From the bucket to the sprout

I swear, I had the beginnings of a terrific blog post all drafted and ready. All I had to do was add some images of album covers and it was all set.

Last night I was supposed to be seeing Barry Manilow in concert at the Chicago Theatre, performing from his 2011 concept album 15 Minutes. Barry’s been a bucket-list item for me since I imprinted on him at the age of 12, he wasn’t getting any younger, and I wasn’t getting any closer to Las Vegas. So I was excited to hear my husband had gotten us tickets to his sold-out Friday night show, even though it made for a super-hectic Friday of work, classes, an eye exam, picking up the kids from school, and rushing them to their grandparents’ house before switching cars and driving (him) / riding (me) to downtown Chicago. Also on the agenda was brunch at Rick Bayless’s restaurant Xoco the next morning. We’re big Top Chef fans and although he’s eaten at two other Top Chef restaurants (run by Harold Dieterle, winner of Season 1, and Wylie Defresne, Top Chef Master), this would be my first Top Chef meal.

But at about noon on Friday, he texted me with the news that Barry was still not recovered from recent hip surgery, and the show was cancelled. And then another text: we couldn’t get out of the hotel reservation, so we were going to take the trip anyway and have dinner at a Top Chef restaurant.

The hotel, Sax, was literally next door to the House of Blues. Which we didn’t enter, have a drink at, or hear anyone play at. Next slide, please!

The unvisited House of Blues

With the Jetta safely valet-parked somewhere in Chicago, and trying not to think of Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari, we took a cab a little ways north to Sprout, which is run by Season Three Top Cheffer Dale Levitski. Now, I was being a happy little tourist taking pictures outside, but I wasn’t about to take any pictures of the restaurant interior, the menus, or the food — although I was tempted to do so at certain points in the meal.

I was going to try to link you to the menus at the Sprout website, but they are not the same menus we saw last night. I have a feeling they change very frequently. Instead, you’ll have to trust my descriptions as I, in turn, will have to trust my memory. (Buckle up.)

Before dinner I had a cocktail that was basically a lime fizz with ginger. It was served with a tiny wedge of lime on the glass and had a very dry finish.

For dinner you could order a la carte from the menu or choose, as we did, the prix fixe. We chose an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert from the menu and would also receive a soup course and a cheese course along the way.

The appetizer I chose was a curried shrimp, which was cooked to perfection on a square of puff pastry and accompanied with a mildly sweet sauce the color of butternut squash, sprinkled with pistachios, and next to a small salad of baby turnip greens, radishes, and dark cherries. It was amazing, and our server indicated that things would only get better from there.

Oh, yes — I was also having a lovely glass of wine with dinner. I usually prefer a white wine on the sweet side, but having picked spicy shrimp to start with and a game meat as the center of my meal, I ended up with a full-bodied red wine that would go pretty well with everything. I do not by any means have an expert palate (though I was, um, coached in the drinking arts by a pair of sophisticated drinkers who shall remain un-named), so when the server described Wine One as “all right” and Wine Two as something that would “provide better structure for my meal,” I decided to trust his authority and didn’t regret it.

Next came the soup course, a tiny taste of a butternut-and-something soup garnished with baby greens and served in a small white cylinder of a “bowl.” The total volume of soup, velvety on the tongue, couldn’t have been two tablespoons, which was good because it was terribly rich, and having any more would have ruined my appetite for the….

Venison, crusted with black pepper, with rustic mashed potatoes and a dark-cherry-and-something demiglaze. I have never had venison before, but tonight seemed the night to try it. The slices appeared rare in the middle, but were actually cooked perfectly and just melted in my mouth. And the wine was perfect with it, strong enough to handle the black pepper (which I barely noticed) yet add some sweetness.

It was around this time that Chef Dale (actually, Executive Chef Dale) came out of the kitchen to talk with the Annoying Couple at the table next to ours. They had been a little too loud all evening, casually dismissive of almost everything on their plates, and basically a pair of local nitwits for whom requesting an audience with the chef was standard operating procedure. Dale stood between our tables and chatted amiably with them, so close to me that I could have goosed him. (I didn’t.) I guess part of a chef’s image is the ability to interact politely with anybody who wants to interact with you, and Dale does that very well. When he was done with them, Brendan caught his eye, and Dale asked about our meal, so we chatted him up for a couple of minutes, asking a bit about behind-the-scenes Top Chef stuff (judges’ table can last up to FOUR HOURS) and trying to spend more time than that in praising his food to high heaven.

