Those Darn Socks

I had a little interlude from knitting yesterday after I found this post by Theresa from Knitting Underway. She has a series of posts about darning socks, and why you might want to do this. There is a “Part 1” and a “Part 3” as well, so check them all out.

I just happened to have a pair of holey socks in the basket by my sink in the bathroom, waiting for a decision. These happen to be one of my favorite pair, though they are nothing special. They are plain ribbed socks that were knit out of heavy worsted Peace Fleece, but they are great for wearing around the house, and with Birkenstocks. (Yes, this is considered “fashionable” in the Pacific NW, if not anywhere else in the world.)

Several weeks ago I noticed a big hole in one heel, and the other heel was on the way out as well, so I tossed them in the basket. I’m fairly brutal on my socks, both handknit and otherwise, as I hardly ever wear shoes in the house. To darn, or not to darn? I am not much for sewing, and was mostly tempted to toss them in the trash. Then I found Theresa’s posts, and she inspired me to give darning a try.

Here are the socks pre-darning:

Sad, eh?

First I gathered my tools. Yes, I have a darning egg, doesn’t everybody? And I went rummaging in the boxes in the yarn closet and found the leftovers of the Peace Fleece yarn. I knew there was a reason that I never throw anything away.

Then I made myself a cup of tea, because I can’t imagine Great-Great-Grandmother darning her socks without a cup of tea. That, and it was too early in the day for a glass of wine.

Notice the Cinnamon Graham Cracker from Trader Joe’s. Best partner for a cup of tea that I’ve ever found.

Here’s how it starts:

Now go back over and visit Theresa and follow her instructions, and check out her links. I didn’t take pictures while I was actually darning, but it looked like a real mess while it was in progress. Apparently that’s how it’s supposed to look.

Here’s the finished socks. I did a combination of duplicate stitch and weaving on the one with the big hole, and duplicate stitched over the bare one.

And there they are, good for another couple of years!

Home Again

And I know what you all REALLY want to know about is the yarn shops in New York City! Never mind all the lovely tourist things to do, and the lovely restaurants, and the excitement of the city. You wanna see YARN!

Cara escorted me on the yarn-shop-crawl to beat all yarn-shop-crawls on Tuesday. It was a total blast to meet her, after reading her blog for so long. If you go to NYC, you have to talk her into showing you around. I used Tuesday as my “free” yarn buying day*, after nearly a month of abstinence. I was pretty good, though, and only bought a few things. No doubt the house project expenses figured into that. I did also get online that morning and buy some yarn for a sweater from Elann. This stuff, if you’re curious.

But, the shopping. Back to the shopping. We went to School Products, Habu, Purl, The Point, and Seaport. I think. Am I missing any, Cara? They are all fabulous. School Products is upstairs in an office building, and has more Karabella yarn than I’ve ever seen in one place, Purl is a beautiful sight to behold, Habu has some of the most creative yarns I’ve ever seen, and the Point has a cafe and yarn in baskets on the walls. Seaport is an office, not just in an office building. It’s a working marketing firm with yarn stuffed in every corner. You’ll be looking at a rack of yarn and some guy is at a computer at a desk behind you, working. It’s probably the most unique yarn shop I’ve ever been in.

Jen from Two Purls, and her charming little son Xavier, joined us, as did Kay from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Kay even autographed my new copy of their book, which I bought for the occasion.

Two stinking yarn shop photos are below. Unfortunately, I’m much better at my day job than I am at photography, and most of the shopping pictures either didn’t turn out or were unflattering. It’s written in the Knitbloggers Code Of Honor that you will not post unflattering pictures of other knitbloggers, especially when they are lovely ladies like the ones I was shopping with. And I completely forgot to whip out the camera at most of the shops. Here’s Cara at Habu:

And here’s Seaport:

Trust me, Jen and Kay were there, I wasn’t imagining it, and we went to all of those places, I didn’t imagine that either. I apparently was drooling too much over the yarn to take pictures.

