Oh Yeah, The Blog

OK, you want it in a nutshell?

1) Cruise to Alaska. Wonderful!

2) 4th of July. Great party, great neighbors, lots of fireworks. Dogs hated the noise, we loved it.

3) Knitting. Still working on that baby blanket.

4) Baby. Baby Jacoby was born on July 6th to my niece Janet and her husband, Charlie. It’s now the 20th, and the danged baby blanket still isn’t done. Knit faster, Lorette, knit faster!

5) Spinning has consumed my life. There are bits of fiber all over the place in this house. Bits of wool now are overwhelming even the Lucy-furr, which is saying something.

6) Teyani came to spin, eat, and drink wine on Saturday. We had a great time, check her post for photos. I have some that I’ll post when I get them off the camera.

7) Tomorrow at 7AM I go back down the rabbit-hole to work. I may or may not get more details of the above events posted before I come out the other end of the warren on next Monday.

8) Last, but most definitely not least. I have a new job. It’s probably no secret to anybody that knows me that my hospitalist practice pretty much consumes my entire existence during my work-weeks. I currently work 7 days on, 7 off, which sounds great in principle, but. It’s starting to do me in. I mostly spend the first 2 days out of the rabbit hole recovering, then the last 2 days getting ready to head back down the hole again. A local thing came up, I jumped, applied, got it. Starting in November, I’ll be working a more consistent 40-hour week. I’ll be in the same hospital, don’t have to move, and I already know all the other docs that I’ll be working with. Changes can be hard, but as changes go, this one will be relatively painless.

I’ll try to get back here to post photos if I have time this week. To tide you over, here’s the Picasa link for the Alaska photos. And here are just two of my own.

Of course, Sweetpea had a good time. Did you really have to ask?

So did I. Photo from our veranda. Yes, I know, I live with a good man. He packed lemons, vodka, and bought me martini glasses at our first stop.

The P Vacations

I started to post some photos of our Portland trip this morning and realized that I completely skipped over the Phoenix trip earlier this month.

Here’s Phoenix in photos:

This is one reason I love my sweetie. He makes me drinks on airplanes. He packed his own Grey Goose vodka for me.

First stop on the way from the airport:

The family Mexican Train competition.

I got to meet Lee Ann, who was in town for a conference. Here are two knitting doctors:

I’m pretty sure that the centerpiece on that table was inspired by yarn balls. Yes, there were martinis involved.

I finished John’s socks.

The girls all got pedicures.

We went to our favorite fast food restaurant.

We also went to the Desert Botanical Garden to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit. If you have any opportunity to get to Phoenix before this leaves, go see this. It is just breathtaking.

We went to see a couple spring training baseball games also, but for some reason there is no photographic evidence of this.

OK, that’s enough photos for one day. I’ll leave Portland for another post!

Back From Vacation!

And what a weather shock. We had beautiful weather in Maui, except for one day that it rained hard, and another where the wind howled all day. But heck, it was warm, we had rum drinks, and I wasn’t at work, so it wasn’t all bad. It’s been in the low 30’s most of this week since we’ve been home, with rain and grey skies, and yesterday morning we woke up again to snow. Sheesh.

We did lots of cool stuff in Hawaii, as well as lots of relaxing by the ocean. We did a luau, saw whales, and drove up to the top of Haleakala Crater. It was socked in with fog on the drive up, but cleared off as we neared the summit, and was in full sun by the time we got to the top. On the way up, we saw a few miserable looking bicyclists coming down the mountain in full rain gear, looking wet and cold. It seems there are quite a few lunatic people who get up in the middle of the night so they can go to the top and stand there in the fog and rain at sunrise.

Here are just a few photos. Here’s the link to the whole slide show if you must see more.

John on the beach:

On the whale watch cruise, a big whale breached twice in the span of a few minutes right in front of our boat. We didn’t catch the whale in the photo, but caught the splash-down.

Big banyan tree in Lahaina:

Socks on the beach:

Socks on the mountain top:

Knitting by the beach. Here are two photos that show that this yarn is the same color as the ocean tidepools.

And one last sunset at the resort:

Alas, all vacations must end. Here’s the plane ride home:

What? Don’t try telling me that you’d send Sweetpea through checked baggage. She always goes Princess Class.

