Freaking Out the Natives, with FO pics

A bunch of us met up in Bethesda this weekend for a Ravelry/Wollmeise swap/knit-out. About 12 of us met up and commandeered some outdoor tables, onto which we piled many, many skeins of yarn. Swaps were quickly worked out and FOs were admired. Yarn was flying across that table so quickly my head was spinning! I think everyone came away pleased.

We spent a good three hours hanging out, knitting and chatting away. People stared as they walked by, wondering what we were doing. One person asked if it was a knitting class. Others started longingly at the yarn (we did direct a few passing knitters to Knitty and Ravelry). One guy walked by, looked at us, and said, "You have got to be kidding me." (Why? Really, why? It's not as if we were smoking the stuff or rolling around naked in it...)

I got some great yarn (thanks to my yarny godmother, Tanya, and to Rena for the lace), and gave some away, too. It was really fun to hang out with other knitters and just be our nutty selves.

I brought my finished Petit Poison Ishbel with me, and now I can show you some great pics of it off the blocking board:




Once it was blocked, I decided that I'm ok with shawls made with sock yarn. It blocked out very nice and airy. Specs: Pattern - Ishbel. Yarn - Wollmeise Sockenwolle 100%, Petit Poison color. Needle size - 6. I did the small stockinette version with the large lace panel.

And so I started another shawl using sock yarn:



This is the Aestlight Shawl, using Wollmeise sock yarn in the Frosch colorway. It's similar to Ishbel in that there's an easy part and then a more interesting part. You start out with a garter stitch triangle, then you pick up stitches all the way around to knit the lacy part. I like this shawl because it's a little more rustic and casual, good to wear with jeans.

In garden news, even though it's taking longer to get the landscaping work done that I had anticipated, the veggies are growing nicely, for the most part. We have little yellow peppers growing:


They're so cute!

Our grape tomatoes are starting to redden:


Our Roma tomatoes are also getting big:


For lunch today, I had another salad using fresh lettuce and basil from the garden. Yum! Unfortunately, the cucumbers haven't survived. Nonetheless, I'm very pleased with the rest of the garden.

Next week was going to be a nice quiet week, with Sr. Jr. away for the week at his outdoor adventure camp and Jr. Jr. gone for most of the day at football camp. I got an email from Sr. Jr.'s camp today saying that they were cancelling his camp next week due to low enrollment. Luckily for him they could put him in a later week. Unfortunately for me, that means my one week of quiet time this summer is no more...