Knitting Frenzy

I just looked at my last entry on this blog and was appalled to see that it has been over 3 weeks. Not that ever had many readers, but is anyone still out there?


I haven't been writing, but I have been knitting. To the point that my shoulder aches, and I'm pulling out the xerox sheet of physical therapy exercises I got a few months ago when my shoulder pain became unbearable and an orthopedist referred me to physical therapy. That was back when I thought Taekwando was causing my shoulder pain -- now I know it's kntting.


I am on a bit of a knitting frenzy -- the holidays are coming!!! My two youngest children have come to believe that the holiday season is When Mom Knits Us New Stuff. And I love knitting things for them, because they wear my creations obsessively. I also want to knit gifts for other family members. But the real reason I'm in a frenzy? There are so many projects I want to knit for myself.


So here's the latest batch of FO's.


Winter Camp Sucks Socks for oldest son, who does not share his siblings sense of entitlement around hand-knitted items for the winter season:


That's my feet they're modeled on. I knit and finished these right in front of him, and he never blinked. I quietly put them away in the closet after I finished them. He likely thinks they were knit for myself -- our feet are the same lenght, but his are a bit wider. Please see previous blog posts for the reason behind the project name.

Specs:
Yarn: Elann Peruvian Luxury Merino Superwash in Slate Gray. Lovely yarn. It was billed as DK, but it was nice and beefy -- more like a Worsted, truthfully.
Pattern: A melange of instructions from C. Schurch's books. The leg is Ribbed Squares from More Sensational Knitted Socks, the cuff and foot patterns are just extensions of that pattern. Short row heel (to minimize bulk) and traditional toe.
Needles: Clover 24" size 3 bamboo circs. First time I've used these. Nice needles, very smooth join, but a bit too "sticky" for working with wool. Slow.
Learned for next time: Short row heels are shorter than flap heels, and I really need to add an extra inch or two to the leg!

Next up, Tri-Peak Hat, knit for one of my sib's kids. I actually started this as the jester hat my middle son asked for, but realized after about 4" that it was mistake to change both the needle size and %ease without re-doing the calcs. It was too tight on my 11YO, but I figured it would be a good fit on a pre-schooler -- and since I intended to use the same yarn for the tri-peak hat anyway, I just switched patterns mid-way. The hat is modeled here by my daughter, ever-willing to model knitwear and never without a knitwear request...




Specs:
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts "Twisted", in Gingerbread Dude.
Pattern: Baby Tri-Peak Hat by Woolly Wormhead. Modified for finer gage. I also added 2 rounds of 1x1 rib to control the roll of the brim.
Needles: addi turbo circs, 4mm.

And then I did actually knit my son's Jester hat -- a pic from above:


...and one from the front, pulled over the face, glasses and all:

Specs:

Pattern: Jester Hat from Woolly Wormhead. Adapted for finer gage and smaller head -- easy enough, just cast on a multiple of 6 stitches. Also with 2 rounds of 1x1 rib in the brim.

Yarn and needle same as above.

Learned for next time: IF I knit this pattern again, I will work a couple of inches fewer in the main body so that I can make the points way longer, per my son's preference. Also, cast on either 6 more or 6 fewer stitches to eliminate the pooling that this hat suffered. And finally, double check that you've woven that end in before you snip it!!!!!

And a few more comments about the yarn. I LOVE this yarn. It is wonderfully soft, and the colors are almost literally delicious. Maybe if the colorway had a different name I would have had a different reaction, but every time I got to the white section of the yarn my mouth would water. I would envision white frosting piped onto a warm gingerbread man, and I would wish I could run a finger through and lick it before anyone came in the kitchen. The yarn came in a generous 560 yard skein -- enough for 3 hats, but I'm going to save the last little bit to enjoy over the Christmas vacation.

BUT a word of caution -- Twisted is billed as Aran weight, but it worked more like worsted for me. Maybe with big enough needles you could get 18sts/4", but to get a not-too-flimsy fabric for a hat I worked it at 24 sts/4".

Hiding in Plain Sight

A few weeks ago, M and I told our sons that they would be going to Boy Scout winter camp this year. Both of them have said that they want to earn their Eagle rank long term. Earning an Eagle rank requires lots of service hours, a big service project, and lots of merit badges. About half those badges are non-discretionary "Eagle-required" badges on subjects like "Citizenship in the Community" and "Personal Management."

