Shawl

The project for the Yahoo! Project of the Month KAL is a shawl. Actually, it's the project for both May and June. I'm making a wave and shell shawl with Homespun Prairie yarn. I don't know why, but I'm having no problems knitting with it. I probably should be using a needle larger than the size 10 one I'm using. But, I had the needle from some project that I never even started and wanted to use it for something.

Also, I've posted an easy-to-make pullover pattern on my other knitting blog. It's a knit-from-the-bottom and seam-up-the-sides-and-top pullover. In writing and rewriting the pattern, I've gotten the urge to make it again -- especially since the pattern as it now stands is so much better than the one I originally used. But, I've got a couple of sweaters to knit before buying yarn for this one. I debated (and am still debating) on whether it would be better to have a slip-stitch edging or a knit-stitch edging (knit at the beginning and end of every right-side and wrong-side row). I opted for the knit-stitch one (since I saw on one episode of Knitty Gritty how easy it was to sew up seams with that king of edging). Then I thought about how to pick up stitches with a knit-stitch edging. So, I picked up stitches off of one of my dishcloths and liked the look.

So, my next philosophical question is why haven't I found any sock patterns in which the heel flap doesn't have a slip-stitch edge. It seems to me that a knitted edge would give an edge that is just as easy to pick up stitches from. (Pick up a stitches between bumps.) Plus, it might lie flatter and be less likely to leave gaps. I haven't tried it yet. But I most likely will on my next pair of socks.

Finally, I've started knitting the mid-May KAL dishcloth. I started over on it because it's one of the times that, to me, variations of the ssk won't do. It's looks so much better with slip 1 knitwise, slip 1 knitwise, knit the stitches together through back loop.

Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day. All three children called to wish me a happy day. It was really nice hearing from them. My oldest and my DH both sent/got me flowers.

My DH and I also went to a soccer game at Giant's Stadium. Evidently, there were over 7,00 people there, but it doesn't look like it. We got to see, Angel, a player that we'd watched quite a few times on British tv. This was his first game playing for a MLS team. Angel and Mathis are in white near the top of the box.

I've finished my Baudelaire socks. I'll post a picture of them on the SAM3 KAL page later. I've finished half the body for my next sweater in Patons Merino. The yarn is really soft. It behaves like I thought 100% wool would in its springiness, but it doesn't behave like I thought it would shrinkwise. Since I'm surprised its lack of shrinking, I've soaked it a couple or more times on the needles already, wrapped it in a towel, and then blocked it. It still hasn't shrunk. And I'm still getting 4 sts and 6 rows per inch.

Sandy Hook

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in New Jersey. So, my DH said let's go for a drive and that I should pick out a place to go. So, I used mapquest and entered "beach" as my intended destination. After looking at the list of possibilities, I entered a state, NJ. On page 2 of the possible destinations, there was a beach that looked interesting and fairly near. So, I printed off directions.

A road trip wouldn't be a road trip without me getting lost. So, when US 9 and NJ 36 divided, I told my DH to follow US 9. I hadn't gotten to the NJ 36 part of the directions yet -- although evidently the car had. Then quite a few miles later, probably about a third of the way to Atlantic City, I told my DH that he should start looking for NJ 36. He said we'd passed it quite a while back. So, I looked at a NJ map, we turned toward the coast, and started going north on NJ 36. It's before Memorial Day and so we were able to visit Sandy Hook for free. We got to see seagulls! Seagulls are in the foreground of the picture and NYC is barely visible in the distance on the horizon.

We traveled all the way to almost the northernmost part of Sandy Hook. There are battlements there that were constructed during the War of 1812 to protect the NYC harbor and the entrance to the Hudson River. It was surprising to me that the lighthouse was so far from the shore. But, it's a nice looking lighthouse. And, even with the getting lost part, it wasn't too bad of a drive. Plus, it was nice to see the ocean and seagulls. (I miss the seagulls we used to have in our back garden in Broadstairs.)

