Retreating

I'm taking today off to compensate for having to work over the Fourth of July weekend. As luck would have it, one of our running companions invited me to a women's retreat up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This "Joy Weekend" was started several years ago by her mother, about a year before she passed away. Marcia and her sisters have continued the tradition and it now encompasses family, their friends, and friends of friends, and their daughters. The theme for the weekend is Color, which should be interesting given that I'm trying to get more adventurous with color. There will also be drumming, food, skits, hiking, swimming, and general relaxation and hilarity.

The weekend promises to be hot and humid, which might put a damper (literally) on my plan to teach knitting. I left my "teaching" skein at work and the only yarn that I could find after rummaging through my stash was a wool/cotton blend. From past experience, wool/cotton, high humidity, and knitting don't mix. I might wander down to the Ben Franklin to see what nice wool yarns they have. And it might be useful to pick up a couple of extra sets of aluminum needes. High humidity, knitting, and wood needles don't mix, either.

Car News
The good news is that my car is not totaled. It was on the threshold, with about $5500 worth of damage. The bad news is that it is going to take a long time to fix. The shop estimates that it will be done on July 28th. Apparently, it takes a long time to get Volvo parts. But the good news is that I don't have to go car shopping this weekend.

Also in car news, I haven't seen any more spiders in the car, little or otherwise. The smell is also diminishing, but now a cigarette odor is beginning to make itself known. I don't understand why people treat things that they rent worse than things they own. I was raised that if you use something that is not yours, you treat it as good as, if not better, than your own things. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned?

Knitting Progess
On the baby blanket front, I've completed four columns of French knots. It takes about an hour per column, not including weaving in the ends. I'm doing that as I go along because I can't stand the thought of having to weave in hundreds of ends all at once. I estimate I've got about 16 more hours of work on the blanket.

In Trekking news, one sock is done and the other is in progress! That will be one of my projects of choice while on retreat and maybe, just maybe, the sock will go on a hike with me and be photographed. The pair will definitely be fraternal twins, despite my best efforts at finding a similar color progression. I don't think it exists for this colorway.

Now that the blanket and the socks are winding down (I'm optimistic, no?), it's time to cast about and on for a new project. Tom's nephew wants a rasta hat like I knit for my nephew, so that will be my other project for this weekend. The drawback is that it's cotton, so depending on how humid it is, that might be a non-starter. But that particular hat pattern knits up fairly quickly and if I'm lucky, I'll have it finished by the time we go to the beach, which is when I'll see him next.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions on the scarf. I did a little research into how to block silk yarn and it seems like I should be able to block it so both sides are similar. The yarn is not Lion and Lamb (good guess!), but is Artyarns Royal Silk, color 123. That will be a beach trip project.

In Stitches
And finally, I registered for a whole slew of classes at Stitches East in November. Even though I registered online the first day, I'm not sure that I was able to get my first choices. I checked them the second day of registration and most of my first choices were filled. I just hope that I'm one of the ones filling them! They had over 500 people register the first day. Amazing. It's going to be a bit frustrating to be at Stitches and know that I'm going to have to severely limit the amount of yarn I buy. As I was making balls of yarn for this weekend, Tom wandered in, took one look at my stash and said "Do you think you have enough yarn?" The obvious answer is "No, you can never have too much yarn." The reality is that my stash is pretty small, less than two plastic storage bins. And most of my stash was bought mindfully, with an idea for a particular project. Tom doesn't have any idea of size of most knitters' stashes.

That's it for now. Time to finalize packing for this weekend. I'll post pictures when I return.