And here’s what I bought:

From right to left: first is a cone of cotton lace weight tape, from Habu. The color may not show very well in that photo, but it is a pale mint-sea green. I think that will be a shawl. In the middle is a cotton-viscose blend from Garnstudio Yarns, purchased at Seaport. It will be perfect for a scarf, maybe the Branching Out scarf from Knitty. Last but not least is Euroflax linen, for a handtowel, inspired by Kay and Ann’s book. Never mind that I already have a bunch of this in the stash, I didn’t have any in this color, and apparently the mood of the day was green.

Oh, and I bought this, because I couldn’t resist it, and because you can never have too many tape measures.

All in all, a great day! Thanks girls–I couldn’t have imagined doing this any other way!

Next post will be knitting project photos, house project photos, and maybe a few scattered NYC pics. I leave you with a picture of someone who was very glad to see us come home:

*Remember, the Yarn Focus doesn’t prohibit yarn buying; you can buy yarn on one day a month, on a day of your own choosing. The ticker doesn’t need to be reset for that day, only if you succumb and buy yarn on a second day in any month.

Skyscrapers, And Everything

Yup, I’m in New York City. We arrived yesterday just in time to experience the joys of rush hour traffic on the way from the airport in Newark. We’re staying in Midtown, near Times Square, so we’re right in the middle of things. It took all day to get here, but I’m looking forward to a good time. I’ve never been to NYC before, so there will be lots of tourist things to do. Today I think we’re going to do one of those boat tours around Manhattan to get an overview, then just pick a spot and start walking. This is my Christmas present from 2005 from my husband; I opened up the package and found guide books to NY along with a card promising a trip this spring.

And of course there are the yarn stores. I’ve been saving my “free” yarn-buying day for April for this event, and plan to see a few of them, at least. Not that I need yarn, but since when does that have anything to do with anything?

I have to thank everybody who has sent condolences on the house problem. It’s slowly becoming a more definable project as they work on it. The decks are completely off, the beams that support the kitchen alcove have all been removed, and today they start work on the windows and supporting wood. We have the plans in place for rebuilding, and it seems less like a monster project, and more like something that eventually will be finished. An expensive something, I grant you, but at least we can see that there will be an end to it in the next several weeks.

Here are some photos:

Willie is the only one who thinks this whole thing is fun.

And of course it started raining last week, as usual for spring in Washington. I now live inside a circus tent.

And yes, we’ve been sitting in those chairs, even with the kitchen beams gone. I refuse to give in to fear.

On the knitting front, I have little to report. I’ve mostly been working on the two-color socks, and I don’t even have a miserable picture to show you. I’m on the toe decreases on the first one, and almost finished it on the airplane here yesterday.

OK, I quit being lazy and got up to take a picture. What I don’t do for you guys.

And just because I knew you were worried, they do fit. Tightly, but they fit.

Socks, Finished

The Candy Stripe Opal socks are finished, and on my feet!

Please note that those flipping stripes match perfectly.

Details:

Yarn: Opal, #518, from the 2002 collection. I named it Candy Stripes.
Pattern: Basic top-down, flap-heel, stocking stitch. I used a picot hem on the top, which I shamelessly copied from Claudia. This is my first picot hem, and it is fun, easy, and flirty. Perfect for girlie socks.
Needles: 2.25mm dpns.
Started in February 2006 as the Wintergrass knitting project, finished 4-9-06.
What I learned: I love plain socks. I think all those other fancy socks are very pretty, and no doubt fun to knit, but I love the process of just knitting around and around mindlessly in plain stocking stitch, and coming up with a sock at the end. The picot hem was new, and I might put it on everything else that I ever knit, it was that much fun. This was also my first experience with Opal yarn, and it is indeed as wonderful as everyone claims.
——————————————————————————-

There’s A Big Gaping Hole Where The Deck Used To Be*


The guys came back today, with reinforcements. It seems that we have it all: wood rot, termites, huge cost overruns. The deck is nearly gone, and the “first pass” estimate is that at least one or two of the beams holding up the kitchen (that glass curved wall) will have to be replaced. The kitchen windows and all the surrounding wall will have to go as well.

