back home

We did get home safe and sound after two potty stops and one detour when 404 was closed just before the MD line. Best line of the trip was delivered by Gilad; he asked what snacks we had brought (at 9 am) and was told by Kayla his choices were tortilla chips or pretzels. He answered, "Hm, I can work with that."

Some photos were taken but all by Margo, so I have to wait until she gets home and emails them to me to be able to post any. Everyone had a wonderful time playing with all their cousins. Addie played with 2 year old Bryce and 1 year old Olympia non-stop, except when they were sleeping or more often when she was supposed to be sleeping but was instead stripping naked and climbing out of her playpen. Everyone beached out, and in the evenings watched "Hairspray," "The Producers" and "Wall-E." Much ice cream was consumed. All in all a successful week at the beach.

I didn't get almost any spinning in (I brought a spindle and some camel, but it's a small support spindle because the camel is so short stapled, and I just didn't have much time or place to pull it out), but I got one sock and part of a second knit for Feivel. The knit win of the week were the cute finger puppets I bought for Gilad and Addie at Made By Hand, a local Fair Trade shop:

but the fourth of the set, the peacock, is missing because it's Gilad's and he apparently brought it up to bed with him.

packing up!

The Three Weeks and Tisha B'Av have come and gone so we're packing to leave for the beach on Sunday. I'll leave with a few spinning shots since I couldn't knit during the Nine Days leading to Tisha B'Av:

chocolate brown Romeldale, 470 yards 2 ply fingering weight

Carodan Farm worsted dyed in lichen

silver Romney plied with silver thread; there was about 66 yards of that blend and then 20 yards of 2 ply Romney when I ran out of the thread to ply with

And my wonderful package from Bronwynn, my swap partner in the Ravelry Ankh-Morpork Knitters' Guild's Guild Swap:

We're outa here!

Gone to the beach until the end of the week.  We'll be back on Friday IY"H and I'll post our adventures next week.  Happy late summer all!

Tuesday Thingers: Summertime and the living is read-y

Since we're past the Fourth of July and the summer season has officially started, what are your plans for the summer? Vacations, trips? Trips that involve reading? Reading plans? If you're going somewhere, do you do any reading to prepare? Do you read local literature as part of your trip? Have you thought about using the LT Local feature to help plan your book-buying?

Well, our vacation plans are the same every year: a few days at the beach in DE with my mother, who rents the beach house for her 3 daughters and 9 (almost 10) grandchildren. Since we know the area pretty well at this point, I'm fairly certain there are only 2 (decent) bookstores "in town." The idea of using LT Local hadn't occurred to me, but it's quite brilliant to check on local happenings. In the past we have gone to events at the public library at the beach, and the kids have loved what they have going on there.

As far as reading, though, while I always take a bunch of silly mysteries, true crime, and similar junk (often old stuff I've already read and re-read), but I usually don't get a lot of time to read, since child-herding is the main game of the trip. A few years ago I did buy a book of local day-trips and hikes, but in the end we've never used it; all we want to do is laze around, hang out at the beach, and eat a lot of ice cream!

I have read one science fiction novel set right in the area to which we go, but the truth is it was a terrible book and now I can't even remember the title, even though it was just a year or so ago that it was published!