As to knitting, I'm halfway done with my second Baudelaire sock. I've finished the May KAL dishcloth (of a daffodil in bloom). And I've restarted the sweater I've been working on. -- Paton's Merino Wool doesn't shrink much, if at all. It's also fairly stretchy. But, so far it's holding its shape and feels soft. So far, it's working out to 4 sts and 6 rows per inch for me with size 7 needles -- my usual for worsted weight yarn.

Sweater 4

Finally, it's finished -- just in time for the warm weather we're having now. :) This is the last sweater for quite some while that I'm going to make on size 3 needles. But, at least, I've finally found a pattern for this yarn and have used up some of my stash. The yarn is Robin Double Knit, which I purchased at a post office when we were living in Kent. It's knit from the top down. The neck is garter stitch in first red, then a knit and then a purl round of the main color, then a knit and then a purl round of red again. The basket-weave stitch itself is k4, p4 for 8 rounds then p4, k4 for another 8 rounds. The sleeves are finished with 4 rounds of garter stitch in red (starting with a knit round), then a knit round in the main color, followed by a set-up round and then by k1, p1 ribbing. The bottom of the garment is finished off the same way (except for the change in color -- no need to emphasize the hips). I made double decreases every 16th round on the sleeves and also decreased evenly around before both the garter stitch and ribbing finishing. (To decrease for the ribbing, I did k1, p1, k1, p2tog for the sleeves. For the garment, *k1, p1* 4 times, k1, p2tog. Next time, I do ribbing I'll replace the k1's by slip sts in this set-up round.)

For the next sweater, I'm going to make a simple top-down boat-neck short-sleeve raglan in Patons Merino denim with size 7 needles. I've never knit with this yarn before. So, it will be a bit of an adventure. To make it more exciting, I'm not going to swatch. Instead, I've knit 4 rounds of the neckline and washed it while it was still on the needles. (So, I guess I really am doing a swatch.) I'm going to let it dry and then see whether or not I'll have to frog and reknit in order to get it over my head. I've made this pattern a couple of times in acrylic. It's a basic try-on-as-you-go pattern.

My DS is now back in London. His flight left last night. We had a really nice visit. The cats miss him, as does the rest of the family. I hope he'll wear the socks I knit for him around the flat. They're Thuja socks in Sassy Stripes and size 3 needles.

Now, I'm on to getting the second Baudelaire sock finished. To finish the first, I bought my first set of cable needles. I had been using DPs for cabling but didn't have any small enough.

Chocolate standards

I just read a Washington Post article that the FDA might change the requirements for what can be called chocolate. It seems that they are thinking of relaxing the requirement that chocolate have cocoa butter in it to be called chocolate.

The Washington Post article has a link to DontMessWithOurChocolate.Guittard.com. Evidently, this company is leading the campaign against the change.

Trees

One of my favorite Clint Eastwood songs is "I talk to the trees." Well, it seems, in this case, that the trees were eavesdropping on a conversation my DH and I had about them. I was telling my DH that the 3 trees seen in the picture hadn't had more than 10 leaves at a time from when they suddenly dropped all their leaves last April and that, if they didn't get any leaves this spring, we'd have to cut them down. (I'm guessing that when the previous owners of the house had someone come in to kill termites that the poison affected the trees. I had trouble growing annuals next to the wood that was treated.) Well, it seems that the trees overheard the conversation and got scared that they might get cut down. They were some of the first trees to leaf out this year. I hope they don't mind being anthropomorphized. ;)

I've finished the mid-April KAL dishcloth with the Yahoo dishcloth group. It's done in hot pink in Sugar 'n Cream. It took a while to get it finished because I kept forgetting yo's.

I've started on the second sleeve on the basketweave pullover and hope to have it done in the next week or so -- just in time for the hot/warm weather. Maybe I'll have to use the rest of the yarn in a short-sleeve pullover.

