Happy Fourth of July!!!

Three day weekend.  Oh blessed, blessed three day weekend! 

Had a little shin dig yesterday with some of the family.  My sister Lisa wasn't here though.  So, that's five missing straight away.  My daughters weren't here.  My aunt and uncle weren't here.  It was so strange to have a cookout and be missing nine regulars!  It was a nice day though, relaxing.  Boys swam for about 6 hours and were sound alseep by 7:45pm.  Bonus!

So, on Mother's Day this year my daughters gave me a gift card to Web's.  You know, because they're awesome.  I signed up for a class with some of the cash and it seemed as though it was going to be months and months and months before it got here.  Well, its coming next Saturday.  And I have two swatches to knit up so that will keep me busy this week.  I knit so fricking slow.  I have tried to switch to continental knitting because its faster, but I just can't seem to get it right. Anyhow, the class is "Fixing Mistakes" and I can't wait to go.  I've never taken a lesson before in knitting, so this will be pretty cool.  If I like it, I'm seriously thinking about taking another for Estonian Lace.  I think I have the basics of it down pretty well, but this stuff is serious knitting.  I am plodding away ever so slowly on my meandering vines shawl.  And by "plodding away" I mean that its likely possessed and for every row I knit, I'm actually behind by two.  Lace is weird, it looks all scrunchy and wrinkly and short and narrow.  But pull it into position and it miraculously opens up into something that looks like, well, lace.  Like magic.

Here, I'll show you:

The bottom isn't shown here (Idirect sun on my deck right now and with Irish skin like this, its like Lestat at high noon: painful, horrible and eye burning. i took the pics and ran back inside in like 5 minutes), but its basically right under that last row of purple.

And here it is stretched out.  This is how it will look after wet blocking.  I'm about a third of the way done. 

And here is a closeup of the meandering part of the pattern name.  Pretty nifty hah?  Also easy.  It just takes time to knit on yarn a little thicker than dental floss. 

Okay, so now that I want to work on this I need to go knit swatches.  Nothing like wool on the needles in 100 degree weather! All hail the central a/c.