Deutsche Shalom

The lovely Lisa (glitterhippo on ravelry) has translated Shalom into German! I tell you, knitters are some of the coolest people you'll meet. It's so kind of Lisa and the other translators to volunteer their time and talent so that the Shalom pattern is available to more people. Many thanks to Lisa! You can find her translation here, and on my sidebar.

Shalom now in Polish

Thanks to Kate (Truscaveczka on ravelry) the Shalom cardigan pattern has now been translated into Polish! It can be found here, or through the link on my sidebar. I'm still so flattered and surprised at the popularity of this pattern. For those of you who are thinking of knitting one, be sure to spend some time browsing the many great modifications made by the talented knitters on ravelry.

Summer grilling

I'm staying at a new place for a while, where there's a really nice, easy-to-use gas grill. It has inspired me to make a couple grilled meals in as many days.

Kebabs for me and LQ
[note: you must pronounce Kebabs like Jemaine in 'Flight of the Conchords']

A really really yummy fattoush salad with grilled veggies and pita. I changed it up a bit by adding a generous helping of za'atar spice mixture (my newest obsession from Israel), and I left out the cheese and olives this time. It was great! Oh, and I should note that this second dish was my first attempt at grilling by myself! Success.

And I'm back!

I'm back from Israel, and have a knitting surprise to share! It wasn't all-work-no-knitting, after all, despite my blog silence. I had enough free time to whip up a lovely version of Heidi Kirrmaier's Buttercup sweater. I followed her modifications for the second version with longer sleeves and ribbing bands. I also knit it in a smaller gauge with Frog Tree Alpaca Fingering weight wool. I'm extremely pleased with how the sweater fits, and the clarity of the instructions.

Here's the ravelry link to the sweater, for you knitters out there.

Scenes from Jerusalem

We had a 3-day break to mark the midpoint of the dig, and I went to Jerusalem!

Still here!

Hi everyone--I'm still in Israel (almost at the halfway point). My blogging efforts are focused on the Kesley Museum dig blog for the time being. Please head over for a bit to see what we're up to. My goal is to post at least one thing a day (there might be a delay in when they show up on the blog though). The blog comes in different sections:

the main blog
our find of the week
and dig life

If you have any questions or are curious about some aspect of our work on the archaeological dig, send me a note on the comments and I'll try to address it through the Kelsey blog. thanks!

A week in Israel

I've been working in Israel for a week now, and everything has been fantastic. We're staying in a lovely guest house with gorgeous gardens and a beautiful view of the valley below:


Miriam Avitan, who runs the guest house with her husband, makes us 3 fantastic meals a day. Last week for lunch we had homemade falafel:


I do my conservation work in a covered shed at the guest house, while most of the team works at the dig site in the mornings. I was able to visit it for the first time last week to see how things were going. They have a gorgeous view from up there of vineyards, and you can even see the Lebanese border on nearby hills.


This summer I will be repairing a whole lot of pottery. Although I do something very similar in the museum setting, here I have added challenges. For example, even though the ceramic fragments are sorted into groups before they come to me, there are usually a few sherds that don't belong. The two pots below were found in the same bag. I also don't have any idea of what the pot will look like when it's completed--or if I have all the pieces. It's like doing a difficult jig saw puzzle without the box, and with a handful of pieces missing.


The cool part about it is that I am the very first person to work on these objects, and the first to see them complete! The pot below was really challenging to put together--if you look closely you'll see that it was actually thrown in two pieces and put together so that the wheel marks run in a different direction than you'd normally expect. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on!


I hope everyone is enjoying a great summer. Although my internet connection is super slow, I'll try to add some pictures to the blog on occasion.