That big three-story beam in the left of that last photo may need to go too. Yee-ha. The guy driving the Bobcat is having a blast in our backyard, and I’m pretty sure that our contractor (the Bobcat driver’s dad) has a guaranteed job for the summer.

It’s a good thing that I have a good Yarn 401K plan. I might be knitting from it for the foreseeable future.

*That could be the title of a hit honky-tonk song, don’t you think?

Uh-Oh, There Goes The Yarn Budget

This year’s house project is going to be the deck overlooking the lake. We’ve known that there were some problems lurking underneath the deck surface, and had scheduled the guys to come out this past week to start work. We knew that it would be more than just a resurfacing project, as the beam under the railing has progressively become more warped and twisted, leading us all to believe that there was some major water damage underneath.

The guys started by taking off the railing, then started to peel off the stucco. Here’s what they found, in a photo essay.

If there was a soundtrack to this post, I think there would be puking noises accompanying that last photo.

The damage extends at least under the bay windows of the kitchen, which means that it’s not just a deck project any more. They are coming back Monday with reinforcements to peel more stucco and find out just how far this goes.

We decided to drink martinis that night. Lots of them. And every night since. Needless to say, we’re not sitting on the deck to drink them.

And I’m not just on a yarn buying freeze anymore. Horrors, the wine budget might have to get slashed, too. Good thing I have a decent stash of both.

I’m a bit too queasy after that pictorial essay to post any knitting pictures. Maybe next time.

On Google searches:

Now this is the best google search that got someone here in a very long time. “Knitting related tattoos”. If you type that into Google, I’m the first thing that comes up. Makes a nearly-fifty year old girl proud.

At The Zoo

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo
I do believe it
I do believe it’s true…*

Monday we had two of John’s grandkids here for a visit (well, their parents, too), and we took a little trip to our local zoo. The weather wasn’t great, but if you live around here, you know better than to wait around for a sunny day in order to do something fun. We had a lovely time anyway, and it really is all happening at the zoo.

The walrus was showing off:

And here are a series of beluga whale photos. They have an underwater viewing room, and these shots were taken indoors without a flash, through the glass. There is no touching-up involved with these, and some are a bit blurry from the animals’ movement, or with reflection off the glass. There were a couple of busloads of schoolkids at the zoo, and I think they were all the the whale room when I took these.

Just so you don’t think it was all about the whales, here’s a fine fellow napping on a rock, waiting for the sun to come out.

Then the peacock and penguins and owls:

Then there was this guy, who is sadly in need of a trip to the spa.

He’s a muskox, in case you were wondering. The way he was scratching, I’m pretty sure he missed his Frontline treatment this month.

Here’s my favorite picture of the day. These two were a little reluctant to sit here at first, until they were reassured about the glass between them and the tiger.

Tomorrow, some knitting progress, I hope.

*Apologies to Simon & Garfunkel!

Yarn Focus Challenge

Rebekah of KnitKnack (Basil and Abner’s mom) has started this challenge. We’re not buying yarn for the next three months, except on one “free” day per month, when we can go crazy. The point is to focus our yarn buying, rather than just hitting that “buy” button in every online yarn shop we find. We’re all going to donate yarn to a “yarn pot” at the end of the three-month period, and the winner will get the whole pile. April 1st is “Day Zero”.

This is perfect for me. I am the worst impulse shopper. I see yarn and patterns on other blogs, and just have to have it. The internet makes this incredibly easy, and the credit card bill here unfortunately takes the brunt of the damage. I will say that I have an unfair advantage in this one in that I have enough yarn in my yarn closet to last for about ten years of “yarn focus challenges”.

So in preparation for this, as soon as Rebekah announced it, I went and bought more yarn. No use taking any chances, right? And in fact some of it was necessary. I am probably going to run out of the “Bold Red” Lorna’s Laces for that two color sock, so I bought another stinking ball of it. I figured my license to shop would probably be revoked permanently if I ordered yarn and only got one stinking ball, so I ordered some Madil Kid Seta in lemon, for this scarf. One little skein of that, too.

