Tuesday, July 7, 2009

4th of July Festivities

ES and I spent the day on the Mall in DC. It was a fun day of attending the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, eating, watching people, fireworks, then more people watching, and shopping.

In the Wales section of the Folklife Festival, I got to watch a gentleman spin on a walking wheel and listen to a woman talk about dying wool with natural dyes. What a fun fiber related day and I learned something more about natural dyes. I haven't used many natural dyes, so talking with her was really interesting. I also ran into Laura from the Wednesday night knitting group and we spent some time in the Marketplace together.

ES and I were going to watch the fireworks from the top of the Cap Gallery, but ended up going and sitting down by the Washington Memorial when it came right down to it. The fireworks were really pretty and I think I got some good shots of them in all their glory.

My favorite picture of the fireworks has to be this green one. There were many more which didn't turn out, but that is to be expected.

I think one of the best parts of the night was standing ontop of the Cap Gallery, once again, watching the people head onto the metro and watching the thirty or more fireworks displays going on around the horizon. There were fireworks going off all over and they kept going and going. You could tell when each of them came the their conclusion as the grand finales were quite spectacular. We watched until about 11:15 pm by which time the metro line was managable and we felt like we could get on without too much problems. Glad we were on the orange line, as there weren't as many delays on that line.

The last picture of this loooong post is the fiber related goodies that I picked up at the Folklife Marketplace. Those are "Darn Pretty Needles" in a size 8, perfect for the scarf I'm knitting for the Red Scarf Project, and a new drop spindle. I haven't spun on it yet, but am looking forward to the spinning. I think I now have about a dozen drop spindles.

Happy knitting and spinning.

3 comments:

Anita said...

Pretty firework pictures! I'll eventually get around to putting up our 4th of July pics. As for your "looong" post, I think my last two have you beat by a long shot!

Anonymous said...

I'm amazed you were able to get colored firework pictures- I always seem to get just bursts of light.

Pretty needles, pretty spindle.

LDSVenus said...

Great shots of the fireworks!! Sounds like you had a great day. Let me know how the spindle spins. :) I bought 10 cd drop spindles to teach the Activity Day girls to spin next month. Should be interesting with 10 girls :P.