I haven’t posted for a while, and since Jeremy comes home for the summer tonight, I thought I should write something quickly. I did take some photos of knitting projects, but they are out of date already, so I’ll just say in passing that the Polka Purl Dot tank is complete except for belt straps and blocking, and my dad’s vest is making good progress, almost to the armholes on the front.
Weekend Update
The past few weekends have been much more action-packed than I’ve been used to of late. Last weekend I went out for a long trek around town: I finally visited the public library, explored a bit downtown Salem and saw an old steam engine train by Riverfront Park, and then wandered around Saturday Market and bought some plants.
This past weekend, I went to a small Sheep to Shawl Festival at Mission Mill Museum, and got to meet sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and an angora bunny that made me miss Baron Von Fluff. I watched a sheep being sheared, and saw a whole bunch of people spinning yarn, but exercised a great deal of restraint and bought nothing. On Saturday evening I walked to the Reed Opera House downtown, in the pouring rain, hoping to go see a play through the Salem Repertory Theater. It turned out that show and all the remaining ones were sold out, but by hanging around, I managed to get ahold of a Sunday evening ticket via cancellation, so the next day I walked back downtown in much nicer weather.
The play is “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” and I saw it performed once before, in my senior year of high school in Denver. I remembered it as being the funniest play I have ever seen, and it didn’t disappoint the second time around. It is put on by only three actors, at a frantic pace, as you might imagine: dressing up in one costume after another, condensing and combining 37 plays. The play does have a set script—I remembered the history play football game, the 14-in-1 comedy, the Othello rap, and the Titus Andronicus cooking show—but the actors clearly had a lot of room for improvisation as well, making comments relevant to Salem and tying in current pop culture and news references. They even mentioned the Desperate Housewives finale, which was airing during the performance. The second half of the play is entirely devoted to Hamlet: fast, faster, fastest (they all immediately fall down dead), and even backwards. The actors did a fantastic, frenetic job, and it is a play I would highly recommend to anyone who has the opportunity to see it—I only wish Jeremy had been able to come home before its run ended here.