Slowest Connection Ever!

I'm in DC for my sister's bridal shower (she's getting married in September), and while I'm generally having a great time, the hotel internet connection is so slow it's going backwards.

However, I do have several important knitting updates... although no pictures till I get home. Thursday night, I finished my sock pal's second sock (Monkey socks, knit with the Socks That Rock club yarn from April--a silk & wool blend) and swatched for the Mystery Stole at last! I brought the chocolate laceweight from Live2Knit, as well as sizes 3 and 4 needles. I thought size 4 would be okay, so I started with that. It turned out that my yarnovers were really loose with the size 4s though, so I went down to size 3.

I was a little worried that the semi-solid yarn would be too variagated even after I knit the swatch Thursday night, so I figured I could re-assess Friday morning, and go shopping then if necessary (my only other choice from stash had an even wider range of colors, so it wasn't like I could have avoided buying more yarn by swatching earlier, or bringing more yarn with me). But the colors looked fine, so I printed out the first clue Friday morning and got started. I'm almost done with the first page of the chart, which I estimate is about a quarter of the way through the knitting for this clue. I've also started a new sock (plain stockinette stich using the Lorna's Laces I got from Greeley), for the Metro, and when people want to talk to me (darn people--getting in the way of knitting!).

(Also, the browser on this computer is only semi-compatible with Blogger, so no links, and no spell-check... what a lame post!)

Snooze

Here's the grey sweater (the one which will eventually have Something Interesting around the waist, neck and sleeves, but which is currently putting me to sleep). I took the picture a couple of days ago (using my patented "low light and built-in camera" technique to show it at its worst... but is there really a good way to take pictures of a top-down cardi on a relatively short circular needle?), so it's a little longer now. Not much though, because I spent most of the weekend working on Monkey socks for my sock pal (I'm done with one sock and a couple of inches into the second).

It's hard to see from this angle, but the front edges of the sweater come straight down from the intersection of the raglan lines and the neck--I only cast on enough stitches for the back and the sleeves, plus one more stitch for each front, then worked the increases as usual. I'm going to pick up stitches all around the front opening, and work 3 or 4 inches of trim, possibly from Knitting on the Edge (have I said this already?).

This may be a slightly better picture of the front, although the edges are rolling back on themselves. Anyway--three or four inches of trim on each side will be enough to meet and overlap slightly in the front, and hopefully fold down around the neck. What I can't decide is whether I want to have the same trim to be around the lower edge as well. On one hand, it seems like the same pattern in in both places will help unify the sweater. But on the other hand, it could also be an unnecessary horizontal line. And if I do put it on the lower edge too, should I knit the lower edge separately from the front edge or work increases at the lower corners? Or something else? I still have a few inches of sleep-inducing stockinette stitch body, plus the exhausting stockinette sleeves before I really need to decide.

Also exhausting: my weekend. Or, not so much my weekend as everyone else's weekend (I biked 30 miles and ran a half marathon as a training run, but I was the laziest). Kevin and I met up with about 25 other people from our triathlon team in Lake Placid for a training camp. The plan was that Kevin would bike 112 miles on Saturday, then swim 2.4 miles and run a half marathon on Sunday (in the real Lake Placid Ironman, the run would be a full 26.2 miles, but most training programs don't ask you to run the full distance till the race, because running that far is really draining). The bike course is 2 loops, so I was going to do the second loop with him, skip the swimming entirely, and do the run. As it turned out, Kevin decided he's had enough 30 miles into the second loop, so that's all the biking I did. I knit during his swim, and then we ran together.

I'd never been to Lake Placid before, and it was gorgeous, just like everyone said. But a little weird, because it was overrun with bikers, runners and swimmers (and also horse people, hockey players and figure skaters, plus what I assume is the usual assortment of outdoorsy and hiking people). In addition to our informal group, there were other clubs, as well as professionally organized triathlon training excursions. Usually, setting out to work out, I feel pretty virtuous--I got myself out of bed early, I'm going to run/bike, hurray for me! This usually lasts most of the day (which is actually a problem, training-wise, since it often makes me feel OK about skipping the second planned workout).