Resolutions

OK, I really didn’t mean to go two weeks without blogging again. That was one of my New Year’s resolutions. This doesn’t bode well, does it? Here are a few of the rest of them. These are not in any particular order.

Blog more. There, I said it. Maybe I’ll do better at it now that I’ve put it in writing.

Knit more. Knit faster. Use up more stash. I’d be embarrassed to die now; the people going through my stash would think that I was a lunatic.

Complain about work less. I have a relatively secure job, one that pays well. It funds far more than the yarn budget, not a small thing in this economy. Quit your whining.

Read more books. I signed up for the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge on Ravelry. I have no hope of actually completing this one, since I tend to pick huge books that take me weeks to read. The two books I’m in the process of reading now? One has close to 800 pages, the other has 900. I’ve decided to just keep track of the number of pages I’ve read through the year.

I even made a new blog page to keep track of the books. The link is over there in the sidebar. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Oh, and the 900 page book?

That’s where we are this week. We’re on Maui, and having a fabulous time. My laptop computer has a little weather icon that shows the temperature back home. It’s 38 degrees this morning at home. It’s much, much nicer here! Here are a few photos to prove that we’re having fun, another of my NY resolutions.

We picked this spot on a drive around northwest Maui to return for a picnic later in the week.

Rum drinks:

Knitting by the pool. I’ll show a photo of that Peacock Shawl yarn next time I get the camera out. It looks exactly like the colors of a tidepool. Oh, the drink in this one was vodka, not rum. Nothing like a little vodka tonic to get you going in the morning.

Sunset on the beach. Is anybody but me humming the song “Red Sails In The Sunset”?

More rum drinks, this time at a luau.

Yet more rum.

Yes, those photos prove that plenty of rum drinks have been consumed. There is nothing better than going someplace on vacation where they put little umbrellas in your drinks!

River, Part 2

Ok, I was going to start with a list of excuses for why I haven’t posted since the last time, but you’ve heard them all, really. So I’ll just jump in with the story of the Great River Trip 2008. I’m going to put a bunch of pictures up here, but will link at the end to the whole photo album, for anybody with a lot of patience.

Now that the bruises have healed (more on that later), and the terror has faded (ditto), this stands out as one of my favorite vacations ever. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, which probably brands me as an insane person. Really, it was fun, I promise.

Here’s the rundown. We flew to Salt Lake City, rented a car, and drove to Vernal. I hope none of my readers are from Vernal, but if you are, I don’t mean to insult you. The people in Vernal were lovely, but the town is really dismal. It’s an oil boom town run amok, with little to recommend it to tourists. We had an extra day there due to some trip rescheduling, and drove up to Flaming Gorge, which was gorgeous. Fossils and rocks and desert, oh my. The geology in this part of the trip was amazing. One of the highlights was going to the dinosaur museum in Vernal. Here’s a photo:

I think she wanted to knit. Maybe if they’d had handknit socks, they wouldn’t have become extinct.

We put in on the Green River for the first leg of the trip through the Gates of Ladore. This was a 4-day, 3-night trip, with the raft company Oars. Both companies that we floated with were outstanding, by the way. I’d go with either of them again without any hesitation. Here are just a few photos.

The second leg of the trip was on the Colorado River south of Moab, through Cataract Canyon. This trip was with Sheri Griffith, another excellent long-term rafting company. The Colorado was at nearly all-time high water levels the week we were there. The first two days were nearly flat water through some spectacular red sandstone cliffs, with hikes every day. The rapids came later in the trip, and we ended up flipping a raft through a set of rapids known as the Big Drops on day 4. The six of us on our raft managed to stay with the upside down boat through the rest of the rapids, and the guides got us to the river bank and rescued us. The raft we were on was an 18 foot raft, with huge oars that you can see in some of those photos up there. I got banged around pretty good by the oar and the water, and had bruises to prove it. We were in wet suits, but I can tell you that the cold water was the last thing I was thinking about. Just to give you an idea of the force of the water, two of the guys on our boat were wearing swim trunks over their wet suits, and they were torn completely off in the water.

The boat that was behind us had a camera mounted on the deck, and is rumored to have a good video of our flip, but we don’t have it yet. Here’s something similar to what we did, in about the spot we went over. (If the link doesn’t work, right click it, and choose “watch on youtube”.)

