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I’m finished with the back of my twist top tank!

(Sorry for the bizarre perspective — it really is even in real life.) I worked on it fairly steadily in Pennsylvania, and finally finished the shoulders last night. Though I was following the pattern, and my guage is on, it’s very long and skinny. We’ll have to see what blocking does for that. Now on to the front!

I didn’t mean to go all AWOL on the blog-posting, but it was the product of a busy last two weeks of work before Kevin and I headed back to the east coast for vacation. First we headed up to Lake Winnepesaukee, NH to see my parents for their 30th anniversary, then (maximizing the benefit for the cross-country travel time), we flew down to PA to see Kevin’s family. I even brought the card reader for my camera, but somehow never got around to posting… oops. Since I had pictures, I’ve gone back and filled in some posts from the trip.

Here’s to more frequent posts! 🙂

Kevin’s Mom, sister and grandmother took us to brunch in Lancaster, PA on Friday. When we moved to Seattle, our cross country drive started through the Lancaster area, but it was early in the morning and we didn’t take any time to stop and be touristy. I thought it was so fun to go back. The area is home to a (the?) large Amish population, and it’s such pretty rolling hillside laid out in farms. It’s a gorgeous ride, though you have to keep an eye out for buggies, since they share the road.

After brunch, we drove back through Bird-In-Hand (the town names out there are great…). There was a knick knack shop which turned out to also contain a great fabric store. In the back they had racks of hand-made quilts, which were amazing. Given how long my machine piecing is taking, I can’t imagine how long the hand-quilted versions must take to finish, even with a guild of women all working on them at once. Since the quilts were rather beyond my budget, I came away with a few yards of fabric:

They look like mosaics! Here’s a picture with a quarter for scale:

I don’t have a project in mind yet for either of them. (a bag? a sundress? pajama pants?) They had so much neat fabric that I haven’t seen anywhere else and the two women minding the store were friendly and interesting to talk to, so I’m happy to have such a pretty souvenir.

We also stopped at the Bird-In-Hand farmers’ market. I was expecting more raw produce instead of the well-packaged crafts and prepared food, but regardless it was fun to look around. We sampled the fudge, pastry, jellies and cheese (mmm), and Kevin was so happy to see scrapple.

I wasn’t entirely sad that they weren’t giving out free samples of that, too. 😛

We had major delays on the flights from Manchester to Philadelphia. As the plane got closer to landing, it was clear why. They’d been citing the weather, but it was so dramatic to fly next to the huge thunderheads suddenly boiling up into the sky.

The picture doesn’t do it justice, since we flew too close to them to give a sense of the perfectly flat clouds that these towered out of. I was glad that we weren’t flying through them (our teeny plane would have been bounced all over the place), but it was such a neat thing to fly next to. Yay for summer storms!

It’s hard to argue with a fourth of July spent knitting on the deck in the sun. 🙂 Comet was hanging out nearby, being very cute with his toy, so the background will have to suffice for a patriotic shot.

Dad and Sharon flew out mid-afternoon, and Comet acted like the ultimate depressed dog when they left with their suitcases. Kevin and I finally coaxed him outside, but it took a few hours before he was back to playing and looking for attention. Poor dog.

As seems to be our wont, we watched the fireworks for Center Harbor, Meredith and Laconia indoors with the lights off. Great shows from all three, plus extras from Squam Lake, an unidentified show straight across the lake, and from lots of our neighbors. The fireworks some people buy to shoot off their docks rivaled some of the town displays, so it was fun to watch.

Happy fourth, and happy anniversary Mom and Dad!

I’ve been having fun playing with my ball of Noro Lotus. I decided to knit it up into an I-cord strap for a felted bag, thinking that it would really pop against a black background. But while the thickness of the five-stitch I-cord felt about right, I was really disappointed with the colors. I loved the chaotic warm colors with the white, yellow and blue highlights that showed when the yarn was in a ball, but when I started knitting the impression was just blocks, and I didn’t think they were pretty. I particularly wasn’t a fan of the stretch of blue, and all of the vibrant red and pink was more or less gone.

(Comet thought his rope was *far* more interesting than taking pictures of knitting… He kept tossing it around and growling. 🙂 Funny dog.)

This wasn’t fitting my vision at all, so then I decided to double the yarn and start over. Here is about two inches of progress with a doubled four-stitch I-cord — so much better!!

I actually decided to rip back yet again and make it a 3-stitch cord since it was seeming a bit too thick. I also cut out the blue, green, and mustard brown stretches of the yarn. Noro always throws in colors that I think would have been better left out. I tried to be open minded and leave them in, but after knitting along I had to rip back and get rid of them. Not pretty. Now I probably won’t have enough yarn (especially for the double strap I wanted), but the colors are so pretty again that I don’t mind. 🙂 Maybe I’ll be able to find another ball even thought it’s discontinued?

Once I was on the right track colorwise, I was so happy to have an excuse to go to Keepsake Quilting one town over in Center Harbor for the bag lining. I found a shockingly bright Bali print (shown in the picture above), and I think it will work perfectly if I have enough yarn to finish the strap. (I also picked up this pattern for Four Corner Designs’ Stash Box Quilt — so pretty, even if not something I will get to soon.)

While I was at the quilt store, I swung by Patternworks, which is right next door and run by the same people. I get their catalog, but the yarn is usually pricier than buying it locally. The store always has sale bins out front though, and I was quite pleased to find 6 balls of Jaeger’s Siena 4 Ply in a pretty light leaf green.

I’m hoping it will be enough to make some sort of shrug, though I don’t have an exact pattern in mind yet.

We had pretty sunsets all of the nights, but Sunday’s was truly stunning. It was a mix of salmon clouds against a bright pink sky, and the color well past overhead from the horizon.

Looking straight out from the deck was even prettier with all of the islands silhouetted in dark purple.

It seems like the wet spring in New England must have led to bumper crops for chipmunks, because they were everywhere. This fat little guy moved into the stone wall by the deck:

Despite the butterball appearance, he didn’t seem too weighed down — he was still incredibly quick to zip away whenever Comet came out on the deck.

The strawberry plants are so happy now that the spittle bugs are gone.

Don’t they look delicious? We split three Friday night after work, and they were wonderful. Strawberries are always good, but the small, real ones are just so sweet.

(An aside: Can anyone identify the line “and one perfect peach”? It keeps coming into my head whenever I look at the fruit on this plant, and I can’t track it down. I suspect it was a children’s book that got read a lot when I was little, because the tempo that my brain keeps repeating it with seems very deliberate. Memory is so interesting.)

Our yarn swap on Wednesday was lots of fun. I had very little to contribute, but was very delighted to find some very pretty yarns.
First, sock yarn from Suzanne! Lorna’s Laces in a colorway I’ve been admiring for months, and a skein of Knit Picks’ Shimmer that reminds me of violets. 🙂 How pretty! I’m so excited.

Then, a skein of Noro’s Lotus, which is not my usual yarn type or color preference, but it was speaking to me so I bought it from Juli. I love the contrasting shiny bit that threads through it. Very lovely. Perhaps it’s destined to be accents on a slouchy bag? I have to ponder it a bit.

Then, I had 3 extra skeins of Madil All Seasons from my 2-skein Branching Out (due to wild overestimation of the yarn required), which Pam offered to trade this for:

It’s 1620 yards of light brown 4.5 st/in machine washable wool. (I didn’t include the other 9 skeins in the photo). She said that it had been lurking in her stash for years. It’s definitely not my typical color, but it’s been appealing to me since she left, so I’m curious to see what pattern jumps out for it. Perhaps something with a shawl collar?

Great fun. 🙂 Yay for new yarn!