Sara Skates

Perhaps off-color, but made me laugh

My gmail account had this ad at the top of the page the other day:

Why Atheist or Atheism ? - www.atheist.net - Visit Atheistic Forum and find out. It's a godforsaken place.

Knitting is going well.  Adding the beads to Bandit's scarf progresses slowly.  I tried to cast on for a pair of socks (these - space invaders!) for a friend, but ended up starting with the wrong color (oops).  I've been working on Poppy still too - the end is in sight for that one.

Hopefully my next post will have a bit more flesh/bulk to it :)

Hmm - this may work

If I single chain (um, I haven't a clue about any crochet technical details, perhaps my terms are off) 5 stitches for ever two garter bumps, then join a single chain to that garter bump, add a bead, and repeat - it could work.  The bead seems to show up on both sides (I was going for a same-back-and-front kind of look with this scarf).

Crappy evening photo with flash but:

I'm flying a bit by the seat of my pants, and I have no idea how this is all going to block out - but I have faith that it won't look totally like crap.

Any words of warning before I put too much effort in?  As adding that bead?  Persnickety, to say the very least.

Tired

We're back from vacation at the beach - Oak Island, NC.  Oh my - I have been to many beaches before, but never one with warm water.  New England beaches have cold water, southern California beaches have cold water.  North Carolina beaches?  Like a perfectly tepid tub.  It was a blast.

there was much of this - Toby splashing in waves

and this:

Hannah's sandcastle interpretation - a big bird nest.

The no internet or email part?  It was ok.  I survived by acquiring skill at texting via my cell phone, and visiting an internet-enabled cafe at the end of the week ;)  My blogroll has still imploded upon itself with unread posts, but I'm catching up slowly.

Knitting - lots of knitting happened.  Amy's kitty paw scarf is knitted and bound off, I am pondering how to add a beaded edging to get another kitty color in there.  It's in memory of Bandit - a long time companion - who was a tri-color tabby and the yarn only has two of the colors (the beads will add the third).  I have looked through various edging books, but am somewhat stumped - and have come up empty with initial efforts at finding edging inspiration online.  If anyone has any ideas about picking up along the edge of a rectangle and adding a beaded border - please comment!

Other knitting?  I completed most of the body of my Poppy sweater, one sleeve, and have started the second sleeve (though it took much ripping for some reason - I kept making goofy mistakes with the second sleeve - you know, twisting the cast-on row and making a moebius sleeve; casting on 55 rather than 45 stitches and not noticing until it was several inches along;  decreasing only at the beginning of the decrease rows and not at the end so only 1/2 the decreases happening; et damn cetera).  A new sock was cast on and progressed through the picot hem and a bit more (my third pair of socks using Austermann Step yarn - with the aloe and jojoba in it - this time in the Dune colorway.  I printed off and thought about starting MS3, but I think I'll pass on it.  This has me smitten instead - it's in queue.  I'll do it in cream not pink, but I love it.

Skating?  We stopped off in the Hillsboro NC area for a few days before heading home - and I snagged another few lessons with the two coaches there that I like.  Tearing my axel apart and putting it back together is coming along.  For moves and footwork and other general just-plain-skating stuff, I came home with lots of good tips.  I'm taking the Rocker Foxtrot text on Tuesday next week, and mostly spending a lot of time on Junior moves elements and footwork for my freestyle program.

Terry's last event of the summer was this week - she and Dozer did really well.  She made a right turn where she should have made a left in the dressage portion - and lost 2 points which put her into 14th place (she would have been 5 places ahead of that without the mistake!).  She did really well in the cross country and stadium portions - and moved up to 6th place!  She is deservedly thrilled.

I'm still catching up on sleep and trying to get back into work mode ha.  Lucky for me, summer is a bit of a lower-key season in the land of Institutional Research - not that there's not work to do, just that there are a lot of vacations etc. and things don't move at quite the same pace.

Lastly - Cate sent a link to this camp for Toby - a week-long sports camp for kids who use wheelchairs/walkers etc., taught by adult wheelchair users. I am SO thrilled for the opportunity - he has been begging to go to sports camp this summer.  So, some combination of us will be heading to Chez Cate and Rhys for a week in early August.

Happy summer everyone - it's moving along quickly but rather well for us!

Traveling again

Random notes from afar - we're part way through a 14 hour drive to the Outer Banks in NC - for a week on the beach with friends, food, knitting, sand and water, and No Internet.  We're at a Holiday Inn in Mechanicsburg PA folks, and  I cut the cord when we check out to finish the drive. 

Things that make you think while driving by:  A sign for the PA Center for Healing Arts.  With another sign saying "YARD SALE" - presumably this weekend.  What does a center for healing arts sell at a yard sale? 

I swatched for starting these socks while driving yesterday, using Berrocco's Smart Cotton.  They're for a friend of mine - who (a) lives in warm California so cotton would be a better choice than wool, (b) this Smart Cotton is stretchy, not unstretchy like typical cotton sock yarns so my knitting fingers will like the process better, (c) but c - the gauge is entirely too wrong.  I have a picture - the little invader dude is quite cute and I just happen to have the right combination of colors in my stash - but it's not going to work.  The socks wouldn't look the same with only 4 space invaders circling the calf rather than seven ;)  Yes, I have photographic evidence - one on my camera conveniently left in the car overnight (thus, no photo until after this week), and one on my cell phone - which I have no idea how to get OFF of my cell phone.

