What I Did, Days Five and Six...

The weekend of summer vacation included a few day trips, which were lots of fun in and of themselves, but even more fun for all the car-knitting-time they allowed!  I finished the Five-Hour Baby Sweater and started the Kudzu Shawlette on the road.  Pictures tomorrow, I promise!

On Day Five we drove down to Columbia, SC, to visit my brother and his family.  The ten-year-old got to spend the afternoon with his cousins, all of whom share the same passion for Legos and Star Wars that my mom and I share for knitting.

On Day Six we drove up to Linville, NC, to see Linville Caverns, an active limestone cave (which means don't touch the walls, they're still forming).  The tour guide was both brilliant and funny in a Blue Ridge Mountains sort of way, and gave us an excellent tour even though it was his first day on the job.  When the tour was over, we all had to spray our shoes with bleach to keep from spreading some kind of disease that's killing bats, which keeps bats from killing mosquitos, and, well.  You didn't have to tell us twice.

Back outside we stumbled upon butterflies bathing in creekwater flowing out from the cave.  And of course, because it's my weakness, I had to take pictures of some flowers growing near the gift shop.

We drove toward Little Switzerland along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and had lunch at a little cafe just a few miles away from the Big Lynn Lodge, where mom and I go for her knitting guild retreat every September.  That would be in exactly 72 days.  This year, I'm taking a spinning workshop, taught by Terri from Day Two.  Because I need another hobby to fill all my free time.

After lunch, we followed the signs to Emerald Village, where we mined for gems scooped out of the mountains and strategically loaded with lots of dirt and regular old rocks in plastic buckets for suckers tourists like us.  It was hard to tell what some of the colorful stones were, but I think we did leave with at least a few emeralds and rubies, a lot of garnets and amethysts, and all sorts of other stones...citrine, sodalite, unakite, moon stone...

Finally we wound our way back down from the mountains, past peach orchards and pastures...ready for one last day of vacation!

What I Did, Day Four...

Some summers we are nearly done with vacation before we get to the end of The List of everything we want to do.  Other summers we get through most of The List early on and just turn lazy for a while.  This is one of those vacations.

On Day Four we went back to Flat Rocks.  This time we walked a trail on the side of the falls we don't know as well.

Oh, ice cream is definitely on The List.  Chocolate for the grandson, chocolate raspberry for the grandmother, and birthday cake (complete with chunks of blue frosting and rainbow sprinkles) for the mom taking the picture.

Late in the afternoon we went to Hatcher Gardens.  Once upon a time it was simply a wooded backyard full of gullies and streams and garbage.  But the elderly couple living there saw its potential and began cleaning and digging and planting.  One flower, one pond, one sapling at a time, and with the help of local garden clubs, the garden grew and quietly attracted visitors seeking sanctuary along its shaded trails.  When the Hatchers died, Mr. Hatcher at the age of 96, the gardens were given to the city and are now a woodland preserve.  Signs along the trails teach about the many things growing there, and benches along the way invite visitors to stay as long as they desire.

There was knitting between all the hiking and ice-cream eating...but mostly there was just being lazy!

What I Did, Day Three...

Day Three of summer vacation dawned early...but hooray, we slept late!  We didn't even tackle The List until after lunch, when we went to the movies to see Cars 2.  Speed.  I am speed...

Late that afternoon, the Malabrigo (yay!) chevron scarf finally had its bath...

...and was blocked.

It was interesting to see how the color went from a little more yellow-ish to a little more dark green-ish down the length of the scarf.  It was knit out of one skein (well, two thirds of one skein) without any knots, so the gradation was just part of how the yarn was dyed I suppose.  My favorite are the occasional flecks of bright periwinkle blue, no more than a few stitches long whenever it showed up in the skein...

The pattern was so simple.... Cast on...hmmm.  Well.  I don't seem to have written that down, but it looks from the pattern that you cast on a multiple of 15 plus 2...does that sound right, looking at row one below?

Row One - K1, *K2tog, K5, YO, K1, YO, K5, Slip 1, K1, psso; repeat from * to last stitch, K1
Row Two - Purl

At the beginning and end of the scarf, work 2 rows reverse stockinette.  Bind off on right side (in knit).  The ends will be a little different from each other, since they draw up according to the pattern, but probably only a knitter would notice...