I've put my second Baudelaire sock on hold since my DS2 said he wouldn't mind me knitting a pair of socks for him. I'm making him Thuja socks. He has big feet, but the socks are going along nicely since the Thuja pattern is so easy to knit up. I hope to have them finished by the time he returns to university.

We went to a Rockies-Mets game yesterday evening. It was a fun game. I even got some knitting done there. We've yet to see the Rockies win a game even though we used to go to approximately 1 Rockies game a year when my DS and her family lived in Denver.

Tulip Bud dishcloth

This must be my year for joining KALs. The latest KAL I've joined is a Yahoo! group project of the month KAL. The first project is a dishcloth, the one at the left. It's done mostly in garter stitch. One unusual part to the pattern is that the tulip bud itself is raised. The dishcloth is on top of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle that we recently completed.

I'm almost done with one of the sleeves of the basketweave sweater. I finished off the main part of the garment with 4 rows of garter stitch (the middle of which contains a decrease of about 10% spaced evenly around -- on a knit rnd) and then 10 rnds of k1p1 -- all in the main color. I'm planning on making the sleeve cuff match the neckline in some way.

I'm also continuing work on the Baudelaire socks. I've had to redo the heel a couple or more times because Fleegle's no-hassle sock heel doesn't come up high enough on the back of my ankle. (I have a high arch.)

I've finished off one ball of crochet thread for the curtain I'm still making and have started on another ball of thread. I'm glad it's for a small window. Though, by this time, the pattern is second-nature to me, and I can knit it even while watching tv. (I like to have several projects going at once. That way, if I need to stop and think about how to proceed with one project, I can work on another. Plus, it's nice to be able to switch from one needle size to another.)

On the weather front :) , we've had a nor'easter for the last couple of days (produced when a low forms off the New Jersey coast). We're fine. Though, a lot of people living in low-lying areas experienced flooding.

Finally, the picture on the right is of Mel Stottlemyre, a former Yankees pitcher. He was at the book store last Friday signing copies of his new book. He was there for a couple of hours. While waiting in line, my DH and I discovered that the person behind us in line works for the same company that my DH worked for -- though at a different location.

PT Cruiser

We learned a couple of miscellaneous things this long weekend. The first is that if you go to the car rental counter and say that you don't care what kind of car you get, prepare to be surprised. My DH and I did that and got a Chrysler PT Cruiser. From the outside, it looks like a London cab. It drove nicely; it had the first in-car analog clock I've seen in quite some time; plus we had no problem at all finding it in parking lots. It's the car in the picture. -- Colorado Springs is beautiful even in an ice storm.

Second, online motel reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt. We booked a motel using aol travel. Then a day later, I read reviews of the motel. They were a bit scary. The only consolation that I had was that although the reviews gave the motel a maximum of 3 stars, the average rating was 3 stars. We stayed there 2 nights (our entire stay in the town) and had no complaints at all about the motel. In fact, we liked the motel a lot. It was a pleasant surprise.

Lace curtain

I'm slowly making progress on the lace curtain for my DD's bathroom window. (I realize that I'm going to great efforts to get rid of the Venetian blinds there. But, right now I'm in the lace making mood.) I've frogged it several times so far -- once to change the pattern and to change from knitting from the top down to knitting from the bottom up; once to change the width and the edging. I've gotten far enough now that I probably won't do any more frogging. At least, I'm past the 4" mark, which seemed to be my favorite length to frog at. Though, it's still up in the air whether it will make it to the window. I'm using size 5 needles and size 10 crochet thread. (The thread plumps up a little when washed. -- I've washed it a couple of times on the needles to check washability.) The pattern is what Stanfield and Griffiths call "Candlelight." The edging is the wrong side of what they call "Shadow Rib." The bumps on the edge are created by ending each row with a purl st and starting each one with a slip (with yarn in front) st. (My other blog has details on the edging.) I'm hoping that I won't have to put a separate edging on it. My plan is eventually to have the Shadow Rib across the top and to fold it over to fit around a curtain rod. -- But, that's a long way off.

