Vacation is supposed to be relaxing!

I am more exhausted this week than I usually am during a work week. I took off the week to hang with the boys before my cruise. The weekend was just a little crazed, in a good way but exhausting nonetheless. Amanda, Tisha, Rinaldo and I did Comic Con on Friday which was a blast. We hung out with old friends:


I returned with Avery on Sunday for Kids Day. When we finished up on Sunday I had to rush back home drop Avery off and then Rinaldo and I returned to 42nd street to the BB King Blues Club to see Pat Benatar.

Best. Concert. Ever.

You know how you see someone who you were a fan of 25 years ago and they can't hit the high notes or they seem like their energy was left behind with their cocaine addiction? So not the case for Ms. Benatar. Her voice sounds even better than it did all those years ago, she still rocks out like she has all the energy in the world and the comfort between she and her husband, Neil Giraldo, on stage is adorable. Well worth the price of admission.

Monday, I took the boys on one of those double decker tour buses around lower Manhattan. When I was a kid my cousin Ingileif and her mom would come visit and do all this touristy stuff. I always got to tag along. I feel like I really appreciate my city because of it so I try to do some cheesy tourist type stuff with the boys whenever I can. It was fun.

Yesterday was a trip up to Yonkers for cruise shopping and then home to rest for a couple hours before heading downtown to knitting. See what I mean about the lack of relaxation going on? Today is my day to catch up on household stuff, laundry, cleaning etc. Plus, well blogging obviously. I have an article to type up. I also planned on working on the sadly neglected Knitting Blogger's Ring but Ring Surf did an upgrade and I can't get it working in any productive way. Risa and I are going to have to come up with a plan to keep the ring going.

Two weeks to the day I started it I finished Swallowtail:
and I didn't completely screw it up:
Oh, uh you noticed something different about mine did you? Well the oracle, aka Kathleen had said to me on her visit, "do you have enough yarn?" and the fact is I didn't. So I decided to forgo the peaked edging, which is in fact my least favorite part of the shawl[ette] anyway. I love the way it looks. It is small but it's as big as I expected. Which is perfect for my needs.

So early Friday morning I am flying off to Florida and getting on a boat with my girls. My dear husband will be holding down the homefront and I'll be back for dinner on Monday.

Try not to miss me too much;)

I gave up...

...on Jeannie. There was no way in hell she would be done in time. I dug into the basket of wonder and pulled out my swallowtail. I'm having a much, much more successful experience this time:



Sorry for the cellphone shot but that's how it goes. I've got 10 repeats of the main chart done, out of 14. She is just zipping along. My screw-ups have been minimal and easily fixed.

Crazy week = lazy weekend, I hope.

Have a great weekend!

The End of the Tail...

Saturday night I finished the final repeat of the second chart of Swallowtail. That meant I only had one repeat each of three more charts. I was pretty excited then I looked at it, I mean really looked at it and counted my stitches:
I seem to have managed to do one extra pattern repeat on the right side. In a specific sense I have no idea how this happened. In a more general way I totally do. There was this one point in time around row 42 where I kept have one more or one less stitch and I decided to make them disappear or appear as needed rather than being a good girl and tinking back to fix the screw up. It doesn't pay to be lazy, particularly when you're doing lace.

This is where Swallowtail was last night:
I decided I would rather do it the right way from the beginning than try to rip it back to where the trouble started.

The Corona was there for medicinal purposes...

I really wish I had a meme for today. I was sick in bed all day yesterday so I didn't take any pictures. I have been somewhat productive though. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

I'm about half-way on the swallowtail. Once I got the rhythm of it, it started to go very quickly. It's a really fun knit, especially for lace. I am screwing up very rarely, though I'll admit to a few here and there. I can't wait to block it to really see how lovely it is.

I also finished the second baby kimono. I have to sew the ribbon on to both kimonos. I went to the craft store on Saturday and bought more ribbon since I still haven't found the original one I bought. I like the new one better anyway. Its a cream rather than a white so it matches the kimono better. I also bought a nice green for the other kimono.

I also made a bootie, and amazingly it looks baby sized. Whodathunkit? I used this pattern. It's a very good pattern for worsted weight. The problem I always run into with booties is that most patterns are written for fingering weight and I like them to match the other items I'm making which are invariably in worsted. This bootie seems to fit the bill.

I've worked on Anastasia a bit but I think I'm still suffering from falling out of love with my first pattern choice. Of course it doesn't help when other people are having so much fun with Love. I like the way my socks are coming out but I have no real urge to work on them. Maybe that'll change once swallowtail is finished.

Only 24 and a half hours left until the long weekend...

I had planned on having some pictures to show you all the projects I'm working on while I'm caught in the grips of startiritis but I was too lazy to take pictures after I got home from my knitting group last night.

Currently on the needles I have:

The Swallowtail Shawl - currently in a state of neglect. Why is it that I get about 30 rows in to a lace shawl and stop dead. This has happened twice on Charlotte. It's like my own personal border issue. I don't seem to have the appropriate visa to continue into lace country.

Garter Stitch baby hat - not loving this either but I want it to match the kimono so I need to finish it up. I'm sick of this damn yarn (Mary Maxim Kashmere, don't laugh- grr). I have tons of it. I think it's time to divest myself of it.

Doctor Who fingerless gloves - the pattern is great but I'm not feeling the leftover Silky Wool from Gyrid. I'm also not feeling the magic loop on this one. I think I'm going to switch yarns before I go any further, I'm going to continue the looping though...for now.

Falling in Love socks - these are going well. The biggest issue is the fact that I can't see the lace pattern showing up yet. It could be the darkness of the yarn, it could simply be the whole lace blooming when blocking thing. I'm going to keep going because they look cute regardless. Here's some sucky camera phone shots for you:

look ma, a provisional cast on:



...and here we are as of 2:00 today:



It's a really good pattern. Of course there was some panic last night at my knitting group when I ran into the K4tog, yup that's right knit 4 together. That was more than slightly intimidating. I pointed it out to Chante and the panic in her eyes made me feel much better. Of course today she came up with an alternative, 'cause she's like that;)

Since I'm feeling that somehow this post is rather sparse, here is some Ian cuteness. We met Diego at the Bronx Zoo on Saturday as part of their Cinco de Mayo celebration. Ian was absolutely thrilled:



Happy Wednesday...