And there it is, Trenton's Wallaby. Does the hood look a little on the small side to anyone else? I'm hoping it's just a weird photo perspective thing, but I'm a little concerned because kids have giant heads, proportionally speaking.

I started another Wallaby yesterday afternoon, but I don't think it's going to make it. The yarn isn't quite heavy enough to get the right gauge. The fabric is ending up looking pretty holey.
You'd think I would have caught that in the swatching process. Unless you know that my swatching process is: Start knitting. If it turns out, great. If not, frog it and start over. Or frog it and move on to something else. Which is how this one is likely to go.

I have nothing else new or witty to say, so I leave you with this game I learned recently. I will post 3 statements about myself. Two are true and one isn't. I leave it to you to figure out which is which.

1. I have been employed as a Parts Department manager at a motorcycle dealership.

2. I have traveled over 100 miles one way just to go to a yarn shop.

3. I have a secret ambition to learn how to fly a helicopter.

Perhaps I'll find a valuable prize for whoever gets the right answer.

So Now What?

Boy, now that the vacation is over and my parents are gone (they got here 2 days after we got home) my days seem to be full of... not much. No deadlines, no upcoming trips, no visitors coming in, no cleaning like a mad person. Well, OK so I never really get around to cleaning like a mad person, but I always feel like I should be cleaning like a mad person. I have spent a couple of days playing around on Ravelry. (PetoskyTurtle is the name to look for there) and I've caught up on all my recent CSI episodes, so now what do I do?

It looks like I cast on some mindless knitting. In looking over my last few projects I noticed a common denominator. They were all for me. I have to tell you that I'm not usually such a narcissist, but I couldn't help myself. The yarn was so yummy, the pattern was so cool, the concept was so different that I couldn't resist the temptation. But now my sanity has returned and I am knitting for someone else. Originally this was going to be for the donate pile, but I realized that it would be perfect for Nephew. His dad is an avid outdoors guy, so the camoflagishness (look Mom, I invented a new word!) will work well. I finished it an hour ago and was then faced with a challenge: What do I do next?

I could cast on the beautiful Maple Leaf shawl I picked up at stitches, or I could cast on the shawl I ordered from Fiddlesticks (thanks YarnHarlot for the enabling on that one), or I could start the second Bart sock. But again, me, me, me. Can't do it. Must knit for others. Must use my God given gift for the betterment of society.

So in the presence of God and everyone who reads this blog (which at this point is my family, MadMad, and the Fibreholic) I solemnly swear that I will knit nothing intended for myself for the rest of the month, or until 5 more projects have been completed, whichever comes second. I'll leave you to mull over the "intended for" part of that pledge, because I sense that it could become a loophole if I tried hard enough.

South Dakota: The Saga Continues

Buffalo in Custer State Park. We drove around through this lovely park several times in the course of the next several days. There was a lot to see there, things like antelope, turkeys, antelope, turkeys, antelope, turkeys, buffalo, antelope, turkeys, and wild donkeys.

Wind Cave which is also in Custer State park. Daughter and I had never been in a cave before, it was pretty cool. There are rock formations found in this particular cave that aren't found in other caves. It's called boxwork and it looks sort of like square honeycombs. Check out the link if you're interested in the scientific stuff.

We went to the chili cookoff in...wait for it... Custer State park. There were 17 teams competing. The photo shows people lined up and waiting for the opening bell to sound. You purchase a kit which contains a little cup, a plastic spoon, one napkin, instructions, and a golden bean. You taste all of the varieties then give your bean to the team whose chili you liked best. The team with the most beans wins the people's choice award. Of the 6 of us who were tasting, 5 of us chose the Gold Rush team, while Brother-In-Law went with the Tailgaiters. It shouldn't surprise you too much to hear that we left immediately after we were done tasting, so I have no idea who won the competition.