I've finished the main part of the garment for the basketweave pullover that I'm making and have started on a sleeve. It looks so weird with no sleeve on one side and part of a sleeve on the other that I'm going to wait to post a picture.

Finally, for my April socks, I've started on Baudelaire socks. I'm planning on using the heel from Fleegle's no-hassle sock pattern.

My First Tribble

While looking through posts for the monthly dishcloth Yahoo! group, I saw a link for a Tribble Scrubbby. It looked easy to do and would use up left-over cotton yarn. And it was and did. I used another type of increase than the kfb and also did something akin to a 3-needle bind off to bind off and attach the 2 ends at the same time. I haven't used it for its intended purpose yet. It's too pretty. The two pics are the finished product and the scrubby before the bind off.

I've also finished the March Monkey socks that I'd been working on. A picture is here.

The sweater I'm working on is working out nicely. It's a top-down raglan. I've gotten to the bottom "hem", which, right now, is in moss stitch. And, I've detached the red ball of yarn that was used on the neckline. In other words, I like the way the sweater is turning out well enough to make the step of detaching yarn.

And, finally, since I'm intrigued by lace at the moment, I'm trying to knit a curtain for my DDs bathroom here to replace the Venetian blinds that are there now. I'm not ready to post a picture yet since I'd hate to post a picture of something that may be frogged at any minute.

In other news, my DS1 has a car now. (He had been walking to work -- a 20 minute walk, and still may be.) But, it was probably time for him to get a car. He lives in California and works at a car dealership.
My DD has a summer internship.
And I just received my last issue of the Atlantic! Before it changed its name, it had really interesting articles. But now it has articles that one can find just about anywhere.

Sweater 3

I'm one of those people who do not have "second sock syndrome". In fact, when I finish a sock, I can't wait to work on the second one to see whether it will turn out the same (ie, to check reproducibility). The same is true for sweaters. So, here is sweater #3 for the Sweater KAL. It's the almost the same as my second sweater except in black and with more stripes and with bell sleeves.

The other picture is from the dishcloth KAL. It's supposedly a bunny. My best guess is that the picture is right side up here and that the bunny is facing away so that one can see its tail. It was fun to do a diagonal dishcloth.

Thanks to knittyboard.com, I've started watching Knitty Gritty on HGTV. It's a fun show. On another tv subject, I'm disappointed that we don't get the cable station that carries the new BBC version of "Robin Hood". I'd seen an episode or two in the UK last fall and had been looking forward to seeing the series here.

Finally, despite my best intentions, I'm working on Monkey socks for my March socks. I had started them toe-up a couple of times. They didn't look quite right. Then I joined a Yahoo sock KAL so I wouldn't have to worry and/or think about which sock to choose and decided to do whatever sock was chosen for a particular month -- at least, for the time being. Well, the choice for this month is the Monkey sock. So, I'm doing my first cuff-down sock for a while and finding out that it's fun to follow a pattern almost exactly for a change.

mid-February lace dishcloth

The Yahoo dishcloth KAL has such lovely dishcloths. Here is the most recent one. The ones at the beginning of the month are usually knit/purl pictures. The ones mid-month are usually lace or cables or bobbles. This is obviously a lace one.

I've finished my feather lace socks for February just in the nick of time. A picture is on the SAM3 KAL. An in-progress close-up of the sock is in the Feb 8 post here. I'm glad that I didn't give up on it. And I'm glad of Fleegle's post on left-leaning k2tog's. It's made those k2tog's so much easier to do and so much better looking.

I've finally figured out what to do for my next sweater. But that wasn't until after I'd frogged 1 finished sweater and another that had been in progress for years. The yarn for this new sweater is from the sweater that I'd had in progress for years. I liked the pattern the sweater was knit in but not the yarn. I started the now-frogged sweater with size 5 needles, then switched to size 4, and finally reached size 3 needles. This is going to be a crew-neck raglan with a reddish garter stitch "collar" and with knit and purl rectangles to keep up my interest, all done with size 3 needles. The picture is of the yarn ball and the back of the sweater. (I haven't detached the red yarn yet just in case I decide that I don't like the sweater and decide to start over. I've already changed the size of the raglan seam to fit the pattern.) This is basically a make-it-up-as-you-go sweater. If it turns out, I'm planning on giving it to my mom (who lives with us). Though, her short-term memory is bad enough that she probably won't know where the sweater came from. (She's had several heart attacks and strokes.) I just hope she'll like it.

