Summer begins

Memorial day weekend arrives and the humidity descends on cue. My plan to not turn on the air conditioning until June 15 in retrospect was laughable. I broke. It was hot this weekend. I'm worried I squandered my oppurtunity to spend time outdoors, go to the zoo and see active animals, garden, eat dinner outside at 7:00 pm. But it was sunny, and I did sit outside, in short 15 minute intervals.

I also baked this weekend. Given that it was so hot, I guess it fits the way I do things, that this of all weekends I turn on the oven and bake a cake. It is my mom's birthday and I decided to bake a cake from scratch. The lemon and blueberry cake from the June Martha. It turned out well, but there was no way I was getting the 4 layers out of the two pans of cake as specified in the recipe. It is a yummy cake and beyond whipping and whipping the egg whites not that difficult. Sorry no picture proof of my culinary triumph.

My sorry baseball team lost to my brother by 20 points. I had second highest score in the league (by a hundred points) and yet I lost to my brother. What is really unfair about this is my team is bad and I have as of this week won two out of 18 or so match ups. And so the one week my players have a good week.... It's okay though, Gagne's coming back.

On the knitting front. I reclaimed another circular needle, but not by finishing a project. I just decided that despite all the hours I have spent on the (evil) green lace sweater from Vintage Knits, it looked like crap and a) wouldn't fit me right, and b)I wouldn't wear it. I hate the cotton yarn, and the combination of metal needles with the cotton was killer. I might get some nice wool yarn and try again, but I've given up on this project for the time being. The evidence of the crappiness is below.

I also finished the first daffodil sock, altough I need to re-graft the toe cause I did it backwards. There is an ongoing secret project which won't be blogged about until next winter (yes, I am ahead of the game). And, In honor of summer I started a lace shawl:

I mean you gotta knit a lace shawl in the summer!

May Flowers

I will distract you from inquiring about project reclaimation by showing pictures of flowers

First, Lookee what has flowers. I started these myself.

Second, Impressionist Irisis at Brookeside gardens

Third, An Arbor of Roses at Riverside Gardens (AHS)

Fourth, a rose in our garden

Finished and MD Sheep and Wool

First and foremost, I mere two weeks after starting operation reclaim the needles, I have my first finished object.

Hippo likes it alot. He almost didn't let me borrow it

There were some issues, mainly of the I didn't read the pattern very closely variety. Like forgot to drop the second stich when I started the decreases. I know now why the pattern tells you to only let the stiches drop a couple of ladders. 'cause if you were of the mind to rip back it would suck to have to pick up the dropped stiches

I was not of the mind to rip out my mistake. I actually cut one of the dropped stiches into place and resecured the yarn with a knot. It's not that noticable, and it's probably a good thing I'm not perfection obsessed.

I was going to wear it to MD Sheep and Wool, and it probably would have started a lot of converstations, as I over heard numerous people talking about this yarn would work great for clapotis. And indeed I got some yarn for another one (probably a gift). But it was really warm walking around the Howard county fair grounds.

It was a great day for the festival, and I saw lots of yarn and lots of sheep, and maybe even spotted a knit blogger I read (although I wasn't sure enough to say hello, and it is kind of weird in a way). I picked up some cool hand-dyed yarns and it will be hard to put them away until I make more progress on the reclaiming needles thing, but I will do it. Anyway I leave you with a picture of cool sheep.