But not this weekend: we went for a short run after we got unpacked on Friday, then out to dinner. On the way to dinner, we passed runners, and I felt like we should be running. We got up at dawn on Sunday so Kevin could swim in the lake, passed runners, and I felt like we should be running (even though we were already planning to run after the swim). Clearly, I'm an exercise lemming. On the other hand, I usually feel bad going into businesses mid-bike (hot, sweaty, smell, and covered with dirt and grease). But as one of several hundred overheated, sweaty, smelly, dirty, greasy people, I blended right in. Kevin's Flickr set is mostly people from the team, but here's a funny one (next to the beach where everyone was swimming), and Kevin and me after our short run on Friday. We have a new camera that's waterproof (to 33 ft.) and drop-proof (from up to 5 ft.), so we're trying to be better about taking pictures.

Yarn Paraphernalia

Here's the rest of my new yarn from last week: 4 more skeins of Laurel (100% cotton) from Schaefer Yarns, in the color way Lillian Galbreth. I'm actually thinking that maybe some of the Laurel (this one, or from a couple of days ago) would be a good prize, if I ever wanted to have a contest. Maybe half of each color for me, and half as a prize? I really like this yarn--in addition to the color, it's mercerized, and so shiny--but 1600 yards of each seems excessive for one person.

And here's the prize yarn I won from Debby, Chris and spokescat Charlie's fundraising drawing for Get Your Guts In Gear: skeins of laceweight merino in chocolate from Live2Knit. Go see their pictures from the ride! What a great thing to do--I'm especially impressed by riding that far (70 miles) on three consecutive days, since one night of sleep is nowhere near enough to recover and feel ready to get on the bike again.

But back to the yarn for a sec, this is one of the yarns I'm thinking about using for my Mystery Stole--the others are a half and half wool and silk blend from Schaefer Yarn (it's called Trenna, and mine is purple), and some 100% silk from Schaefer, in the same pale colors as the cotton up above. I haven't swatched yet, because I like to live on the edge. Someone on the list for this project suggested that the theme (which isn't revealed till partway through) might be Pirates of the Caribbean, because the designer said white or black would work well. I liked the first movie well enough (back when we saw movies, before we started going to sleep in mid-afternoon... I don't think we've been to a movie theater yet in 2007, although sometimes we try to go in early January, just to get it out of the way for the year), but I'm hoping for another theme.

And I kind of finished some socks... kind of because when I went to photograph them, I noticed that one cuff is one repeat longer than the other (although Kevin and I tried to hide it when we took this picture). I have a little bit of this yarn left, even though I also made some booties after I finished the socks, so I may lengthen the short one. But then again I may not, because I bound off using the Kitchner bind off, and it's a pain to undo. The yarn is from Riin at Happy Fuzzy Yarn, and the pattern is mine, using the Seaweed pattern from the second Walker treasury.

(The title, by the way, is from Kevin--when I received the unpteenth yarn-related package in the mail, and explained that I was NOT getting yarn every day, sometimes it was accessories!--he decided that yarn paraphernalia counts as yarn. Crazy!)

No Pictures Yet!

But we're well supplied with chargers now--we bought a new one and then found the old one (of course).

Instead, I present the next in the occasional series, Times I Have Tipped Over. (A small digression, before I even get started: my running club before I moved to New Haven had a semi-regular feature on their website called the falling down archives. At the time, even though I also trip more than average while running, I thought that was silly, because who falls over that often. Me, as it turns out, as soon as you put me on a bike.)