On the way home from the chili cookoff we drove through Custer State park some more and came upon a herd of donkeys. These guys are very clever. They know that if the cars stop there will probably be food in the offing, so they all stand still in the middle of the road and won't move. Naturally we got out and gave them the last of the kettle corn that we still had. Daughter learned a valuable lesson: Don't stand behind a donkey. Luckily it was just a glancing blow because a straight on kick would possibly have broken her leg. Wouldn't that have been a fun way to end our vacation?

And finally on Monday we got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to the Buffalo roundup in Custer State park. They herd them in so that they can give them their immunizations, brand them, and sell the surplus animals. It was a pretty cool sight, but it left me imagining what it must have looked like 200 years ago when herds of tens of thousands of buffalo would have been roaming the countryside. It also struck me as somewhat funny that there were 11,000 people there to watch the herd of 1300 being brought in. All of the people had to stand inside of their viewing area and weren't allowed to go from one side to the other. It seems to me like the buffalo got a better show than we did.

And thus ended the great buffalo roundup trip, with one other memorable event. While waiting for our flight out of Rapid City I got out the second Sole Solution sock and worked on it for a while. I got to the heel flap, got it about half done then looked at what I had...

You see it don't you? Take special note of the toe. This may help...

I'm going to call this my Misery sock, because the only person who could wear them would be James Caan after Kathy Bates works on him in the movie Misery. So I spent the rest of the wait in the airport ripping out the heel and trying again. Mistake corrected, sock finished, trip completed!

South Dakota, Day 2

When we last saw Kathy she was stuck in the rear seat of a 12 passenger van hurtling through southwestern South Dakota.

And really, that's pretty much where I spent a lot of my time during our vacation. On the second day we went to see...


Mount Rushmore. "Sculpted" by Gutzon Gorglum & crew from 1927 till 1941. I find it funny that they call it sculpting when they used dynamite to do 90% of the work.

The Reptile Gardens where we saw an alligator/crocodile show, a snake show, and toured the world's largest collection of reptile species.

Bear Country USA which is a drive through game preserve. It's like Jurassic Park, only with bears and reindeer rather than T-Rexes and Triceratops. There's also an area with smaller animals in smaller enclosures. A couple of days before we got there a fox had managed to get into the otter enclosure and we got to watch several minutes of the otters chasing the fox away from their food.

Then back to Mt. Rushmore in the evening. They gave a presentation about the end of the Indian Wars, focusing on Wounded Knee. A very sad story with bad decisions all around. Then they lit up the mountain and asked all the veterans in the audience to come down and help retire the flag for the evening.

There were a lot of them. They took a microphone around and each person said their name and what part of the military they were from. Anna thought it was pretty cool that grandpa got to go up. I'm not sure she even knew that a long time ago he was in the Navy. They all got a standing ovation at the end of course.

So if you're keeping track, that was 4 major attractions/events in one day. The only saving grace was that Father-In-Law likes to read plaques and informational signs, so it was possible for Daughter and I to get ahead and get to the gift shop for our trinkets before being loaded up for the next agenda item.

When next we meet I think I can squeeze in a couple of day's worth of events as we reduced the number of things to do in a day after this.

p.s. clicking on any of those pictures will make them really big. I was shooting album quality rather than my usual blog quality photos.

They're Badlands All Right

Just sit right back & you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip
That started in this cargo van from a little desert strip.
The mate was a tidy mother-in-law, The driver brave & sure.
Eight passengers set out that day for a three hour tour,
A three hour tour.

Well, anyhow, that's what it felt like at the time. I was sure that disaster was looming when I learned that there would be eight people and one vehicle. My in-laws are good people, but they're the kind of tourists who go somewhere, check it off their list, then move on to the next thing. And they'd already been to everywhere we were planning on going a couple of years ago.


Husband, Daughter and I landed in Rapid City, SD on Thursday around noon. The entire Colorado contingent was there to greet us. I think they had been waiting a good long time because we later heard about how my nephew, who's 3, kept going on the escalators over and over and over again. They were taking shifts with him. Anyhow, we all got in the van and took off for Wall.