My husband and I have been, and will continue to be, very supportive of our kids' scout activities. But sometimes support feels more like, well, nagging. Citizenship/Community for our older son required nearly daily "support" all summer. Occasionally this "support" culminated in screaming fits of exasperation. As in, "This is the third day in a row you've told me you didn't have time! How could you not have 10 minutes to google 'suburban alligator control'!" The worst was the 3 weeks of "support" it took to get him to actually talk to someone in the Texas Parks and Wildlife department about alligator control -- the absolute last requirement on that badge. While I remember my own teenage mortification at the idea of talking to a grownup, I was nevertheless impatient with his plight.

So I'm a bit weary of "support." And this winter camp looked like an exceptional opportunity. Large attendance (something like a thousand kids) and staffed by parents and scout leaders who share our interest in knocking out those badges. In a 4 day camp, they typically earn 4 to 6 badges. And with the large numbers of boys, they offer just about every merit badge.


We decided to trade in our summer badgering routine for a few relatively short weeks of acute whining. Good trade-off so far. The boys even wrote a highly entertaining essay on Why Winter Camp Sucks.

From the opening paragraph:

You get pneumonia from being in an overly cold environment, like winter camp. It
is one of the most horrible diseases ever. Frostbite can cause fingers, toes,
noses, etcetera to fall off. This could make it quite hard to play the guitar or
trumpet. And it would suck.

They tried pushig every real and perceived parental button -- here's one of the more entertaining attempts:

With the $280 bucks that you save from not sending us to winter camp, you could buy your own x-box 360 and the Tiger Woods golf game.

There was a comment about starving children in Africa -- a cliche I thought had passed with my childhood.

Or try this one:

Grandma and Grandpa won’t get to see us over the break and they will be sad because their only grand children are at some sucky winter camp in crappy little tents, trying to stay warm and not die of pneumonia or frostbite of the brain.

And the coup de grace:

There is no caffeine.
I suffer from caffeine withdrawal and there is no caffeine at camp.
There is no eggnog.
Eric suffers from chronic eggnog withdrawal.

If I could quit laughing I might feel bad for them.

But what does this have to do with knitting, you ask?

Lest anyone accuse me of not being sympathetic to my sons' miserable situation, I cast on a new pair of socks last night. Winter Camp Sucks socks for the elder son. Worked in DK-weight merino on size 3 needles, they should keep his toes from freezing off.



I knit the swatch as he sat across the kitchen table from me, doing his Chemistry homework. He never asked. He showed me a magic trick while I was doing the ribbing. He might have looked at my pattern notes with the heading "WCS socks." But I'm sure he didn't. And I'm sure he won't look at this blog either. And the funnest part will be that since our feet are the same length I can try them on my own feet instead of his, and he will just assume the socks are for me. They will be a surprise Christmas present that he's seen a hundred times but not noticed.

If he's lucky I'll have enough yarn leftover to knit him a Winter Camp Sucks hat.

Finished: Funky Camo Socks

I knit these for the most "unique" of my children -- my middle son E. He picked the yarn and told me how he wanted them made: "only up to about here, and just a plain pattern, and not too loose 'cause I hate when my socks bunch up inside my shoe." Done:

When I asked him to model them for me, he thought they'd look good with his pajama pants:

Yes, that's flannel. No, these aren't old pictures. Yes, Houston is still sauna-hot. No, his bedroom is actually kind of warm. He just really, really likes flannel pants and thinks they are year-round wear. The difference between winter and summer is that in summer you don't wear a shirt and you turn the ceiling fan on really high.

While I was knitting the socks, I kept wondering what kind of kid needs socks this long and skinny. The answer of course is my kid. Long skinny socks for long skinny feet:

All said, he likes the socks. "They'll be my Friday socks." We've checked his school dress code, and it appears that socks are actually one of the rare non-restricted areas, open for self-expression. He'd probably love the bmp socks but I don't want to knit them just yet so won't show him the pattern.

Specifics:

Yarn: Crystal Palace Panda Cotton in the "Fern" colorway, purchased from the Loopy Ewe.

Needles: Addi Turbo 2.5mm circs

Pattern: Basic sock pattern. 3x1 rib for the leg and instep, standard flap heel, standard kitchnered toe.

Learned for next time: I really should avoid doing too many simple projects like this -- if E hadn't been nagging me, these would have fallen to the bottom of my knitting list. Dull. The 2.5mm addis are the best needles for Panda Cotton for me.