Yeah, it was about that much fun.

Here are just a few more photos from the Cataract Canyon trip.

That’s Jose, our guide, and one of the owners of the company. Jose knows just about everything about river rafting, and a good deal more. After I brought out the knitting, he told me about the yarn shop back in Moab, and that they have a group that meets once a week to knit. We had to catch an airplane home, so never made it there to check his story, but next time.

That’s me explaining the basics of sock knitting to the boys.

Here we are, after the big flip, sharing war stories over cocktails.

And at baggage check-in at the Lake Powell International Airport:

Our rides back to Moab:

Here’s the link to the full photo albums, if you have nothing better to do. Next time there will be knitting updates!

Gates of Ladore

Cataract Canyon

The River

No, that’s not the name of my new shawl. It’s still “that cream lace shawl”. Although last night there were a few expletives interspersed in the name. I came to a mistake, and in the process of trying to fix it (gin & tonic-driven, I’ll readily admit), I dropped a couple of stitches. They rapidly unravelled across about a two inch segment, down about 4 rows. Fortunately, I had a lifeline installed. Unfortunately, the lifeline was 20 rows back.

I’ll stop and let that soak in. There are about 300 stitches on the needles. 300 times 20 rows. You figure it out. I didn’t bother to stop and take photos, but spent about 2 hours last night getting the mess back on the needles. I haven’t checked it tonight to make sure that the stitch count is OK. It’s in time out for a couple weeks.

Which brings me to The River. Tomorrow we leave for a little river trip. We’re doing two back-to-back river raft float trips. The first segment is on the Green River in northern Utah, through the Gates of Ladore, a four day raft trip. Then we drive to Moab, Utah, and do the second segment, a 5 day trip down the Colorado through Cataract Canyon. 9 days in a tent, with “no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury”*. It sounds like heaven to me. And I will admit that in my yarny nerdiness, that I packed the sock yarn first. We’re limited on baggage weight on the flight back off the river to Moab at the end, so I’m just taking sock projects.

Speaking of which, here’s the latest sock photo. I’m still loving this yarn.

I’m off to pack. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks!

*Extra credit for knowing the source of that quote…

To The Beach!

You will note that the ticker was reset again. I’m hopeless, but least I’m honest. More about that later.

We went on a little road trip this weekend to the Oregon coast with the new car and the dogs. We found a nice little resort right on the beach that was dog-friendly, and stayed for a few days. It was cool, rainy, and windy, but just a perfect get-away, and the dogs had a blast running on the beach.

Here is a travelogue, in photos.

In the car, more than ready to go:

Me too:

Our room:

It would have been better if we’d gotten a room with a nicer view:

The beach:

All this leads to two very tired but happy dogs.

Of course there was a yarn shop in town. Isn’t there always? I bought two skeins of sock yarn, which of course I don’t need. What’s your point?

There is a skein of Jitterbug sock yarn, in the color Lapis. The other one is Noro Kureyon sock yarn, which I had no desire to buy until I actually saw it.

My second mistake was that we took our laptop along with us. We had wireless internet access, which is always dangerous when combined with a credit card and lots of free time. My logic went like this: I’ve already blown the yarn shopping fast, and have to post about it, so why not really do it up right? This makes perfect sense to all of you, right? Don’t even begin to try to convince me that you all wouldn’t do the same.

So I was browsing online and found the Three Irish Girls website. I couldn’t resist some more sock yarn. Look at their colors, and see if you don’t fall for this, too. Then I realized that I had a coupon for 10% off at Kris’s shop, Sonny and Shear. Let’s just say that I won’t need to buy sock yarn for a few more lifetimes. These haven’t arrived yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll love all of them, too.

Last but not least, thank you all for the lovely comments on my last post! I got to wear the stole on vacation, and it provided some much-needed warmth!

Where In The World?

We’re on the road again (wait, wasn’t that a song?), this time to Hawaii. We got here on Friday, and we’re using a week of our timeshare on Oahu. It’s a beautiful place, certainly, and made even lovelier by the fact that January so far has been one of the all-time greyest and rainiest in the Pacific Northwest. I really needed to get out of Dodge before I started shooting holes in the refrigerator. A little sunshine midwinter goes a long ways towards getting me through the season without spending time in a sanitarium.

