A short intermission from everyday life

My husband, children and I went on a fun family vacation to South Dakota for Spring Break. We drove about 8 hours each way, and spent two whole days at our destination, but it was just the refreshing getaway that I had hoped for. We saw the Oregon Trail Ruts, Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, and stayed at the WaTiki Indoor Waterpark Resort.


The children got along surprisingly well, on the long roadtrip and otherwise. Amazingly, really. To the point that at a restaurant, a very nice lady came over to tell me that we had a nice family and that she was impressed at how "nicely and pleasantly everyone interacts with each other..." Outwardly, I thanked her for saying so. Inwardly, I was thinking "whose kids are these?"

My husband and I made a pact that we would avoid all news coverage and political chatter, on television and radio, while we were on our trip. All the negativity, fear, and anger wears me out emotionally, so for our vacation we had none of that. Our thought was that if something earth-shattering happened, someone would be talking about it somewhere, so we didn't need to worry about it ourselves.

Knitting is, for me, a coping mechanism for stress. I have realized that it is also an escape from all the messes I have to clean up, and problems I am responsible for solving, as a Mom and as a nurse. I may not be fixing everything, but at least I am making a sock. My house may still be untidy, but at least I'm accomplishing something. On this trip, I discovered that as I was enjoying my family in a setting free of housework, unpleasant news coverage and deadlines, that I had much less of a need to knit. I still did knit some, but I didn't feel as drawn to it as I do during my everyday life.

My car-trip knitting was a pair of thick, warm socks that I am apparently going to finish for my husband just in time to store them away for Spring:

These are Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Woodsman's Socks", from The Opinionated Knitter. I'm using two colors of Paton's Classic Merino that were sitting together on the shelf at Michael's and they called out to me: "Make us into some warm wooly socks!" The colors are called Grey Marl and Burnt Orange. The heel appears to be different colors because I decided to use up two half-bobbins of heel and toe reinforcement thread that I had on hand, rather than start a new one and subsequently have 3 partial-bobbins to use up.



I finished the first Cascadia sock from January's Rockin' Sock Club shipment:

It's my first successful toe-up sock. It actually fits my foot. Well, it mostly fits my foot. I learned something important from this project...Addi Turbo dpns size 1 are NOT the same size in millimeters as Knitpicks size 1! Who knew? (OK, lots of people knew, but not me, until now.) The moral of that story is use a needle sizer or you will have surprising gauge issues.


I also learned a lesson this week about my computer monitor's color properties. I used the coupon from the Rockin' Sock Club to order 3 skeins of Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. A lovely golden yellow semi-solid, a soft, subtle, pale peach, and a sort of funky hand-paint colorway that I've been drawn to since it first graced the website. And here they are:

They are basically the same color, even though on my computer screen they looked entirely different. I still love them though: Wonderful Goodness, Narikama, and Hoofle Foofle. At least two of them are destined to be socks for other people, so it won't really matter that they are so similar, but I still thought it was kind of funny.

I'm off to tidy up the house, and hopefully knit a little bit before the kiddos get home from school. Thanks for visiting my little blog, and have a fantastic day!