Remembering the Symphony

They guys -- both sons and my husband -- went on a Boy Scout "camp out" this weekend. Quotes because the troop went to Schlitterbahn, an enormous, old, and truly wonderful water park in central Texas. They pitched tents at a genuine BSA camp near by, but ate all their meals at the water park so as to maximize fun time. So "camping" is term loosely used.

So K and I were at the house by ourselves this weekend. We had talked about what to do with our Girls Weekend. She suggested we go "motoring" in the MINI, but she quickly abandoned that idea when I mentioned a drive through scenic countryside that would also go very near a LYS I wanted to visit. That, and she wanted to have a classmate over for a play date.

I quickly jumped on "play date" because she suggested a girl who...how to put this...I think is a good match for K. The girl seems sweet, K never reports any conflicts with her, and I've met her parents and they seem to have the same values and lifestyle as us.

Last year, K had two good friends that I could never quite embrace. One was a girl I actively disliked -- she was petty, domineering, and manipulative. And, worse, the only time K didn't seem stressed about their relationship was when she was outmaneuvering, out manipulating the girl.

The second girl, the third of the disturbing little threesome, was nice enough but I couldn't connect with her mom. The girl was the grand daughter of a major sports celebrity, and dad had some considerable wealth from managing the franchises in grandpa's name. Her mom and I tried to connect for the sake of the girls' friendship, but we just couldn't find common ground. For one, I work full time and she never has. We had gone to the same university but she was into the sorority scene and I was an engineering major. We agreed that it was important to expose our kids to the things that would be important in later life -- but for her that was golf, tennis, and not pressuring kids too much about grades, and for me that was scouts, tae kwon do, and making sure my kids had challenging coursework.

So, I jumped on this opportunity to encourage a friendship with a sweet little girl whose parents are both professionals, who seem to have similar academic goals for our kids, and who have a hectic evening schedule that rivals ours. And that took care of Saturday DAY.

At piano lessons on Wednesday, the teacher and I were talking about upcoming Houston Symphony concerts and how we'd like to attend that weekend's program. As we left, K jumped on that idea -- "let's go see that, Mom. It sounds really fun." I agreed, we'll do it.

On the internet next day: cheapest seats were $45. I regained my breath, clicked "buy", and we were going. And on Saturday, I treated her to the whole thing -- dressing up in our best, getting dinner near the symphony hall with other concert and theater-goers, then claiming our seats at the hall.

They opened with Beethoven's 1st symphony -- good enough, but mainly interesting for historical perspective. The next piece was to be a modern thing, written in 1998 by Kevin Puts. K was already fidgeting, so I decided to start our intermission early. The bartender had a little sister about K's age, so he made her a very special Sprite with pink stuff and cherries. And we watched the Mr. Puts piece on the CCTV they had in the lobby (I actually liked it, but it was...modern.) Then we explored the hall a bit -- found all the bathrooms, talked about the 2nd balcony that had been closed off when they rejigged the ceiling for better acoustics, checked out the gift shop.

Then back to our seats for the Emperor concerto.

And what a treat that was. The pianist, Garrick Ohlsson, was wonderfully expressive, with tones ranging from silver bells to thundering cavalry. The orchestra was spot on with timing and phrasing. And, of course, it was Beethoven at his mature best, and there's not much in the world that can be better than that.

And I remembered why I love going to symphony, even though I haven't been in a few years. In a hall, you hear every note, every nuance -- without fiddling with the volume nob. And somehow you're part of it, not just a passive observer.

Ohlsson, for his part, was a very gracious showman. On his third call-back, he sat back down at the piano and played an encore -- the adagio from Beethoven's Pathetique. As it turns out, this was Kathryn's favorite part. When I told her that being able to play something like that was why I had started taking piano lessons again, she she said that she, too, wanted to learn to play pieces like that "so that when you and Daddy are making dinner at night, I can play something nice for you to listen to." How could she know that was the perfect thing to say?

Oh, and I got some knitting done. While watching the girls swim on Saturday, I got to within about an inch of starting the toe decreases on E's camo socks. And I finished the heel turn and gusset decreases on my Dunes socks. I really like the way the eye-of-partridge heel stitch shows off the shading in this nearly-solid yarn:

And I putzed around in the garden a bit. This guy seemed to be enjoying the flowers too:

Strange Winds

What a strange 24 hours for weather reporting in Houston. Usually if there is storm headed our way, we watch it for days and the newscasters spend a lot of time reminding people of preparations they need to make.

