Kids, kids, and a little knitting

It was a good weekend, just not very productive as knitting goes.

K had a friend sleep over on Friday night. They spent hours in the pool, then fell asleep in front of Animal Planet.

E, our middle son, returned from his first Boy Scout "away" camp on Saturday night. He had the time of his life. He can't quit talking about it: how to treat hypothermia, how to treat frost bite, how to diagnose heat illness (slightly more relevant than frostbite here on the Gulf Coast!); how to inflate a flannel shirt; how to make lanyards from flat plastic cord; the tarantula, the two scorpions, and the water snake that was not a water moccasin; rappelling off a 40 foot rock. Perhaps most importantly, his best buddy -- a boy who shares E's impulsiveness and high energy -- is still his best buddy after sharing a tent for a week. Both of them started pestering their respective parents for a get-together as soon as they stepped off the bus.

And we celebrated R's birthday a few days early, on Sunday. He got his long begged-for i-pod and some tab books for his guitar. We have a long car-ride planned for the day of his actual birthday -- what's the point of an i-pod if you don't get it BEFORE the long car ride?

On the knitting front, my shoulder was aching on Friday night and every time I picked up the needles it got worse. So I decided to switch to machine knitting for a bit. I calculated the pattern for Autumn and got on the machine (which doesn't care which hand I use to run the shuttle.) I knit the back in one longish sitting. I'm very pleased that I didn't have to do anything to keep the colors from pooling:

I'm also pleased with how the lace rib came out:

There was enough hand-manipulation in that hem for me to finish my listen of "The Kite Runner." (A wonderful book, by the way -- about tradition and shame and redemption and good and evil. I highly recommend the audio version.)

On the vacation-knitting-planning front, I have found 2 sock patterns I want to knit with some of my nearly-solid stash. The first is Dipsy Doodle's Dunes of Tinfou socks. The second is Loksins from Too Much Wool. Lovely socks from both ladies.