Summer Vacation

OK , it was more like "summer long weekend" but I did manage to get away with my devoted husband "Terry", our dear friends and thier two adorable children who happen to be my god-children. When I woke up this morning I seemed to be thinking (or was it dreaming?) about what my essay would be had my teacher asked....what did you do on your summer vacation?

I guess it was a mix of playing with D. and V. (my 6 year old god-children; whose identities are to remain anonymous) , knitting and eating lots of great food and not necessarily in that order as you will soon see.

D. and V.'s parents (who are non-knitters) were constantly amazed when I pulled out yet another knitting project. Actually, I packed 5 projects for this mini-vacation:

1) my mystery shawl

2) sleeves for a Rowan cabled pullover that Val wants as a class project

3) a fingerless mitten in new yarn - Llama/Silk

4) my Berroco coat with the new Jasper yarn (getting too big and warm to knit on these days)

5) sleeves for my son-in-law's Christmas or birthday gift - whichever is closest to when I finish this project.

More on these projects later....

We had a blast watching the kids learn to swim in the lake, go tubing, fishing with Terry while the rest of us slept, hiking a mountain with the best view ever, and making smores on the campfire. While they have so much more energy than we do, their enthusiasm kept us going. Our little guy is an amazing story! He was adopted at 5 months when he was nothing but a grey/blue skelaton with chronic bouts of pnuemonia. He would truly not be alive today if he hadn't been adopted and received the help he needed. Now he looks like a little model for J. Crew or some other All-American advertisement. You should see him get excited over catching a fish. You can't help but get excited yourself. His sister has no fear when it comes to the water and would swim across the lake if you let her.

OK back to knitting projects.

my mystery shawl (stole) - I'm loving this lace proeject and I promise you, if Melanie does another one next year we will advertise it like crazy. This year there are about 7000 knitters worldwide making this shawl. She has the directions translated into 9 or 10 languages. Several of us meet on Friday nights after the shop is closed and work on our stole. Desserts are shared along with the eventual mistakes we all make bacause the conversations distract us from our yarn overs, knit 2 together.....

sleeves for my son-in-law. You are going to learn a little bit about me in this and you might even recognize yourself. I once thought that a pullover sweater made out of self patterning sock yarn (on size 2 needles) for a 6'3" guy would be a cool project and it was, until....the sleeves. Think about the striping for a minute. The front (and back) are both about 22 inches wide while the sleeve (at the cuff) are about 7 inches wide. That means that the striping on the body of the sweater is 1-2 rows wide but on the sleeves the stripes are much wider (more like 5-6 rows each). And I am being so anal about this that I am cutting the yarn every 1-2 rows so the stripes match! Am I certifiable nuts??? Yes, but I do have one sleeve done and the second one is almost to the elbow. THERE IS HOPE that I can finish this sweater. I just hope he likes it after all this effort.

To break up the delicacy of the lace shawl and the size 2 sleeves I knit up a fingerless mitten using Plymouth's new yarn Royal Llama Silk. I love the tweedy effect and it is so soft (but not limp and there is none of that "silk" smell). The pattern is free with yarn purchase.

I mentioned the other two projects but they don't look like much in the photo so I'll save them for later when they take more form. I will say that I am enjoying the new Berroco yarn, Jasper as it is so soft (100% merino) and easy to knit with on size 9 needles.

I expect my teacher would have lots of material here to critique. I hope you enjoyed my vacation, Laura