Dale retreated to the kitchen, and our cheese course came out. I was expecting a plate with cheese on it, but what we got was a “grilled cheese sandwich” that was more like a wedge of a quesadilla, with aged Wisconsin white cheddar and thin slices of roasted apple inside. This is the only item I ordered that is pictured on the Sprout website; go to the Gallery and click once on “back” to see it.

Then it was time for dessert, and I had picked “chocolate.” (Why would I not?) I remember a chocolate mousse with shaved chocolate, and some creme anglaise, and a very very rich dark-chocolate-and-something sauce beneath it all, but my stomach was filling and now my memory is fading. Everything was wonderful, and I don’t remember sharing a bit of it. I did make a bit of a mistake with this course by not finishing my wine before I started eating it — it was a clash. I remedied that as soon as I could (bottoms up!), and enjoyed the chocolate very much. We finished with a cup of coffee (sweetened with raw-sugar cubes and can’t-say-”lightened” with some thickness of cream) and cabbed it back to the hotel.

Gene Siskel Film Center

On Saturday morning we took a walk around the area before heading back to Milwaukee to get the kids. We went down State Street and passed the Chicago Theatre, which did NOT list Barry Manilow on the marquee. We saw the Gene Siskel Film center (miss you, Gene). We wandered around a bit, then saw something very familiar — a huge Picasso sculpture I’ve seen dozens of times in The Blues Brothers, and a signal that we were at Richard J. Daley Plaza and “on set” for the culminating scenes of The Blues Brothers. I was a very happy little tourist here, and scurried around to find just the right angles for my pictures. They’re also in a Facebook photo album titled “Blues Brothers Walking Tour.

Chicago Theatre

National Radio Hall of Fame

Does anybody know whose these fellows are, on the side of the Cook County Municipal Building? Boy, would I like to tag them on Facebook.

Mystery Man 1

Mystery Man 2

All in all, it was a fun trip even though I didn’t get to see Barry (yet). Chicago itself was my eye candy, from architecture to cuisine to walking through scenes from one of my favorite movies.

So. Resolution update? A little knitting, great work in my classes (I was even the first to turn in my Astronomy homework online), no getting rid of anything, and I don’t dare step on a scale after eating and drinking as I did. I didn’t even tell you about the espresso/Tia Maria/vodka cocktail I had this morning with a three-egg spinach and feta omelet, with perfect hash browns and wheat toast on the side. That omelet might feed me at every breakfast for a week!

One sad Hufflepuff

It is with a heavy heart that I pass along the news that some of my most treasured handknits have expired. Yes, I know there are greater losses. But these knitted items were kind of a benchmark for me in a lot of ways.

First off, I didn’t knit them. They were the first handknits I ever received, from the first knitting swap in which I ever participated. It was the summer of 2007 and Harry Potter mania was in mid-swing. One night I’d probably had half a glass of wine too many, clicked on a link, and Bam! I was in a Harry Potter themed knitting swap. We had fake wizarding names and everything.

I remember the timing because it was when I was starting to knit the Ravenclaw-colored socks for my downstream swap partner, my youngest child was admitted to the hospital and being fed some high-calorie meals around the clock in an effort to pack some pounds on him. I was pretty stressed out and struggling with the double-pointed bamboo needles and actual Sock Weight Yarn, but I was making a game effort of it sitting on the hospital bed until the afternoon I pulled too hard on the wrong needle and yanked it out of about 25 stitches. I knew then it was time to quit without really quitting. I called in a favor to my cyber sister Lauren in Scottsdale, frogged the project, and sent her the yarn so she could make socks for my partner. I did make some beaded stitch markers and get other goodies for my downstream partner, but in the end she barely acknowledged receipt of my packages.

My upstream pal, however, was a whole different story. Jules sent me a pair of striped Hufflepuff socks, a drawstring bag with lotion and goodies, and my favorite type of Ritter brand chocolate — dark chocolate with marzipan. You can relive that happy moment here at my One Happy Hufflepuff post from June 21, 2007.

Jules was also the first long-distance knitter I met in person. We got together once at a cool yarn/fiber shop near Springfield, Ohio, that had, among other things, a claw-foot tub FILLED with yarn. It was on that day that I bought my first package of stitch markers, and a hank of yarn I just KNEW I would make into mittens someday (and I eventually did). It was that first meeting when I told Jules she had the hair of a spinner. Do you believe me now, Jules?

