Oh, hey, did I tell you that M’s sister was graduating from high school? No? Well, she did and we just got back from Atlanta. Great Gran went up with us and spent the night with Mom (they apparently didn’t see enough of each other last week) while we went on up to Woodstock for the graduation festivities. All of this is to say: ROAD TRIP KNITTING!

First we have the green bear Great Gran is making for a friend’s Upcoming Grand-Baby. I did his head and arms in the car on the way up so that Mom could do his face.

Aw. The cuteness.

Then, I managed to finish one of the LL socks I started ages ago. You can’t tell in the picture, but I promise it’s finished.

No lives were endangered by the taking of this picture. We had been at a dead stop in traffic for ten minutes.

Since I couldn’t find (was too lazy to root around for) the scissors or my darning needle, the LL sock is still attached to the circulars. Instead of starting sock #2, I worked on the ever growing Flower Basket Shawl. Which I am actually really enjoying.

It had another repeat on it by the time we made it home.

Wait. How much did you and Great Gran get done last night, Mom? What’s that? None?! That means I’m winning! Mwahahahahaha! Mwahhahahaha! *cough*

We took a pile of yarn

and added a large amount of Kool-Aid

and ended up with this:

Mom’s is pink lemonade, Great Gran’s is grape and mine is lemonade with three packets of orange thrown in for good luck.

Pretty neat, huh? Especially for folks with No Idea what they were doing. I have no pictures of the actual dyeing process because, as many of you already know, my Mother and Grandmother do not show up on film. But we did have a great time and at the end we were happy with our results. I am also having fun with the Flower Basket Shawl, the Kool-Aid Yarn’s Destiny. It’s complex but not painful and really pretty. As you can see from the picture: Mom is winning, but Great Gran and I am catching up.

The second sock is finished! I made it to the toe last night during my cousin’s ballet recital (Cinderella - she was a step-sister) so that the second sock (who was suffering from Second Sock Syndrome) could get a little culture.

And now I have a confession to make. I have discovered Second Life. Whatever you do, don’t try it. It will cut into your Regularly Scheduled Knitting Time and make you Stay Up Late. Kind of like sock yarn. I miss sock yarn.

So the second sock has been a little down in the dumps because his buddy got to got to DC. To improve his morale, we took him out to dinner on Sunday. He picked the place.

Papa’s Pizza has a new location with a “view of the Bay.” Which means: if you sit by the window, crane your neck, look over the highway and trees, you can see the water. Heh.

Guess what Mom and Great Gran and I are doing tomorrow! You’ll never guess. I’ll give you a clue:

This is all your fault Becky. I do mean that in the nicest possible way!

After a small delay (I had a Thing on Tuesday, took the day off on Wednesday and had to get my pictures out of M’s laptop after he got up this morning), Yarn Miracle presents: Mr. SockPalSock Goes To Washington. There are a LOT of pictures in this one.

Here we are riding the bus to the metro station.

Once aboard the metro (subway/train/martalikething), we rode out to Arlington and then to the Pentagon (the Pentagon has lots of signs about NOT taking pictures of the building). After that, we headed into DC and visited one of Stitch DC’s three (yes, three) locations. I am a Yarn Tourist. I had to go. Besides, every single vendor at MSW was sold out of bamboo #1 dpns - I had been developing an ulcer about what would happen if I broke one and had no back up needle.

Then the tourism began in earnest. The Smithsonian(s) close(s) at 5:30 on Sundays so we decided to hit as many of those as possible. We made it to the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the National Gallery before ending up in the Museum of American History. This was the highlight of Sock’s trip: he got to meet Mr. Rogers’ sweater.

He was so excited that we had to sit down and turn the heel right there in the museum.

Incidentally, the Museum of American History has a textile exhibit up right now that has several examples of hand knitting. They’ve got these mittens that have a poem worked into them and these teensy gloves are less than two inches long.

The bad part about touring DC on a Sunday is that when the museums close, so does everything else. There is no water, no food and no souvenirs. Anywhere. At all. Our last bottle of water had been consumed between the National Gallery and The Museum of American History. But did that stop us? NO! We sucked it up and walked and walked and walked to all of the monuments and other Historical Buildings of Interest. Are you ready? Here they are in order of our visit:

The Supreme Court (over my shoulder).

This was as close as we tried to get to the Capital - there was a lot of construction in the way.That is M by the lamp post.

The White House (over M’s shoulder).