I had a Day Two peach with every meal, and may have had an in-between meals peach as well.  Summer vacation is a good thing.

What I Did, Day Two...

Day Two of summer vacation had lots in common with Day One.  We were still working on The List, which included an outing to another yarn store.

This is North Woods Farm, owned by mom's friend, Teri.  If it has to do with making yarn available, Teri does it.

The alpaca, freshly shorn, greeted us as we arrived.

A fourth of the shop is where Teri processes fleeces.

I had never seen all that amazing equipment before, and have a new and deep respect for the amount of time and effort it takes to turn this...

Into this...

There may not be any kind of yarn that Teri doesn't carry.  Well, except for the one kind I was looking for, Classic Elite Cotton Bam Boo, to make this.  But Teri took time to show me lots of possible substitute yarns, and I finally settled on Twilleys' Freedom Gorgeous DK (75% bamboo, 25% nylon, 100% gorgeous indeed) in the Bamboo colorway (a neutral).

Mollie distracted entertained the ten-year-old, who to his credit was supremely patient with his second yarn shop visit in two days...until the visit dragged on past an hour or so...

North Woods Farm is in Inman, SC, which is right in the heart of peach country.  Georgia may pride itself on its peaches, but South Carolina peaches are perfection, especially at this very time of year.  They're beautiful and soft and sweet and so juicy you have to eat them over a sink.

Peaches were on The List.  We stopped at a roadside stand to buy a basket, and were tempted by lots of other fruits and vegetables as well.  The woman who sold us the peaches (and some fabulous zucchini) said she arranges the produce by color because she thinks it's so lovely that way.

By the end of the day, the Cascade Pacific from Day One was being turned into my first sweater big enough to be worn by an actual human being, if that human being is a very tiny infant...the Five-Hour Baby Sweater. It may have really only taken five hours, over the course of the next couple of days, if you don't count the holes under the arms I still haven't sewn up.  Unfortunately I don't have any in-progress pictures.

I do have a picture of Sam, who lives at my mom's house (along with Belle).  He hopes you'll tune in next for Day Three.

What I Did on Summer Vacation...

Every summer we drive halfway around the world to South Carolina to visit my mom.  It's really only three states away, but oh my goodness...Alabama.  Is.  So.  Huge.  And while this means we get the "Are we there yet?" question a billion times, it also means plenty of time for knitting!

But more about that in a moment.

One of the first things we do when we get to South Carolina is make The List of all the things we want to do while we're there.  Certain things always make The List.

Flat Rocks, also called Glendale Shoals, is just a couple of miles from mom's house.  Water from Lawson's Fork Creek (I preached about it once) falls over an old dam that once helped power a textile mill, and then rushes over exposed bedrock and smaller falls before becoming a humble creek again.  Every summer, depending on how much rain has fallen, the falls look different.  And we always meet new friends there, like blue herons, or crawfish, or tadpoles, or butterflies.

This year we met turtles.  Lots of them.

We always find Treasures.  Beautiful black and white granite pebbles, generous wisps of mica, feathers, twigs, memories...

Another outing that always makes The List is a trip to a local yarn store.  Or two.  This year we visited Robin's Bead Nest, a local bead store that also carries beautiful, beautiful, beautiful yarn.

They have every imaginable kind and color of both Cascade and Spud and Chloe.

They also have a cat, named Purl.  Genius way to distract entertain ten-year-old boys while their moms and grandmothers shop for yarn.  I bought two sky blue skeins of Cascade Pacific (40% superwash merino wool, 60% acrylic, 100% soft and squishy).

Also on The List is the Spartanburg County Public Library, where my mom works.  We check out a few books to have on hand for rainy afternoons and late bedtimes.

Or whenever.

We also make plenty of times for games.  Grandmother's houses have great old games around, like Battleship, and decks of playing cards, and Chinese Checkers.

I won the first game.  The ten-year-old won all the rest.

Never on The List because it is simply A Given is knitting.  I finished a simple chevron scarf I had been knitting out of some scrumptious Malabrigo Sock.  There are no words to express how deeply I loved knitting with this yarn.  The scarf is intended as a gift for a colleague who's moving to Virginia.

But first it needs to be blocked.

That will have to wait for Day Two of summer vacation.