Dusting Myself Off

Two months??? I don't know how that happened. Okay, maybe I do. Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up. (I so love that line!) First, there was that marathon reading during July that was All Harry Potter All the Time. I did finish all seven books of the series during the month of July. It helped that I had read the first six before and two weeks of serious vacation relaxing enabled the total immersion. To commemorate the trips to Hogwarts, I even knit the Golden Snitch dishcloth. If all goes well, there may be a picture of it on some other famous blog.

Next, there were the babies. No, none for me, but two nieces and one nephew now have new babies. There wasn't time for much baby knitting, but there is always time for tie-dye.

After that I attempted socks. I am now in the decidedly strange position of having three single socks and one that was just pulled rudely from the needles. Gauge and needle selection have not been my friends recently. The Uptown boot socks were humming along nicely until I realized that the bamboo needles I switched to for plane knitting were actually quite a bit smaller than the needles I had used for the cuff and they left the sock too tight to go over my heel. Hmmm. Much ripping ensued and the socks were put on the shelf for a time. After a significant time out, they are coming along much more sensibly.

Today was a real reason for dusting off. After all, today is Coastal and Inner Coastal Cleanup Day. Mr. Engineer has a nasty bug that left him down for the count, but Young Man and I did our part in cleaning up a local creek bed. We picked up umpty-two thousand shards of glass, cigarette butts, and odd debris from humanity.

After cleaning ourselves off, I had an even bigger adventure. I drove through the wilds of Los Angeles to see our favorite knitting star, the Yarn Harlot! Yes, I saw her, heard her, and gave her a dishcloth! It was a great day. The camera stayed at home (sigh), but there were many cameras about. Considering that traffic was completely messed up by a house stuck on the 101, it was more than a little amazing that I made it at all. Yes, you read correctly. There was a HOUSE stuck on the FREEWAY. Really, I couldn't make this stuff up. And people think knitters are wacky!

Stephanie is wonderful, of course. Witty, unassuming, and fun. The masses of knitters (all 230 of us) were great. Waiting in the book signing line was made much more pleasureable by the likes of Lynda and her friends. We came, we knit, we posed, we laughed. There were hats and socks and smiles all around. Come again soon, Stephanie! Next time, stay a while and I'll take you to the best coffee around.