They have a very famous drug store that pretty much covers an entire city block. We stopped there for lunch. As we ate our buffalo burgers we we able to look at the maps they had on the table and decide which parts of the store we wnated to check out after lunch. My first stop was the little area behind daughter's head in the photo. I picked up a couple of little trinkets, then went to move on to the next room. At this point I noticed that Father-In-Law was hanging out in front of the store. He was done and waiting for us so that we could leave. I think we explored about 1/20 of the store. Daughter was peeved of course because there were about 15 things she wanted to see, and we had no time. (Did I mention that there was only one vehicle for 8 people?)

So we climbed back in the van and headed to the Badlands. It's actually pretty cool. You're wandering around in the desert and, POOF, you're in these little canyons and mini-mountains. The view from the van windows was very nice as we drove through. At the posted speed limit. And didn't stop to check out any of the trails or scenic overlooks. Actually that's not true. We did stop once and took a couple of pictures.

But we did really go through the entire Badlands in about 1 hour. It may actually have been a good thing that we didn't get out and walk around much. At this particular area -> Daughter took off on a "trail" that wasn't really a trail. She didn't seem to notice that her little trail was headed for a cliff and that there were rattlesnake signs everywhere. Happily there were neither any falls, nor any envenomations, but it was not the only time during this trip that I threatened to leash her to my wrist with a 6 foot length of merino sock yarn.

We then headed to the hotel in Keystone to finish out the day. In order for you to have the right perspective you'll need to keep in mind as we go along that this is a seasonal tourist area, and the season was over about 3 weeks ago. A lot of the shops were closed, a lot of restaurants were closed, and the ones that were open all shut down at about 8:00. And as the weekend went on we discovered that the restaurants that were open were out of a lot of stuff, or just didn't have very good food.

Tomorrow we continue our Wild West travelogue and also answer the question, "Who is that guy, and why should we care?" For now, I have a house to clean.

I'm In!

Too much going on. Must be quick.

1. Got invite to Ravelry! But can't take time to play. Aargh.

2. Going to South Dakota Thursday. To Buffalo roundup. With In-laws. Who have made all arrangements. Including no car for us because we will all fit in their van. whee.

3. Finished first Sock Gang sock. Overcast day, bad color representation on little photo. Click to make bigger.

4. Pretty sure I will die from eating McDonald's for lunch 3 days running. Bad bad bad.

Fickleness, Thy Name is Kathy

I finished my Bartholomew's Tantalizing Sock from Cat Bordhi's new book. It's made out of Socks That Rock in the Ms LaRock colorway. I think this might be the best fitting sock that I've ever made for myself. I also think that my neighbors may be calling in the gents in white coats after watching me wandering around in the back yard trying to find a good place to lie down, put my foot up in the air and take pictures of it. This may be one of those things the muggles just don't get.

I must tell you though, in the spirit of truthfulness, that there is very little chance that Bart's partner will see the light of day anytime soon. You see, yesterday I was sitting innocently in my living room, working on Bart's toe (which is the only change I made. It's got my favorite tapering toe rather than the star toe called for in the pattern) when the mail came. We got some bills, some catalogs, some credit card offers, and... what's this? A big envelope from Interlacements. **heart starts beating faster** I know what this is. This is my first care package from the Interactive Sock Gang. I wasn't even tempted to not open it. Bart's buddy will have to wait. Inside was a bundle of wool and the pattern. This is a pretty good reflection of the colors, excepting the part that looks blue is actually much more purple. This morning I got out the swift and winder and discovered that the wonderful Judy Ditmore even thought ahead for us and sent 2 small skeins rather than one big one. After winding I now have two lovely little balls of heaven waiting for me to cast on. The pattern is for toe up socks, which I have never done before, so this will be a good opportunity to learn some new stuff.

One final note regarding the health camp I was bragging up last week. If you are interested in taking up roofing as an exercise regimen you will have to find your own workout area. The gym I was using closed roofing operations on Monday morning. As far as I know the only casualties were a few pairs of gloves and one shirt. No one fell, was punctured, or received any hammer wounds above and beyond the routine blisters and banged up thumbs.