I started a new sock yesterday. I chose Claudia's Handpaint, colorway Chocolate Cherry for my yarn. After much deliberation (which I thoroughly enjoyed) I settled on one of Cat Bordhi's constructions - the Spiral Coriolis. I started with a Whirlpool toe, and that's what I am working on now. My markers are in place, the cast on went reasonably well and the toe looks good. I limit my time knitting on this new sock because I am under a deadline - I haven't finished DH's white sweater yet. One sleeve is at the elbow (I had to rip back because I was doing the decreases too fast) and the other has not been started. Pressure .....
Laminaria is still lying, untouched, at the foot of my bed. I have picked up the bag several times, decided that I a) didn't have time or b) was too tired to concentrate or c) I'll try to insert a life line below the mistake first and I don't have time for that right now or d) S**t! I am too scared to try this at all! or e) all of the above.
I sent the red cotton baby sweater to my cousins, along with one pair of booties (that were practise Bordhi socks) and a couple of bibs that were woven by Mayan women that I picked up at Rhinebeck. I hope they like the package.
Two weekends ago I was very busy, but had a great weekend. I judged knitting at the Montgomery County Fair on Saturday morning. It was a long drive but very interesting. I had thought that my biggest problem would be to concentrate on the knitting, not on the color or pattern that I liked best, but there were so many nicely knitted items entered that I still had a hard time deciding in some cases. Thank goodness there were 3 of us judging the same items (there was another panel of 2 judges for other entries) so that no one's personal preferences could take over. Very interesting, and I would do it again.
After that I drove to NY to visit Mom - it took 6 hours from the site of the county fair. I was very happy to get out of the car. We ate dinner (she brought food in, assuming that I would not want to drive to a restaurant), then chatted until after 11. On Sunday, though we had planned to go to the beach, it was so hot and humid that we stayed in the AC - and went shopping. DH groaned when he heard that, but he was a good sport when we paid the bill. I even found something to buy for Mom for her BD, which is in a couple of weeks. She can be very hard to buy for. She was trying on a knit fabric long black dress for the summer. It looked great on her, but she wanted something to go over it- break up the black, hide her tummy, whatever. I found this silky poncho kind of thing and it looked wonderful on her! We did go out to eat that night - seafood, wine and good company.
I drove home on Monday, after the NY rush hour traffic had eased. Luckily I checked the traffic on the TV first, though. (Long Island does a much better job of that than Baltimore.) The route I usually take was jammed with traffic due to some construction and I was able to find an alternate route that worked well. I was home in 4 hours, in time for dinner with DH.
The week, while a short one, was busy with work and trying to get household chores done.
This past Saturday, I went to a friends house and we dyed yarn and fiber. It was lots of fun. Most were dying blank yarn, but a few of us were over-dyeing, and it's always interesting to see how that turns out. Here are some of my results.
This is 2400 yards of lace weight alpaca yarn. It's is turquoise with a little bit of blue dye powder sprinkled over it in the dye bath. I think it will knit up beautifully. I was hoping for a not quite solid so that I can knit just about any pattern in it, and that's what I got.
This is fiber from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club. It is a blend of merino and mohair, 4 oz, but the colorway included a lot of a greenish/olive yellow that looks terrible on me and that no one else in the house liked either. I over dyed it with blue and it's much improved. 
This is merino, amount unknown, that I dyed silver grey, again sprinkling some blue dye powder on it while in the crock pot. There's not much blue there and the color is more grey than silver, but it will do.
This yarn is for my brother's socks. He wanted some heavier socks, warm, not itchy, for inside his boots. This is Happy Feet, sport weight and I will knit with it doubled. He requested NY Giants colors, and I think I got that. I plan to knit with the variegated yarn and the red yarn held together, using the blue for heels, toes and the cuff. I have to decide when to start the ribbing - the entire leg of the sock or some stockinette and then ribbing just for the top 3 inches or so, but this will be a simple pair of socks. Sunday was a boating day. We fished a while but were a little too late for the tide fishing, so we went swimming to cool off - it was HOT! The water is in the 80's, warm enough to get in qucikly and cool enough to still lower the body temperature. We ate, did more fishing and got chased in by a thunderstorm. : (
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