Ruminating

Don't have anything specific to write about. Just want to put ideas down in 'black and white' to sort out the thoughts in the head.

We have sunshine this morning. The weatherman says it will rain later today, then sunny tomorrow. Yay! It's going to be in the 40F's for the highs. Almost shorts weather! Ha ha! Sweet Hubby has gone into training, so the sunshine is welcome!

Sweet Hubby has been talking all our married life about going on a bike ride across the country. I have encouraged him to work toward that goal. Lets get it over with before he's too old, is what I'm thinking. So, last weekend I talked him into registering to join a bike ride that will be local, and not quite as far. Called the WaCanId Ride, it's 350 miles done in 5 days. The route will take him on the Selkirk loop through bits of Washington, Canada, and Idaho. He needs to start out crawling before he does a country wide marathon. He also needs to know if he's actually going to like doing this type of thing before he commits to a 3-month bike ride. The ride is in September, so he's got time to get in shape. And he needs to be IN shape. He'll be biking with young guys, doing 50 to 80 miles a day. Don't wanna be left in their dust!

Now, if I could find someone to go with him, like his brother, or one of our nephews. I'd feel a lot better about it all.

Lots of birds at the Parkarosa bird buffet this week. Mostly the usual Chickadees, Nuthatches, Flickers, Finches, and Magpies. My daughter has seen a female Black Headed Grosbeak a couple times. No males though, yet. For the first time since winter started I've heard the call of the Towhee's. Mating season has begun.

Last night I sat down and wrote up the pattern for my Star Trek socks. I'm thinking about posting it up this coming weekend. I won't call them Star Trek socks because I think the Star Trek name is trademarked. I could get in trouble for that. However, I want it to be obvious what they are. So I've come up with an idea. How about "Captain Picard Would Wear These Socks"? (Yes, I know Captain Janeway would probably wear them too, but that is beside the point.) Kind of a long title, but catchy.

The other problem with the pattern is that the gold metallic yarn I used has been discontinued by the company that sells it, Patons. Something I didnt' know when I bought the yarn. I have done no research into a suitable substitute. I'm not wanting to either. A part of me says "not my problem". There are tons and tons of patterns out there written for yarns no longer made. At the same time, I hate it when a brand new pattern comes out with a discontinued yarn used in it. What to do, what to do...?

Went to Knitwits yesterday. I was hoping to find more of the winter white yarn to finish the sweater I'm working on. No such luck. Couldn't even find something close, so I've come up with a wacky idea involving a beautiful shade of wine red. (I wanted black, but there weren't any that had more than one skein available) It will be kind of funky, but I also think it will be pretty, and I won't have to frog the sleeve that is finished.

I worked some on the enterlac project last night. Got a couple more rounds of squares done. I did have to frog a row earlier in the day. The row I knitted the day before, to be precise. It was all wrong. Suddenly I had no edge to pick up sts on, but I'd only done 4 squares. There's 6 squares in a round. I knew I needed to be picking something up. Where did it go? Thanks to my daughter, we figured out what I'd done wrong. Apparently I wasn't paying attention when I was at Rathdrum Knitalong on Tuesday (chatting and all that) and accidentally turned and went the wrong direction for four squares. Making that mistake, and figuring out what was wrong caused a lightbulb to click on in my head and suddenly knitting Entrelac in the round is a piece of cake.

By the way, I'm making fingerless mitts, not socks.

Live long and prosper. \\//