For the second year we took our summer vacation in Seattle. This time we also went to the Pacific coast (it was cold), Bainbridge Island (just me and Maeve), and Sammamish (to see an old friend I knew when I lived in Japan). We also finally found the Fantagraphics shop. All good. Here are some photo highlights.

Maeve in Olympia. She is an awesome traveler for a two-year-old.

With our hosts, former Detroiters Norm and Lexi, in Olympia

Maeve with her own donut at Top Pot*

On the ferry to Bainbridge. We did this while Rodney was hiking near Mt. Rainier.

Rodney with his bubble tea. As far as we know, you can’t get this in Kalamazoo.

I managed to knit one boot sock on this trip. I have learned that two socks on two circs is not for me, but one sock on two circs is pretty nice. No laddering like with DPNs. I did visit Churchmouse Yarns & Teas on Bainbridge, but none of their yarns seemed to be local in origin, and I can buy Rowan and all the other fancy things here at home. Plus, the Michigan Fiber Fest is only a few days away.

*I broke with all of my strict healthy-diet rules on this trip. We’ll see how easy it is getting back to our usual vegetable/fruit/homecooked life. Oh and the time difference.

This is not a craft project, but it’s from the archives. What is it about motherhood that makes you wish they could stay the same size, or could go back to being smaller than they are right now?

This is from a little less than two years ago.

Another item for the Friday Archives. I’m pretty sure I made this in North Carolina, so sometime between 1998 and 2000. The exterior is silk or a silk blend that I bought in Japan. I can’t remember who I gave this to–it’s long gone now!

This one is going on two years old. I bought it as a kit (Chad’s Pullover, halfway down the page) from Peace Fleece way back when I first joined a local Stitch-n-Bitch and they were doing a wholesale order. It was a good value, and I find Peace Fleece yarn to be really durable, perfect for someone like Rodney who wears his clothes pretty hard. My only complaints with the yarn are overtwistedness and too much machine oil in it, but I sometimes think those factors might add to the durability (?).

The original design calls for a drop shoulder construction but I don’t find that to be very flattering on a person of Rodney’s shape, so I am going to alter it to a saddle shoulder style. Problem: I realized this after already knitting the first 50 or so million miles of the very tedious double seed stitch for the back, which I’m not going to re-do. Lots of the other saddle shoulder styles out there are knit in the round. So my solution is to knit front and back separately up to the armpit point, sew em up into a tube, and then keep knitting as if it were in the round all along. I hope it works out OK. It’s just a couple of rectangles that should seam up pretty neatly, right?

It’s a goal to have it done by the fall–a more exciting one now that I’ve decided to tweak the pattern. I’m also planning to knit a few pairs of KnitPicks Boot Socks in the near future. I’m not much of a sock knitter, but they look easy and I love the two color style.