Anyway, Kevin and I went out for a long bike ride on Saturday. The route we planned to ride is about 50 miles (the exact distance varies every time, because we're still searching for a non-traffic-y, well paved route out of New Haven. Ha!), but about 15 miles in, I noticed that my bike was really hard to pedal, and actually seemed to slow down when I tried to coast downhill. We kept going (always a good idea--get further away from home when something is going wrong!), but stopped a couple of times to try to figure out the problem. About 10 miles later, we realized that my bike was almost completely unlubricated--thinking about it, we remembered that Kevin mostly lubes his bike before races, and since I haven't raced, it hadn't been lubed. Poor bike.

And poor us--I'm a slow biker to begin with, but with my bike fighting me, I was even slower than usual, even though I was working harder (and getting more tired). We decided that Kevin would turn for home at the next intersection, and I'd continue a few miles further along our planned route to the town where we usually have lunch. I'd eat, then wait for Kevin to come back with the car. The town has a big central green, so even if I felt too sweaty and grimy to go inside anywhere, I could just sit under a tree. We split our money and snacks, and I kept the cell phone and Kevin's credit card (I got the phone because Kevin would have our other cell as soon as he got home). We estimated the whole process would take about 2 hours, if there wasn't any traffic. (To throw you off, I'm foreshadowing the wrong outcome... the cell phone, credit card, and traffic weren't the problem, it was my stupid pedals and a waitress.)

So Kevin turned for home and I kept going. When I got to the green, I noticed a bookstore and realized I could buy a cheap paperback to read while I waited... but when I tried to dismount to step onto the sidewalk, I slowed down too much before my feet were detached and tipped over. It was my first experience tipping over somewhere friendly, and it was kind of embarrassing. People asked if I was okay, was there something in the road, was I sure I was okay, what had happened... which was very nice of them, but I generally prefer to leap back up and hurry away, pretending no one saw. (I really am fine though!)

I successfully bought a book (using Kevin's credit card... the clerk didn't notice the wrong name, and we both have legible signatures), then tried to go buy a sandwich. I'd been biking for 2.5 hours, and I was famished. Sadly though, the sandwich plus tax was 25 cents more than I had in cash, and the waitress said the credit card machine was broken (and there may have been a $10 minimum for credit cards, but if she'd said that, I'd have been happy to pay $10 for my sandwich). So I went back out to the green to starve quietly and read. Kevin picked me up soon enough, having had his own adventures: a flat tire, many hills, and an impossible intersection.

Good Days for Mail

This week has been great for mail! On Tuesday, I received a box of Schaefer Yarn as payment for my designs, and then yesterday the lace yarn I won in a fundraising drawing appeared. The camera battery died before I gook pictures of everything (and now we can't find the charger, although it must be around somewhere), so here's part of it.

Meet Martha (a wool, angora, cashmere blend), in the Julia Child colorway. I have 4 skeins, which is 1320 yards total--I don't exactly remember what I was planning to make when I picked this yarn, but it's gorgeous (and I have more, in the Greenjeans colorway). I wear a lot of brown, especially to work, and none of my attempts to make the a versatile brown sweater have quite worked out. My best effort so far is Loll, from the Rowan Calmer Collection (scroll down). But the front edges roll (I think I need to sew some ribbon on the inside), and the sleeves are a little tight to wear over another layer. Which is generally a good idea, when wearing cardigans to work. So maybe the sweater I make out of this will be the answer?

Next up, Laurel (all cotton) in the Elizabeth Blackwell colorway (I love that Cheryl names the colors after female pioneers... half the time, I can feel proud of myself for knowing who they were already, and the rest of the time I learn something I should have known already. I think I remembered Elizabeth Blackwell from a children's biographical series.) I have 4 skeins of this one too, which is 1600 yards! I'm not sure about what to do with this one, so it may marinate in my stash (now up to 9.5 miles, thanks to 3.5 miles of yarnful mail in 2 days) for a bit. A second skein of the same yarn, but in the color called Lillian Gilbreth, which is very light came as well, but pictures will have to wait till the charger turns up.

