August already??

Apparently it's August........ And I'm not really ready yet. Ron's birthday is in 2 days (luckily he requires very little in the way of preplanning), but Caitlin's 9th birthday in in 2 weeks and 2 days and I have nothing planned as yet. We have the school's Wakakirri performance next week and I have been busy helping with costumes and attending rehearsals. Luke had his first Pedal Prix race on Sunday (it was a 6 hour race) and the 24 (yes, that's 24) hour race in September. We had 2 teams in the primary school category and came 2nd and 11th (we think-the results for anyone who finished after 3rd aren't up yet-160 teams were racing altogether). I have a stitching weekend planned for later in August which will be lovely-stitching, eating, talking, sleeping (and not necessarily in that order) will be a great break. I also have a model for Stitches and Spice to be finished-I posted about it here .

So-what have I been doing? I finished the model for The Gift of Stitching-I think it will be in the next issue. We had 2 weeks of school holidays-which included visits to the library, shopping centre, aquatic centre, Harry Potter movie, grandparents for the kids (and a weekend away for me and Ron), other grandparents staying with us, 5yo birthday party (costume of course). We've had one and a half weeks of school since then-feels like about 5 weeks.... We've bought and read the new Harry Potter book-no queueing for us though-just picking it up at the local Kmart on the Monday.

Knitting-wise has been quietish, although I did knit that tension square, and discovered that I have quite a loose tension. So much so that I had to use 4mm needles to get the correct gauge with the 12ply wool. I fixed up the weird pointyness of the beanie, and unravelled this beanie because it "relaxed"when I washed it to the point that it was unwearable. I skeined the yarn and washed it, reballed it, and have started to reknit it. Oh, and I joined Mystery Stole 3 because no-one can get sucked into the latest thing to join like me! I am still up to Clue 2 (I think Clue 4 has been released) but I am not in a rush to keep up. I'm knitting it in JaggerSpun Zephyr in Ebony (which is a 50%wool, 50% silk laceweight yarn) with some blackish beads (scavenged from my bead stash) and using a Knitpicks Classic Circular in a 3mm size. I told you I have a loose tension. I will take a picture-one day. I even knit the swatch.

Oh, and I knitted my portion of this and signed up for dishrag tag which is a knitting relay of sorts (competitive knitting-very Australian-we have 2 teams). I told you I was a joiner.

Here's a couple of pictures-since I took them back in late June I thought I had better put them up. It's the view from our backyard towards the "non-town" side of us-we live right on the edge of town-literally. I hope to have some more up-to-date pictures for the next blog entry, which hopefully won't be so slow in coming.