FAVORITE HAUNTED PLACES - MANSFIELD REFORMATORY

As an experienced paranormal investigator (tongue firmly planted in cheek), I can't resist seeking out supposedly haunted locations, especially when vacationing.  On our way back from Niagara Falls this year, we just had to stop in Mansfield, Ohio and check out the Ohio State Reformatory, also known as the Mansfield Reformatory.  It has been the subject of numerous ghost themed shows, such as SyFy's Ghost Hunters, as well as a popular destination for paranormal adventurers across the country.

One look at the building and you just figure it's a place that has to be haunted.  Actually, the grand style of architecture was intentional.  When the prison was begun in 1886, the guys in charge thought that the building itself would inspire the inmates to change their evil ways and experience a rebirth during their incarceration.  It operated as a working prison until 1990 and over 150,000 men were housed there over its lifetime.  The place is huge, over 250,000 square feet, and looks like a joint the Addams family would find very homey.

The Inmates and I arrived with our ghost meter (which has never turned red, indicating "danger" or a ghostly presence, except when it's near an electrical outlet or appliance).  I had also purchased a couple apps I read about, strangely enough, in Forbes Magazine.  The Professor had one called Ghost Radar, which I don't think he ever used.  The one on my iPhone was Ghost Hunter M2 and features a sensor sweep, EMF gauge, and, my favorite, EVP analyzer.  The latter shows a screen of letters scrolling and occasionally certain ones turn green or yellow or red and finally, presumably at the urging of a ghostly force, a word will emerge.  (As I was taking the screen shot of the EVP analyzer, a ghostly presence gave me the word "charge", which I think means I'm supposed to buy a new purse.  Just sayin' it's best not to piss off the supernatural.)  I'll give my little disclaimer that I'm a skeptical paranormal enthusiast.  I do believe there's stuff out there that I can't explain.  I don't believe everything I see and hear on the ghost chasing shows.  Similarly I don't necessarily believe my little $1.99 app is really my telephone to the spiritual word.  Then again, some strange things have happened with that app...

The tour through the reformatory is self-guided and begins in the living quarters and offices of the prison staff.  The place is full of peeling paint and crumbling plaster, but if you're able to ignore the purpose of the building and imagine it restored to full beauty, the architecture is really something to see.  From there we went into the heart of the prison, the cell blocks, and that's when things got spooky.

The ghosts were really hyper
in this spot.

First of all, the place is old and crumbling, so the metal alone has an eery appearance, kind of like underwater images of the decaying Titanic.  Then there's the vibes, real or imagined, from all the negative energy emitted by all the negative humans who inhabited the place at various times.  I strolled around with my EMF gauge, which generally stayed around the 3 to 4 level.  I wandered into a small corner just as you enter the actual row of cells and the meter spiked to between 25 and 30.  I'd saunter away, it would go down.  I'd saunter back, it would spike.  No, I wasn't standing next to a dangling electrical cord.

As I moved into some of the actual cells, I changed over to the EVP analyzer.  I've done this at home and I might get three or four words in a ten minute period.  Here, I got a new word every minute or so.  I should have made notes, but they were coming so fast and furious I'd have never kept up.  I do specifically remember that the first word was "leave," which freaked me slightly, although it could also have been the prisoner expressing his own desire.  At another point I got the word "devil" and the name "Davis."  Later I got "stake" and "cemetery" in close succession and wondered if I was standing where someone had been shanked.  Other words that popped up included "help," "peace," and "Alice."

I hope this doesn't mean
there's a flooded laundry
room in my future...

More interesting than the readings on my ghost meter and the feelings I got in the back of my neck were the orbs in the photos, obviously not noticed until we returned home and pulled them up on the computer.  I will admit the place was terribly dirty, so dust particles were not an impossibility.  However, we found this photo of The Professor particularly interesting, with the orb floating right in front of his face and the other above his head:

We also liked this one of "the alley" showing numerous orbs.  My sister converted it to a black and white negative, which shows the little circles more clearly.  Incidentally, my sister took a picture about ten minutes earlier of the same area and it showed absolutely nothing.

More information about the Mansfield Reformatory can be found on their website here.  Additional photos can be found through my Flickr account here.  And did I mention that the movie The Shawshank Redemption was filmed there?  More on that later...