As will photos of the prize yarn, which is beautiful and so, so soft.

Planning

Here's the yarn I worked on over the weekend--it's the half pound of merino from the Sheepshed that I bought at Cummington. I'd spun a little bit before spinning group, worked diligently on it while I was there, and finished it up at home (totally ignoring Kevin's pleas for advice on what he should make for dinner in the process... oops). It's a 2-ply, and I think I have about 300 yards (I don't have a niddy-noddy, so I wind my finished yarn off the bobbin onto the legs of an upturned chair. Yardage calculations are kind of a pain to do in my head, because my chair legs measure 66 inches around rather than 60 or 72).

I'd been thinking about plying it with some laceweight silk, remember, but in the end, I decided not to, because when I'd spun it all into singles it seemed too light for the colors of the laceweight. (Shown together here, with the roving, back when they were clearly the same colors.) I didn't take a picture of the singles, and now that it's plied it looks darker again (but much browner), so you'll just have to believe me that the singles looked too light. I'm still pretty happy with my decision not to ply them together (although it would have been interesting to see what happened) because I've remembered that I had another idea for the laceweight... which I probably won't actually try for months, because I suddenly have a lot of knitting lined up.

I'm going to be making a second version of the cardigan I just designed for Schaefer Yarns (although designed is kind of an overstatement, since it's such a simple shape), which shouldn't take too long (this is the semi-solid brown blob in the background of the picture here). And I signed up for Mystery Stole 3 (blog and Yahoo group). Mystery knitting is like mystery quilting--you know the required materials in advance, but you don't know what the finished piece will look like. Then every week the designer gives the group a clue (actually, the next few steps of directions), till the piece is finished. I didn't participate in either of the previous mystery stoles, but I really like the wraps people made, as well as the designer's other patterns, so I expect I'll like this one too. Even though it's not a race, I'd like to keep up with the group (more or less), so that knitting will take some time.

And ongoing socks, of course. That reminds me--I took a picture of sock #1 from my current pair, but didn't post it right away. By now, sock #1 is finished and sock #2 looks like sock #1 when I took the picture. I'm thinking about writing up the pattern and posting it here--these are going to be my June socks for the sock-a-month KAL, so when I post a picture of the finished socks over there, maybe some people from that blog will come here and find the pattern.

Finally, I've started a short- or 3/4-sleeved sweater from the Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere I bought at Webs. It's going to be a top-down raglan cardi, with Something Interesting (yet to be determined) around the front and cuffs. So far, it's not that exciting, since I'm still doing the raglan increases. Snooze.

Group Project

I think I've mentioned a couple of times that three friends and I have been making a baby blanket for a fourth friend whose baby is due in a very few weeks. The blanket is finished and mailed at last. This isn't the best picture ever (it might help if I didn't try to take pictures in the middle of the night...) and I swear the actual blanket doesn't have the strange spot on the upper left.

The yarn is Swish Superwash from Knit Picks--2 skeins each of the contrast colors, and 5 skeins of the yellow. I was pretty happy with the yarn. Because it's superwash, it became very loose and stretched out while it was wet, but it returned to normal when I machine dried it. In any case, the baby's mom is a knitter (she's the one who first convinced me to knit without a pattern), so I'm sure she understands about superwash.

Yarny Weekend

On Saturday, three other SnBers and I met near the green in Hew Haven for World Wide Knit in Public Day--we'd planned to meet on the green, but it was raining so we moved inside. We knit in public regularly (although not in that location), but I don't usually have such a good view of the passersby and their double takes. It's pretty impressive how easily people forget that windows work both ways, when there's something unexpected happening on the other side! We didn't attract any new knitters, although we did talk to an alumna in town for the weekend (it was Reunion, part II), who was knitting in another part of the cafe.

