Duct tape: is there anything it can't fix?

My 12-year-old daughter is too cool to wear handmade things. Unless she's the one handmaking them, apparently.

One afternoon, she called me at work and asked if she could use the duct tape. I told her sure.

When I got home, she was sporting these!



Aw! My little girl pimped her sandals, duct tape style! I am so proud.

Holding perfectly good yarn hostage since 1930

I finally came to terms and liberated the yarn from this gauge disaster:



Still love the pattern. Still love the yarn. After two years of trying to make it work, it was time to admit that they just aren't right for each other.

Meh. I have a migraine.

My choice between migraine pills seems to be:

A. Nausea-inducing headache
B. Nausea a la carte
C. Brain-numbing drowsiness

I usually opt for C, take a gigantic wad of cotton batting, and stuff it in and around the crevices of my brain.

(Nobody better say one single word about Grandma's Lye Soap on this post, I freaking mean it.)

Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider

Yesterday was a good ride, and I needed a good ride because lately I've been feeling plagued by fatigue. And when you're plagued by fatigue, the garden gets overgrown, mildew collects in the caulked edges of your bathtub, and the closets fill with dirty clothes. That's just the way it is.

I rode anyway, with my legs feeling like mud, because my drill sergeant husband made me. Something about training, and commitments, and blah blah blah. I loaded up my helmet, gloves, water bottles, etc, into the car and drove halfway to the trail before abruptly turning around and coming back home.

Yeah. I forgot my bike.

The first five miles felt miserable, but then it was like something shook itself loose and I was flying.

I was chased by a bird and almost ran over a ginormous black snake. Two angry cyclists fixing a tire glared at me from the side of the trail, though I'm not sure why. Did I look like the kind of girl who randomly tosses glass bottles into the path of oncoming riders? I chased and caught a guy on a road bike, and matched his speed for a few miles until he turned off and went home. I don't know what that speed was, because I also forgot my bike computer. But it felt speedy.

Then I went home and immediately ran three loads of laundry. Exercise is weird.

Monday wisdom

Sometimes, when you buy a can opener from Everything's $1, you get a bargain.

Other times, you get a can of soup only halfway opened and gash in your thumb from trying to pry open the jagged edge of the lid.

And then, as you're standing in front of the microwave with your bleeding thumb in your mouth, watching your bowl and its contents lazily circle the perimeter, you realize.

All that for vegetable soup.

Long-overdue correction to the DNA top/vest

Remember Protopretty over there in the free patterns section?

Well, someone much smarter than me pointed out that the "diamond" lace pattern on the back begins with a yarn over.

Awkward!

So awkward, in fact, that when I was making it up as I went along, I instinctively kept an edge stitch on each side to anchor those rogue holes.

And then I forgot to mention that in the pattern. Um. Sorry about that.

What floors me is that there are several brave knitters with completed Protopretties out there who somehow either added instinctive stitches too, or struggled through it with fiddly stitches hanging off the ends of their needles. Either way, you all deserve to be taken out for ice cream.

I'm back!

My pumpkin vines are teeming with beetles, my youngest daughter screams herself sick every morning before daycare, and I'm stuck here sleeveless in an overly air-conditioned office rewriting things I routed last week. If that doesn't say summer, I don't know what does.

I'm mostly bummed because I'm no longer in Disneyworld eating dessert at every meal.

Gary is dedicating hours of his post-vacation life to uploading and captioning the 600 photos we took, so those of you who are really in love with my family will be able to fully immerse yourselves in our Disney experience. The rest of you can look forward to a few choice hightlights.

In the meantime, I can show you how I amused myself on the 2,000+ mile roundtrip drive.

One Waving Lace sock:



This is the nicest sock I've ever made. It actually fits like a proper sock and not like a smooshy leg sleeve. I did modify the pattern to leave out two lace repeats (I cast on 48 instead of 60) so it's nice and snug. I just love it. I'm almost to the heel of sock #2.

Also, I made this:



I resisted the Clapotis for years despite the fact that every single other knitter was raving about this pattern. I thought, what is the point of knitting a stitch if I'm just going to unravel it? Also, I didn't like the bulky, weird shape of it.

But I had five balls of bamboo yarn and time on my hands. So the bamboo Clapotis was born. And honestly, it's now one of my favorite things. If you haven't made a Clapotis, immediately make one out of bamboo. It's silky, drapy, warm, and fun to knit.

And just before we left, I put the finishing stitches on the Petunia Tote from Interweave Knits. Bessy is modeling it here:



It's huge. And it's lined thusly:



And it's covered with sweet little petunia-like purly flowers:



Now I have to go to a meeting and explain why one page of a brochure will not hold three pages of product description, even though I'd rather be knitting.