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WHEN HOUSE MARRIED WILSON

 It's not news to anyone who knows me or reads this blog that I'm obsessed with House, M.D. starring Hugh Laurie, the man I'm going to marry next time the great British actor.  Months ago I got my husband into the show and we've been slowly making our way through the seasons, an episode or two a day.  (We're almost done with the second to last season and whenever he pisses me off about anything I threaten to tell him what happens in the last episode.)  As soon as I started watching the series I saw eery similarities between the House/Wilson relationship and that of my own marital one.

As House's best friend, Wilson is the one who looks after his interests, tries to protect him from his own destructive habits, catches him when he falls.  In return, House makes fun of him, pulls pranks, and generally abuses him on a daily basis.  And each time, Wilson comes back for more.  "Would never happen in real life!", critics might scream.  Well...

After The Vulcan had his heart surgery, he bristled against my nursing style and compared me to Kathy Bates in Misery -- and then found his bathroom and bedroom plastered with photos of the knife-wielding caretaker. 

He had the nerve to insult me in some fashion and then discovered a picture of himself hanging on the refrigerator with a plastic knife piercing the crotch and a line from my favorite Chicago song written across the bottom ("he had it comin', he had it comin', he only had himself to blame").

He hovers over the kitchen counter when making PB&J sandwiches, like a dog protecting a bone, because if he lets his attention slip for half a second I smash my hand down on the bread.

When The Vulcan got his vasectomy during the holiday season, I serenaded him with "All I Want for Christmas Are My Testicles" to the tune of  "All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth."

Despite his frequent warnings that I'm not to touch his computers, with all their stock market tickers and graphs flying around the screens, he frequently comes back from the bathroom to find me in his office chair chirping, "I'm gonna buy a stock."

And then there's that cane he bought me for Mother's Day.  What an idiot he was to acquiesce to that request...

Wilson would never stay with House and all his personality quirks, you say?  Well, my husband's been here for 17 years and shows no signs of leaving.  I know he's just joking when he says he can't, the alimony would cost him too much.  He's as happy today as he was 17 years ago.  Might be time for the man to talk to a psychiatrist about that.

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{this moment} - Inspired by SouleMama

As I'm sure you all know, today is I Love Yarn Day (at least according to the Craft Yarn Council).  What better way to celebrate that wooly goodness than to show the current projects I have on the needles.  On the left is a ripple afghan using a multi-color yarn my son gave me for my birthday, appropriately named "candy corn."  I'm mixing it with rows of yellow and white since I only have four skeins.  (Free pattern can be found on Ravelry here.)  On the right is another sweater for my daughter.  After last week's sizing fiasco, I almost immediately cast on for another Tomten Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann.  This one will probably be too large, but I know Foghorn will grow.

Happy I Love Yarn Day to all!



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MY BIG QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

1)     Why was there a piece of cat poo on my family room  floor?

2)     Why did my hound dog, St. Jimmi, decide to roll on it? 

3)     Do you have any idea how hard it is to get poo out of the holes in a dog’s collar?

"Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it..."  So true, Eric Idle, so true.

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{this moment}

{this moment} - Inspired by SouleMama

What can I say?  Homemade white velvet cake with caramel frosting for my mother's 80th birthday (made by me, The World's Most Unenthusiastic Cook, no less).   If you're interested, the recipe can be found on my mother's blog here.

SWEATIN' OVER THE SWEATER

I've been knitting for about a year and a half now.  I've done dozens of socks and dishcloths and hats.  I've whipped up a number of scarves and shawls and afghans.  I've even managed a baby sweater.  What I have not managed up to this point is an adult-sized sweater.  This is not for lack of trying.  I bought a load of off-white yarn a year ago and attempted the Shalom Cardigan, adjusted for my size.  I didn't know enough about adjusting sizes at the time and it looked like something I dug out of the dog crate and slung over my shoulders.

I unraveled that little goody and tried my hand at the February Lady Sweater (based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Alamanac February Baby Sweater, which I had successfully created).  Two problems quickly emerged.  First, I wasn't going to have enough yarn.  Second, I had apparently measured myself incorrectly and/or miscalculated the gauge because it hung off my shoulders as if it had been knit for Andre the Giant.  (There were also those pesky mistakes I made in the actual pattern, but since it was quickly frogged we won't talk about those...)