We met up again a couple of years later to visit a yarn store in Dublin, Ohio, and get some Jeni’s Ice Cream while I finished Those Noro Socks.

Many things have changed since then. Tommy put on a few pounds and got discharged from the hospital. I learned to knit socks and even more intricate items. I had meetups with other knitters, created a little knitting get-together we like to call Unwind, and started a local knitting group that’s been meeting for almost three years now. I’ve done another Harry Potter related knitting event, and got re-sorted; I’m no longer classified as a hardworking, loyal Hufflepuff but a brainy, clever Ravenclaw who has gone on to knit herself some nice ‘claw-colored items.

When you knit…. people don’t often give you knitted things. But other knitters know this, and the kindest of them make sure that the handknits keep getting parceled out. I cherished those socks, and this winter I was wearing them to bed when I felt especially cold. One morning a couple of weeks ago I took them off to discover that they had given their all.

I’m sorry, Madame Pomfrey / Jules / Crafty Peach. But they were loved.

What a couple of weeks!

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been back home for almost a whole week. It was kind of crazy there for a while, driving to the lower U.P., then “up and over” and down to near-Detroit to stay with a friend on the way to my parents’ house, then a Rav meetup with two previously-met knitting friends, then a meetup in Fort Wayne on the way home.

During the whole trip I only had two knitting projects with me, and I finished one and cranked on the other (despite leaving the lace pattern at home). I felt like such a Knitter.

Here’s the project I finished: Those Noro Socks!

Since then I’ve started and finished a book (“The Wednesday Sisters”) and taken an Aran knitting class at Irish Fest Summer School.

If you’re going to Milwaukee’s Irish Fest on Sunday, leave a comment and I will get back to you — I’d love to meet you there. I will wear my Ravelry button (I’m “chocolatesheep”) so you know who to say Hi to.

More later!

Judith, Judith, Judith

That’s “Judith MacKenzie McCuin” for those of you who still need to update your scorecards.

I’m blogging from my hotel room, after a long and somewhat frustrating day full of Learning Experiences. One thing I learned at the very end of the day was that my wheel needs some fixing and updating. Pending the availability of the right parts (odds are good), Maggie should receive a new flyer (with extra whorl — I will have two ratios from which to choose), a new brake band, and a new drive band early tomorrow morning before the last day’s session.

However. Considering all of that, I think we did all right with worsted, woolen, wet spinning, plying, bouclé, and slubs. It was a bit of a liability to have missed everything that took place in the Friday sessions, but I caught up as best I could. (It’s hard to concentrate on your draw technique when your flyer keeps falling off.) I did some spinning and plying and skeining-up in the hotel, too.

Tomorrow we’re going to work on tweeds and encased yarns. Woo hoo! But tonight I’m missing an informal dyeing session (boo hoo) because I had to leave that hotel in Columbus and check into this hotel in Watertown. Oh well. I’m not going to worry about it.

I have a lovely quiet evening to myself after driving through the fog to get here — dinner for one, a room with a TV I haven’t turned on yet (and might not at all), and Firefly DVDs I can watch on my computer if I wish. But maybe I will just knit, or spin, or read the Judith book I already have.

P.S. I tried to upload my pictures of Flickr, but the hotel’s wifi doesn’t seem robust enough to handle it. I’ll put them up tomorrow — wait till you see my “clown barf bouclé cabled yarn”!

I can’t believe I’m going….

So, like, there’s like, this spinning retreat, like, starting tomorrow — and I get to go!

Well, not to the whole thing, but something like two-thirds of it plus a little slice of Friday. It’s the Judith MacKenzie McCuin-led retreat held through Susan’s Fiber Shop. Getting there has been an interesting journey, what with date changes and roommate arrangements and hotel reservations — but it starts tomorrow.

On the one hand, the original plan was going to be *awesome* with all the things that a friend and I had schemed up. Nothing can replace the weekend that I had, briefly, in my imagination. But this one should be pretty good too, even though I’ll miss everything that happens in the daytime Friday session.

The best part of getting ready for it (have I packed a single thing? NO) has been clearing the spinning equipment so I can start fresh this weekend with spinning every freaking thing in my stash, with intelligence and intention. This week I made two new Wookie skeins totaling almost 200 yards of 2-ply, I updated my spinning records as much as I could without Actual Research, and I made little labels for the jars I keep my handspun in.

