sweltering, swatching

As you may know, it's been a little on the warm side around here lately. I didn't know my car thermometer went into the 3-digit range, but it does. Sweltering, drooping, awful sort of hot and humid days with thunder every evening to tease with the possibility of a cooling drench, but often with no such luck. Still, it's amazing what a cool wet cloth draped around the neck and simply chatting on the porch in the evenings can do for the outlook after a scorcher. Those Waltons knew what they were doing. ;-)

I was looking forward to the hours of knitting time at a baseball game with ~500 homeschoolers on Tuesday evening, but the temp. was such that I didn't even take my knitting out of the bag. The yarn wouldn't have been able to glide through my fingers. Luckily, the beer was cold! Since I don't have a pic of baseball knitting, here's a shot of some of our group holding the big flag on the field during the National Anthem. Such fun to see so many old friends, put faces to names of online acquaintances, and generally have a great evening.

I realized recently that I never did put up pics of the little ipod pouches Leah made. This one protects it while in her pocket.

And this one has a hole toward the top left, where she hooks it to her belt loop with a carabiner. Both were freebie patterns from Ravelry, where there's an abundance of ipod-holding options.

The flurry of finished objects last weekend has been followed by much swatching. Here's what remains on my desk at this time, although there was also a baby sweater and a hat cast on and torn out at some point.

Top to bottom:
1. A Lelah-based halter top that I'm making for Leah.
2. An undulating waves scarf in alpaca with supercool iridescent beads with copper cores.
3. A lace ribbon scarf made from a big ol' cone of green wool ($1 at Goodwill!) combined with the never-ending cone of tencel from Webs
4. Undulating waves (again and again) in alpaca and iridescent beads without copper cores.
5. Fire sock in Trekking. This is the 2nd sock in what will hopefully eventually be a pair, but I think these socks are cursed because you wouldn't believe how long they've been in progress and how many problems there have been along the way. And nope, they're not even a complicated pattern; just plain toe-up 2x2 rib all the way. There is no other possible explanation for the difficulties with such a simple project except to believe that they're cursed, but the fire yarn is cool, so I'm sticking with it.

Cooler temps now and looking forward to summertime outdoor festivities all weekend long. YaHOO!!!