But this was really different. When I left the house yesterday morning it was a tropical low pressure system that would bring lots of rain. Next time I checked the radio it was Tropical Depression 9. Then Tropical Storm Humberto. By the time I left work they were talking about school closings. At dinner time it was aimed right at us. I went to bed expecting to be awoken in the wee hours by howling winds and pounding rains.

But when I poured my coffee this morning, my spouse said -- surprise! -- it had been upgraded to Hurricane Humberto. Huh, I thought, as I looked at the slightly-low pool level and the neat dry back yard. And surprise #2, it had scooted on up the coast almost to Louisiana.

The kids were disappointed that they had to go to school. (Hello! Hurricane! did you think we'd have electricity for video games?) Today was dry and partly cloudy. We're not even getting the three days of rain we expected from the low pressure system. Very strange.

The End Already?

Tomorrow is the first day of school. It's hard to believe, even though this was a longer-than-typical summer. Our legislature decided school shouldn't start until 1 week before Labor Day (rather than mid-August), but since the length of the school year is unchanged I have no idea what the benefit is. The cynic in me suggests it is a one-time shift in cash flow so that the state finances look a smidge better going into an election year. But I'm sure it really was about Childhood and Summer and Family Time Together, as our lawmakers suggested. Next summer break will be 10 weeks, just like before, only starting in mid-June.


The boys were on a Boy Scout camp out this weekend, and came home tired and cranky today. E and his best friend had a 3rd boy in their tent who ignored their request to put his bag of M&M's in the chuck box. E retains a bit of his raccoon phobia, but he how has another reason for No Food in The Tent: ants. E came home with 4 or 5 pimply fire ant bites on his face.



While the boys were away, M and I decided to go to a semi-fancy (not kid oriented) restaurant with K in tow. It was almost like going on a real date. While we waited for our order, she read a book and we enjoyed adult conversation. She spoke politely to the waiter, used her flatware appropriately, and kept her napkin in her lap. How wonderful to have proof that we aren't, after all, incapable of teaching children good manners.


I took advantage of the quiet weekend to catch up on housework and to crank out some knitting. At long last, I have finished the front of Josephine:

And holding it up to my front, I believe it will fit as I wanted -- draw cord below my bust, neckline saucy but wearable without an undershirt.

I had been worried that my gage had become erratic, but it looks OK here, even without blocking:

I also frogged the back down to just below the old armhole shaping, and am now in the process of adding some length to match the revised dimensions I used for the front. It's going much faster than I expected, thank goodness. Maybe I'll be able to wear this before it turns cool after all.

Motoring

Despite my long absence from the blogosphere, I have very little knitting to report on.

On Thursday afternoon, we braved the flooding left by Tropical Storm Erin and headed for the airport.

A brief rant: How can some people who live in Houston be so clueless about driving after a heavy rain? Rule #1 of driving a car through water that's a smidge too deep: ONCE YOU START, DON'T STOP. If you stop, the wake you created will wash back up your tailpipe. And then you are stuck in the middle of an intersection, blocking the way of the rest of us who aren't clueless.

Even though it took us triple the normal time to get to the airport, our flight was only delayed by about an hour, and my eldest son and I arrived in Maryland...well, pretty stinking late. And on Friday, my brother and I went down to his bank and transferred ownership of this baby:

Friday afternoon, my son and I began the long trek back to Houston, including a celebratory side trip through Shenandoah National park, where I took the picture.

I had lured R to accompany me on this trip by promising frequent stops for Frappucinos. Two hours into Day 2, I finally spotted a Starbuck's. Why is it there are 7 Starbuck's within 5 miles of my house, but not a single damned one visible along Interstate 81? I thought they outnumbered McDonald's, and there were plenty of those. Next time I will do my research before I make promises I can't honor. But at least we found one:

For some reason -- well, one of two reasons -- R insisted we drive all the way west across Tennessee rather than dropping diagonally across the South. I suspect he was influenced by his dad's worry about driving an unfamiliar car through the numerous storms blanketing the South. But Ryan said he "just wanted to see Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis."

