Well, I've been trying to post at least once a week. Trying to avoid blog burn out. I miss some of the bloggers that have gone off the air. I'm finding that I'm spending less time browsing the knit blogs; not enjoying it quite a much. Is this a trend? I've notice my daily hits are down, but maybe because I'm boring. Every once in a while, I find I have been "discovered" and someone has gone and read all the archives. Not a lot of comments; not sure why. What a strange way of putting yourself out there.

Last week had so many distractions - Tour de Lance, New Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and of course Harry Potter and the HBP. Oh yeah, and me trying to meander through life. I'm still feeling detached, maybe depressed, and having a hard time finding focus. Going through motions seems to help a bit. With daughter out on her travels, I have not had her schedule to force me to move. She comes back Tuesday from her last trip of the summer, so I need to get my act together. I obviously can't use her presence as an excuse to not accomplish anything. I have discovered that I don't do much while she is gone either.

In the mean time, we picked daughter up from a Sailing camp a week ago Friday and were happy to find that we have a budding sailor now. Since my husband and I met around boats, and stopped a lot of sailing to look after her, we are happy about getting back to this sport.

So, Daughter had enough time to wash before we went to B&N for our Harry Potter books. She and her friend then decided that they would rather watch Napoleon Dynamite than dive into the new book. I dove into bed. By the way, in our family the first one through warns the others about the "chapter of no return". That would the where the action gets so thrilling that one can not put the book down. It helps reduce those all night reads that wipe you out for the next day or so. For HBP, that would be chapter 26. Good read; tighter than the previous few, but I was disappointed that we didn't get more back story on Lily Evans.

We went to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the next Saturday night. Visually it was lovely, and I appreciate that Tim Burton lifted the OompaLoompa lyrics straight from the Roald Dahl book. However, I didn't connect with the interpretation of Willy Wonka as a reticent troubled somewhat immature nutcase. I much preferred the Gene Wilder interpretation of an exuberant nutcase. I felt it was closer to the character in the book.

Speaking of books, I get the heebie jeebies when people tell me they won't read the book, but prefer to wait for the movie. Yikes. I don't know why folks prefer to see someone else's commercially motivated interpretation of a book. I really started to dislike Disney at quite a young age, because his Mary Poppins movie horrified me.

Now, the knitting content of the week happened during the "Tour de Lance". We were horrified by the poor luck Rasmussen had on Saturday. We were thrilled by the fabulous finish of Vinokourov on Sunday. I worked on Rogue, while the boys peddled, and got past the cute kangaroo pocket, see?

Pretty Madli being modeled by my dining room chair. She will go into the Christmas stash drawer.


Christmas is on my mind. I haven't really liked Christmas for a while now; such high expectations; so much work. My husband and I were discussion it; he still can't belief I've become so hostile to that holiday. I told him I wanted to drop out; like to go Mexico or charter a sailboat. We discussed some more, and decided to float the idea by BIL and SIL. BIL passed to SIL, whose first response was....

"I'll have to get passports for the boys"

I'm proud to have such a trooper in my extended family. No hesitation, just straight to the problem solving. So between us, we e-mailed sites, suggestions, ideas, and last weekend made our choice and booked. Husband even bought tickets.

Wow, It's July all ready. Coming back to work hazy from a nice long weekend to find requests to turn in mid year reports, and checking numbers from last month. Yeesh.

We did a lot of driving to and from camp. Daughter loved her Austin theater camp, and we were very impressed with the show at the end. Rather than aimless kid written skits, this was a tight semi-professional musical review. The kids rehearsed something like five or six hours every day of camp, plus attended classes in dance, acting and voice. Next year she will be old enough to go to the three week session for older kids, and she can't wait.

We drove the next day to Girl Scout sailing camp. Daughter was feeling a little clingy, but she is not too far away.

With all that driving, some knittting happened. Madli is done except for grafting the edge lace to the shawl body. Oh, and cleaning up ends.


And a Rogue hoodie arm is done. I made it in the round instead of flat, because I'm just that way.

Detail of the cosmic cuff cable. I used a different method on the edge because I don't like the way the hem works. This is the same edge used on Dale of Norway Tuja.