The good news?  I packed amply in the knitting project department.  This one will be shelved until I revisit the what-yarn issue.  While yes I totally fell off the buy-no-yarn thing while in Kansas City with Cate, and while the  fabric that the Cotton Twist is really rather nice and would make nice socks, they'll make other socks.

I'm also on the lookout for a small knitted border to add to a skinny scarf - with beads.  Or a way to add an edging with beads to a scarf - all the way around.  Any suggestions??  Yes, it would have been much more efficient to have the beaded border part of the plan before knitting commenced - but I didn't - and the scarf is nearly complete and I need beads on it.  There must be a way to make it to my bidding.

I expect to return with a blogroll that has exploded with posts to catch up on, which I may or may not manage to do.  But the week at the beach???  Hard to complain about that.

Summer knitting -

Is mostly socks, with a few hats thrown in for good measure:

I know, dark lighting and it's not yet blocked.

It's my favorite hat pattern, it's the Short Rows Pill Box Hat, from Homespun Handknit.  This yarn has a different gauge than the pattern as written, so I did a little calculation to figure out the size of the vertical short-row wedges, and it came out pretty well.  The yarn is nice - it's the two-ply-natural in white from this page - I got it as souvenir yarn as some teeny store on our way to I forget where.

It was a speedy project too - I cast-on on the ride up to Canada ;)

Kiddos

So there was this this road trip to Canada.  I have been part of this online "playgroup" (former pregnancy group) since I was pregnat with Toby - all of us were expecting kids to be born in July of 2000.  (Toby arrived early, but nonetheless...).  One of the board members lives on a farm not too far Montreal, and periodically invites board members (who in reality live all over the world) to come for a bbq weekend.  We went two years ago - and brought Barney the dog home.  This time, we brought home no new pets (though there were a number of litters of cute kittens).

There was face painting:

Hannah was a giraffe.  Toby had elaborate instructions for the face painter:  grass on the bottom, a jungle tree on the right, a monkey on the left, hanging off of his name spelled across his forhead - but spellled upside down so that the monkey could read it while swinging ...  Kai was a most excellent butterly - she was one of the first to have her face painted, and she was stunning.

It's a funny thing - to spend real 3D time with folks you have known for years only online in more 2D interction.  About 80 people were there - families with 6-7 year olds, and older and younger siblings, and moms and dad and friends. 

There have been three two-mom families on the board since the beginning.  One I met briefly a few years ago while attending a conference in Southern California - she was there for work too (though not at the conference!) and we made some time to see each other.  The other I have never met in person - she and her older daughter flew out to Rochester, and we drove to Canada together (though Terry stayed home for a horse event).  It was really great to spend some time with Jill and Kai - we connected well way back at the beginning, spending hours on IM chat, and since them keeping in touch via email and the occasional phone call (and the board of course).  Kai and my kids folded themselves right into being fast friends for the weekend.  Jill and I chattered on all the way up and back.

We had two tents - a larger "car camping" one, and a smaller "backpacking" one (you know, where you strap everything you need on your back for a week or two and tromp through the woods).  So that mamas could stay up late with all the other grownups, we three our three kids into the bigger tent, and Jill and I shared the smaller tent.  There were some middle-of-the-night hysterics trying to get the mats and sleeping bags set up.  First, I had put the tent fly on so that the door of the fly and the door of the tent did not match up at all - reinstalling it at 1 am in the dark and just finding the door was pretty funny.  Second, we had set up the mattresses/sleeping bags so that our heads pointed pretty firmly downhill - hopping them around while in our sleeping bags so that they were oriented perpendicular to where they had been was pretty funny.

We got back later on Sunday, and sent Kai and Jill off on their plane homewards on Monday around noon.  Returning to work on Tues was a challenge - but luckily, today is a vacation day, and it's coming up on mid-day and I have yet to swap out of my pjs to day clothes ;)

Yesterday was also Toby's due-date day.  For the first time, I forgot about it - until someone on the board reminded me.  It has always been more of a "hard" day for me than his arrival day - which is much more of a traumatic memory for Terry.  His due date has signified for me all sorts of things that should have gone differently.  But since I didn't even remember it - I took that as a sign that much of the PTSD parts of having a baby so early is fading.  So I got home and exclaimed to Toby that we needed to celebrate the day we were expecting him to be born - and that we should go pick up a cake.  After a dramatic attempt at getting some gifts too, we went to get ice cream after dinner - we were hoping for an ice cream cake but they had none in stock.  They  had pop rocks to sprinkle on top - quite the taste experience for Toby and Hannah (I abstained from the pop rocks...).  It was a good day.

There was also kniting.  I am nearly done with a hat - commenced during the ride up to Canada - I will post a picture when it's done. 

I also enabled another knitter:  Jill went home with a firm grasp of knitting and purling and a dolly skirt to show for her efforts.  It's still a think-hard process for her - but she demonstrated an excellent sense of "reading" her process - and I'm pretty sure we have another one emeshed in the fold.  :)

Telegram

very busy stop
Canadian camping trip stop
70+ others moms/kids born ~July2000 stop
great time with a friend of mine and her daughter stop
hat knitting stop
more later after zzzz stop