Here are a couple photos of where we are:

On the knitting front, there have been a few knitting accidents lately. The purple Langsjal JĂ³hönnu stole is proceeding without incident, thanks to judiciously placed dental floss lifelines. I haven’t needed to rip back to one yet, but I’m certain that if I stop using them, I’ll make a colossal error and have to rip the whole thing out. The lifelines stay. They may brand me as a knitting wuss, but there you have it.

The grey Peace Fleece sweater is nearly done. It would be done by now, but I had some issues with the sleeves. I finished the first sleeve and was well on my way on the second one, when I decided that the whole thing looked rather suspicious. I put the front and back together, and then pinned the first sleeve in and had John try it on. I was a bit concerned that the whole mess was going to fit Andre the Giant, but the body seems to meet with his approval. The sleeve? It reached past his fingertips. So I re-jiggered the sleeve increases on the second sleeve, and it looks like it will be about the right length. Now I have to rip out the first one back to where I changed the increases, I’d estimate about a third of the first sleeve needs to be reknit. I brought it with me, but I’m not so excited to knit on heavy worsted weight yarn when it’s 80 degrees outside.

Then there are the socks. The yarn is Madeline Tosh sock yarn in the color Amaranth. I’ve gotten about this far on them:

That would be one sock, a little over half done. I’ve been concerned all along that this was going to be too small for my big feet, but marched on, knitting along anyway. Just call me the Queen of Denial. I tried it on yesterday, and I was right. I can barely get them over my instep. I thought about just finishing them and giving them away, but I need a new pair of socks, as I haven’t really finished a pair in a long time. And I really love this color. So I ripped the whole thing out and started over yesterday. I have about an inch of ribbing done at the moment.

And that’s all there is in the knitting news. We’re off to church, then to Chinatown for dim sum this morning. I wonder, are there any yarn stores in Hawaii?

Idaho! FO!

I’m back from Idaho, and have a new FO to report!

First, though, I omitted something from my post about the goodie/prize bag I received from Kim. She included a little “L” shaped notepad, and I discovered yesterday that there were also little “L” stitch markers in the bag. Here they are:

Very cute, eh? I love them and just want to cast on something that needs little stitch markers.

Next, I got a couple of requests about one of the yarns I scored in Boston. It’s the Claudia Handpainted Silk Lace, and it is divine. The color is “Chocolate Cherry”.

Click on that to make it bigger, and start drooling. I have no idea whatever to do with this, but it will be lovely to knit with. It will be a shawl or stole someday once I find the perfect pattern.

Now, the trip. I have never taken a knitting class, and was a little nervous about doing so with someone as famous as Beth Brown-Reinsel. Not to worry. She was fabulous. The class was on “knitting ganseys”, and I learned more in 2 days of classes than I have in months on my own. Beth is a very patient instructor, and managed to get a bunch of women of varied skill levels absolutely enthusiastic about traditional gansey construction. In the process, we finished (or mostly finished) a tiny sample gansey. If you have her book, it’s in there, though I’ll warn you, it’s a lot more fun knitting it with Beth alongside coaching.

Here’s my finished gansey, after a bit of steaming with my trusty Rowenta to block the edge into submission:

And a closeup:

I learned tons of cool stuff by doing this sweater. I had never done an underarm gusset, and was very surprised at how easy and intuitive it is. It’s a little like turning a heel on a sock; once you do it, you wonder why you never thought of it before. I also learned how to do a channel island cast on, which is truly cool.

Probably the best thing, though, was being at an isolated resort for three whole days with a master knitter. Beth spent a couple of hours on the second day talking us through the design process, and showed us how to come up with a gansey sweater pattern of our very own. I intend to knit a full-size gansey some day, but even if I never do, the stuff she taught me will make my knitting much better. And being around a bunch of other great knitters was wonderful. We laughed, shared, and just in general had a blast.

Here are some more photos:

That’s Beth in the middle, with her giant teaching swatch.

That’s Jennifer, who owns Isabel’s Yarn & Needlepoint shop in Ketchum.