Spotted from a rest stop near the eastern Tennessee line:

That's a building on the other side of the freeway -- the "neck" is a breezeway to another building. We noted that billboards in Knoxville claimed it was the Birthplace of Country Music. Memphis welcomed us to the Birthplace of Rock and Roll. We spent a fair amount of time talking about guitars and rock-n-roll.

On Sunday afternoon we finally arrived back home. And I'm pleased to report that the MINI was every bit as fun to drive as it looks. It was a blast driving it across country. I'm starting to wonder what other road trips I can fit into my calendar...

Back in the Saddle

Mid-week my new US sz 1 DPN's arrived in the mail, so I was able to get going on the Monkey's again. I got in some time at restaurants and some time while chatting with friends last night, and I am now about 1 repeat away from beginning the toe decreases:

I also worked a few hours on Josephine during the evenings at home and have finished the lace section of the front. Since summer here will last until October, the odds are looking good that I'll get to wear it this year despite the delays and rework.

And our friends whose critters we tended last week returned from Wyoming bearing thank-you gifts. T-shirts for most of us, but this was for me:

A 100g ball of Tofutsies from a yarn store in Wyoming. I think only the best kind of friend helps you build your sock-yarn stash when she is not herself a knitter!

On the music front, 15YO R reminded me of my promise -- that if he worked hard to learn guitar using his dad's old acoustic, then we would buy him an electric guitar set-up. He seems to spend about half his waking hours with a guitar in his hand, so yesterday I made good:

That is an actual smile on his face -- more rare than you could imagine. And the smile stayed on his face for the rest of the day.

And finally, a picture from my garden. Although we rudely transplanted them in the spring and have had freakishly cool/rainy weather for most of hte summer, the birds of paradise decided to bloom after all. So beautiful it makes August in Houston worthwhile:

Safely Back in the Nest

My darling oldest son returned from Sea Base this evening, full of tales of sea critters and of boy scout dorm room pranks. He is tired and sunburned, but in very high spirits. He even gave me a Real Hug (as compared to the grumbling, stiff-back, arms-at-side lean I get on ordinary days.) Now I can breathe a little easier, after a week of stamping out fear that he'd get sick or bit or worse, and then today a rough afternoon of watching thunderstorms while his plane was supposed to be landing.


One of his favorite things about this camp was that despite being a Boy Scouts of Americal high-adventure camp, they had some decidely relaxed rules around the BSA uniform. Class A uniforms were required at dinner every night, but the green and red socks weren't required if you were wearing flip flops. And the Class A shirts could regular uniform shirts OR...something else, so long as everyone from the troop matched. R and his troop-mates marched to the nearest souvenir shop on the 1st day and bought matching matching t-shirts. Voila, his troop's Sea Base Class A's:

Front

Back

On the knitting front, since casting on the Monkey's in Panda Cotton on Sunday, I've worked just a little bit every night on them. I find I can get a whole repeat of the pattern done while waiting on dinner (boiling pasta, waiting for my restaurant order, etc.) Very, very fast pattern. The sock fabric is coming out very dense and silky and stretchy -- and it feels cool on the skin. Depending on how it wears and washes, I may have found my new favorite summer sock yarn.

Here's progress so far -- 5 pattern repeats, 1 more to go before the heel:

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...

Back from Vacation, and moving slow...

Now that we're back from vacation, I am having a very tough time motivating myself to do "fun" things. Like knitting. Listening to my i-Pod. Blogging. It seems really strange -- I want to...work. Is this why they give us paid time off?

Glacier National Park was amazing. I thought mountains like that only existed in National Geographic and the Lord of the Rings movies. Despite the lines at the entrance gates, it felt like we were among a very small handful of people and a very large number of wildlife. We were clearly outnumbered.

I did do some knitting, but I ended up doing far less porch-sitting than I expected. This was mainly due to the very long daylight hours -- we ended up staying in the park until very late most evenings, and returning to the cabin only for a very late dinner (9 or 10pm) and bed. I haven't taken pictures of knitting progress yet, so for now I'll post just vacation pictures.

Early in the trip, M and oldest son R were suffering a light version of the bug that took down my daughter earlier in June. So our first hike was an "easy" one -- to Avalanche Lake:

I think it is so-called because the creek running down from it is snow white from minerals and agitation, and looks like an avalanche.