Washington's Headquarters in Morristown

On the spur of the moment, my DH and I decided to visit Washington's Headquarters in Morristown, NJ. (We were driving by, saw the sign, and decided to stop in.) Luckily, we got there just as a tour was starting. We were surprised at how interesting it was. It's a largeish house, but, at one time, there were 70 people living there. They had guards at every door, both interior and exterior.
None of the furniture in the house was Washington's. He had to move his furniture there from Virginia when he moved in. (The owner of the house moved most of their furniture into the attic -- though they did keep a couple rooms for themselves.) Then he moved his furniture out of the house when leaving. Pictured is the bedroom where he and Martha slept plus some furnishings of the time. Martha spent her time mending shirts and knitting socks. (I didn't notice the knitting until after uploading pictures from my camera.)
On another subject, my California DS sold his first half car!
Finally, on the subject of my knitting, I discovered this morning why one should knit in good light. I was redoing stripes on my next sweater when I discovered that I needed a little bit of yarn to finish the stripe. It wasn't until this morning that I discovered that I had finished the dark navy stripe with black yarn. I'm considering leaving it as it is as a reminder. But, I'll probably redo it. I've knit and reknit that sweater so many times.
I'm also having trouble deciding what to make for my February sock for SAM3. A lady at the knitting group said that the socks I'm currently working on would look good as knee highs. However, if I did that, the socks wouldn't be finished until March. So, I'm going to put them aside and knit the mystery pattern from the Sockamaniac sock-along Yahoo group. The February pattern looks interesting.
added the next day:The February pattern is nice. However, I decided to use the advice that I gave to someone else who was worried about finishing socks by the end of February. A pattern knits up faster the further along one is. So, I now am going to finish the socks I was working on before beginning socks in the mystery pattern. -- And I redid the sweater's stripe.
On another subject, my DS in Calif just sold his first whole car!

Feb sock started

I started my Feb sock for SAM3 with the intention of making the Monkey sock from knitty.com. However, I couldn't get it to look like the picture. Plus, I wanted to make it a little narrower. I made a half-hearted effort at another sock, which looked good. But, I couldn't get my heart into it. Then finally, I thought: I've got a whole book of knitting charts that I've been wanting to try out. Why not try one out with a sock? -- So, I picked out something called feather lace. Here is how far I've gotten. I'm debating on whether or not to try to make it into a knee-high sock. My one try at knee highs didn't turn out.
Earlier this week, I went to my first knitting get-together. It was really fun. I'm looking forward to going back.

Sweater 2

Happy Groundhog Day! I heard that Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow, and so the winter will end in 2 weeks instead of 6.
I've finished my second sweater for the year for the Sweater KAL. It's a 3-color variation of Tubey with a square neck bordered with garter stitch. The sleeves are a little over 3/4 length and have cuffs in garter stitch. There is a narrow stripe at the elbow with a change of color after that. The sleeve is basically straight. The only striping for the lower garment is in the 5" or so under the front neckline. Details are here. It's also linked in the side bar under the name TSquared. And this is a picture of me taking a picture of myself modeling the pullover. I'm obviously not good at taking pictures of myself. ... And this is the best of the lot.
I've now frogged my old Tubey and am going to remake it in this style. The four balls of yarn are from the sleeves, the upper garment, and the lower garment. It will have more stripes than the one just finished, but the last stripe for the tube part will be at my waist. (I tried it on as I was frogging it and discovered that if the stripes ended at my waist, it looked a lot better on me.) And I'm planning to make bell sleeves as in the original. I'm also planning on making it smaller around.
I was planning to make the first of my SAM3 socks in KP Essential using the Monkey pattern from knitty.com. However, the yarn I was going to use (the Peruvian) doesn't show lace as well as the (Italian) Essential that I used for Zokni. So, I'm debating whether to find a pattern more suited to the yarn or to use a different color (from the Essential skeins I have of it that were made in Italy). I wonder which is the "new" Essential. Oh well, part of knitting is finding what pattern the yarn wants to be knit into.

