SailingKnitter

Life's been good here in the slow lane. We've made some great progress on our check list of boat chores without any stress.

For entertainment, some of us got together for an afternoon of playing with beads. Nope, we don't really know what we are doing...we just have fun touching and admiring pretty baubles. We even managed to entice Gaby, who is a server in the Yacht Club to make some earrings.

Here's a photo of Michelle's (s.v. Coastal Passage II) first pair of earrings - on her ear! Go girl! I made a pair of earrings with some little alpaca critters on them. I picked up these little charms many years ago at a bead festival. Along those same lines, I made a knitting stitch marker with a ram. I only use one stitch marker - at the beginning/ending of rounds when I knit in the round - which is most of the time.

A BIG part of summertime life in the tropics is knitting. Yep, due to the magic of Air Conditioning, I can knit all I want - and I knit all the time. So...I finished the final square of my 20 knitted 7x7" afghan square design committment to the Sacramento Knitting Guild.

During my flight last month from Puerto Vallarta to Memphis, TN I studied Janet Szabo's book Cables, Volume I: The Basics which is a treasure for knitters! From the first couple of chapters alone I found some new-to-me ideas which can be seen in this 7x7" square. Plus, more will be seen in future FREE patterns for the Holiday Mystery Gifts yahoo group.

Whew! We have all been so busy designing, knitting, frogging, test-knitting, photographing patterns for the upcoming season of the Holiday Mystery Gifts group. It's frustrating though not to be able to share with y'all...so I'll just show you a couple of little hints about the knitting.

And...TODAY is the start of the Gansey List Yahoo! group's Knitalong of Meg Swansen's Guernsey Pullover. Come on over and join us. If you're a new knitter, this is a great opportunity to knit your first Gansey style sweater and be able to ask questions of the more experienced knitters on the group.

Okay - gotta go...Jonesy just let me know that we need to go ride the bus to the marine store (Zaragosas) to get some zincs for the bottom of the boat. I'll take my knitting. Although this giant store doesn't have air conditioning, they do have a giant industrial fan with a stool set up in front of it. I'm sure they set this up just for me.