July Mystery Mittens

I finally finished the thumbs and blocked my July Mystery Mittens this past weekend.

I'm loving the weight and color of these mittens, and anticipate getting quite a bit of wear out of them this winter.

I've been doing quite a bit of posting from my phone, as I had a bit of a computer melt down, so the formatting has suffered.  

Now I'm back with a new MacBook, and all is well!

Many thanks to Paul, my in-house computer go-to-guy.

I'm a very spoiled girl...

Lilleput

Startitis strikes again.   

Lilleput.  

A baby sweater for a friends joyfully awaited grand daughter.  

Where's Wooldo?

The perfect sheepy t-shirt, on sale at Shirt.Woot today.

I've bought shirts for my kids here, but never one for myself.

Today may be the day.

We must be doing something to be happy

“To do any thing, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, –in a word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to succeed, has something in it that gratifies the love of power, and carries off the restless activity of the mind of man.  Indolence is a delightful but distressing state:  we must be doing something to be happy.”

–William Hazlitt, “On the Pleasure of Painting”

I've got some extended downtime, so I'm  very happily knitting!

Do your business here?

Why do I half expect to see a little pile of poop on this floor?

Duluth

College visit to Duluth today.  One of our most favorite cities.  

Alpaca

60 degrees out and it's a spin alpaca and watch hummingbirds kind of evening. 

Brick tree

What's going on here?

Pretty

Seriously.   

Isn't that one of the prettiest yarn cakes ever?

Senior night

Senior/parent night for soccer this evening.   

Can you see it?

Left mitten.  

Can you see it?  The star that's supposed to be there to match the left mitten?

Yeah, me neither.   

Time to frog.  Apparently I need to be more attentive.   It never works when I think I'll just quickly finish a long abandoned project.  

Sunday morning

Girl of the House and snuggle buddies.  

3S shawl

Pictures of the finished 3S shawl.

I really like the picot edging.

Hummingbirds

We've had tons of hummingbirds on our feeder lately.

Can't tell if they're all females, or just young.  The males should have ruby throats, and these don't.

Wake Me Up

First song I hear on my running/biking playlist this summer.

It's impossible to feel lazy when I hear it.

Late run

It was a beautiful evening for a sunset run. 

After Girl of the House's 5pm soccer game.  

Ironic?

Geocaching

Did some geocaching today.  One multi-stage cache started at the old Sciota township hall.

Then there was hiking at the Carleton College McKnight Prairie.  

There are still cacti growing in the Minnesota prairie. 

Who knew?

September Hot

A very hot day for September 7 in Minnesota.  92 degrees here.   Heat index of 104.

We sat on the deck while our supper of pork ribs and grilled sweet corn sizzled.  We had a chilled bottle of Dolgo Crabapple wine from my visit to Wisconsin's Maiden Rock winery earlier this summer.    It showed great promise to stand up to the strong flavors of the grilled meat.  

But it was cool and delicious, so I'm sorry to say it didn't last til mealtime.  

I'd highly recommend it for hot September evenings! 

Pink!

Tonight the Girl of the House baked cupcakes for the Lace for the Cure fundraiser that the soccer girls do each fall.  

 

The bright pink is an important part.   

Sale to take place during Northfield's famous Defeat of Jesse James days festival tomorrow. 

 

Soccer tonight

Let the game begin!

Hitchhiker

I started this scarf when we were driving back from camping in Colorado this summer.  It's become my carry around knitting.  It's mindless enough that I can knit while I read, too.

River's Edge Progressions merino sock yarn, purchased at Shepherd's Harvest festival back in May, knitted in the incredibly popular Hitchhiker pattern.  There are currently 11,253 projects with this pattern on Ravelry.  I can see why.  It's easy, yet mesmerizing.

Final First Day of School

Girl of the House was off bright and early for the first day of her senior year.

So I guess this would be the day to show her Senior Year blanket.

I adapted the Temperature scarf pattern to knit a blanket for her to take to college next year.  Cascade 220 Superwash yarn in colors chosen by GotH.

One row for each day, beginning July 1.  One color for each 10° temperature increment.

I'll have July and August of 2014 to finish knitting, if I need it.  

And we all know that I'll need it...

Labor Day

Fall is here.  

The high temp reached 67° today, after being in the 90°s last week.

We had our third annual Labor Day "If Mama ain't going' anywhere for the holiday weekend, we're ALL gonna go for a run" 5K.

I had some good-natured resistance on the part of the seventeen year old, but we all made a go of it.

I'm quite slow, as I'm rehabbing a torn meniscus, so I ran the opposite direction of the loop.  That way I managed to get a picture of the two of them headed my direction.

School starts tomorrow.

Let the fall truly begin.

Back on the Horse

Well, that was a dandy break, wasn't it?  Summer just galloped away...

I'll just climb back on this horse and ride 'er into the fall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cooler temps today (it's been in the 90s for a solid week) made me feel like playing with fiber again.

I had these shawls to block.

Well, Color Affection turned out to be 80 inches wide.  Where the heck do you block something of that size?

On the clothes line, of course. It worked surprisingly well. 

(Please ignore the towels.)

Boulder 3S shawl

I started this one while taking an intensive weekend seminar in Boulder Colorado this summer.  It was great mindless knitting.

Corrina Shawl

Part of a summer knitalong, finished while we were on vacation in Colorado in July.

Finished object photos to come this week.

Happy Fall to everyone in the Midwest!