If any of you are Lorna’s Laces fans, and aren’t on a Yarn Focus Challenge, Angelika’s, where I bought this, has the world’s best LL collection. You name it, she has it. And great service; after you order, you barely have time to put the credit card away, and the UPS guy drives up.

Speaking of which, somebody should probably let Alan, my UPS guy, know that I haven’t died or anything. And yes, I know my UPS guy by name. Doesn’t everybody??

I already know where my April “free day” will be spent. We’re going on a little pleasure jaunt to New York City later this month, and I have never been there. We already have tickets to a Yankee’s game, tickets to see “Sweeney Todd”, and tickets to Van Morrison’s concert at Madison Square Garden. And reservations for dinner at the Rainbow Room. We’re staying near Times Square; where are the best yarn shops? Any reader suggestions?

Aunti Meme

I’m not so much into doing memes. I love reading them, but by the time I get my sorry butt around to doing it, everybody else in blogland has done it and it’s so over. Here’s one from JenLa that I had to do though, if only because I loved the button and wanted to put it here. I didn’t think there was any legitimate way to steal the freaking button without doing the meme, so here you go.

1. A blog which you think people have not discovered.
This was difficult. It’s hard to tell sometimes who’s been discovered and who’s not. In the end, I went with a blog that’s relatively new to me. Knitting Underway’s Theresa is a fabulous knitter. Go look at her Olympic Medal winning sweater, Am Kamin, if you want proof.

2. A blog whose author lives close to you physically. Just get as close as you can, it’s all relative.
Kris, from The Knitting Wannabe. I should get double points for this one because until a few months ago she was a Floridian, which would probably make her the knitblogger who lived the farthest away from me in the US.

3. An unusual or weird animal picture.
This one was easy. I love Abner, from Knit Knack. Basil the bird is cool, too, but Abner might be my favorite blog-dog, next to my own Riley. Scroll down that post a bit to see Abner nosing the camera.

4. An entry that made you laugh and got you strange looks from family or co-workers.
Oh, no question on this one. Stephanie’s story of getting herself locked out of her hotel room in her underwear wins this one without a fight.

5. An idea you wish you’d thought of.
Well, most of them, really. Kim Salazar’s blog, String-Or-Nothing, though, is full of good ideas. Scroll down the right side of her front page and check out the categories. Gadgets is one of my favorites, and her Reference Shelf is priceless. Pee first and get yourself a cup of coffee, because you’ll be there awhile.

6. Something you’d like to knit.
I’ve already mentioned Am Kamin, and the Frost Flowers and Leaves Shawl from question #7 is high on my list. Hmmm. A blog I haven’t mentioned. Here’s a two-fer. Celtic Dreams, a design by Beth Brown-Reinsel. Knit recently by two different knitbloggers; Mary Beth from My Knitting Life, and also by Annie from The Knitty Gritty.

7. A picture of something you consider beautiful.
This was another difficult one. So many choices. The knitbloggers in general are a very creative, prolific bunch. I narrowed it down though. Eunny’s Frost Flowers and Leaves Shawl, which she completed in 16 days, is a beautiful work of art. Yikes. 16 days. And she thought it was a boring, easy pattern.

8. A blog whose author you’d like to one day meet in person.
Laurie, of Etherknitter fame. Even if she has gone over to the dark side of spinning.

9. A blog of someone you have already met in person.
Dorothy, of Missouri Star. I just wish she lived closer so we could meet for tea and knitting. Or wine and knitting, whatever.

Everybody’s tagged on this one. If you do it, go to JenLa’s blog and leave a comment, though. And read the rules.

Time Management

Once again, I have NOT fallen off the face of the earth. I got sucked into that big seven-day festival called my work week. While I won’t go so far as to say “work sucks”, this week had some special moments that added up to one hell of a 90-hour-plus fun time. It left no time for anything except a quick meal when I got home, followed by crashing into sleep to get ready for the next day. And I can’t even bitch about it publicly. It’s a good thing I love my job. Really, I do.

