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Miraculously, the wool feels light and soft, even in the dog days of summer.  It has been H-O-T here.  Poke your eye out hot.  Sink into the tub with everything but your nose immersed hot.  Hot Hot.  It has not been business suit and pantyhose weather.  That is the sadness of my life in summer.

But, as I said, the wool still feels good.  Maybe that’s because I have been knitting mostly on the manos merino/silk shrug.

I just love this yarn.  The  shrug has a major flaw, though.  You can see about midway down, a line of twisted stitches.  I had to rip back about 6″ after realizing I had started decreasing too late, and I didn’t catch that I had twisted the stitches until last night.  I tried to convince myself it was a charming design detail.  But, this morning it is bugging the snot out of me.  I’m hopeful I can embrace the imperfection and live with it, as I would like to wear this shrug on our vacation next week.  But it’s doubtful.

Yesterday’s mail contained this wonderful organic cotton.  I’m using it to knit a cabled front babysitter for some friends who are having a long awaited baby.  I went for the gender neutral color, thinking that I could always overdye it after it’s finished, but I like this yarn a lot: Blue Sky Alpaca’s organic cotton.

We have also been dyeing silk here this morning, causing Ellie to dance in the rain.

The only thing better than dancing in the rain, is sneaking freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and eating them in the rain!

Here are some pictures from the last morning of our Grandma visit.  Here are the girls, snuggled up on the couch, reading.

It’s nice to have a grandma!

And here are pictures of Ollie, adding a little bit less quiet to the mix.

Finally, long awaited progress pictures of Robert’s knitted purse.  He picks it up, every night around Daily Show/Colbert time and knits a few rows.  He says it will be finished by the time school starts.  I think he looks really good knitting in pink!

It’s Pretty Things day at Elliebelly.  I’ll be stocking the store at noon Eastern time today, Thursday.  The previews are up already.

This week I decided to do some little soldered charms for knitters and sewing mamas.

I had fun knitting little swatches to go inside the charms!

And, using some of my favorite Japanese fabric.

After playing with my cousins’ chickens, I even did a nesting themed charm, with a vintage picture of some girls holding their prized chickens — they must have loved them as much as my children love their dogs.

There is yarn too.  Clapotis yarn.   A variation on the beautiful Oliver colorway my sweet baby inspired.  A Paintbrush colorway.  And more, lots more, including some pretty rovings for my favorite spinners, organic merino, and more of the Dover Silk/Cotton yarn.

Come visit.  I hope you like the charms and the yarn, and are having yourself a fine summer day.  We’re off to the zoo.  I hope you are having a fun day too.

The judge, our two littlest ones, and I have spent the better part of the last week on a roadtrip to Arkansas for the wedding of a very dear friend.  Nine hours, two small children, and an exceedingly poor traveler of a husband in a minivan, with gas at $4 a gallon, did not sound like my idea of nirvana.  So, I carefully stocked the car with candy, drinks, small toys, and an enormous quantity of junk food and baby wipes.  My Mother in law threw in a Harry Potter book on tape for good measure.

Amazingly, it was a fantastic trip.  The wedding was beautiful and it would have been worth a nasty trip to be there, but the drive turned out to be lots of fun and we had a great time all around.

This is the bride and groom (with Ellie).  She's so beautiful that I have to include this picture (she is also a knitter).

Here, Ellie and Ollie after six hours in the car.  I anticipated horrors, but instead, they emerged quite happy.

Here they are with Katie, one of the other flower girls, and Catherine, the bride, at the rehearsal.

The wedding itself was at an incredibly beautiful chapel in the middle of the woods (the Judge was in charge of the camera, so we have no pictures of the wedding itself, naturally).  It was the kind of wedding that really reminds you of what matters in life.

Despite the Judge's decision that we would do the drive home in one day, it was fine.  We had a great time stoping in Memphis for a brief walk along the Mississippi River.  The kids enjoyed this a lot more than the stop at the Clinton Library on the way out.