Blocking Adventure

After thinking about it, I remembered that I had blocked things before. Many years ago, when I would crochet a doily, I blocked it by washing it in hot water with Dawn detergent, rinsing out the soap, pinning it to a towel on top of something that pins would stick into, and spraying it with spray starch. More recently, I've started knitting dishcloths. I block a dishcloth by putting it in hot water with vinegar added to set the color, wringing it out to get rid of excess liquid, and then placing it on the back of a sofa.
So, for the sweater that I'd just finished (which is half wool and half alpaca), I put it in the sink with a bit of detergent in tepid water, rinsed it in cold water and vinegar, squeezed the liquid out without wringing, and then wrapped it in a towel to get even more liquid out. By then it was just damp. So, I put in on the back of our sofa. One of my kitties helped with the blocking. Here is an unblocked picture of the sweater. Details and a better picture of the sweater are here on my other blog.
The Tubey that I'm currently knitting is coming along -- without too much frogging and reknitting. I thought that it would be done by today. But, I decided it would look better if I made some changes to the order of the stripes.

Sweater number 1 finished

I've finally finished my smocked top-down raglan based on the Smock it to me pullover in Knitty.com. Mine is knit in the round with Mystic Inca forest green wool/alpaca yarn and size 3 needles. (I bought the yarn on ebay.) Detailed details on how I made are here. It has a garter stitch crew-neck neckline. It looks a little bit long in the picture. But due to the nature of smocking, it will be shorter in real life. It also looks a lot better when worn. The sleeves have a little bit of puffiness, which I like. This is sweater number 1 in the sweater a month KAL. I still need to block it. I've never blocked a sweater or anything else for the matter. So, we'll see how it turn out. At least, this time I did swatch before starting.
I've already got great plans for my second sweater. I love Tubey, but there are a couple of things that I don't like about it -- namely the fit around the neck and the fit around the arms. I was about to frog my old Tubey and knit something else from the yarn when I thought: Why not make the shrug part with an underarm seam? There's nothing in the basic construction of Tubey that says it would ruin the look. My second thought was: Why waste all that yarn around the neck when it just gets rolled under? So, I've got an idea of how to proceed.

green pullover

Well, I'm almost done with my green smocked raglan pullover based on Smock it to me in knitty.com. It's done with some yarn -- 50% wool, 50% alpaca -- that I got over eBay from Mystic Inca. I thought it would be very tedious knitting a sweater with size 3 needles, but it went fast, as least I considered it fast. The smocking pattern in the lower half of the garment and the lower half of the sleeves gives it interest. I'm knitting it top down and have now started the smocking on the second sleeve. Though, I may go back to the main part of the garment to make it a bit longer. I've already made the first sleeve a little longer than I had planned in order that the smocking would cover the top of my hand, if desired and if cold. If it's warm, I can push the lower half of the sleeve up to make a 3/4 sleeve.
I thought I was almost done knitting a pair of socks. The pattern for the socks is one of Chrissy Gardiner's. The heel is Fleegle's. I was test knitting the pattern for Chrissy with some yarn that I didn't particularly care for and decided to try out Fleegle's heel at the same time. (The yarn is KP Essential in pumpkin. I like the yarn but don't know what I was thinking when I ordered that color.) To make a long story short, I liked the pattern so well that I'll have to a second skein of the yarn in order to finish the second sock of the pair.
Finally, I'm knitting dishcloths as they appear on the Yahoo monthly dishcloth KAL.
My Sony camera is in the shop again, and I'm using my daughter's Sony camera. She gave it to me when she got a new (non-Sony) camera for Christmas. Her old camera takes pictures except that you can't see them on the screen until after you've taken them.
I have plans to start making Monkey socks soon. I hadn't heard about them until I finally decided to upload all my Turkey pictures to my yahoo picture albums. I took a lot of pictures and so the album is quite large and took a long time to upload. While they were uploading, I decided to read through past Yahoo sock group posts and found that a lot of people were making those socks.
We were in Turkey for over a week. In addition to a magnificent solar eclipse, we saw quite a bit of Turkey: Istanbul, Troy, Antalya, and Cappadocia. (The interesting rock formations in Cappadocia were where the pod races were filmed for Star Wars.) Troy was the most interesting. Cappadocia was the most beautiful.

