August mailings

I received very happy mail yesterday, both my club deliveries arrived on the same day. I didn't even have time to get anxious as they arrived before the end of the month.

The clubs include the scarf club from Patternworks and the sock club from Three Irish Girls. The sock club mailing was an extra large skein of 100% superwash merino called Beckon in the colorway Lagoon. The extra goody that came along with the sock club was a group of gift tags with cute labels stating your gift is hand-made. An example, "Yes, I did make it and no, you can't return it" from kniterlla. Very cute package and I can't wait to make Lagoon colored socks but I must finish July's first!

I will detail the scarf club mailing in another post.

Today is school supply shopping day, always a fun day. Happy Saturday!

Random Friday

What a mess! I don't know how this happens so quickly. The table next to my chair that holds my knitting - I clean it off and put one knitting project there that I work on in the evening when I finally get a chance to sit down. All of a sudden its a storage place for a month's worth of knitting magazine subscriptions and catalogs, swatches, three knitting projects, and a pile of books that I haven't read yet. Its a breeding ground for clutter. Its what Flylady would call a Hot Spot.

For awhile I live with it because I know I put each thing there for a reason but pretty soon its no longer each individual item that I touched for some reason but a huge, single mess that must be dealt with. This weekend I will deal with this Hot Spot and cool it down by putting stuff away.

I may even knit a little bit.

Sock on the road

My sock and I drove to Portland yesterday afternoon. I went for a concert with my husband, my sock came along for the ride. I turned the heal and started working down the foot as we drove over the Government Camp pass. It was a very pretty drive, the sun was out and it was a lovely afternoon.







I got a picture of my sock with Mt. Hood in the background.







We went to see The Dead Weather, Jack White's new band, my husband is a big fan. Their opening band, at left, was called Tyvek. My phone camera does not take the best pictures, especially from a distance so you wouldn't be able to pick out the drummer who played standing up the whole set.



At left here, The Dead Weather. Again, very difficult to tell who is who but it was a good show and fortunately for me, my husband played the album several times over the last few weeks so that I recognized the songs and was able to sing along. We drove back to Bend after the show so it was a late night.

Thankfully, no work for me today unless you count taking a 12 year old to the 2nd out of three dentist appointments in the span of a week work.

Project progress

Despite the week away and challenges of getting back to the routine, some progress has been made on a few knitting projects.

I finally cast on for my July sock club socks and am really enjoying working on them. After telling people at knitting group last night about joining a sock club, one woman asked if my goal was really to knit a pair of socks a month. It is my goal, I don't need 12 skeins of socks yarn just piling up to enhance my stash. I want to actually get through these shipments and make some socks. My goal is to knit up every skein of yarn that gets delivered to my door.

I washed and blocked the swatch for mom's sweater. I don't generally do this but I listened to Kelly Petkun's podcast on swatching and learned why its important to wash and block your swatch and I figure this project should be done the right way so I am going to do it step by step.



Work on the July scarf-club scarf continues a-pace and it will certainly be done before the next shipment arrives. Now that I know they don't come until the very last moment of the month, I know I have plenty of time to get this done before the next one comes. Its nice to just work one pattern repeat each night and watch it grow.




I looked far and wide at Sock Summit for the perfect pattern to use for my sock-club socks and finally found the Urban Strollers pattern by Aurora Yarns. It is looking really nice with this colorway and its just what I wanted.





July's colorway - Rhubarb, isn't it pretty?

Vacation pics

This picture of the kids with Mt. Lassen behind them is one of my favorites of the trip.

We had a very geologic trip, seeing two caves - the Oregon Caves and Shasta Caverns at Lake Shasta, two volcanoes - Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta, and we threw in the Redwoods and a little bit of beach as well.


It was a great trip but its nice to be back in a routine and look out - school begins in three weeks!

We're back

Had a great time and packed in a lot of fun stuff.

More later after the laundry and I get back into the routine.

On vacation, back in a week

We're heading our for a road trip - three kids across the back seat, camping gear in the back and the roof of the car.

Oregon Caves, Trees of Mystery, the Redwoods, Mt. Lassen National Park, are just some of the planned destinations.

See you in a week.