Saturday we went and walked all around the Buda part of Budapest which is the part of the city on the west side of the Danube. We started out by looking for a restaurant on a street that appeared not to exist. At least not where we were looking for it. After that we hiked right up the huge steep hill to the Freedom Statue. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure we actually went to the base of the statue but we did get to the top of the huge hill.

We also went to the palace and saw a few historical things (none of which really stick in my mind). Then we decided to look for a wine tasting shop. We searched exhaustively in the area of town in which it was supposed to exist before we found out from the local tourism people that it had closed. So, we stopped for a snack and a drink before we went off to look for the duck restaurant. On the way to the restaurant we stopped and took a photo of Matthias Church.

The duck restaurant was a little restaurant sort of northish in the city, on the Buda side I think. It was clearly geared towards tourists as the pianist and violinist played tunes from popular western musicals.

Sunday we decided to visit the flatter part of Budapest, called Pest, on the east side of the Danube. We walked up to parliament and saw some statues and monuments and had lunch at an ethnic restaurant. We also saw the Basilica of St Stephen.

Later that evening we saw a musical in Hungarian and then went in search of food again and ended up at a local pub where we at pizza which I remember as being really tasty but that might be because I was again really hungry.

It is reassuring to know that despite any language differences that may exist between English and Hungarian, most of the important elements of a musical are easily identifiable: the love triangle, the overbearing father, the expendable minor character, the comedy relief character, the dream sequence that doesn't seem to quite make sense no matter how you try to interpret it, the grand finale song, and perhaps most importantly the tune of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Actually I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the musical even though the dialog was mostly wasted on me. I can sort of understand how people can enjoy opera not in their own languages, although I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it so much if it had lasted for 5 hours or if 3/4 of the plot was taken up with one really long death scene.

The most surprising element of the experience came at the end of the play when it came time for the audience to express their appreciation of the actors and musicians. It started off normally enough with the actors taking a bow and the audience clapping but once all of the actors were on stage the audience descended into synchronized clapping which slowed after the curtains were closed and then returned to the standard random clapping when the curtains opened for the second bow. This happened several times - random enthusiastic clapping, fast synchronized clapping, slow synchronized clapping, repeat of the curtain call. Why is it that Hungarian theater enthusiasts can manage to clap all together at several speeds and Christians in church can only barely manage to clap together on the off beat - or was that only something that happened during high school chapel? Anyway by the end of the applauding I was beginning to feel like we were back at the ballet but with all of the clapping moved to the end of the performance instead of at the end of every piece. Fortunately however a standing ovation does not seem to be part of the standard procedure so not to many excess calories were burned - those all had to be saved for the search for post theater snacks.

Monday we didn't have too much time so we decided to look for a local cafe that was reported to be nice in one of our tour books. We walked quite a ways down the street it was meant to be on, in the wrong direction, before we finally found it. It was worth the walk though, we had a relaxing lunch and some nice Tokaj (pronounced tokay) before setting off for the airport. The tokaj was an especially pleasant surprise since we had tried it at a more touristy restaurant earlier in our trip and it was not at all nice, indeed it tasted more like a spirit than a light, sweet wine.

The trip back to London was fairly uneventful although Kim came through the non-EU passport line with me and did not particularly like the immigration officer's question of "so, what's your plan" when she saw that we were married but living in different countries. Over all it was a great trip, I would like to have found some less touristy restaurants to try but it seems we may have been in the wrong part of town for that.

Well I finally finished the lacy wrap but those rows at the end were crazy long.  I will think twice before I start a triangular project again - I think I may have had almost 400 stitches on my needlesthe time I got to the casting off row - which took at least 20 minutes by itself.  I've worn it a few times already but it was curling a bit so I decided to block it to see if that helps at all, I'm not sure if I really stretched it enough but we'll see when it dries I guess. 

I decided to use some textured stitches for this project to accentuate the unevenness of the yarn.? I used a slip stitch pattern to incorporate some yarn that I found at a local yarn shop that matched perfectly.? I also extended it into a sort of combination rib/seed stitch.

Slip Stitch Pattern:
row 1: (knit 1, slip 1) to end, knit 1
row 2: (knit 1, slip 1 with yarn in front) to end, knit 1 - so you're slipping the slipped stitches from the previous row
row 3: knit
row 4: (knit 1, purl 1) to end, knit 1 - so you're purling where the slipped stitches are and knitting in between.?
This pattern is sort of like a rib but with seed stitch where the columns of purling would be.

Seed/Rib Pattern:
row 1: knit
row 2: (purl 1, knit 1) to end, purl 1

?

The yarn I got for this project (Arauncania Ranco in teal) does not have dye lots meaning that apparently you are supposed to intertwine several skeins at once since no two skein are the same color - although the one row per skein suggestion on the wrapper seems like it would make the project not so much blended as stripey. Anyway, I just used one skein at a time so my wrap has a bit of two-tone action. It was difficult to get a good picture of the problem though, the flash mostly covered it up so I drew lines on the right side of the photo roughly where the color changes are, but its more obvious on the wrap than in the photo.

Also, this yarn turned my needles and my fingers green, the former more permanently than the latter (I'm hoping).

For the cuffs of the sleeve I used the colored yarn for rows 1 and 2 from the Slip Stitch Pattern so that it looks as if the colored strings are threaded through the fabric behind the slipped stitches.  I also put two columns of stockingnet on either side of the slip pattern to serve as selvage but this turned out to be not the best idea since the stockingnet is taller than the sliped stitches and is a bit like a ruffle along the edge. 

After the slip stitch cuffs I switched to the Seed/Rib stitch for most of the length of the sleeve, then towards the shoulder I gradually switched to plane stockingyet.  My plan is to do something similar for the front and back of the sweater.