Vacation was such a needful thing. I had a whole week off, but only had to burn 4 days of vacay time. I had time to catch up on my knitting. I had time to catch up on my blogroll, some of which had been sitting in my queue since April.
What a wild collection of things I missed while ignoring my blogroll.
Annie Modesitt’s husband is going through a hellish illness right now. She’s offering a pattern for a donation to help raise funds to make his life a little more comfortable. It’s beautiful. I am alternately awed and appalled by some of her garments. I’ve been wanting to knit the Morris Fern Cardigan for ages, and her corsets are beautiful, but then that bobbled thing from the (I think) winter Vogue scares me. 🙂 She’s an amazing architect, and could really use some help. This pattern can be knitted as a dress or a corset!
Then over at January One there was a row over whether or not a woman can post her own opinion of her own experiences on her own blog. Huh?
My most happy find were these from way back in May: Karen attended a class taught by Janine and showed one of the exercises they worked on for seeing how colors relate to each other for a fair isle. Seeing these swatches was such an ‘Aha!’ moment for me on what to do next. I’ve got several balls of Jamieson’s, Jamieson & Smith, and recently some of the KnitPicks heathered fingering weight yarns that I can’t wait to play with. Separating the color play from the pattern seems so liberating to me.
Earlier in the week, I re-read The Art of Fair Isle Knitting: History, Technique, Color & Patterns, but still wasn’t feeling the love. She does her swatches as solid rows of color stacked on top of each other. But I was having trouble envisioning which colors to stack. After reading Karen’s blog, now I don’t have to, I can use them all! Muahhahahahha!
Well, I didn’t quite finish the sweater, but here’s my progress mid-week. We went to Vegas to see Spamalot. I knitted all the way there and back on the plane.

Here’s a closeup of the clever waist shaping. Cables pull in — plus there are some decreases in there too. I love how it looks.
It was 116F in Vegas, (during the day, that is) and was 98F at midnight. Kinda hot. Not so much fun with the wool, dry heat or no. At some point, it’s just too hot for wool. But I pressed on.

We stayed at the Wynn. Wow, I think the suite was bigger than my house. Seriously. We could only afford to stay one night, but it was a beautiful thing. The bathroom was bigger than my master bedroom and guest room combined. If anyone ever offers to comp you a room there, say yes without even thinking about it, it was that good. They even had room service, pretty much unheard of in Vegas, unless that has started to change. I had an amazing Japanese breakfast, something I’ve always wanted to try. And for dinner before the show, I had a lobster sushi roll that I can still remember the taste of, it was so good. Spamalot was not as good as I had hoped. I laughed plenty, but I had higher hopes for it.
We came home and chilled in the A/C for a few days. Since Independence Day fell on our Stich n’ Bitch night, I didn’t get to knit with my women, so I visited up at the WEHO Stitch n’ Bitch at the Farmer’s Market. It was a pretty small crowd, a few women that I have known for a while from the Santa Monica Stitch n’ Bitch, and some complete strangers, and some in-betweens.
Then on Friday, we went to see something that I’ve never seen except on TV – the Giant Sequioas. All I could say was “Wow”. To see something that has been alive for over 3000 years is pretty awe-inspiring. It makes you wonder how anyone could see this bit of nature and not want to do everything possible to protect it.

Husband included for scale.
More crazy heat, plus the 7000 ft elevation + my asthma left me a little woozy up there. I lost my cable needle somewhere between the car and the room, so I had to cable with the clip of a pencil. I’ve made more progress on Eris, and am only a few rows from starting the hem cables. So maybe a couple more weeks to finally finish it. It was just so hot!