The second day was a visit to a remote village (was it big enough to call it that?) on the north west border of the park, Polebridge. It is accessible only by dirt road, and is not on the electric grid (though the buildings in town have generators.) Some shots of downtown Polebridge:

The third day was the absolute high-point -- a 12 mile hike along the Highline Trail. The first 8 miles are cut into the side of a mountain that varied from "cliff" to merely "breathtakingly steep." Fine terrain for bighorn sheep (not close enough for good pictures), more mountain goats than we could count, a marmot under every bush and rock, and a wolverine in one of the less-steep rock-covered areas. No pictures of him -- he ducked away into some bushes before we could even think to be scared. R and I looked at each other -- "was that really a...wolverine?" We weren't convinced ourselves until we got home that night and checked the wildlife guide -- right facial markings, right size, right habitat, and we saw him from about 30 feet in bright daylight. We're sure.

So, some goat pictures first, because they are not camera-shy:




Note that this first photo was not zoomed.

We encountered the baby (left) and his mama (not shown) about 3 miles in. Mama was absolutely determined to stay on the very narrow trail. M and I herded our bunch into a slightly-wide spot against the cliff wall and shushed them while they argued about whether we should "make the goat move." Mama, in the mean time, stood 3 feet away glaring at us in that threatening way universal to all mothers. My kids finally shut up, and Mama decided to pass us. Junior, in the mean time, had been goofing off around a corner and had forgotten there were people. As he ran to catch up with Mama, he was startled to see us and skidded to a stop at our feet. He stared at us wide-eyed for a moment, then dashed after Mama as fast as he could go.

But the real star of the Highline hike was the views:

The next day was river rafting, which likely would have been enjoyable if the Whiners and their two small boys weren't on our raft. No photos for obvious reasons.

The last day there son #2 and I came down with...something. Immodium, that elixir for all travelers, got us through but we weren't going to tempt fate with another long hike. So no Iceberg Lake, no Grinnell Glacier. Just an easy hike along a chain of small lakes. Nothing of note until we were almost back to the parking lot, then this guy and his harem:

Mr. Moose chose a particularly picturesque spot to stand. His two cows and their babies were at the far end of this small lake, and pictures of them were shot into the sun, sad to say.

The next day we loaded up and drove to the airport just as the heatwave hit -- 105 degrees, according to the car thermometer.

I promise pictures of knitting in the next post. (It will probably be a let-down...)

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.

The Cure for Acrylic

I am embarrassed to admit that I have quite a bit of acrylic in my stash. Some I bought when I was a college student and couldn't afford better. But most I bought during those manic episodes when, after months and months of no knitting, I declared "I must knit! I WILL knit! I need new yarn!" And in those moments I never had the patience to drive past the craft store and find real yarn. No, in those moments cheap acrylic seemed like just what I needed. And of course, I've kept every inch of it. It might be useful someday!

Well, friends, I have found the cure. Finger weaving! God bless whoever taught my two grade schoolers this craft! My middle child, the energizer bunny of children, learned finger weaving yesterday and BEHOLD the wondrous quantity of acrylic he consumed in LESS THAN 24 HOURS!

Let's unravel that ball and ponder its wondrousness, shall we?

From the family room sofa...

Up the front stairs...

...across the upstairs game room...












...down the back stairs...











...and to the family room sofa again.








I have always been amazed at this little guy's ability to churn out projects, but he has surpassed himself. We'll be able to knit a blanket for King Kong from his weaving by the end of the summer. Or, if he won't consent to having it knit, it will take over his room and force him to move in with his big brother and the dogs.

Although I've neglected to mention her, my daughter is quite an accomplished finger weaver. She has been at it since last fall, and tends to be more quality conscious and deliberate than her brother. She has begun experimenting with "2 finger finger-weaving" and novelty yarns.

Tonight when we returned home from day camp/dinner/tae kwon do/shopping, both kids were clamoring for "more yarn." Woohoo! Here they are with their new supplies:

For the uninitiated, finger weaving is really i-cord knitting with your fingers instead of a needle holding the stitches. My kids are all over me to try it -- they clearly believe it is superior to knitting as crafts go.

Yes, I have been doing some knitting. I'm almost to the bodice on the back of Josephine, and I got another inch of sock knitting done during my daughter's tae kwon do class tonight.

P. S. Before I could finish this post, the kids shouted downstairs -- K had finished her ball of novelty yarn, and E had finished the 1/2 skein of green and is starting on the burgundy. Heaven help me. They've turned into yarn disposals.