Admittedly not doing much knitting

Our house guests flew home a week ago, and so far all we've seemed to do is work on cleaning the house. We got the downstairs carpets shampooed and are currently working on the upstairs ones. We have another house guest arriving Friday, and I have commitments Monday, Tuesday and Weds. nights, plus I'm singing in a wedding in a couple of hours, so the craziness clearly hasn't ended. And who am I fooling? Around my life, it's always crazy, so I can't use it as an excuse TOO much. I did manage to knit a gauge swatch this weekend, though I haven't blocked it yet.

Some trip photos were asked for, so here are a few to start you off. First we have wild lupine at the top of Mt. San Jacinto (~10,000 feet). We took the aerial tramway up and hiked around a bit. This is in Palm Springs, CA:

One of many great views from the top:



Cholla at Joshua Tree National Park:

And a genuine "one-armed bandit," found in a diner in Searchlight, NV (I didn't try playing it, though):



Tomorrow night I will be conducting a mediation (parent/teen conflict — that should be interesting), Tuesday night I have band practice, and Wednesday night is my mediation class. Lots on the boards! But I'm attempting to take one day at a time... and hopefully will have some actual creative blog content soon ;-)

Whoops! Sorry I vanished

Sorry I worried a few folks. We've been travelling for a couple of weeks with our summer house guests, my mother-in-law Verna and Rob's childhood friend Brian. We went many places in the West, including Joshua Tree, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Zion. And I did knit on the long road trip, though not so much as you might think, because I've been fighting crampy hands and arms lately. Still, I've accomplished a few things:

The Very Berry T-Shirt is done except for Kitchenering one underarm, and then blocking. I managed to do one Kitchener seam in the car, but decided against trying to do the other one with so many distractions.

I made some progress on a cardi for Elinoire. This is the Spring Garden Cardi from Kirsten Cowan's Irresistible Knits, being knit in the fabulously soft Jaeger Roma (and yes, it's reverse stockinette, I didn't photograph it inside out). The only problem is that I've hit a big error in the pattern — the instructions for the shoulder cap are completely wrong — and there appear to be no published errata. I've written to the publisher to ask about it, but I am sure I can recalculate the shoulder cap if I need to. Just lazy!



Finally, I completed a gorgeous beret, Gretel by the beautiful Ysolda Teague. The pattern costs a small amount of money, but it's way worth it — Ysolda's patterns are top-notch. It's not blocked yet, but here it is pre-blocking:



What have you all been up to?