Hey

Kevin and I went to a tandem rally near my parents' house this past weekend. It was fun to ride with other tandems, especially because it meant we could all drag ourselves uphill together, rather than fruitlessly trying to keep up with single bikes.

And I'm sure it was nice for our bike to meet other bikes just like it:



On Friday, we did a short ride with ice cream near the end (we went on the ride with bigger hills, so we could have more ice cream!). And a longer ride on Saturday--we'd convinced ourselves there was a metric century (100 km/62 miles) option, but there wasn't, so we added some length onto the end of a 58 mile ride--and nearly got lost in the process, because Elmira has an unnatural number of one way streets.

Here we are at the end of that ride, just about to have lunch and go for a run.



In other news, , some of the SnBers are doing a sweater knit-along. I'd planned to join, thought I'd missed the start, found out I hadn't, then started the sweater I'd planned to knit (Hey Teach, from Knitty) a week before the official start date.

Oops!



At least it's coming a long well (since I took this picture, I've finished this piece--the back--and both fronts, AND sewn them together. It's been a while since I made a sweater in pieces, and the sewing was starting to seem imposing, so I figured I should get started.) The yarn is Bam Boo, from Classic Elite, and it's actually more teal than it looks here.

Since the early start date disqualifies this sweater from the knit-along, I'm going to use the sweater I'm designing for Schaefer instead... which means I should actually start knitting, instead of just swatching and sketching till the end of time!

Mismatched

I'm amazingly tired--Wednesday's and Thursday's workouts were an obvious attempt to kill us all, and I made things worse by biking with Kevin Wednesday night, then running after practice yesterday. All I was good for after that was napping--even knitting was too tiring (fortunately, Thursday's not one of my days at work).

Speaking of biking, anyone who thinks people have become unfriendly and too busy to chat should try riding a tandem bike (or a Vespa). When we're actually riding, we're followed by an echo of "look at that bike! I want a bike like that!" And when we're stopped near the bike (on Monday, for example, I sat on a bench at the beach while Kevin swam with the other Sharks), people want to know where we got it, how much it cost, if it's hard to ride together, etc.

One time, we were stopped for a red light and a police car pulled up next to us. We may have rolled through a stop sign at the previous corner, so I was sure the officer was going to lecture us about bike safety. But no; he wanted to know where we got the bike, if it was fun to ride, and if it had been hard to learn.

I'm having a hard time cutting back on socks. I've backed off from a pair a week, but it seems like I might still be knitting a sock a week (although I guess cutting my sock output in half is progress--but on the other hand, even if I keep halving my output forever, I will never not be knitting socks! Good thing Zeno wasn't a sock knitter.)

Anyway, more socks:



That's Hedrea and Muscari from Knitty, and Lindsay from Sock Innovation.

All knit from Anne, which is possibly my favorite yarn ever.

And Muscari and Lindsay close up:

My Colorguard Instructors Would be so Proud

We mostly maintained the right stroke ratings (that's strokes per minute--which supposedly is set by the stroke, although it just felt like I was rowing whatever rate the rest of the boat was rowing), despite my previous poor track record of maintaining anything like an even pace at anything (starting with my inability to march and spin a flag in time with music, or the rest of the guard). And it only took 18 (19?) years!

Also, there's this point, right before the last piece of hard workout, when the cox tells us to empty the tank on the next (last) one. Every time she says it, I remember (for the first time all practice) that I'm planning to run as soon as I get home--which makes it all the harder to row with everything I have left.

(Hey, I'm knitting some socks! And I started a shawl, but I'm not happy with the needle-yarn combo. The needles are bamboo with a bumpy cord-to-needle transition, and the yarn's silk... which you'd think would be slippery, but somehow it sticks.)

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

We're back now, but Kevin and I have had another flurry of traveling--this time, to North Carolina to see his parents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. Naturally, we'd scheduled 2 races in the 2 days before we left, so step 1 in going to NC was to go to Rhode Island.



My race was on Saturday, a regatta at the Narragansett Boat Club in Providence. The women raced an 8 in the morning, and a 4 in the afternoon (the 4 who weren't in the 4 were in another 8). I essentially forgot how to row during the first race (maybe it wasn't that bad, but it felt like it), and I suspect that the rest of the 4 weren't looking forward to rowing with me a second time--especially since the wind picked up dramatically and the water got very choppy. (Even under the best circumstances, the water would have seemed weird to me, since we row on a regular river, but the Seekonk River is tidal.) I definitely didn't want to row with myself, and the trip up to the start was not reassuring, but amazingly, it went fine. I relaxed, and remembered how to row, and didn't panic (much). And we even won--really won, and then won by a little more because we had a few seconds handicap. After the race, the cox informed us that there has been times she couldn't see because she'd just been swamped by a wave (it was a bow-loader). So glad I didn't know that at the time!

No pictures of the 4 because Kevin spend the afternoon dashing around the state, getting all his stuff dropped off for his race--unlike most races, the bike was point-to-point, so he swam at a state park about 50 miles from Providence, got on his bike, rode into Providence, then ran around downtown, ending up in front of the capital (inconveniently located at the top of a hill).



Trust me, it was much steeper in person. Especially after nearly 6 hours of exercise.

