Now That's More Like It

Thanks to a lot of running around that forced me to be monogamous with the Herringbone Socks, I am finally done, finished, kaput and see- evidence!

I was particularly pleased with these, since I had to modify the pattern from six pattern repeats to seven in order for them to fit.  (With socks, I really hate going up in needle size because I prefer a dense fabric, so I nearly always stick to my size 0 needles and add stitches to make them bigger.)  Of course seven repeats is not an even number, so when I changed half the pattern to stockinette for the instep, I had to work out a six stitch version of the herringbone pattern to make the numbers come out right.  I considered just doing three repeats on the instep, but I didn't like the idea of the partial repeat just cutting off at the heel.  So:

The herringbone pattern is a multiple of three, plus three stitches.  So from a 12 stitch repeat I went down to  for the single little herringbone column along the foot.  I'm very pleased with them.  They fit well, they're very comfortable, they look great...and I am so never knitting this pattern again.  It's a lovely pattern, but with slipped stitches and passed stiches in every row...it's very, very, very slow.  

Mysteries of the Universe

Foremost among these mysteries is where the time goes.  It seems like just yesterday that warm days were rare, and I was waiting impatiently for the first flowers to bloom, and then I turned around and -

These all grew from one bulb, which I received many years ago as a favor at a baby shower.  I planted the bulb after it finished blooming, and every year it's put out more blossoms.  (The same cannot be said of the friends for whom the shower was given.  They stopped after two lovely girls.)

And Cookie and Biscuit have been able to observe the always fascinating Out on a near daily basis:

I'm rather puzzled as to why there isn't more knitting.  Thinking back, there has been some.  For example:

• I think there may be some mittens that didn't get photographed.   
• The Wasabi hat was completed and gifted without pictures.  
• There have been bits of sweater knit, but it's not done.  
• The Herringbone socks are now officially the world's slowest socks (I'm on the second one, but glaciers may cover North America again before they're done, or at least that's what it seems like.)    
• There was a baby sweater that I got in a bin of free yarn that has been seamed up and had buttons and button loops put on it.  It needs some decoration, I think, but I haven't decided what. 

In an effort to figure out what else has been going on, I looked at the camera memory (though I have managed to leave it at home so often that's not an accurate record by any means).  But there have been various hiking excursions, part of my husband's and my annual quest to be less pathetically unfit.  A couple of weeks ago we climbed in the Holyoke range in western MA.   It was gorgeous day, and the tender new leaves were such a vivid green they practically glowed.

And of course my favorite thing about climbing is the views.

And as if that wasn't enough (which it clearly wasn't!), last weekend we hiked up on Mt. Monadnock in southern NH.  Another very nice hike, though I discovered some additional muscles that I somehow had missed recalling earlier.   I had once again forgotten the camera, but my husband took some pictures with his phone:

And I also liked this one- very dramatic:

Aside from that...well, there's been rather a lot of pool maintenance, and running around visiting people. and work, and.... dang it, I still think that I must have misplaced a week or so somewhere.  Like maybe it's under a pile of magazines up in the sewing room or something.  Hey, it could happen!