We walked past the Washington Monument several times, through the new WWII Memorial (it was raining by this point), the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial and visited Lincoln with a bunch of punk middle school kids who thought it was Wicked Cool to slide on the wet marble sidewalks. I kept waiting for one of them to crack open his skull (I mean really, it’s not like the entire town isn’t made out of steep and dangerous steps or anything). The chaperones didn’t even say “Hey, Punk Kid! Knock it off - you’re going to crack open your skull or someone else’s!” M made plans to sue if his were the head to be cracked and I designed a t-shirt for my kid (who doesn’t exist yet) to wear on school trips. In bold letters it will read: If I am behaving recklessly, please call 1-888…

After Lincoln, we consulted the pop-out map KT loaned us (from now on, we will only visit cities that have pop-out maps), and plotted a course over to Jefferson. We didn’t make it. I took this picture from the bridge when we finally admitted defeat:

When we squinted, we could see him in there. At 9pm, in the rain, with no dinner and no water, we decided that was good enough.

Then it was back to the metro station (which we walked right past and had to turn around), back on the bus and back to the hotel at 10pm. It was a Full Day.

We’re sitting at Dulles waiting to board the plan, so I have to be quick. I didn’t get to blog yesterday on account of we got a Metro pass and rode the train and walked and walked and walked and walked all over D.C. so by the time we got back to the hotel at 10 we were Exquisitely Tired.

But here’s a taste of what the sock has been doing:

Claes Oldenburg made little things big.

So I went to bed around 10:30 (eastern) and got up at 6. We went over to KT’s house and met the small hollering boys (we read a book about bulldozers). M went off to Baltimore to look at the boats and KT and I hopped in the car. Everything was going swimmingly until we got stuck in traffic on the beltway. I had my sock pal’s sock and KT (who is Entertaining all on her own) so I was Fine with it.

KT is modeling the sock to keep us busy while we are stuck in traffic.

Because of the delay, many many people made it there before we did.

There is an equal number of cars to my left. Seriously.

There was tons and tons of yarn and fiber and sheep and sheep accessories. I only have a couple of pictures because it was Completely Overwhelming. I had a really hard time buying anything at all because there was just so much to look at.

This stuff is interesting becuase it’s naturally non-felting. KT, what is it again?

I did not get to touch this particular fiber, there were too many people in the way.

Alpacas!

That’s pretty much it as far as pictures go - there were HOARDS of people and I did not think that they would have appreciated me getting in the way with my phone. There were Serious Fiber Enthusists **I just watched the Kentucky Derby! Woot!** in attendance! As far as fiber goes, there was a lot of roving/fleece (goes without saying), a whole lot of miscellaneous handpaints, sock yarn, handspun, machine spun (in natural animal colors and dyed) wheels and spindles. The Socks that Rock sock yarn was SOLD OUT by 10am (no keychains either, boo). KT was very sad (not like she isn’t in the club or anything - but once you get some of that stuff, you just want more). She bought roving and a spindle to console herself. Heh. I believe I might have encouraged that a little. Just a little.

There were these amazing Orenburg lace shawls. I was Enchanted by them and I desperately want to make something that delicately beautiful. I’m going to get a book, give thought to the project and some day, when I finish the Epic CounterPain, maybe I can make one too. I would have bought the yarn (cobwebs, really) already, but it was also GONE. But I did get:

That’s some worsted in purple and grey from Fingerlakes, some stinky sample fiber (I can’t remember what it is?), some roving from Cloverleaf Farms and a swift! Yaaaay! KT ended up (the picture I took is Horrid, not worth the download time) with some roving from the Fold (Hot Flash), the spindle, some really pretty stuff from somewhere she went while I was busy fondling the shawls and some of the naturally machine washable wool in red for vests for the boys. Not nearly as much yarn as I thought I would get, but I did get my swift so it is all good.

In conclusion: I had a great day!

This is my pitiful attempt at a group shot!

We are going to look at DC monuments tonight (they are pretty all lit up)! After that I’ll see if I can’t remember my password and check my email. Thanks for all the fun comments - it’s been fun blogging as I go along!

I love KT! (I didn’t take any pictures because it was dark in the restaurant but I promise I’ll do better tomorrow.)

She’s funny. And we’re leaving at 7 in the morning. This is really 6 for me. Yarn is totally worth it.

For a quick sock update, the sock looked like this on the plane leaving Atlanta:

ilovemyphone

But when we got to the hotel, I noticed this:

Can you see it? One of these cables is not like the others.

And the funny thing is…it’s only on one side.

These are the basic cabled socks. More later. Very sleepy. So very sleepy.

PS: I used M’s iBook and Bluetooth phone to blog from the airport.

I got about an inch of the cuff done in the half hour it takes to go from Pensacola to Atlanta. It’s loud and there’s lots of people…and we have 2 hours to kill, so we’re going to go look for lunch.

I’m so very sleepy.