Today is a rest day. At least on the workout front of my life it is. Yesterday's workout consisted of 3 miles on the treadmill, racewalking at about 4mph, but at a 2.0 incline. I've decided that Tuesdays and Saturdays will be my off days due to my rapidly approaching start of school on August 25th. I have to work around my school schedule, and I think those days are best. I can hardly believe the summer is over already! My kids start school next Monday! Ack! I'm not ready!

I am, however, looking forward to watching the Olympics which start this Friday. As a child, I loved watching the gymnastics events the most. I was a gymnast until I was 14, at which time I managed to break my hand twice and rip my knee innards apart in the course of 1 year. I pretty much decided after that that my body just couldn't handle it anymore. I was a pretty good gymnast despite the fact that I was so tall. The only event I couldn't do was the uneven parallel bars. I was so tall that you couldn't get the bars far enough apart for me and still have the lower bar at a high enough height for me to not hit the ground when I hung from it. It was my favorite event to watch, so I was very disappointed when I discovered that I couldn't actually compete in that event.

I still enjoy the gymnastics, but of course, nowadays, I really enjoy watching track & field, and especially the racewalks. It looks like this year, NBC will have highlights of the racewalks rather than showing the entire event live. What a shame! And not even during prime time (which is when the races are actually occurring for those of us on the West Coast of the US), but rather, sometime between 11pm and 1am or something like that. I know race walking is a bit of an obscure sport here in the US, but come on, this is the Olympics! Can't they show all of the events live or at least in full at some point in time?? Sheesh... I know marketing talks, but can't we put capitalism aside for the Olympic games! Please.

Oh well, guess I'll have to try to catch glimpses of Joanne, Phillip and Kevin (our 3 US race walkers) during time-outs of the basketball game.

Knitting wise, I'm still chugging along on the back of the SWTC Cardigan, although now I'm a bit more than halfway done with that piece. Hoping that switching to stockinette stitch will speed things up and I can get it done today. I'm taking the kids to see "Get Smart" today, so maybe I'll take it with me. I've not yet tried knitting at the movies, but can't hurt to try right?

I've also put aside the Retro Rib Socks for a short time so I can cast on my Diamondback socks. It's really simple: I dyed my own yarn in a color that is as close to Sedona Red as I can get, and will knit simple stockinette socks. Then I'll double stitch the 'D' symbol down the leg once they are done. I'd like to get these at least started and maybe almost finished for the Stitch n Pitch game here on the 24th.

So that's it for today, hope you all are having a great day and a great week!

Next post: new pics of the Nutkins, and maybe some WIPs as well.

Onward!

Socks pictures

As promised, I'm posting pics of the socks I was working on in May. My mom's Tidal Wave socks in Plucky Knitter BFL fingering, colorway is Persian Rug. The green ones are my Mini-me Detonators in Tofutsies.

Vacation, Vacation, Vacation

Just returned from a fantastic knitting retreat weekend in the mountains of Arizona! It was great to get out of the heat and hang out with my fiber obsessed friends.

And now, I'm getting the family ready to head out for our annual vacation. This year we're taking the train! With gas prices so high, and airlines even more expensive and unpredictable, we figured train would be the most enjoyable and give us the most bang for our $buck$. We're taking the train from AZ to California, hanging out with my mom for 2 days, catching an Angels game, and then heading up to San Fran and Yosemite for 4 days (also catching the Stitch n Pitch Giants game while we are there). Then heading back down to So Cal, and to Legoland before heading back to AZ on the 27th. All this travel for less than $1000 for the 4 of us!!! We're using the California Rail pass on the Amtrak, so affordable it can't be beat.

Of course, all this rail travel will provide me with lots of knitting time (big fat grin)! But with limited space in our bags, I'm only taking up 3 projects: a pair of socks already in progress; a cardigan, and yarn for another pair of socks just to have something small to constantly be working on.

In progress are my Mirrored Nutkins in my own handdyed yarn:




When I return from vacation, I'll be working on getting my Etsy shop up and running with my handdyed yarns. At least now I have a name for it: Gecko Yarns! So keep a lookout for updates on that. Right now, I'm in the process of getting all the yarn off the cones and into skeins and dyed up. I'm hoping around August 15th, I'll have 15-20 skeins ready to put up in the shop. Of course, I'll give a sneak peek here first :)

Off to do laundry and get those suitcases packed for our trip!