Fiber Dreams

… we were on vacation! Woohoo! It was loverly being away. Dave and I talked about it before we left—except for two funerals (me), and one funeral and one business trip (him), this was the first time in a year that we’d gotten away. At all. Yes, it was way too short. But it was divine anyway. We stayed at our timeshare in Las Vegas, and except for going to the grocery store the night we got there, we didn’t leave the premises the entire time we were there. Mostly we sat on our butts and read, ate, watched movies, and knitted (me). Divine. Divine, I tell you.

We got home Friday, and as usual decided to extend our holiday a bit by not going in our home offices or getting on our computers until today. That was nice, too. It wasn’t quite as relaxing as it would have been, as we had to unpack not only the stuff we took with us to Vegas, but all our food that was left here—the food was all packaged up because we had our house tented for termites while we were gone. Have you been through tenting before? It’s, um, unpleasant. Tons of work. Not only do you have to be gone for a few days, but before you leave you have to package up all of your food that’s in plastic or opened containers. All of it. You’d think that the food in the refrigerator and freezer would be safe from fumes, right? Wrong. All that has to be bagged up as well. Needless to say, we took the opportunity to toss stuff that had gotten shoved to the back, and to clean the shelves and reorganize a bit when putting it all back. I don’t think our refrigerator has been this clean in a long time! It certainly hasn’t been this empty.

Before you ask, no, Ricki wasn’t here, either. She spent the week at the vet’s office, where they took very good care of her, and she was safe from all those deadly poisons that filled our house while we were gone.

A friend was supposed to come by and take pictures of the house in its tent, but he forgot. Drat. I was really hoping to be able to share a tented house picture with you. Alas.

Okay. Enough of the work part of our vacation. On to the fun stuff!

Like I said, we stayed at our timeshare. Again. Yes, we’ve been there four years in a row now, and we still love it. What’s not to love, I ask you? We dwell for a week in a two-bedroom, two-bath, twelve-hundred square-foot penthouse suite, complete with three Jacuzzis (one outside on the deck, one in each bathroom), a living room, wet bar, widescreen TV with surround sound, a view of the mountains and the pool, and complete kitchen that includes all the dishes, pots, and pans we need to cook lavish meals for ourselves. Lest you think we skimped when it came to food, let me tell you that we took our entire spice cupboard from home—it had to get packed up anyway, so we brought it along—a case of wine (drank most but not all of it), a bunch of the hard stuff, brownie mix, and fixin’s to make a pumpkin pie from scratch (it turned out great!); we also roasted a chicken, baked a stuffed pork chop, had bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast, totally yummy cold cuts for lunch, and lots of fruits and veggies besides. We also went completely the other way, and had peanut butter cookies and brownies for breakfast a day or two, and once had cheese and crackers for dinner! What’s the vacation worth if you can’t eat poorly if you want to?

This is the stuff we took with us to Vegas, all ready to go home again. Well, except for the camera (in my hand), and my stitching frame (on the chair).

On the stitching front, not a single thing got done. I took it with me, but I obsessed on knitting the entire time we were gone. I do have one stitching picture for you, though. Dave took this before we left. It’s a little dark, but there I am in my corner of the couch, working away on Lilac Basket.

On the other hand, a lot of knitting got done. Except for weaving in the ends and blocking it, my red Green Gable sweater is done. I’ll post a photo of that as soon as I get those little bits finished up and it’s truly done. And I started the promised lap blanket for Dave. You may recall that I’ve been trying to work out a way to knit up a quilt pattern for him.

Like the lap blanket I made for myself, one of the goals here is to use up yarn that’s been hanging around the house, unused, unloved, unnoticed, and make it into something useful, used, and loved. The yarn breakdown: the peacock is from an afghan I made for Mom; the dark blue, a medium blue, purple, lightest blue, and white are from an afghan I made for a friend when I was in college—he bought the yarn, I got to work on a project I’d always wanted to make; and the other medium blue is from an afghan I made for myself. When Dave decided he wanted the blanket to be a little bigger, three pinwheels by two, I looked at my pile of yarn, and said okay. Never did I think that I’d be seven stitches short—seven stitches!—of finishing a block with the main background color. Gads. LOL Dave just laughed when I showed him. Guess the other rectangles will be other colors after all.

I’ve made a little progress on this since I took these pictures yesterday. I knit up the bottom half of the next pinwheel, and picked out the colors for the top half.

By the way… If anyone’s interested, Dave thinks that I should write up and release this pattern. That being said, I’ve never done that before, and will need volunteers to test-knit the pattern for me when I have it done. The construction is… interesting. Intarsia interspersed with rows that are short (as opposed to short rows), some picked up stitches, binding off only at the very last row of the border, mitered corners, and when you’re done other than weaving in all the ends, there’s no sewing. Done is done. Any takers?

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