Here’s where the retreat is:

Our cabin:

This answers the question of what kind of wine goes with Cheetos:

And the sock enjoying the scenery:

Here’s the details if you are interested in next year’s retreat. Jennifer has done this retreat for several years, and it’s at Redfish Lake Lodge, Idaho. It’s very remote, though they do now have wireless access in the main lodge, if you can’t live without internet access. The cabins range from rustic to more rustic, though we found it very comfortable and absolutely the perfect setting for a retreat. There are no phones in the cabins, and no television, which is perfect. The food was lovely, and the scenery can’t be beat. Ketchum (Sun Valley) is a little over an hour’s drive away, so this really is out in the middle of nowhere. Email Jennifer at her website if you’re interested in next year’s retreat. I certainly plan on going if at all possible.

Next time, another FO!

Sit Back & Relax,

…this will be a long post full of fun and adventure! Get yourself a cup of tea, or maybe something stronger.

But first, a Lucy picture, because you can’t have enough silly cat photos.

Let’s all hear it, “awwwww”. Her look of pure bliss probably is due to the catnip that I dump over this thing regularly.

And next, just a few photo highlights of the recent Boston trip.

These are our friends Byron & Diane, who now live in Rhode Island. We went to visit them while in Boston. You might note that Byron & John have pretty much the same facial expression in these photos.

The sock got to see another ocean:

We had lobster:

We ate more good food:

The next couple are for Kris:

We found that they tend to get a lot more dressed up in Boston:

We took the Duck Tour, which is very corny, but I’d highly recommend it if you’re a first-time Boston visitor.

If you’ve never done one of these, they go both on land and water. Click on this one to make it bigger.

We went here:

Red Sox Win!

Then we came home:

The End.

(New Projects next time! Stay Tuned!)

Boston…

Or, Red Sox, Blue Sox

Indeed we have internet access from our hotel room here, though it took me longer to figure out than I’d like to admit. Other than the rainy icky day we had yesterday, we’ve been having a blast. I even got to do some yarn shopping. More on that later. First, the Sox. We have tickets to the Red Sox game tonight, and in honor of that event, I finished a pair of Blue Sox. Actually they are more purple and green, but what the heck.

Project Specs:

Yarn: Wollmeise superwash sock yarn, in Krauterbeet
Pattern: My own. 72 stitches, picot hem, flap heel and gusset
Needles: 2.00mm Pony Pearls
For: Me
Started: June 2007
Finished: September 2007
What I learned: Hmmm. I always say the same thing about socks. I still love a plain sock. There are all those lovely sock stitch patterns out there, and yet again, I’ve started another plain version for my next pair. I carry these everywhere in my bag, for those odd moments when I can knit just one or two rounds, so I like a simple pattern that I don’t have to think about. I absolutely love this yarn. It has a nice smooth finish and the colors are fabulous.

Now, about that shopping. Laurie, aka Etherknitter, arranged for a few friends to get together to take me on a knitting tour on Saturday after we got here. Julia, Claudia, and Manise (no blog) met us at Windsor Button for the first leg of the tour. We then went to Woolcott over in Cambridge, then out to Lexington to Wild & Woolly. Kathy, Martha, Lucia, and Ruth met us along the way. We had lunch and a lot of laughs during the afternoon. To me, this is the best part about blogging. There are a lot of reasons why I still do the blog, but getting to meet some very wonderful people along the way is a real treat. Thanks, ladies! Here are some photos:

The classic “we’re blogging each other” photo:

Yes, Ruth has a baby in there. Or had, as I think she’s gone into labor since our little foray.

And what all did I bring home? Here’s the evidence:

We’re off to enjoy the sunshine. Next time, new project!

O, Canada!

I know, I know, I’m a little late for the big holiday up north. I was working, dammit, and didn’t get time to post pictures this past week. Here, however, are the long-awaited photos of our road trip to Canada. There are a lot of them, and I was going to split them into two posts, but what the hell.

I joked in a previous post that we were going to flip a coin at each intersection to decide which way to go. That was only partly true. We actually had a destination in mind, Fairmont Hot Springs in eastern BC. We had a week of time share that was going to expire if we didn’t use it soon, and they had an “efficiency”* suite open for one of the weeks I had off, so off we went. We didn’t plan how we were going to get there until we had the car packed and we were sitting in the driveway with the maps all over the place. Surprisingly, given that John and I are both happiest when we can give orders and expect everybody else to comply, we didn’t fight at all about the route that we ended up taking. We took a couple of leisurely days driving there, with frequent stops along the way.

