Yarn diet and other things

My sister reminded me (coaxed me) that I haven't written a blog in the last week.
I realized I have absolutely no idea where the last week has gone; so let's try to piece it together.

Last Saturday was KNIT O RAMA--summer solitice style. Fresh out of declaring myself on a yarn "purchasing" diet, Merrill, Janet, Michelle, Wendy and I broke out into an all out swap-o-rama. I scored 2 skeins of Anne, a bunch of koigu and some gorgeous Alchemy "alpaca pure."
We ate like fiends, points friendly food of course, and we all anxiously await our emails from Robin with the recipe for "Fruit Salsa." I don't know how much KNITTING we actually got done, though Trish won the award for most productive knitting in the afternoon--she's making a Blue Sky Alpaca baby blanket for her soon to be born niece. That kid is going to be well dressed and warm. Wendy came in a close second, knitting a little pink cardigan for her niece. The rest of us did a lot of chit chatting and not so much knitting. The party went late into the evening and I don't know about you gals, but I am ready to do it again!

Sunday, I had an internal disaster; two actually. I went downstairs in the am to find that my freezer door had been open all night. I had to toss EVERYTHING. On top of this, Molly had diarrhea (there is nothing worse than doggie diarrhea, trust me). And, Trish and I had tix to see the Wyeth exhibit at 10am---all the clean-up detail made me a little crazy and thus a little late.

The exhibit was wonderful. I had no idea of the scope of Wyeth's work into the expression of feelings of loss, grief and death. I felt an instant connection.

This week has been marred by the Phillies losing 7 games straight, my own terrible GI distress resulting in a 7 pound weight loss (!) and finally, poor Molly has a "dental root abscess." We spent the last two evenings at VHUP/Dr Soli's. She looks as though someone punched her in the cheek. She's on lots of antibiotics and hopefully the presumed infection will resolve. Of course, if it doesn't, we get to talk about the "t" word (tumor). Think good thoughts for Tiny Molly.

So, knitting. Well, I'm onto the center panel of the North Sea Shawl, but I'm less than motivated to work on it---I really have to concentrate on the center panel because every odd row is different. No more auto pilot lace knitting. Instead I decided to try to get back on track with socks. I'm knitting a rockin' pair out of the koigu scraps I collected during the swap. I'm also making nice progress on Dad's sweater.

Maggie reminded me this week why I knit socks using the "magic loop." Addi turbos are much harder for a beagle to chew than double pointed bamboo needles. I love this dog...