What all didn’t I have time for?

Knitting, for one. That really means it’s a bad week, when I only get a few pitiful rounds done on a simple stockinette stitch sock. I didn’t get to the weekly knitfest group that I love to attend. I didn’t get to see Kris cut the sleeves off the sweater she’s knitting for her husband.

There were a couple of days that I didn’t have time to even check email. Now that’s bad.

I didn’t get to participate in Celia’s Sunday installment of International Pajama Day. That just isn’t right.

I’m off as of last night at 10 PM. I got home, and my husband had a traditional Monday night dinner ready for me. It’s become a little ritual for us. I work the late shift three nights a week, meaning I am there from 7 AM to 10 PM. That means that we don’t see much of each other on those days. It also means that I have the opportunity for at least two hospital cafeteria meals in a row, which just doesn’t do much for me. Our hospital cafeteria is probably no worse than any other, but it isn’t any better, either. I have a personal rule that I do not eat two hospital cafeteria meals in a row unless it is really an emergency. So on my late nights, when I get home at 10:30 or so, John has dinner ready for me, and he waits to eat with me so we can have at least a few minutes of private time together before I have to go back to work.

On Monday night (which is my “Friday”) he does something a little more special. Yesterday he bought two huge Dungeness crabs, steamed two artichokes, made a butter-lemon dipping sauce, and put a bottle of champagne on ice. (Yes, I know I’m married to a real gem. Don’t even ask, you can’t borrow him.) We lit the dining room table candles, sat and talked, and ate the whole damn thing. And drank the whole damn thing. I even remembered, after a whole bottle of bubbly, to hit the “off” button on my alarm  so it wouldn’t go off at 5:30 this morning.

This morning I slept in, then started the Tuesday version of International Pajama Day. The upper Left Coast version, if you will.  I changed into my warmer pajamas* when I got up (10:30!), got my coffee, fired up the computer, and got my husband to take a picture. This one shows how much I love my blog readers. I am not even going to edit out the bed-head look. This is exactly how it is today.

I am SO ready.

I missed my 2 year blog anniversary over the weekend. I didn’t forget, I just didn’t have time to post about it. It’s been two fun years!

*You, too, can have this cool pajama top and cool coffee mug. Go to Bookish Girl Wendy’s CafePress site, and get your own cool stuff.

Half a Pair

I have one half of a pair of socks done:

The second one will be started as soon as I get this posted. And it’s a good thing, too, considering what came in my mail today.

I couldn’t resist joining the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin’ Sock Club. If you haven’t received your first box of goodies, and don’t want the surprise spoiled, look away now.

There’s a binder with the first month’s pattern, a bumper sticker, the club pin, and of course the hank of sock yarn. The color is Rainforest Jasper, and included is a tiny little hank of yarn on a keyring, labelled Emergency Sock Yarn.

I will NOT cast on for these until I finish the Candy Stripe Socks. Really. I’m going to start that second one right now.

Balance in the Universe

I missed an important anniversary of sorts around here. Last week was the 1-year anniversary of this. I’m happy to say that at one year, the hand is functioning much better than I thought it would. I can do almost everything that I was able to do before the accident. My “disability” consists mostly of not being able to get caps off things (damn those screw-top wine bottles); and heavy-duty wrenches, and the husband, takes care of those for me. I think the importance of the anniversary lies in the fact that I’m better enough that I forgot about it.

I’m having a knitting dilemma. I seem to have too many projects going at once. Normally I have one big thing, one sock, and one other…the current configuration seems to be sweater, sock, and lace project. This configuration suits me, and I don’t get too discombobulated by it all. I threw an extra sock into the picture a few weeks ago, for the bluegrass festival, and now I’m a mess. I can’t decide at any given moment which one to pick up and work on. I probably need to just pick up that second sock and get the pair done, then life will be back in balance.

