Socks, Check

I finished the socks. The pattern is called "My Heart Beets 4U." If you look at the heel in just the right way, it is supposed to look like a beet, with the pattern on the leg forming the beet greens.





I don't know that I really see it, but they are good looking socks, even if I can't see the cuteness of them.

I'm glad that they're done because the beginning of the end starts tomorrow when we leave for 4 days at Kohler Andrae state park in Wisconsin.

Socks that Rock

As I've mentioned, I'm a member of the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club this year. I received the May club kit which contained this skein of yarn:


I know, it looks like they sent me an undeyed skein of yarn, but if you look REALLY closely, you'll see that the right side of that skein is very slightly more green than the left end. It is actually dyed, it's just deyed in a very subtle way. The patterns that were included in that package were both ankle length socks, neither of which really spoke to me, so I haven't made either of them yet.

A week or two ago I received the July shipment which contained this yarn:


This color is called Firecracker, and the patterns this time were a little more to my liking. I ruled out one of them because it features cables, which I don't like to deal with in a sock related situation. The second pattern only calls for 3 cables on each sock, so that's the way I went. This is what they looked like last night:




They look very narrow, but that's because they have a lot of ribbing. They stretch out nicely and fit just fine. I'll need to get a move on and finish them soon, because Thursday we leave for a 4 day camping trip, then we go to Colorado the day after we get back and stay there for 8 days. We'll be back home the day before Daughter starts school. It's frightening how fast summer goes by.

Bad Blogger

Yes, yes, I know. It's been a while. But the knitting fairies conspired to give me a couple of bad projects in quick succession. The wallaby I'm making for Daughter is made out of a had dyed yarn, and when I got to the end of one skein and started another the colors were violently different. So the poor thing has been sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to make a decision about what future awaits it. Then I started a pair of socks, also for Daughter, and there were 3 breaks/knots in the skein before I got 2/3 of the way through the first sock. Since there hasn't been any cool knitting to talk about, I've let the blog go to pot. I still haven't gotten any knitting to work right, but I did have an interesting weekend.

Daughter and I and 15 other people went on a camping/canoeing extravaganza this past weekend. We were at a cute little campground owned by River Raisin Canoe Livery. There are 16 little camp sites, but we were the only one who were there, so we got the whole place to ourselves.


You can't really tell from the picture, but the river runs just behind the trees. The canoe livery rents canoes and kayaks as well as driving your party up the river for the half and full day trips. So on Sunday morning we got in the white van and were driven 20 miles up the river for the all day canoeing trip.


Once we put in, there were 3 canoes with 2 adults in them, 1 canoe with 2 teenagers in it, 2 canoes with 2 adults and 1 child in them, and my canoe with 2 kids and me. So if you re-read that, I was in the only canoe with only one adult in it. So you can guess who the slowest boat on the river was. It also means that Daughter was chosen as the expedition photographer, so there are a lot of pictures like this:


She did manage to get a couple of good ones:










And I took a couple as well.




It turns out that 6 hours in a canoe was a little too much for the kids, who are not used to going that long without a television or computer to keep them company. So as soon as we got back to the campground they jumped out of the canoes and immediately jumped in the river.




When I asked Daughter on the drive home what the best part of the trip was, she chose swimming in the river. When asked what the worst part was, she chose the canoeing. I guess the lesson is that next year I need to bring a babysitter to watch the kids on the day that all the grown-ups go canoeing.