(No, I haven’t knitted a single stitch on any of my handspun. There are many reasons for this. But I do have a project in mind for my Wookie-wool once it’s all spun up. Right now I have about 25 percent of what I need. Wait and see….maybe by 2011.)

So. I emptied my bobbins, I reglued most of my bobbins, I printed out directions to the “field trip” portion of Friday…. 

Yup. Going to yarn camp, and I couldn’t be happier.

Wait till the kids find out.

Knitwise I’ve been a bit of a slug. I started working on the second Retro Rib Sock again, figuring if I did one pattern repeat a day I would eventually finish the sock and could get on with my life. That plan worked about as well as most of my plans do, but this time I’m going to climb right back on the wagon and keep trying to work it.

I got caught up on Logan’s Blanket tonight, too. It’s pretty easy to work twelve rows on that blanket — you just have to turn your back on teh drama of Ravelry and actually sit down to knit.

So. Let me know if you’d like me to blog from mid-retreat on Saturday night, and I’ll take the computer along with my collection of two-hundred year-old technology. Hey, maybe I’ll even take the camera!

The day before the travel day

What happened? Is it time to go? Where are my clothes? What am I taking?

Oh yeah.

I thought we were on track with getting ready for a week away from home, when I saw the 2-3 inches of wet snow on the ground this morning. OK kids, now I’m serious about the mittens and the hats and the scarves. And by the way, pick up a snow shovel on your way out. kthxbai.

There are a couple of knitting projects I really should be working on today, but in reality I’ll be doing dishes and laundry and making lists and packing for the kids. So any knitting will probably be just stress-release knitting. I started a little garter stitch scarf for my daughter that’s perfect in that role — filling the Garter Stitch Void where the Doctor Who Scarf used to be. (I’ll probably start another one after Christmas, if there is anything after Christmas.)

We currently have 20 Connor Caps logged in here at Hat Central. Today’s the last day I’ll be receiving mail before the deadline of next Monday. I’m preparing myself hoping for an onslaught of the remaining 180 hats then, when I go to the post office to pick them up.

If you haven’t emailed me for my address before 2pm tomorrow (Tuesday), just contact Sara (Spitfire) at the email she left in the comments, and she’ll get it to you.

And while I’m gone, try a visit over here. Apparently I have a German twin! When I update my blogroll in 2009 I may well make a separate section for Chocolate Sheep sightings around the world. If you see one, please let me know about it!

Yesterday I purchased a 66 qt. plastic bin, 200 feet of clothesline, and 200 wooden clothespins for transporting the hats to school on Hat Day and displaying them between the basketball hoops. Does anyone know if 200 feet of clothesline is going to be enough?

It’s come to my attention that I haven’t posted a picture here of my Doctor Who Scarf, fully fringed. So here’s one!

 

Season 12 Doctor Who Scarf, fringe and all

Scarf complete

It’s done, folks, my Series 12 Doctor Who Scarf is done. Just need to add some fringe and it’s perfectly complete. Right now it’s very busy keeping my neck warm and trying to stop my sniffles.

Yes, I’ve come down with something, but I’m happy to have a nice long wool scarf to make me feel better.

Let’s see if I can show off a little.

Doctor Who Scarf 10/23/08

My goodness, it appears to be letting me put a picture in.

Well, what else is there to talk about? I have a day trip to the house tomorrow, to help pick a new real estate agent, shoot some pictures for a possible magazine article, and have a mini meetup with a Ravelry knitter. Then we’re off to pick up the kids and get them back home too late to go to their school Halloween party. That wasn’t the original intention, it’s just probably the way it’s going to work out. My daughter asked me this morning why we “never go to Halloween parties.” Sorry sweetie.

Last Sunday we dressed the kids up and took them to their great-grandparents’ house for a practice trick or treat. We ended up with a World War I flying ace, Little Red Riding Hood, a skeleton, and a cowboy. And no cameras. Sorry! I hope they will allow themselves to be the same things again at another time. They looked good.

I’m a little under the weather right now, but have the perfect piece of mindless knitting to work on. It will probably be someone’s Christmas present, but I don’t know whose yet. I was working on it last night at a Girl Scout (okay, Daisy Scout) meeting and a five year old came up, stared at my hands, and said, “Will you make one of them for me?” She was a little scary, but I offered to teach her to knit and she said yes. There’s a “big brother” of one of Tom’s daycare classmates who’s also watching the progress, so now I may have sufficient social pressure to complete the project.