Happy New Year

I'm really behind on posting.
Christmas and catnip
We decided to get our two cats catnip for Christmas even though they usually play with it for a couple of hours and then basically ignore it. This Christmas it was different. One of our cats opened her catnip present Christmas morning -- and she did open the one with her name on it -- before the rest of us got up. And then the two of them played with it and the other catnip present for the rest of the day and a lot of the following days.

The Nutcracker
My DH and I went with our two DSs and the oldest son's girlfriend to the Nutcracker presented by the New York City Ballet. We were underwhelmed by it all. Most of the dancers seemed to be just going through the motions.

The actor who plays Monk
My oldest son and his girlfriend went to a Broadway play featuring the actor who plays Monk on tv. They were quite surprised to say the least. My DS likes Tony Shalhoub and has seen him in quite a few movies including Big Night and also Galaxy Quest. Nothing prepared them for the role he played in the play. My DS thought the change of pace from Shalhoub was funny. They saw more of him and heard a more varied language than they were expecting, even though they were on the wrong side of the theater for the "best" view. At least, they got in for cheap $15 student seats. I assume though that the acting was good. It's not clear, however, whether the play will make it to opening night.

An empty feeling house
Two friends of my DD went back to Ohio last Wednesday. My oldest DS and his girlfriend went to California on Thursday. And my DD and other DS went back to London on Saturday (after their Friday flight to Chicago and then London was cancelled). So, now it's just me, my DH, my mom, and the cats.

2 here, 1 to arrive later

The house is starting to feel more lived in now. We picked up 2 of our children at the airport Thursday night. The plane was delayed because of fog here. The flight was scheduled to arrive at JFK from London around 10:30 -- but the estimated arrival time was changed to just before midnight. So, we drove to JFK's terminal 8 and timed it so we would get there just as they were clearing immigration and customs. When we got there, we were surprised that less than a dozen people were waiting for an international flight. Well, we stayed in the lounge for a while (over half an hour) and visited with a lady who was waiting for the same flight and had been there longer than we had. Finally, I walked over to the AA desk and asked when the flight was going to arrive. The lady said it was arriving at terminal 4 since the international portion of terminal 8 closes at midnight (the immigration and customs people stop working at that terminal then). (As far as we know, there were no announcements to that effect. If I hadn't asked, we would have been there for a long time.) So, we drove over to the other terminal and arrived about 15 minutes before our children (home from college) came into view. We didn't get home to NJ until 2:30. But, at least, the traffic was good.

I'm starting to knit a scarf for my other DS's girlfriend. She's arriving here the day after Christmas. I'm using my usual scarf pattern, which my DD likes. My DD has the three previous scarves I made with the pattern. She says it's so soft. It's also very easy to make. I'm using a navy colored worsted weight yarn and size 7 needles and cast on 30 sts because I wanted to make it a bit wider than the other ones I've made. After starting it, I wondered about my directions for the slipped st edging. (I didn't know the "correct" way to do a slipped st edging back then. I hadn't realized there were so many online resources. So, after trying different ways of doing one, I settled on slipping the first st with the yarn in front.) It gives an edge that faces out instead of lying flat as the usual edging does and which I like better than the usual one.