Here’s where things are. I didn’t take another picture of the eggplant sweater, as I haven’t touched it since the last post.

Sock number 1:

I’m in the doldrums on this one, for a couple of reasons. One is that I think that it’s still going to be too tight for me. I’ve never done a two-color sock before, and the gauge is pretty firm, making a smaller sock. The cuff would go around my leg, but I’m not sure that the instep is going to go over my foot. That problem could be overcome, however, by putting these in the gift pile for someone with smaller feet than mine (not hard to find, admittedly). A more worrisome possibility is that I have a sinking feeling that I’m going to run out of the red yarn before the second sock is done. I have two balls of the rainbow, but for some reason only had one of the red. This is a busy enough sock that I’m relatively sure that a different dye lot wouldn’t matter much. I’ll probably finish them, if no other reason than to prove I’m no quitter.

Here’s the second, dither-inducing sock; the one that threw the knitting balance off-kilter:

Maybe I need a knitting challenge. Let’s see how fast Lorette can finish a pair of plain socks, shall we? This is the first of the pair, so I either need another bluegrass festival, a long train ride, or a heap of good movies.

Last, but not least, is the lace project.

This does have a deadline of sorts, though it’s a ways off in the future. This will be a gift for somebody later this year. I’m a little shy of half done with the center part of the scarf, and have memorized the pattern enough that I can do this while watching a movie or talking. The pattern stitch is really only four rows, as the back side is all purl rows. It’s also easy enough to see where you are by just looking at the row before. I could see making another of these someday. It’s an easy project, at least so far. I’ll give you another opinion later when I get to the border section.

Speaking of lace, go look at Eunny’s blog for her “Majoring in Lace” series. She’s done three different installments so far (go back a few posts to find them). This is the best lace “school” I’ve ever seen.

I’m off to knit that sock!

Eggplant Sweater, v.3.0

Here it is again, in all its resized glory:

And a closeup of the center cable section:

It’s actually prettier than that last picture would indicate. This color is hard to photograph well. Either it’s so dark that you can’t tell it’s a cabled sweater, or it’s washed out from the flash.

I think the size/gauge is going to be correct this time out. And the number of stitches on the needles is correct this version, unlike the first time, before I found out that the pattern was incorrect. I’m sure that there will be some other glitch that I will discover, but only after I’ve knit another eight inches or so.

I got quite a bit done on this the past week, due to a trip to Phoenix to visit my sisters. I have two sisters, one lives there, the other one still lives in North Dakota. We all met in Phoenix for a week of sister activities. The long-standing joke is that if any two of the three of us gets together, the third one has to show up too, or the other two will talk about her. Because of this, we actually see each other rather often. I worked a bit on the two pairs of socks I have in progress, but mostly on the sweater. And I didn’t do any yarn shopping while I was there. There are a couple of yarn shops in the Phoenix area, but my sisters have a low tolerance for hanging out in yarn stores, and I really don’t need any more yarn anyway.

Ack. I can’t believe I just said that. I did buy some yarn online before I left, and it was delivered while I was gone. Here’s a picture, but it just does not do it justice.

It’s laceweight silk, from Hip Knits. I purchased it from a UK shop called Yarnsmith, which quite possibly has the best online service I’ve ever experienced. Good communication, fast shipping, lovely yarn, and a handwritten note in the package; what more could you ask?

And what might I be planning for that lovely pile of ivory silk, you might ask?

This:

This is the Frost Flowers & Leaves Shawl, from A Gathering of Lace. I have a few things to finish up before I start on this one, but I’ve been dying to make this ever since I saw it. When I saw the silk yarn, I knew that it was just what this one needed. I hope it swatches up ok, as I’m not sure exactly what else I’d do with 3600 meters of silk laceweight yarn.

When my sisters and I get together, usually there is a lot of fun and shopping involved. Often it involves wine and bourbon. (OK, it almost always involves wine and bourbon, but we’re getting more responsible as we get older.) One year we each got a second ear piercing done while we were together. This time it was a tattoo*.