Here’s our first stop. We got a bright and early start, about noon, and I hadn’t had nearly enough coffee.

This was our first night’s stop, in eastern Washington. Ahhh, wine and knitting.

By our second night, we’d gotten across the border and into Canada. We stayed in an old Victorian B&B in Cranbrooks, BC. Sweetpea found a buddy. She’d heard that there were bears in Canada, so she really was looking forward to the trip. I think she’s trying to explain to her friend how to knit socks.

By the third night, we’d made it to our timeshare home. Here’s the setting for our first dinner. Note the fancy candle holders.

I’m not exactly sure that I remember where this next photo was taken. This is bad, it might mean that the alcohol might be finally killing off more than the weak brain cells. John might remember. Honey? Any idea?

Next, your standard tourist photo taken through the front windshield of the car while it’s moving. I’m not sure what it says about my photography skills, but the shots out the front window were some of the best scenery shots.

Here’s one of the seaming party that I had for the Eggplant sweater.

It was getting dark, I was almost done with it, and the lighting wasn’t very good. John, always ready for an emergency, had packed his camping headlamp.

The sock enjoyed the drive through Kootenay park.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that they put benches along the trails in the park, just so we can sit for a minute and knit socks.

After our timeshare stay, we moved up north, to the resort with the late-night drinking boys I mentioned in the previous post. Sweetpea liked this place, too.

We took a hike, where John held up the world for a while.

We saw lots of waterfalls.

We had cocktails by the little stream outside our cabin. Yes, John brings his own martini shaker along on vacations. How can you not love a man like this?

Some of us drank bourbon.

And more Guinness. Remember, Guinness is good for you. Trust me, I’m a doctor. This one was enjoyed in an Irish pub in Banff. I remember this one.

We took more hikes.

We sat by that creek some more. This one was taken on the Solstice. We sat out until almost midnight (quietly, I might point out), and I got the opportunity to actually wear my new sweater. Right then, I wished I had made the collar higher.

We took more walks.

We saw a real bear. We are pretty sure that this fine specimen was a grizzly. It was right off the road, and dozens of tourists were out of their cars, dragging their little kids as close as they could get to take photos. We snapped this from the safety of inside the car. People always astound me in their infinite stupidity.

Sweetpea was really pissed that she missed that one, being back in the cabin and all.

The sock got to see glaciers. This was taken at the Columbia Icefields. This was pretty exciting for us, as we live close to the other end of the Columbia River. It makes me happy somehow to know that I’ve taken sock photos at both ends of the Columbia.

After all Stephanie’s talk of the hot Mounties, I finally found one. I couldn’t talk him into holding the sock, though.

We stopped at the Chateau Lake Louise for a cocktail. I think I might be the first person to sit on those benches and knit socks.

We saw more wildlife:

This is John’s favorite photo of the trip. It was the car stopped right in front of us. For some reason, this one made both of us laugh.

Last but not least, Sweetpea got to see some more bears.

The End.

Happy Fourth of July for all of you that celebrate it! Next time there will be knitting photos, I promise.

* Translate that as “small room tucked into a corner overlooking the parking lot, with a miniature kitchen and no air conditioning”.

On Vacation

We are still on our road trip, and in true "Lorette" fashion, I packed the car full of everything you could imagine. Books, yarn, enough clothing and wine to last us weeks, etc. Everything except for the camera cord, so I can’t upload any photos to show you how lovely this spot is. We really did have sort of a plan for where we would end up, as we had reservations at a timeshare in the Canadian Rockies. We took a few meandering days to get here though, and now we’ve moved to a lovely spot near Lake Louise, in Alberta. Our room overlooks a rushing creek, and it’s just perfect.

Well, perfect except for the fun-loving guys who partied by the creek until 4 AM last night. John yelled at them at about 3 AM, and when it didn’t make any difference, I got dressed and went out and gave them my best disapproving schoolmarm lecture that they shouldn’t just quiet down, they should end the party now. I’m not sure if it was the lecture, or the sight of me in my Bat Signal sweatshirt, with my hair on end, but they called it quits and went to bed. Of course they left the fire going, and left numerous empty bottles of booze for the staff to clean up this morning. The manager said they are still here tonight, but she’s going to give them another dressing down and make sure it doesn’t happen again tonight. I hope so. I don’t want to be trooping around outside at 4 AM again tonight.

