The wanderer returns

My last travelling scarf returned home from Germany this weekend. I love how the soft palette of colours has been maintained by all the knitters who contributed. It's lovely!
The pattern is Brooklyn Tweed's Striped Noro Scarf.

And the sky was grey

Well, more rain and overcast skies; we keep making trips out, dodging the deluges, but to be honest, it looks like it's set in for another summer. We haven't made plans for a holiday this year, but have booked for next.

A year to the day, in fact.

We're flying to San Francisco, staying for a few days and then heading off on a road trip which will take us to Carmel, Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon and Los Angeles. Quite a trip.

School's Out!

First day of freedom :)

Woke up at the same time, but it doesn't matter. I'm technically on holiday for six and a half weeks. Don't consider the three boxes of work I've brought home with me or the fact that I will actually be going in next week - the holidays have started. Just as well, it's been a fairly difficult week and I'm exhausted.

Last night I cast on a celebratory sock and got to the fifth line of the pattern before my brain became so foggy that I just couldn't make sense of it, lost the ability to count where I was up to and had to put it down. Simple lace pattern, too.

He's still here. Every morning I came down to this sight from the kitchen window.


J is less enchanted than he was initially. The lawn is covered with divots as Tufty, here, rips up the top of the turf, pushes his haul underneath and pats it back down again. If these seeds germinate we will have a sunflower plantation next year. Still, he's lovely to watch.


I've bought this to inspire me over the summer.


I'd like to figure out how to make a Zig Zag vest without having to buy the kit for $170.

What I would really like to do, this summer, is learn how to spin.

Nunchuck

Now, this isn't a word you would normally find in my vocabulary, but we bought a wii console with wii fit this weekend.


I'm totally addicted - and quite good at hoola-hooping, I must say. I do have the hips for it!

Did half an hour yesterday and again today on the wii fit and we've been bowling and playing tennis this afternoon - great fun and we're not sitting down.

My wii fit age is, apparently, 56. I need to lose 10 years.

What progress on the knitting front?

Well. It's difficult at the moment. I have had little time and I keep falling asleep at 8pm on the sofa. Furthermore, I don'twant to knit any more garments for me until my weight stabilises. I'm already going to have to pull out my Hey Teach from last summer as a combination of weight loss and the cotton stretching has made it too big now.

Consequently, I've been sticking to non-garments. This mass of green malabrigo sock (lettuce colourway) is going to be a Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl or scarf. Note the lifeline. Falling asleep with knitting needles in hand is, for me, incompatible with lace knitting. I've frogged this three times already, but I'm determined to finish a lace shawly thing this summer.

Kite Festival

It has been the International Friendship Festival in Sunderland this weekend. This incorporates the Kite Festival.


Naturally, we chose a day with very light wind to visit.


So very few of the bigger kites were in the air.


Still, there were some spectacular designs.

Recent garden visitors

It's that manic time of year again. Two more weeks of school and about seven weeks of stuff to fit into them.

We've had some extreme weather too, making it difficult to do lots of the usual things involving going outside.

Today was hot and dry, thankfully and I got some knitting done outside after taking j for new glasses and trying to do some shopping in hot, angry crowds.

Some pictures of our garden visitors this weekend:

An out-of-focus woodpecker. I've been trying to photograph him for months, but he's so fast and easily scared.


The reason for the recently escalating cost of peanuts and sunflower seeds.


A drowsy bee staggering across the top of a scabious, covered in pollen.