t need to tell y’all about this one.
- Y’ALL. My friends, my deeply loved kids, strangers who just aren’t friends yet. All a y’all.
flying the great circles
Well, anyway, I’ll be flying over the North Pole when I go to Laos and Cambodia in the fall. Want to see? I’m so excited!
That leg will be 15 hours, following a Great Circle, then I’ll change planes and fly 3 hours to Phnom Penh. I’m flying Cathay Pacific, which may well be a great airline, but it’s not Singapore Airlines, which is the airline I flew to Vietnam. But I don’t care! It’ll be my 2nd flight over the North Pole, I am a very very lucky girl. Here are the specifics, once I’m there:
I just finished watching The Big Sleep and spinning – what a nice morning! I slept in so late – 9:30! – and wish the day weren’t half over, but what to do. You need a lazy day now and then, right? Now I think I’ll make some bread, my favorite ciabatta recipe, and then do some knitting, and maybe a little more movie watching. One of my goals is to see all the AFI’s top 100 films, so there’s an abundance waiting for me. I hope you’re having such a lovely Sunday too!
we’re going back to the other side of the world!!
First, this is a reservation. An actual, already-booked reservation. Here’s the legend:
- JFK = JFK airport in New York
- HKG = Hong Kong
- PNH = Phnom Penh, in CAMBODIA
We’ll be going to Vientiane and Luang Prabang in Laos; Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and Kep in Cambodia, and of course, Hong Kong as a transfer point. The blog is set up, and I’ll add information there as the itinerary firms up. For now, what I know for sure is that I’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Laos or Cambodia. Isn’t that amazing?
listen!
hard yarns and fun places to go
I had a wonderful weekend – got a lot done on the wedding dress (but not too much, since Marnie is coming for a fitting at the beginning of May), had some great food, got outside a bit, and did a bit of knitting on my blanket:
love the pattern
I do love the pattern – Totally Autumn, by Anne Hanson – it’s great fun to knit, and the scrunchy dimensionality of it is fun to touch. The yarn, though, not as much. I’m using Cascade 220 for the first time, and finding it a bit hard. Ravelry lists it as the most popular yarn, and I got it on a great sale at Webs, but it’s not soft, and the hand is a bit heavy at this point. We’ll see how it goes; it’ll be just fine for what it is, but I’m not sure I’d use this yarn for anything that needed to go against my skin.
we had joy we had fun, we had blanket in the sun
And in other news, I may just be taking an exciting trip in September. I’m not sure yet, there are some impending changes in my life that make it a little uncertain, but if I do go, here’s the masthead for that blog:
I really did love Vietnam, so much, and I’ve heard that Laos is amazing. I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope……….
back from vacation and planning the next!
……and, we’re back. Roatan was just wonderful – even better than last year, in many ways. We weren’t able to be online with any ease, so I just put up one giant post on the Roatan blog, with a flickr slideshow. It was great to be there, and kind of awful to be facing work tomorrow. I only have 235 emails, so it could definitely be worse, but I can’t bear to look at them today. Tomorrow will be soon enough.
I did a lot of knitting on vacation, partly because I had a dreadful cold the first couple of days, and there was an amazing storm for a couple of days. I finished the holey socks, and am ~75% finished with the other pair:
side view of the holey socks
holey socks, accompli!
- Pattern: Holes in my socks! By Nicole Okun
- Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi (Colorway: Beverly 209) – 2 skeins were more than enough
side view of the monkeys
looking down on the monkeys
- Pattern: Monkey, by Cookie A
- Yarn: Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks (Colorway Meadow 1518)
I’m going to try to knock out the rest of sock #2 and get them both out in the mail to Katie asap, then I need to return all my knitting time to the wedding shawl.
While we were gone, spring seems to have arrived in full force here in Manhattan! It’s sunny and gorgeous outdoors, and people seem refreshed. Today is the post-vacation normalizing for us – piles of laundry, straightening up and putting everything away, getting ready for the week.
One thing that makes it better, coming home from vacation, is that we always start planning the next one. Our current idea is to go to Laos, with a trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and maybe a side journey into Thailand, avoiding Bangkok if at all possible. Or to the degree possible, anyway. The child sex trade there is too horrifying to bear, and I don’t want to give a penny to the country that supports it. Every country supports horrors of one kind or another, and there’s little gradation between things at that far end of the spectrum, but that one in particular is unbearable for me. So we’re focusing on Laos, and trying to figure out how best to get there at a reasonable price. We loved Vietnam so much, and especially enjoyed Hanoi, so we may just make a stop there, too. Fun fun fun, anticipating and planning. It makes the coming home a bit easier.
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