Then on Sunday, Heidi and I went to Cold Goats Farm, home of one of the women in our spinning group, for the monthly meeting. Instead of camnesia (when you forget to bring your camera, and/or bring it but forget to take pictures), I decided not to bring my camera because I never seem to use it anyway, so go see pictures here. This is only the second time I've been to a spinning group meeting, and I was reminded how much more patiently I spin when other people are spinning around me.

And how peaceful spinning noises are--industrious, but at a human speed (although just imagine how incredibly fast spinning on a wheel must have seemed compared to spinning with a drop spindle when they were new technology!). I really like New Haven, but it was still nice to visit a more rural setting, with chicken sounds instead of traffic sounds. Just visit though--I don't want to give up my walking commute and the convenient proximity of pizza!

Funny Coincidence

Hey, did you notice (in the comments on my post about Kevin's half Ironman) that my sockapalooza pal's husband also just did a half IM in Kona? What are the chances of that, do you suppose?

(Review for non-knitters: Sockapalooza is similar to a Secret Santa gift exchange, but with handmade socks. You sign up, provide your foot measurements, color & fiber preferences, and are matched with two people: one makes socks for you and you make socks for the other. You don't know who's making socks for you during the knitting phase--that's revealed when you get your socks.)

Speaking of sock pals, my pal requested vibrantly colored socks in a non-nylon yarn. She mentioned Socks that Rock as an example of yarn she really likes, but she decided not to sign up for this year's sock club. Would it be weird to use sock club yarn to make her socks? I wouldn't have picked the colorway with her in mind, but she said she generally loves their colors. Am I being generous or lazy/cheap to think about making her socks out of the yarn she hoped for, in a color that's not widely available (except for all the other club members--but remember that she didn't sign up for the club), but that I kind of had already, and didn't pick for her?

The totally unrelated picture shows some more of my recent handspun--this one is merino and silk from Times Remembered, which I bought at the CT sheep and wool festival. As I recall, there were 4 oz, and I spun about 200 yards (or maybe about 250 yards--for some reason the number 246 springs to mind).

Andrea Argosy

On the drive home from NH, I finished the lacy Argosy I've been working on--largely unblogged because of the blobiness of pre-blocked lace. Here it is after I blocked it. While it was blocking, it was about 18 x 60-something, but in use (I wore it yesterday), it got longer and thinner.

I'm not entirely happy with it--the pattern is terrific, but I think my version passed right by light and drapey to limp and wimpy. I suspect there were too many factors making it drapey: the pattern is knit on the bias, silk yarn has very little memory, and the gauge is very loose. Whatever the reason, it was a little bedraggled by the end of the day, and the points were on the verge of disappearing. I blocked it a little lazily (I soaked it, then spread it out and tugged on the points, but didn't pin them in place), so the points weren't that defined to begin with. I'm going to try reblocking it with pins (when I blocked my swatch, I used pins), and maybe it will perk back up. Failing that, I might try to hang it (maybe on some kind of frame? It matches the house...) rather than wearing it.

I have about half of the 1093 yard skein left, and I definitely need to ply it with something else, or knit something that will be a little more supported than a scarf--even a triangular shawl would be held open over the shoulders when being worn.

Race Pix

So here's Kevin before and after the race. Not surprisingly (I don't have the fastest reaction time, hate drawing attention myself, and like to keep out of other people's way) I'm a terrible sports photographer. He's a little blurry even when he's standing still!

I'm also not so great at identifying people in crowds, especially when they're wearing a wet suit, goggles and swim cap (the color of the cap should help, but the race gives out color-coded caps to identify the waves). Waving at me and yelling my name doesn't help much either. (A friend of ours calls this "bad crowd vision.")

And here he is at the end of the bike, before the great shoe debacle. By the way, Kevin's feet are fine, except that he has bruise on one heel where he landed hard on a rock.

