Summer Slowdown

I know I haven't been blogging as much this summer. There's a lot going on and nothing going on, and I often feel like I have nothing interesting to share. Vacations are good, but there are only so many vacation pictures I can put up! Knitting slows down a lot in summer, too. Once school starts, I bet I'll have more things to post about and more time to post, too.

One part of our vacation that I didn't talk about in the series of vacation posts was our family kayaking trip. We didn't bring our camera along, for fear it would get wet, so it didn't go into the picture-heavy post. We went out with a guide and several other kayaks full of people. Mr. T and Jr. Jr. went in one kayak (therefore, Mr. T did all the paddling), and Sr. Jr. and I were in another. It was a lot of fun, but got even better when a pod of dolphins decided to hang out with us. We saw 3 and sometimes even 5 dolphins. They played with us for about half of our trip. They'd surface near us -- sometimes it felt like they were close enough to touch -- and then swim a little bit away for us to follow. It was really magical :)

Now we are home. I'm watering the new plantings and taking the kids to golf camp. The transplanted veggies are doing pretty well. I planted more broccoli, pea, and lettuce seeds, and they're all popping up quite nicely. The Roma and grape tomatoes and pole beans are producing yummies for salads:


Absolutely delicious. I think we're spoiled for supermarket tomatoes now. When we were on vacation, we got a pack of grape tomatoes from the supermarket and Sr. Jr. complained about how tasteless they were compared to the ones from our garden. Very true.

In knitting, I've finished the back of the Moses non-hoodie sweater and started the front. Knitting on size 2 needles is pretty slow, but I'm cooking along now. I did a lot of the re-designing and tweaking on the fly while I was knitting the back, but now that all the details are worked out, the front should go quickly. When I get a chance to knit, that is:


Here's a close-up of the diamond pattern:


I used all that driving time to work on the Gothsocks. I finished the first and started the second, which now awaits a short-row heel:


Last, and apparently least, I did get a little bit done on the second Aestlight Shawl:


I can't wait for school to start again, so I can do more complicated projects. On the other hand, I have a lot of things that I've been putting off doing over the summer, like dentist's appointments, eye appointments, and so on, so who knows?