Knitting tonight!

I do knit most nights, at least a little, but tonight is knit night at my LYS so I get to chat and knit with like-minded people and that is good. DH tries, he really does, but he just doesn't have the passion of a knitter.

Last Thursday was a bit of a bust. The LYS is in a small strip center along with a copy store, religious articles store and church rooms and offices. Last Thursday the church group decided to do some sort of craft project that caused some problems for me. They had a painting project going on and they used some nasty smelling spray paints. The fumes came in first through the A/C system (there's no way to control it from the store, so we couldn't turn it off). We then moved outside because of the 5 of us there, 3 of us got headaches from the fumes. Of course, a few minutes later the church room door opened and out came people and paint fumes. I was coughing almost non-stop within a couple of minutes even being outside. I do have some respiratory problems, which they had no way of knowing, but anybody there could have had severe asthma and had a medical emergency as a result of their art work and the fact that they didn't warn us ahead of time. They wore masks while painting but didn't think that we (next door) would have a problem? I left, obviously, and let the store owner know.

This week should be better. I am looking forward to seeing Nancy's progress on her sweater and shawl. Nancy is knitting a Labyrinth sweater - she knits a long strip of knitting with increases and decreases that, when bound off, zig zags in different directions but when sewn together will be a sweater. She cast on something like 3800 stitches!!!! Each row takes a while, as you can imagine. She is also knitting a shawl in a very pretty cotton yarn. Karen was on vacation last week and her vacation knitting was with a yarn that has silver in it! It will be a shawl and I can't wait to see what it looks like.

Our first water lily bloomed this week. It's not fully opened in this photo - we left for the day before it was fully opened.

There is another lily in the pond and it was getting ready to bloom. We don't have enough room in the pond for a third lily, but I really enjoy having night bloomers in the pond also. I am home mostly in the evening, and I go to work most days at 6 AM so the day blooming varieties are not open when I am home except on the weekend. Night bloomers open as the sun goes down, stay open all night and close up with the rising sun. Much better for my schedule, but not in the cards this year.

We were out on the boat this past weekend and while we sat at the dock I was able to snap a few photos of this handsome Great Blue Heron.


We watched a beautiful sunset from the water.

I knitted and used my drop spindle on the boat. The forecast was for 15 MPH winds but it wasn't nearly that windy and turned out to be a wonderful evening. I used my drop spindle for a while, and knitted on a new project. I wanted to knit on something that I didn't have to watch very much while on the boat - it's kind of like reading in the car if I have to watch my knitting a lot on the boat - and I didn't have anything that fit the bill except for one felting bag that is in the works. I knew that wouldn't keep me busy all day so I cast on (sigh) for another project. I had purchased some Wool in the Woods yarn, a cotton linen rayon (I think) blend in worsted weight and I had already swatched for a tank top. I cast on for the bottom edge using Ann Budd's Handy book of Sweater Patterns as a guide and knitted a few rows. I then gave more thought to what I was doing and realized that I have no way to anticipate how long I can make the top if I knit bottom up. I frogged it and started at the shoulders. I am knitting moss stitch shoulder tabs and will soon cast on stitches to make a square neck line, then at some point I will change to a stockinette body for the rest of the tank, and probably go back to moss stitch for the bottom edge.

Have a good day. Tomorrow is Friday! yippee!