 

Pastel Triangle Shawl

I like working on this, but now that the Scarf is off the needles I can finish the socks and the Christmas knitting.

However, this morning I learned about NaKniSweMo, National Knit a Sweater Month, in November. Do you think I can do it? Do you think I should try? I already have the pattern, the yarn, and the needles.

Ravelympics, Day Twelve

Finally, some progress. Last night the gods smiled, the angels sang, two cans of Coca Cola kept me alert, and I got some knitting done on the second Rose’s Wrist Warmer. I was feeling pretty good about this all day today until I grabbed some heavy pans while preparing dinner and got so much pain in my left hand I thought it was broken. My very first thought was d@mm!t, there goes the wrist warmer. But it seems much better now. I’ll just knit s-l-o-w-l-y and perhaps my hand won’t mind.

Want to hear about the Mystery Knitter I met at Irish Fest? Of course you do! But first, some background.

In May of 2007, in cahoots with my never-met-but-sure-we’re-sisters blogger friend Lauren, I checked out a web site called Clanarans, which promised a sweater or sweater kit that corresponded to your Irish clan. Lauren was able to order sets for her surname, but for some reason “Dooley” wasn’t included. Not Irish enough for them? I don’t know. Anyway, I emailed them about it, supplying the English and Gaelic spellings, and asked if they would have it available someday. They wrote back and said, Not now, but keep checking. So, every few months I’ve been checking. Still no Dooley sweater.

So. Fast forward to Sunday at Irish Fest. I was at the Cultural Village anyway, so I decided to take a look through the tents and see if there was any wool. A few years ago, there was; lately, not. But you never know. I went through every tent, I tell ya. Nothing.

There was one tent left, which looked like it was probably selling T-shirts and jewelry. I decided to go in anyway.

Just inside the door were dozens of knitted wonderful things. Aran sweaters, baby bonnets, “longies,” mittens, you name it. I recognized the sweaters immediately, but a big sign behind their table confirmed it. Clanarans.

“You know,” I said to the woman on the left, “about a year ago I emailed you because you didn’t have a sweater for my name.”

“What’s your name?” she said, jumping up to check the list.

“Dooley.”

“Hmm, we still don’t have it. Tell you what, e-mail me with the Gaelic spelling of it and I’ll see what I can do.” She took out one of their flyers and wrote her contact information on it, then looked up at me. “I’m the sweater designer for Clanarans.”

Folks, she also had just finished four days of teaching a class on sweater design as part of Advanced Knitting during Irish Fest Summer School. She teaches you how to select cable patterns, allow for proper size and fit — the works.

Guess where I want to go next year!

It gets better. I pulled out my completed Rose’s Wrist Warmer for her to see. “You can do this,” she said. I felt that same warm rush I got in college when a professor told me I could write. My goodness, I’d been writing constantly since I was about eight years old and pretended to start a neighborhood newspaper. But the Validation by an Expert still gets to me, in a good way.

So, I’m going to email her, and keep plugging away at this. Four years ago I didn’t own a set of knitting needles. Three years I thought I’d only need one pair if I picked the right size. Now I’m afraid to count them. If you insist upon learning something…you can. You truly can.

Ravelympics, Day whatever

I think it’s fair to say I haven’t been keeping up with anything. (I don’t know why this would surprise anybody.)

First, the Ravelympics. I cast on for the second wristwarmer pretty soon after I bound off the first one, just to take advantage of the momentum. Got the ribbing done, check. Kept going and did 8-1/3 rounds of the pattern, remembering to start on Row 4 and not Row 1. But that 8-1/3, that’s where it all started to go wrong.

I don’t even remember now what night that was, but I was trying to watch some Series 4 Doctor Who at the same time. At the end of the episode I realized I didn’t really know what was going on, since my eyes had been shut half the time. Saw a clone of Freema Agyeman climbing out of a bathtub n@ked, there was a lot of frantic running around….. I think I’ll have to watch it again. (Things could be worse.)

But the point is that the next night when I picked up my knitting and tried to continue, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell what round I was on, or what part of the round. There was a hole, there was not the number of stitches there should have been, and down there at the cable cross was something that looked suspiciously like a stitch, hanging out like a little outie belly button. Apparently I do not knit at all well in my sleep.