And knitting — do you realize how much knitting you can accomplish during 18 hours of driving?  Sadly, I had focused so much on getting the kids's stuff together for the drive, that about 10 minutes away from home, I realized I had left the needles for Ellie's skirt, which I had intended to knit, at home.  I did have the cuffs for my Rock and Weave socks, and a feather and fan scarf from Sea Silk I have been working on, in my bag.  So I knit on them on and off while mostly enjoying the drive.  The linen stitch on the Rock and Weave cuffs has been a natural disaster for me — I rip as much as I knit, so it has been slow going.  However after the trip out, the cuffs are about 2" shy of being done. 

I got online after our first day of driving, found a knitting store in Fayetteville and emailed them with a desperate request for size 6 addi turbos.  About midway through driving the next day, I had the nicest phone call from them!  They assured me they had the needles set aside for me.  We made a quick run by the store on the way into town, and I got the needles, along with two skeins of Koigu and a really lovely alpaca/silk yarn I had never seen before.

The ladies at Hand Held were incredibly nice and helpful.  And I was blown away by the great yarn they have in their store.  I would put this store on my list of yarn shops it's worth driving significantly out of your way to see.  I was really sorry I couldn't just sit there and knit for awhile!

And, on the way home, I started Ellie's skirt.  The waist band is made to contain the elastic — I left a hole on the back to insert the elastic threw and then two eyelets on the front that I'm going to thread a silk ribbon tie through.  This part of the skirt is a bamboo/merino blend.  I am also hoping my plan to tie a few silk ribbon bows along the yoke of the skirt (you can see a few places were I made eyelets) will work.  Now I'm just on to the fun part — I've got several balls of Be Sweet's Magic Ball yarn that I'm going to use for most of the skirt, balancing it out with some silk I've dyed and a few more balls of coordinating Be Sweet yarn.

I'm in countdown mode for Art and Soul.  Since I wasn't sure about flying with chemicals, dyes, gas masks, and soldering tools, most of those kind of items are in boxes and winging their way to my roomate, Kathy Wasilewski, who lives nearby in Virginia and will drive them on down (if you're going to Art and Soul and don't have a Monday class scheduled yet, Kathy teaches The Clearly Visible Journal — a very cool class that has a few spots still open). Some of the rest of my class supplies are sorted into little piles all around the house.  I've still got images to print out and wee collages to make for my soldering class on Thursday.

I took a few minutes out to put some of my hand-dyed yarn into mini-skeins for Vendor's Night.

I love this particular fiber, and have dyed it up in several different vintage-looking colorways for artists' use.

I also took some time out and made myself a comfortable skirt with one of those stretchy yoga waistbands to wear for class.  I also did a matching messenger bag.  Unfortunately, the only available photographer was my 15 year old Teddy, who managed to get only one picture with me even in the frame.  This is it:

"Mom" he told me, "I thought you wanted a picture of your top.  Kids with non-verbal learning order don't know what to do unless you tell them exactly."  This cracked me up and made me appreciate how much his school is doing for him.  That's the first time he has ever asserted his "disability" as an excuse, and he grinned while he was doing it.  One of the fringe benefits of having a special kid like Teddy is watching him grow into himself in the most unexpected ways.  Needless to say, we'll be having a photography class this weekend, to insure that he "gets it."  But for now, that's all of the skirt and messenger bag you get to see.

I suppose I should make a list, but I think it would scare me: collect, pack, create.  But I can't wait for Wednesday, when I'll be on the plane to Virginia and I can't wait to see all of my Art Sistahs.

Today has been a day to stop and smell the roses.  Literally.

Can't you just smell them?  That is Souvenir de la Malmaison — virtually thornless and with a pure, gentle rose scent.

I planted her while I was pregnant with Ellie, and every year, she rewards me: blooming through drought, never asking for fertilizer, and always generous with her beautiful flowers.  I love her, and couldn't resist taking a picture of yarn (ok, not just yarn, cashmere sock yarn) tucked into her leaves.

After I stopped to smell Souvenir, I stopped again on the way into the house — there was an  envelope from my friend Angie.  She e-mailed earlier this week to say she had sent me a little envelope to thank me for a wee piece of silk I had popped in the mail to her.  Look at this!  Her "little envelope" turned out to be a world of art, itself.

It's all wonderful.  Especially the vintage German linen ribbon, which I am going to take along to Art and Soul.  I have plans to use it in my Girls Got Goth necklace in Sally Jean's class.  I really don't deserve friends like Angie and feel very fortunate have them.  Thank you girlfriend.