I have been getting some knitting done. I finally finished that Eggplant Jo Sharp sweater, and when I get back home and find the camera cord, I’ll post photos. It fits better than I anticipated, given that it has drop shoulders instead of fitted sleeves. I’m quite happy with it overall, even though I won’t be able to wear it for many months. I’ve also been working on the lace shawl in progress, and am nearly at the point of starting the edging. It’s the Forest Canopy shawl, and I’m making it in some leftover emerald colored Zephyr laceweight. I’m not sure how big it will be, as I had about three ounces total of the yarn to work with. I also forgot to bring my handy little scale with me. I started with one 2-ounce ball of the yarn, and another approximately one ounce ball. My current plan is to use up the larger ball on the body, then switch to the edging half way into the second ball. I think half an ounce of lace yarn should be way more than enough for the edging, don’t you? This is an easy enough pattern that I haven’t been using a lifeline, but I might just put one in a couple of repeats before I do the edging, just in case.

And there you have it. The photo-less knitting blog report. We should be home this weekend, so hopefully I’ll get some photos up next week!

Oh, and go congratulate Claudia on reaching, and surpassing her fundraising goal for the MS ride that she is doing this weekend. She is the #1 fundraiser for the event. She is also still taking last minute donations, so if you haven’t given, or if you have some extra cash and can donate a bit more, get over there. She’s perilously close to $35,000, people. $35,000 sounds like a nice round number, doesn’t it?

No Knitting

I have no knitting progress to report, so will show cute kid photos instead. My surprise weekend trip was to Sacramento to visit my niece, Donna, and her family. She graduated from her master’s program this week, and I flew down to surprise her and attend the festivities. My sister Linda was there also, so we had a fun time (yes, Diane, we talked about you, you should have come).
Here are those cute photos just to get started. You can see that my niece is raising her daughters with the proper queenly expectations.

Notice that somebody got her ears pierced; she was very brave for the procedure:

Here’s the graduate and her mom, my sister Linda:

And one after the ceremony with Donna and I:

And Donna and her sister, Jan:

There was a post-graduation party where everybody had lots of food and drinks and a great time. Oh heck, I’ll show a photo from that as well. Before you see this one, you need to know that Donna is not much of a party girl-drinker. Master’s degrees don’t come every day though, so she decided to celebrate with her friends:

That guy in the middle is her husband, Brian. The party was luau-themed, so there was a grass skirt and coconut bra involved, but since this generally is a family-rated blog, I won’t show them.

Congratulations, Donna!

There was knitting involved, actually. I worked on the green lace Forest Canopy shawl, and finished a couple more repeats. I have about an ounce and a half of the yarn left, and would like to just use it all up. It’s just a blob at present, and not very photogenic. I’m also still working on that eggplant Jo Sharp sweater, knitting more miles of seed stitch collar. The pattern has two options, one for a short mock turtleneck type of collar, and the second for more of a cowl collar. I’m aiming for something in between, more like a real turtleneck that folds over, but not quite as floppy as a cowl. We’ll see. It better work; I’ll cry if I have to rip and knit much more seed stitch.

Typepad was on drugs last week, as some of you noticed when you tried to comment. To their credit, once I figured it out and emailed them, they responded quickly, fixed it, then emailed me to let me know they’d fixed it. Hopefully it’s working now. If you can’t comment, email me (link over there to the lower right in the sidebar) to let me know.

We’re off on a road trip for the next week. We’re headed east and north, through eastern Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and aiming to end up around Banff. We don’t have a definite plan, and though we’re leaving today, we’re not exactly packed either. The “plan” so far is that when we get to an intersection, we’ll flip a coin to see whether we go right or left. It makes my husband nervous when I drive, which is perfect. He gets to drive, I get to knit all the way. We’re taking the laptop, but seriously doubt that there will be wireless access where we’re going. If I’m wrong, I’ll post, if not, I might have some finished stuff to show you when I get back!