This weekend's hard work.

For the first time in awhile I had the whole weekend to myself. Well, not the whole weekend. There was that whole Saturday where I had to work(for the 2nd weekend in a row)...but it was the first weekend in awhile that I had no company. I knit my little heart out...started a book...made jewelry and stitch markers...and still can't figure out how to put more than one picture in a single post.

Lace on the way. Note the stitchmarkers I'm using!

Here are the beautiful stitch markers I made:

The ones in the middle are destined for my secret pal...she's into the rennisance fairs and dark garnet tones. The other two sets are probably for me! I'd never made stitch markers before but I went crazy earlier this week at a bead shop. Someone in my SnB had recomended it and I figured if they could do it so could I! I even made jewelry this weekend--new hobby here I come!
Stitch Marker heaven...

I even worked on socks this weekend!

2nd socks on the way...
I was a good girl and didn't start a new beautiful Secret Pal-Sock...though I dearly wanted to. I was a trooper and started 2nd socks for both of my sisters!
Yay, fun weekend.
Boo--weekend's over!

Secret Pal Gifts!

Look what I got in the mail yesterday!
Lorna's Laces of my very own! I'm making this up but I'm calling them "bone" colored. I think they're beautiful and they will be my first attempt at knitting socks with a cable pattern up the side. For some reason this color--bone--screams "Cable me." I don't know why. Also seen in this picture but maybe not prominently enough is a set of very cool and very beautiful beaded stitch markers. They are wonderful and will help mark my cables!
Thank you Secret Pal out there--you're so cool!
In other knitting news I've sort of forgotten about the "Summer of Lace" idea and moved onto what's truly going on in my life: The Summer of Socks. I finished my Koigu sock for my sister and have already cast on for the second. I have the second cuff completed for the pink socks for my other sister too so I'm fighting the single sock syndrome urge. It's hard though. I got up early this morning and if I wouldn't have gotten all distracted blogging I would have cast on a new one! Maybe I can holdoff just until I turn the heel on these two suckers...then again, I'm sorley tempted. We'll see how long I last with new Lorna's Laces tempting me! I give myself until about 5:30 tonight.

Watch out for knitting content!

Here we are with actual knitting content and progress on one of my many sock projects...with all the tsunamis and MIL visits I haven't been knitting much but like it or not this sock is almost to the toe--just 1 more inch to go and I'm back to the pretty pink yarn again. This is the first sock I've ever knit on DPNs (I originally learned how to knit socks on 2 circulars) but I think it's going well even though the body of the sock looks a little fat to me. I guess we'll see when we're done. In other news, I recieved a cool Mohawk postcard from my Secret Pal, which is awesome! She seems super-cool and so there's that to look forward to. I dropped a note to my assigned Secret Pal, however I still need to decide what to actually get for her...
Oh, I almost forgot! I also signed up for the Summer of Lace group...I'm very excited and thinking about starting a lace sampler scarf sometime soon!

Progress!

The Emergency Broadcast System

So my MIL left and I was planning on writing a great entry here and we're in the middle of dinner listening to the radio in the background and all of the sudden the emergency broadcast system starts and it's not a test! They say something about a Tsunami warning and it happens so fast and they don't repeat themselves and we almost miss it. We hopped onto the weatherchannel.com and double-checked and it said there was a tsunami warning for the entire west coast and we live 2 blocks from the beach! So we grab a few things (phones, charger for phones, wallet, sweatshirt, knitting, and book about knitting...you know, to have something to read just in case) and we're out of the house and on our way up the 605. It was probably 4 min. from the time we first heard the warning to us leaving the house. We headed to B's Grandma's house, which is about 20 miles inland and on top of a huge hill and started calling our friends who also live close to the beach. We were already out of there but I guess that warning sirens were going off in downtown Long Beach and some of our friends who didn't know what was going on were REALLY scared. I was frightened because my sister lives in Seattle and I couldn't get ahold of her at first and then she was just sleepy and said not to worry.
By the time we reached Grandma Jan's house they had just called off the tsunami warning, thank goodness, but we stayed for awhile and listened to the news for about an hour before we headed home. So all in all it was a very wierd night and by the time we got back home I was exhausted. It goes without saying that I'm so glad that everyone is safe and overall I think I'd give us and A for reaction time but a C for forgetting our toothbrushes. You'll note that I did not forget my knitting.
Long Beach SNB tonight, so probably not another post until tomarrow--and oh yeah--I've heard from my Secret Pal! More on this later...

The Visit

We're all having a lovely time here...

The Chef

The Gardener

I Found My Tribe

So I had a very big weekend--I:
1. Worked all day Saturday and missed the Yarn Lady Bag Sale (best sale of the year!)
2. Set a goal of giving all immediate family members socks this year for either birthday/Christmas.
3. Bought new sock yarn for my dad and mother-in-law to fulfil item 2.
4. Found out the tribe my Grandpa's Grandma came from--Abenaki--and saw her picture for the first time (I cried).
5. Found out that my best friend has Abenaki ancestory also--of course, she was already a member of my tribe, this just cements it.
6. Talked to a friend of mine, We'll call him Mr. Fitzgibbons, who just came back from the Peace Corps in Suriname. Hi Peter!
7. Heard from my Secret Pal! She sounds cool! I was also assigned a SP so I'm already thinking about some great ideas to suprise her with.
8. Told a few people about my blog!

The main thing that I didn't do:
1. Clean my house for my mother-in-law who arrives at midnight tonight.

I will remedy this by thinking about it ALL day and then coming home and cleaning frantically for about 2 hours before giving up on scrubbing the shower floor and sitting down for some Tivo'ed Law & Order and knitting. I've turned the heel and finished the gusset on my sister's Koigu socks and I'm on the home stretch. Her feet are 10 inches long so I'm in the home stretch, right? Depending on when I give up on cleaning I'll try to post some pictures of my WIPs tonight.

So my sister sent me this picture over email today as a thank you for helping her with one of her papers and I almost started crying...at work! I guess I'm homesick. This was taken from the top of the Rimrock back home in Wyoming. It's almost the view from my parent's house except from a slightly different angle. Isn't it beautiful?!
That's the Shoshone River and the road from Cody to the east entrance of Yellowstone Park is just out of view along the bottom. We've been in California for 2 years and 7 months now (B-man just worked it out) and thought I like it here it just can't compair to the beauty back home.

Home!

Sock Time

So Memorial Day weekend came and went and so did our company. In the middle of games of Trivial Pursuit and teaching them how to surf I was able to cast on for 2 pairs of socks! Both for my sisters. I have birthdays coming up and I kind of want to start working on Christmas presents too. Anyway I'm in love with Koigu, as you can see by how excited my fingers are to work on it.

Here's the weekend's work.