So it's 2:22am, and I am up as usual, knitting. I'm knitting a little bit more frantically than usual, though. Why, you ask? A deadline? A baby impending or something else exciting? Surely my reasoning must be thrilling, right?

Yeah. I'm trying to finish this sock so I can have the needle to take a different sock to Klondike Days/Capital Ex/Whatever the hell it is and I wish they'd stop renaming things in this city. (I'm looking at you, Space Science Odyssium Telus World Of Oh my GOD just pick something.) You see, we bought ride-all-day passes to go to the midway tomorrow (whee!) (and also, gack, those bastards are expensive, but buying in advance is $14 cheaper so that makes it a little easier to swallow.), and I'm too far along in this sock to bring it. We are sure to be waiting in a lot of lines and I don't want to run out of sock halfway through the day. However, I also don't want to bring more than one sock - that's just plain silly. (Secretly I wouldn't care but Jamie would mock me plus I am only taking my smallish purse.) But next on my agenda is finishing my long-suffering sister's Gryffindor socks, and those will require the needle that's currently in my Sock Garden socks once I reach the heel.

(Yes, I'm using a different sized needle for the leg and the foot. Because I'm anal.)

Anyway, I'm zipping through the toe decreases and I've only got...oh, lordy. 24 rows to go? And we're heading for the midway at noon and I kind of wanted to get up early enough to try to catch some Sunshine Yarns tomorrow, and now it's 2:28 and I'm not even knitting, I'm updating my blog. And now that I took a break to knit a few rounds, I almost sneezed my stitch marker off my needle. Wouldn't that have been embarrassing? (By the way, it is a delightful stitch marker from my totally fantastic Knitty Secret Pal. Thanks, Pal!)

I would post pictures, but our stupid camera is in the shop. There will be pictures soon, don't worry - I've got a lot of backlog (backblog?) to get through. But the pictures are (say it with me now) on Jamie's computer. Some of you may be wondering why I don't just blog on his computer if he's got the photos. His computer is also significantly newer, faster, nicer, and has a space bar. (Don't ask.) But my computer is a laptop, and it lives by the super cushy comfortable recliner. Reason enough for me, thank you very much. I love this chair. But right now, I really just want to finish these freaking socks. But now I've only got 12 rows to go. That's not so bad, right? It's only 2:59am. I can still get 7 hours of sleep, and I'm sure I'll be hopped up on sugar and caffeine tomorrow anyway. (Mmm, mini donuts.)

And now it's 3:21, and I'm done. Except for the kitchener, which I am really bad for putting off. Still, the one good thing that came from the Great Blanket Disaster of '06 was that having to repair it with over 100 kitchener stitches means that I can now do it without the instructions. And so, knowing that I'll drag myself out of bed at the last possible moment tomorrow morning, I whip through the grafting. My Addis are free, my socks are finished, and I'm ready for the Midway tomorrow.

I'm also ready for bed. 3:32am. I'm totally going to get heckled if Jamie reads this.

Oh, blog. You are sadly neglected. I'm sorry. So here's the thing, friends of mine in the real world who still optimistically check this thing once in a while (or possibly use bloglines): it is likely that this blog will be morphing into essentially a knitting blog. I know most of you don't care. But these days most of what I do is knit and talk about knitting, and I haven't been writing because I've only had knitting to really write about. So consider yourselves warned. There will still be occasional non-knitting updates, but I'm hoping to update slightly more regularly and that means knitting.

However, that is not the case today, because hey, I went on a big fancy vacation! It was awesome, and I do not have the time nor energy to write in detail about everything we did. We went to Cambridge, London, various parts of Wales, Bath, York, Edinburgh, and several small towns around England. We had a fantastic time, the weather was ridiculously good (except in Wales, which is traditional for family vacations), and I didn't kill any members of my family, which I feel is a good sign. We were upset by the Oilers loss but soldiered on despite it (having skipped going to Oxford to watch game seven), and the only hockey I missed was the first period of game 4 (or was it 3?), which was because we were on the plane to Calgary.

I will write a longer entry about it another day when Jamie's computer is on, because that's where most of the pictures are, including my sock's cultural tour of London. I got a ton of knitting done while I was there, which was most satisfying. I finished a large chunk of a baby blanket (would have finished the whole thing but stupidly brought one ball of the right colour in the wrong weight - gah), which has since been finished and sent to said baby. Photos to follow. I finished one and a quarter of the Gryffindor socks for Beth, which she got to admire in progress. (They're the ones who got the cultural tour of London.) I knit some of my mother's Christmas present, and also got to the heel on a pair of socks for another Christmas present. (That was my airplane knitting on the way home, because they're on my Bryspun double pointed needles, AKA the most inoffensive needles in the world. Worked like a charm and I got in at least four hours of knitting on the way home.)

I hit two yarn stores - one was actually just a yarn department in a huge store in Edinburgh (actually, two stores, but one was vastly superior), where I bought two skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk in a lovely purpley colour. Oh my, that is glorious yarn. I haven't decided what it's going to be yet, but possibly a lace scarf for me. We also took a complicated tube ride (on the day three lines were down) and a lengthy walk to go to a yarn store in London, and barely made it before they closed. But I picked up two balls of Opal sock yarn that I've never seen here, and was sorely tempted by the cheap Addis before talking myself into sticking to the new Knitpicks needles.

In non-knitting reports, we ate a ton but walked almost as much, saw several excellent Evensongs in Cambridge (Kings College, natch), York Minster:




and Westminster Abbey. (Both Jamie and Dave, Beth's boyfriend, assessed the Kings wafers as being subpar. They being the only two in my heathen family qualified to get Communion.) We rode on the London Eye



(super cool but brutally hot),

saw the Lion King



(I couldn't get over the cubs with British accents. Better when I saw it in California last year, but still good), went to the British Library, which was awesome, and the British Museum, which I continue to be too plebian to enjoy. (Really I was just hot and exhausted and hungry, but the last time I was there I was about six and hated it, so we are not the best of friends.) (Is that even the right use of the word plebian?) We went punting along the Backs in Cambridge



which was super cool.

Drove to Wales, which was as beautiful as ever


if blustery at the seaside.



Post-Wales will have to follow in another entry, because none of those pictures are online. (I could go boot up Jamie's computer and upload them, but it's late and I'm lazy.) Since getting home, we've been lolling around in the heat, occasionally working (well, I have. Some of us in this house are fat-cat teachers who get the summers off.), going to Shakespeare in the Park, and frantically helping with the upcoming wedding of Jamie's brother.

We celebrated our first anniversary last week, which featured flowers for me (the same roses as were in my bouquet - I was impressed!), brunch at the hotel we stayed at post-wedding, which has a revolving restaurant overlooking the city, hanging out, having a barbeque, eating amazingly delicious year old cake, and, best of all, a ball winder and a swift for ME! (I got Jamie a gift certificate to pimp up his camera. I thought it was quite noble that we got gifts for the other's hobby that kind of makes us roll our eyes. I like Jamie's photos, but I have no interest in the actual process. His logic was that now I won't bug him to help me wind yarn. Except now he wants to because it's FUN!)

So that's what we've been doing. Stay tuned for lots of pictures of knitting (I'm actually knitting a few things you can see!), lots more pictures of our trip, and an ongoing log of surviving the really freaking hot weather in a house with lousy circulation. Bleah.

How's by you?