Last week I started unraveling and prepared to use the yarn on, yes, the third sweater.  This time I went smaller.  I decided to try to the Tomten Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmermann (found in both The Knitter's Workshop and Knitting Without Tears).  The interesting thing about the pattern in Knitting Without Tears is you use the person's measurement and your stitch gauge to come up with a base number of stitches that she refers to as X.  The rest of the pattern is a modular design and is based on fractions of X.  To be safe, I measured Foghorn and calculated a sweater for her (much smaller) size.  I love Elizabeth Zimmermann because she's funny in a dry way and has a no-nonsense approach.  She also gives very few directions for her patterns and apparently assumes I'm much smarter than I really am.  Thus her patterns always make me slightly anxious until I finish and see if I actually understood the directions correctly.

I finished today and...um...  Listen, I swear I was always an A student in math.  I don't  know what the hell is screwing me up with sweaters, but I evidently did something wrong.  Either Foghorn's measurement was wrong or my gauge was wrong or...or...something because the damn thing came out too small.  Now, ignoring the fact that it's a good size too tiny for her body (and too short), the sweater itself I think turned out pretty well.  If I could shrink my daughter by 10%, I'd probably be pleased with the results.  The jacket is very basic garter stitch throughout, so it's not meant to be fancy or particularly stylish.  (One criticism I hear of Zimmermann's patterns is they tend to be very practical and more suited to a 1950s hausfrau than a 21st century gal.)  I offered to put a contrasting color around the edges to give it more pop or add decorative pockets, but Foghorn insists she likes it just the way it is.  She also insists it fits perfectly and she's wearing it around the house as we speak.  She's wearing no pants (her habit of late is to wear only her underpants and t-shirt at home), but she's got the sweater on.  I'm making careful notes about my numbers and will adjust for next time.  And, just to be safe, I think I'll add on another 10%.


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VINTAGE BIRTHDAY KNITTING - THE FINALE

Today wraps up a birthday celebration that started in July when my mother began opening the daily gifts counting down 80 days to her 80th birthday.  She began displaying the gifts on a bookshelf in her living room and eventually they overflowed onto additional pieces of furniture.  She's now the proud owner of all manner of junk spanning eight full decades.



She now also possesses eight decades' worth of knitted items, some lovely, some practical, some...well, let's just say they were of their time.

Nothing says 1963 like a toilet paper roll cover.  To have a bare roll of tissue sitting naked would just be tacky, whereas this little baby is...ummm....  Anyway, the free knitting pattern is available here and my Ravelry notes can be found here.

I don't care what my sister says, these mittens are gorgeous.  Mrs. Brady would be proud to go skiing in them and that's good enough for me.  Plus, they just scream 1974.  The pattern actually came from an old Coats & Clark accessories booklet I found at an estate sale.  My Ravelry notes can be found here.

I didn't like much about the 1980s (curse you, teenage years!), but these place mats from a 1983 Workbasket magazine are kinda cute.  Ravelry notes here.

By 1997, I was really struggling to find patterns that didn't repeat an item already made.  (The poor woman can only use so many tacky lovely bathroom accessories, after all.)   The Tiny Cables Washcloths came to the rescue.  The free pattern can be found here and my Ravelry notes here.

These Eyelet-Edged Knitted Coasters filled the spot for 2001.  The free pattern can be found here and my Ravelry notes here.

The knitting finale was 2011's Drachenschwanz.  My mother herself sent me the link to this pattern after she stumbled across it last year.  Drachenschwanz is German for "dragon tail" and the pattern has this interesting effect that really does look like the spiky back of my fire-breathing friend.  The free pattern can be found here and my Ravelry notes here.

So, the big day has finally arrived.  Before she even has her official party on her actual birthday, my mother has received 80+ gifts (including ones from family and friends), had two birthday lunches, and endured a tree full of balloons (which have popped and shriveled constantly over the last two days).  If only the city had come through with that damn permit for the fireworks display...  Happy Birthday, Mom!

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