So. I pulled out the needles and wound the yarn all back up. Until yesterday at Irish Fest when I cast on again in the curragh tent. Got my stitches on, knitted two rounds, and took it all to the dance tent at the other end of the festival, in hopes of crossing paths with RavPal Criosa/Cristy. I didn’t see her there but finished the eight rounds of ribbing. (Hooray!)

And we did end up meeting, but in the curragh tent. She also knew some of the rowers, and before I knew it people were asking me if I wanted to go out rowing in one of the racing curraghs. My husband’s been trying to get me to do this for a while, but I have Resisted. I think I knew I would like it, but didn’t know how we would swing both of us being in the club. Who’s going to watch those kids while we’re out rowing, I ask.

Well, we’ll work something out, because I loved it. Got five quick calluses, none of which bled, and made that curragh fly. Mr. Beth was steering and another rower, Mark, sat behind me and captained us both, and everything came together fairly quickly. So maybe, just maybe, if I start exercising aGAIN, I could be rowing for the team at next year’s Fest.

And Criosa? Took pictures of the whole thing, swear to God.

I had another meetup while I was at Irish Fest, but I’ll save that for another post.

Current Projects I’m Actually Working On:

Bamboo socks: waiting for black yarn to do the toes.
Cotton footies: started these for my grandmother. They’re really like dorm boots, but I’m doing them in Peaches and Cream for no good reason other than she didn’t want wool, and I had this yarn already. If you can comment with a useful instruction for doing a p2tog tbl, you will win a prize because I will be so grateful. That’s where I’m stuck in the pattern.
RWW: ready to start the pattern tonight for Mitt Two.
Secret Projects: the count is now at 2.
Doctor Who Scarf: As of 3pm this afternoon, I now officially have more than enough of the yarn I need to do the Scarf. Now I just have to finish all the above projects, so that can be the one that runs in the background. 

I’m still working on organizing this wonderful afterparty. If you’re not on Ravelry and you’re planning to come, drop me a line to let me know how many free tickets you need. If you’re on Ravelry, PM me there. Thanks! And if you can help with setup on Friday night or Saturday afternoon, or cleanup on Saturday night, double thanks!

You won’t freaking believe the door prizes that are rolling in. O.M.G. I wish I could win one!

Prepacking

The last several days have been a whirlwind as we prepare for a just-longer-than-a-week road trip covering several states and generations of relatives. The hard prep work is now almost done: I think I have finalized my trip knitting.

Now, I just have to discover whether or not I have a week’s worth of respectable clothes. That can wait till tomorrow, I think.

In case I don’t have Internet access next week (The horror! The horror!), those of you on Ravelry can check out my notebook and see Actual Project Pictures and Actual Stash Pictures. Flickr proved a lot easier to finagle than WordPress image uploading was a few months ago, so I haven’t made the time to try again. Yet. Someday…..

I do have a couple of projects to almost cross off my list.

The alpaca triangle shawl is done except for edging. I really want to add an edging. I don’t know if this will be in crochet (which I don’t know how to do) or attached I-cord (which I haven’t done yet), but I have about 100g of fingering weight, chocolate-brown (of course), Peruvian alpaca to do it with. I wore the shawl around the house this morning, pinned with a section of fractured vintage knitting needle, with my matching fingerless mitts. It was so cozy — can’t wait till winter!

I am THIS close to finishing my second Hufflepuff mitten. THIS CLOSE. And it occurred to me while I was driving today, that I have been referring to them everywhere as Ravenclaw mittens. Maybe I wish I were a Ravenclaw? I really do know my Hogwarts color coding, honestly. Anyway, I just have to knit the tip of the thumb and weave in the ends.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been swapping yarn literally all over the world to score what I need to start a Doctor Who Scarf for my Ravelympics event. Yes, I understand this makes me a dork among dorks, but I have found my people and they usually think I’m funny. Some days, that’s enough.

I may not be able to post before August 4, but I have two knitting meetups incorporated into the vacation already, plus a trip to Knitters Mercantile (“The Merc”) in Columbus, so I’ll probably be okay. My travel knitting? Socks mostly, plus DH bought me the Nancy Bush Traveling Sock Knitter book I’ve looked at for two years now and never bought for myself. I might take yarn to start one of those patterns, especially the Welsh one.

Stay cool and dry!