The last drawback to me as a spectator is that I'm cheering impaired. Other people jump up and down and scream--I clap and grin. On the bright side, there are hardly any spectators, so even my pathetic cheering is noticed (did I mention how many of the cyclists thanked me for clapping for them on Sunday? Many, many, many of them--including one guy who said "hey, you ran a long way yesterday!" because he must have seen me doing my long run the day before, and another who asked how my husband was doing as he zipped by--that's how few spectators there were! As far as I know (it's possible that I'm also bad with names), I'd never met either of them.

70.3

So, it didn't rain too much during Kevin's bike yesterday, but maybe we should have focused the collective power of our crossed extremities on something else: remembering shoes.

A quick review: in a half ironman, you swim 1.2 miles, bike 56 miles, then run a half marathon (13.1 miles). That's where the 70.3 comes from, by the way. In between, you pass through the transition area, where you change--before the race, you set up your bike, helmet, biking shoes, bike shorts, jersey, running shoes, running shorts & shirt, etc. (and there's a lot of etc., depending on how long the race is, and how worried/prepared you are: food, water, Gatorade, sunscreen, bug spray, body glide, towel, hat, sunglasses, bucket & water to wash your feet after the swim, kitchen sink, band aids...). Since triathlon is an individual event, you aren't supposed to get any assistance (from your family or from random spectators) on the course, except from the official aid stations (with food, water & Gatorade) and vehicles, which have spare bike parts. I've run road races where people have handed out popsicles from the ends of their driveways (officially the best popsicles I've ever had in my life, by the way--thank you, people with popsicles and driveways), and there's no such thing in triathlon.

So Kevin got all set up yesterday, and we went down to the beach to watch the first couple of waves start, then into the water (a bracing 60 degrees, and there was one crazy guy with no wetsuit!) he went. I watched the rest of the waves start (you're grouped by age & gender & sometimes experience into waves for the start of the swim, so there are fewer people kicking each other in the head at once--they don't start timing you till your wave actually starts), then I went back into the car to drop off Kevin's shirt & the spare shoes he'd worn down to the water.

And I noticed a pair of his running shoes in the trunk. Which was worrying, but I reassured myself that he must have brought two pairs in case he wanted to run on Saturday and got 1 pair wet. And besides--even if he'd forgotten his shoes, how would I get them to him? (Remember, no assistance from spectators.)

So off I went on my slightly less merry way. I thought about asking him when I saw him in the first transition (after the swim) if he had his shoes--he could check, then tell me (nearly 2 hours later) when he passed me halfway through the bike, and if he didn't, I could have gotten them and... what? Thrown them over the fence into the transition area? So it would look like he'd set his shoes up in a corner for no reason? (Each person has a spot on a bike rack for their bike, then about 2 feet of ground on either side for everything else). What if he actually did have his shoes and I made him worry for no reason? I convinced myself he MUST have his shoes, hurried back to the transition area, waved at him after the swim but said nothing, then jogged out along the bike course to wait for him to pass by.

I clapped for everyone who went by (and was thanked by most of them--the course was long and hilly, and it was difficult to drive out of the park once the race was underway, so most spectators stayed at the start area and there were many lonely uphill miles... if you ever encounter a bike race, drive slowly, as far from the bikers as you can safely drive... pull a little way into the other lane if you can... and cheer), saw Kevin, failed to take his picture, and walked back to the transition area to try again on the picture thing as he came back from the bike (which he yelled as he passed by would probably be 2 hours later).

So I knit a bit, then went out to watch Kevin come in from the bike. I managed to take his picture, then scurried over the the beginning of the run to see him there too. I waited what seemed like too long, then started worrying about the shoes again--what would Kevin possibly do if he didn't have his running shoes (bike shoes have metal clips sticking out from the bottom--you can barely walk in them, let alone run). And you start to get stupid as you exercise that long (the swim plus the bike had taken 4 hours), so if a genius solution would have been possible hours ago (shoes made from bark? bicycle tires?), there was no way it would work now.