Kevin's been biking a lot more this year than usual--he's doing this Tour de France bike-along, so he's biked every race day of the race... although it should be noted that last Monday, a rest day, he biked a little, and I think we're also planning to bike tonight... a nice, easy 1-2 hour ride, just like the real riders do on rest days. Of course, on non-rest days we also do rides they would consider nice and easy, so it's not quite the same thing.

Anyway, this means 2 things: first, that Kevin's bike time was much better than in his previous 1/2 IMs, which meant his total time was much better (it also helped that the run course was not the hilliest course ever, like it was last time!), and second, that I'm biking more than usual. Especially while we were in NC, because we only brought the tandem--so for him to bike, I had to bike.

This was generally a good thing, as the theme of the trip was frozen dessert (on Tuesday, my mother-in-law and I had ice cream as a pre-lunch appetizer, then Kevin and I had a root beer float as a post-workout snack... on Thursday, she and I had Italian ice--also before lunch, actually--then Kevin and I stopped on our ride for more... ), but by the end of our ride yesterday, it was clear that I'd doubled the mileage of my previous longest week ever without any kind of build-up. (And after essentially taking the previous week off from biking, because the tandem was at the bike shop.)

Fortunately, we were short on rowers this morning at practice, which meant the lineup was a little strange, which meant that we did a technical workout instead of whatever terrible/good for us piece of torture/fun they'd originally planned. Sadly, this will not be the case on Wednesday... when it appears that I'm going to stroke. Clearly, we're still short on rowers.

Lazy Blogger

Fortunately, I knit something for E., so I can distract you with cute.





It's the Little Sister's Dress, knit at a different gauge (I think), and after I finished the stripes I just joined the body to knit in the round, casting on a few stitches in each underarm when I got there (the pattern asked you to knit a few rows flat on just the front or back before joining), like a top-down raglan. And I added the stripes--the original was solid.

Too bad everything else I own you pictures of is adult-sized!

In other news, I have a race on Saturday (rowing), and then Kevin has a tri on Sunday. In preparation for the race, we practiced every morning this week (rather than just 3 or 4 days). That extra day or 2 of getting up at 4:35 was painful, and to make matters worse, I wasn't home either of the days I wasn't at work (on Monday, the SnBers went on a field trip to MA, for yarn and fabric shopping--incredibly, I only bought a bowl of soup!--and on Thursday I was doing some consulting) so I couldn't nap. So I'm tuckered!

As a result, it's taken me all week to knit 2 inches of sock--or at least it feels that way.

Thinking about Sweaters

(Naturally, because it might have finally stopped raining and started being summer.)

I bought a cone of Artfibers Sylph in San Fransisco last August--it's a DK weight wool, silk and mohair blend, and mine is a dark chocolate-y brown. Now that I'm not knitting quite as many socks (never mind that the only project I have on the needles right now is a pair of socks), I'd like to turn it into a sweater.

I like the idea of Amelia, from Knitty, but I suspect the fuzz of the mohair might obscure the ribbed sections entirely. And I've convinced myself that there's something strange about the way nearly everyone's Amelia looks in the bust. Intellectually, I think there's nothing weird going on (why would so many people rave about their Amelias, if they all looked secretly weird?), but I'm concerned that I've thought about it so much that I'll think mine looks funny no matter what, and then I'll never wear it.

And now I have to take a nap because all that thinking about what I might think is exhausting.

But back to sweaters... I already have 2 brown cardigans in this same color, so it's possible a pullover would be more useful. But one of the cardis kind of drives me crazy (and I bought the other one, so even though I love it, it doesn't really count, right?), so maybe another cardigan?

Suddenly, it's clear why I keep knitting little things!

But I do really want to start something larger--sprinting through small projects is making me feel scattered and flighty. I want a project to last long enough that I can look forward to working on it for more than a couple of days. I made a Burnished Leaves Cowl over the weekend, in some lovely baby alpaca (from an alpaca named Gracie), and it was really nice to think about working on it when I wasn't, if you know what I mean.

Kevin and I were in Lake Placid this weekend for our triathlon club's training camp. We tried to go for a run before dinner on Friday, and got about halfway around Mirror Lake when the sky got dark, then opened up. We were soaked immediately--hair plastered to our heads, shoes filled with water, glasses a dripping blur--and it was nice, as we swam up the last hill to the hotel, to anticipate knitting my cowl with soft, fuzzy (dry!) yarn.

But the cowl's done now, the socks are strangely un-look-forward-to-able (possibly because they're going to be slightly too small to be perfect, but I decided to finish them anyway?), and I'd like to knit a sweater!

Combining

I think I mentioned my plan to knit more of my handspun this year? Well, I tried--I had some superwash merino that spun up kind of stripy, so I set out to make another baby surprise jacket. Things seemed promising--I'd started with 4 oz of wool, the same amount as the last time I used handspun for a bsj (when I had plenty left over, and I'm spinning much finer now that I used to, so I figured I'd have more yardage this time.

But I didn't:



(At that point, I still have maybe 20 more rows to knit--the extension of the body, and the front borders, which include the buttonholes.)

Fortunately, I had coordinating solid yarn floating around, so I finished off with that:



Of course, I'd used some of that skein for something else (or at least some swatches?) already, so I nearly ran out of it too. That little ball on the left is all that's left!