Knitting These, Reading This

Besides shaking my head over spammers and going to the beach, I've been working on the latest pair of socks (the souvenir socks made of the Supersocke 100 yarn I bought at Knitters' Mercantile) and reading my new knitting book, Gossamer Webs: The History and Techniques of Orenburg Lace Shawls, by Galina Khmeleva and Carol R. Noble.

Given how difficult it has become to buy Knitting Lace, which was published in 1992, I thought rather than wait until it was out of print and going for $50 to $100 on eBay, I would buy Gossamer Webs now, while it's available at the cover price.

I'm terrible at book reviews. So I'll just say that I love the eye candy in this book. I've decided to wait until I've taken the introduction to Orenburg workshop before knitting from the book, but the instructions look fairly easy to follow, and they include charts, which I find easy to work from.

Julie asked, "Anyone else get this?" namely a "thumb divot" from knitting. So here's my thumb-divot photo, complete with stitch impressions.

Thumb divot I don't mind so much, but the waking up at night with numb hands I could do without.

Let's see, what else have we been doing?

Oh, yeah, we used a free pass and went back to the zoo Friday, where I visited my buddy the wolf eel. When we went to the zoo earlier in the summer, it was the one day it rained, and we spent a lot of time on the indoor exhibits like the aquarium.

This time we had no rain, but the temperature was in the 90's, so the cool indoor buildings were crowded. Our son loves the tide pool exhibit, where periodically a rush of aerated water swooshes in from one end. I think he would have spent our whole stay there, if I hadn't been dragging him around to look at the tiger and the budgie aviary.

And I just discovered that Marguerite, over at Stitches of Violet, tagged me as a "Rockin' Girl Blogger".

I have to agree that the hot pink of the button is not me, either. The pinkest thing in my life is probably our hot pink phlox, beloved of the hummingbird hawk moth. And I've been fairly militant about calling female people past high school age "women" rather than "girls", even if the young ones (young whippersnappers! [cackle]) do seem more and more like little girls to me with every passing year.

Wow, is it hard to pick from all the blogs I read . . .

Tatt3r has three blogs, one each for knitting, lace, and her dog.

Beth, over at Morbid Fascination, I've known in real life (remember real life?) since middle school. You rock, girl!

Amy in Rhode Island, another knitter and full-time mom.

Julie hasn't been tagged yet, has she? Tag!

And how about Bells? Just because I love watching the inverted seasons and her steeked jacket.