Safety Nets

I can't imagine it would surprise you if I were to say that a vacation that involves spending a week and a half on a lake with no obligations is relaxing.  I think my nephew (2 years old) summed it up nicely as we were packing up when he said, on the verge of tears, "I want to stay at the cabin forever!"  Me too, kiddo, me too.

Despite the fact that I took over 300 pictures while at my cabin, I only took 12 with my camera (the rest were with my phone) and 260 were of either my brother or my dog.  In years past I would get up early to watch the sun rise over the lake.  I would never set an alarm, but some internal clock would wake me minutes before the sunrise each morning.  This year I think I left my internal clock at home.  I only got up to watch the sunrise once, and even then I was tired, cranky, and cold and crawled back into bed right before the sun actually rose above the trees.  Here's the only photo I took, before deciding to curl back up on the couch.

Most of the days were quite windy and the lake was always in motion.  We only had one or two days of rain and the rest were warm enough for me to lay around in my bathing suit, provided the sun didn't hide behind a cloud.  As soon as the sun started to set, however, it was jeans and a sweatshirt for me.  Check out this sunset, though.

You can't make that up.

As far as knitting is concerned, I didn't do nearly as much as I thought I might, which in all honesty is fine by me.  Like I said in my last post, knitting acted more like a safety net than a life preserver, if that makes any sense.  I know it's there if I need it, but there's no need to wear it at all times.  I knit one sock and did a bit of work on my Ashby, but for the most part, I chose to spend my time laying around in the sun, kayaking, playing card games, swimming, canoeing, drinking coffee, or sitting by the bonfire.  (I also went waterskiing once and while I used to do it all the time when I was younger, it has been probably five years since I did it last and boy, is that a workout for your legs!  I was embarrassingly sore the next day.  I also had a really hilarious wipeout that resulted in the ski smashing against my shin so hard I'm convinced there's a fracture in there somewhere while at the same time nearly tearing my swimsuit off my body.  And I don't mean that my suit got pulled down a bit when I fell.  I mean that the entire side seam tore open and for the rest of my skiing experience, I tried to pretend that I wasn't skiing with a loincloth rather than a bathing suit.  I'm sure the entire lake got quite a show.)

But I digress, I was talking about my knitting.  At the last minute I decided to only bring enough sock yarn for one pair rather than two, and despite the fact that I was a little bit stressed that I was going to run out of knitting the whole time, it turns out I only knit one sock and didn't need enough yarn for four.

It continues to be near impossible to take a decent sock photo when the sock is on your own foot, but I did my best (and believe me, this one is the best of the lot.)  The yarn is Malabrigo Sock in some kind of blue and I opted to go with a basic K2, P1 ribbing with 1x1 twisted rib for the cuff.  Super simple and it turns out that's exactly the kind of knitting I wanted.  It was so relaxing that I sped past the point where I should have started the gusset increases by two inches and had to rip back, but no harm done.

I did some work on Ashby as well.  I finished the cabled edging and picked up stitches to knit the body of the shawl.

I'm convinced I could finish that one up with just a few more days of knitting, but (and this is so unlike me), I'm more interested in finishing the second sock first.  Since when do I feel compelled to finish the second of anything?  I always seem to have that "been there, done that" attitude when it comes to making the second sock, mitten, fingerless glove, whatever.  I think the reason I want to finish this pair is because I got my first taste of the cold weather to come while in North Dakota (one night the temps hit 40) and I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a pair of wool socks.  And nice it will be, I'm sure of it.

Are you feeling the change in weather?  Have you adjusted what you're knitting accordingly?