Then Kevin came along the trail and out of the woods, shoe-less. He yelled, "in the trunk!" and off I went, back to the car to get the shoes. It wasn't far, but I had to run out of my way to get around the trees and underbrush and avoid disaster on my way across the path of the bikers who were still finishing their bikes. Back at the car, I grabbed the shoes, then ran back to where I'd seen Kevin. But no Kevin. Surely he hadn't started running with no shoes? So I ran back to the fence near his spot in the transition area. No Kevin. OK, he did start running with no shoes. So I ran back to the run course (I thought I'd save time by running next to the course, rather than around through the bikers, but I don't think I did... I had to run in sand, vault over a row boat and a dock, and cross the edge of someone's back yard). Still no Kevin... so I started running along the run course with the shoes. But he's faster than me, and it had been 15-20 minutes since I'd seen him, so he was long gone.

I ran maybe a mile and half along the course before someone with a bike came up along side me, and took the shoes to deliver to Kevin (she asked me what his number was, which was odd--how many other shoeless runners would there be?). She took off with the shoes (now carefully untied and loosened), but I kept going along the course anway--I'd remembered as I ran with the shoes that part of the run was on a dirt road, and I wanted to see that he was ok (and shod) as soon as possible.

I finally caught up with Kevin about 2 miles out (as he was on his way back towards the start/finish area--because the run went out and back twice along the same route, the runners ran out a little more than 3 miles, turned back in, ran almost to the finish line, turned, ran out and back again, then to the finish). He had his shoes, which he reported were very soft ("like running on pillows"), and insisted that trying not to cut his feet for four miles had distracted him from the many other aches, pains and cramps he was developing.

So he kept going, and I turned back in toward the park to meet him at the finish line. Here's what's impressive: this was a much harder (hillier) course than the half he did last summer, he spend a lot longer in the transition areas (fighting with his wetsuit the first time, then discussing shoe options with a race official), he ran nearly a third of the half marathon without shoes, and he still took nearly 15 minutes off his time. I'm so proud of him--not just for getting faster, but for not quitting after the shoe incident, because at that point all you want to do is stop--although at the same time, the last thing you want to do it stop because you've gone so far already. (Pictures once they're downloaded, I promise... also of my current sock, the joint baby blanket, and lacy Argosy.)

Argh!

I forgot to say, for the local SnB people, that I'm going to miss this weekend too, because Kevin and I will be in New Hampshire for his first 1/2 Ironman of the year (he's doing a second one in August), the Mooseman . Cross all your extremities that it doesn't rain too hard during the bike.

This yarn, by the way, is spun from the red and purple batt from Grafton Fibers that I bought at the CT sheep and wool festival. I wrote about it right after the festival, and I clearly remember taking a picture of it... but the picture has vanished. Maybe you've seen it--it shows the batt coiled into a snail shell shape, sitting in the corner of a park bench?

By the way, Annie, I'm not counting my handspun in my yarn mileage till I start knitting with it, because some of it is folk art, not yarn.

Belated Thanks!

In my picture taking flurry, I also finally took a picture of this yarn (Lorna's Laces in seaside), which Greeley sent as a thank you when I contributed to her fundraising ride. She's riding in the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure on July 14 and 15. My grandma had diabetes, but was very fortunate in that she was able to manage it successfully. She passed away (from other causes) before I was old enough to really understand what a chronic illness meant--I just thought it was really cool that she always had a package of crackers in her purse in case she needed a snack for her blood sugar.

And I won one of the two prizes from Debby, Chris and spokescat Charlie, for the last month of their fundraising for Get Your Guts In Gear, which raises money for Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis. I picked lacewieght yarn from Live2Knit, because clearly I was running low on yarn!

So, thanks! (I think they're both still accepting donations, so send money! Kevin did a 1/2 Ironman last summer for Team in Training, and asking for donations was much harder than we expected, even for the most worthwhile cause.)