duchessofgravity

it's night time on the carousel down at wonderland on the ocean city boardwalk

we headed out for sun, sand, and fun in ocean city, nj. our first sight of the philadelphia skyline container ships being offloaded there's the city! bridges and there was just had a little traffic there were flowers planted along the way and you know i love me a blue sky.

we had a wonderful time on our vacation. i'm still in the process of collecting photos from all the cameras on the trip so once they are organized i'll post a bit about our trip to the jersey shore :)

at low tide rain and seaweed on the beach

so any guesses as to what we'll be driving under on our way to the airport tonight?

i really thought these were going to take forever when i cast on for them but the knit up really quickly! they also took a lot less yarn than i thought they would. at the point when the below picture was taken i had only used 2 balls of yarn (1oog). only 3 inches of sock were knit from that 3rd ball of yarn. i finally have sock yarn leftovers! and i only used 20g of the third ball. woo hoo. there is plenty of grey left for a pair or argyle socks! not that i'll be casting on for those any time soon. one pair of color work socks is enough for me right now. i also thought i would have to crochet some elastic into the tops to keep them up but i wore them around the house yesterday evening (dave thought it was ridiculous to wear them in july) and they didn't slouch once! actually dave may have thought it ridiculous to wear them at all. we shall see if he still thinks that they are silly come december. mental note. get a nifty wool skirt! i did have a bit of trouble with...

this is one of my favorite photos ever. several years ago i took a school trip to some telescopes down in new mexico with my photometry* class from C.U. we took a side trip into white sands national monument. we spent the day playing in the dunes, rolling and sliding downhill, making sand angels, and taking photos. i guess there had been a storm the night before because there was this giant puddle in the parking lot. pretty neat huh? if you ever get the opportunity to visit there do. it is absolutely beautiful. *a fancy name for an astronomy science class where you use telescopes with spectrometers to take data and use computers to reduce a nights worth of freezing your butt off at the observatory into a stack of numbers :)

way back in february or something silly like that i planted my vegetable garden. we only have a patio so everything is in pots. but seeing as it hardly ever freezes i doubt the winter will be a problem next year. i love the climate here! we have such even temperatures that everything was just able to keep growing without a problem! well this is how we started out tomatoes on either end (cherry and early girl) with peppers in the middle (banana and jalapeno) around the tomatoes i planted green onion seeds thinking that we would have enough onion tops for a few baked potatoes this summer... well just look at them now... the onions are almost taking over. the good news is that they don't seem to be slowing down the tomatoes. and the onions seem to have dissuaded the aphids from taking over the tomatoes. just a few more days and we'll be eating fresh tomato salad! if anyone knows why those tomato leaves are curling like that and how i can correct this please let me know. i...

almost a year ago now i was working on my pomatomus socks when i realized that i had one sock with 67 stitches, and the other had 73...the pattern calls for 72 stitches around the leg. d'oh! these guys promptly went in the bad knitting basket to think about what they had done. when i cast on for the cappuccino socks last week i couldn't figure out what had happened to my size one addi's. then i remembered. so out they came. the 73 stitch sock was an easy fix. i knit two stitches together. switched to my contrast yarn. and knit up the twisted ribbing. the second sock, well that is going to take some frogging. i have to figure out where the last correct stitch count was and re-knit from there. in the meantime. check out that twisted stitch pattern. neat huh? gosh it sure is a pain to p1, k1tbl over and over and over again :) well i just could let well enough alone. i knit through the gimpiness and just held my bandaided finger out of the way and figured out that it wa...

so dave and i went to the farmers market. collected fresh eggplant, zucchini, and mushrooms. and brought them home for dinner :) but while i was slicing veggies i sliced my finger. oops. and it's my index on my left hand! you know what that means right? no knitting. at lease for a couple of days. dang-it. and i was doing so well on my socks. oh well. so after i washed the blood off what did we do with those veggies? well dave cubed up the rest (my chopping privileges have been revoked for a while.) and we tossed the pieces with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, some sea salt and fresh pepper, and some dry herbs. then, we roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes (which was may have been a bit too long) and served them up with a box of celery, onion, and cornbread stuffing and a rotisserie chicken from the grocery. what can i say? sometimes i take shortcuts :) finish it off with a glass of what we like to call 2-buck-chuck* and you're done. so, what's a brok...

so the plan is to knit 2 socks before the end of september. first you have to make sense of the chart. i know there are mistakes in that but don't worry i fixed 'em. then you knit the world's smallest swatch. i realized i was carrying the pattern color in the wrong hand because it just didn't pop. so i switched for the socks. then you wind up 4 balls of yarn and cast on. at like midnight. cause it is finally july and you can. i learned the last time that 4 balls of yarn. 2 socks. and 2 circs. is a recipe for disaster. so i am working these socks one at a time. magic loop style. so that is still 2 socks on 2 circs. just separate. so i knit the toes together. why not. then i separated my socks and started the first sock. and then the second sock. leapfrog fashion. when one sock gets to half a pattern repeat then i set it down and knit a whole pattern repeat on the second sock. then i knit a whole pattern repeat on the first. so far i am 3/4 and 1/2 of a repeat in....

Your Result You are a Knitter, with the capital K. You are never found without needles and yarn in hand. Your favorite place is the yarn shop and you can never seem to leave without buying needles or wool or a pattern or those fantastic stich markers. Darn yarn fumes. Your stash of yarn is the kind that spills out of closets and is taking over the house. And it's still growing. Beware of SABLE (Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy). You may need to bequeath yarn to people in your will. Knitting is a lifestyle for you, not just a hobby. You do it for fun, to make presents, or to cool off. We need more of your kind in the world. Go start a knitting club at your school or local coffeshop. well, that's me now you try :) happy fourth of july.

it only seems fitting that since dee started all this that i show florida a little love. mom came to visit us in orlando a little over a year ago. we took a trip down south to the everglades and while we were there we made the long trek down to key west. we had some shrimp. and some pie. and drove back just in time for sunset.

can i first just say that this is the best idea for a swap ever! everyone has a little ball of wonderful in their stash that they frankly just don't want or would be willing to part with so why not just trade it out? right? so i know get to the point already! i had a note in the mailbox today that they had a package for me at the office. the girl sorting through her junk mail in the mailroom looked at me weird when i squealed...so what if i'm thirty. i can squeal when i know there is yarn waiting for me! then i was at the leasing office to get my package and they handed me some media mail package for dave. and i saw in the teetering pile of boxes that there was a message on the side of another box saying "sock yarn swap." so i asked if i could have my other package too? they said that dave's stupid book was all i had. but i knew different. that yarn had to be mine! and it was! karen . my swap partner. is awesome! by the way. check it out! super cut...