Where am I?

I know I've been delinquent about posting. I'm not sure what my excuse is. I'm not spending long hours at work. I haven't been reading the new Harry Potter book. I haven't been living at the piano. I haven't been going to extra Taekwondo classes. Heck, I haven't been grocery shopping or cooking or cleaning either. What I have been doing doesn't seem like it should take up that much time:

• getting oldest son equipped, packed, and on his plane to a SCUBA camp
• watching the Tour de France
• oggling sock yarns on-line

I have been spending a fair amount of time knitting -- about as much time as I'm spending watching the Tour. None of it is photo-worthy...yet. I'm working again on Josephine, but the front is progressing very much as the back did. I've knit a few inches on the Dunes socks, but since it's a dark yarn you can't see the pattern unless I put them on something, which I don't dare do again because a whole bunch of stitches fell off the DPN's last time I tried. And I am working a simple pair of ankle socks for K out of the leftover Clown yarn -- my "goes everywhere" project.

Since the sock-yarn oggling seemed rather pointless, I bought some Panda Cotton from the Loopy Ewe (who delivered faster than I thought possible):

The blue (Blueberry Grape) is for K. I've been playing with the other ball of the Roses colorway, and I have to say the yarn is kind of strange to work with. It feels very cool to the touch and is silky smooth, but it looks pretty heavy even though the ball band says you can get 7 sts/in. I've tried it with 3 mm needles (looks almost sport weight) and with 2mm needles (too tight for my taste, but amazingly it was still supple and stretchy.) I need something in-between, but my in-between needle sizes have the above mentioned socks on them. Back to Loopy Ewe for some more needles and another 2 balls. My 10YO son insists he wants a pair of socks in the Fern colorway.

And speaking of my middle child, he is still working on his finger weaving occasionally:

But this week's Hot New Crafts are bead animals and "coasters" (or what I called God's Eyes back in my Girl Scout days.) Here is the batch of finished goods he emptied from his pockets just before dinner yesterday -- a fair day's effort, eh? He's leaving piles of them around the house, but he is consuming large quantities of acrylic...