Really. Well, only two of us got tattoos, my third sister decided that it just wasn’t “her”. Here’s mine, first, just getting started:

And finished:

Note that I’m smiling in that first picture. It wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I had thought it might be. I have wanted to do this for a long time, and decided to put the first (!) one where it can be easily covered up, in case I didn’t like it. I love it! The next (!) one might have to be knitting related!

*And no, there were no alcoholic beverages involved in this escapade. Tattoo places insist that you be sober and not under the influence of anything when you sign up for body modification.

Size Does Matter

Or, Why Gauge Is Important

Or, How Bourbon Can Be Useful While Knitting

Remember this?

I finished a couple more repeats of the cable pattern, then got the bright idea to transfer it to a circular needle to finish it, as it was getting sort of unwieldy on the straights. As long as I had it on a circular needle, I decided to measure it.

Uh-oh.

I found a top that fits nicely, not too big, not too tight, and compared.

 

Well, damn. I got out my trusty gauge-measurer and found that I was off by half a stitch per inch. Now that doesn’t sound like much, does it? When you multiply that out over the width of the whole garment, this is what you get. It’s about an inch and a half too wide, which means it would be almost three inches too big around in circumference. This is just not the look I was going for with this one.

As Norma would say, ” Oh for fucksakes!”

I contemplated this a bit, then got up, got myself a little fortification, and the camera. As long as I was going to rip the whole damn thing out, I might as well document it for the blog.

 

Here I am waiting for the fortification to take effect:

 

And here we go:

And my trusty helper:

And I started over, again.

The Church of Bluegrass, Day 4

Or, 364 Days Until Wintergrass 2007

I’ve learned after four years of going to Wintergrass that it just isn’t over until the final band has performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”, complete with audience participation, and until George (the emcee) says it’s over.

John always gives a big sigh of relief when they play that song. It means he can finally go home and not listen to banjo music for another year. For the record, I don’t make him go to the whole thing. We get two weekend passes, I sit through every note, he drops in and out when he feels like it, using the “I have to go home and feed the dog now” excuse.

Highlights of the last day? Sunday morning is always the bluegrass gospel show, and only the diehard bluegrass fans, or the ones who got some sleep the night before, show up. Everybody else starts drifting in to the pavilion around noon. Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum gave a fine performance, including an impromptu number called “The Vice President Has A Shotgun, and He Can Shoot Whoever He Wants”, that brought down the house. Mountain Heart had the whole pavilion crowd tapping its feet, and Del McCoury did a long set that was pretty good. He’s a little too much “high lonesome” sounding even for my taste, but puts on a good show.

I have 6642 bluegrass songs lined up on Rhapsody to tide me over for the next year. And I already have tickets for the next festival in July, the Adventure Bluegrass Festival in Stevenson, WA. My favorite bluegrass boys will be there; the US Navy Bluegrass Band, Country Current. And yes, John knows we’re going. It’s an outdoor festival, so he can take a book, or his Ipod, or wander around the Columbia Gorge area.

There was knitting going on yesterday. I got the heel turned and picked up the gusset stitches, and am on my way down the sock foot.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like that picot edge instead of ribbing, but now that I’ve gotten part of the sock done, it looks pretty cute. I have no high hopes of matching the stripes for the second sock, but I like how they’ve turned out on the first one.

Congratulations to all the Olympic Knitters out there! Whether you finished or not is not the point. There’s been some fine knitting going on, worthy of gold medals all around!

Added Later, Almost as an Afterthought:

I almost forgot, I needed to pick the favorite artist of the festival. I loved Uncle Earl the best. They play oldtime music as well as great bluegrass. Their banjo player, Abigail Washburn, also does many of their vocals, and has her own solo album. She also speaks fluent Mandarin. This may be the first time ever that there have been bluegrass songs sung in Mandarin at Wintergrass. If you like old time music, go buy their group album, She Waits For Night, as well as Washburn’s album. Their fiddler, Rayna Gellert, has a solo album out as well, and that one is a keeper also.