It was a weekend for knitted gifts.

Here’s baby Alex, quite well grown for his three-and-a-half months, sporting his new footwear. I’m calling these moonbooties for their decided resemblance to ’70s moonboots. But they stay on beautifully, and they’ll fit the little fellow for at least another month or two. Apparently even the doctors remarked on his large feet when he was born!

And here’s Marika in her clapotis:

May it keep her warm through many hours of studying at the barbarously air-conditioned NYU library!

She’s all done! But she isn’t for me. Pretty early on, I knew she needed to be a present for my beautiful and talented almost-sister Marika, whose birthday was last week. So off she goes. We’ll try for a modeling shot this weekend.

(And no, I didn’t, after recent events, leave Mingus alone to block the Clapotis. I covered it up with a sheet because I knew he’d do his routine mad gallop over the couch first thing in the morning and spoil it.)

It was a red letter day for knitters throughout the five boroughs: the day of The Point’s knitting cruise in celebration of the third anniversary of knitty.com, and of The Point’s own magical goodness. The day didn’t start out too well for me. You know those mornings when you wake up vaguely aware that the cat has been making some pretty enthusiastic scuffling noises in the other room, but you’re still too deep in your state of lassitude to climb out of bed to see what he’s doing, so you just sort of hope he’s playing with his toy mouse before you roll over and go back to sleep? Yeah…

This picture really doesn’t capture even one tenth of the destruction that met my eyes when I finally did stumble out of bed. It seems that ultimately I have the spirit of a craftswoman and not that of a journalist. The first frenzied thought through my brain was “Repair! Repair!” and not “Document!” So I crawled around under the furniture rewinding my ball and picking cat hair out of the malabrigo and swearing before I realized I ought to take a picture. Actually, I may have the spirit of a vigilante – my very first thought was to find the son-of-a-mangey-monkey who dun this and give him an earful. And since I didn’t exactly have to send out a dragnet to round up suspects, that’s exactly what I did. (How did I come to leave my Clapotis lying about in such slatternly fashion that the ball of working yarn was available for this rumpus? Well, I left it on top of the laundry hamper where the cat never goes…and the darling hubby, being so darling and all, was trying not to wake me up when he left for his triathlon at 5 a.m. and may possibly have pulled his shorts out from under it a little indiscriminately, and since the darling hadn’t turned the light on he didn’t see that he’d released my precious ball of yarn down into Cat Territory…) Anyway, everyone is forgiven. We have nursery rhymes hundreds of years old that tell us what happens when you mix cats and yarn. This cautionary information is of such importance that generations of future knitters have learned it before they’re old enough to talk. Although my pet theory is that Mingus was reading over my shoulder the other day when I wrote to Lee Ann that he was good about leaving yarn alone, and he thought his bad-azz reputation might be slipping…

The omens didn’t get any better when I went to the flea market (Sundays the farmers bring their fresh produce, so I scored some tasty fruits and vegetables for the week) and the woman who sells the #5 green aluminum knitting needles wasn’t there. Her booth was just empty…I can only hope she was just on vacation and she’ll reappear next week!

But despite the signs, the cruise itself was delightful. I’m not sure how many people were there – seventy-five perhaps? It was a big bunch of happy floating knitters, and the breeze was cool enough on the river that we actually needed the knitwear we wanted to show off. I wore Lara, and she received many compliments. Goddess Amy of knitty.com fame took a picture of her and everything! And I worked on my mother’s feather-and-fan sock, which is nearly ready for a heel flap. You’ll have to visit other New York bloggers for good cruise pictures, as my little PowerShot S110 is proving itself to be sadly outdated, particularly in conditions with backlight. But here’s proof that the sock saw the statue of Liberty:

And no, the sock isn’t black. It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot in colorway “meadow”, which is a rich mix of greens, blues and purples that my mom picked out herself. I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow when the light is good, since I also need to photograph my fab gift bag haul. Here are some happy Spiders (even poor Lisa, who was kind of seasick, is feeling better here as we pull back up to the pier) anticipating the gift bags:

A big thank-you to Amy, Helane, John, Sandy, and the rest of the teams at The Point and knitty.com for this terrific afternoon!

As you can see from the sidebar, there are way too many projects in the hopper Chez Blue Garter. In all fairness, I have every expectation of finishing Apricot Jacket this weekend: it lacks only buttons and there are a few more ends to weave in. The bolero won’t be far behind – I finished one sleeve knitting with the Spiders yesterday evening and it won’t take long to dash off another. The several yards of lace edging may drag out for another week or two, but I intend to finish it in time for a wedding in Chicago on September 16, and I think I’ll make that deadline. And I only have a few more inches of sock foot before the feather-and-fans will be ready for wear.

But let’s talk new projects. I’ve finally assembled the most recent for their mug shots. Thanks to a dull few days working up a manuscript for copyediting, I’ve had time to forge all the way through the first ball of Malabrigo, and I’m into the third straight-row repetion on my second Clapotis. Can we all take a moment of appreciation for the amazing yardage of the fabulous Malabrigo? I’m converting people right and left with this stuff. No one who’s touched it can resist its ample charms.

Then there’s Dad’s gansey. Happily, it turns out I can knit on the bus without getting carsick, so long as I don’t have to peer closely at what I’m doing all the time. The gansey was the perfect project to accompany me through the loooooong hours on the bus to DC last weekend. Unfortunately, despite all those hours of knitting, it doesn’t seem to have grown very much. This is going to be a dogged knit, I can tell. I’ll just have to plug away at it. I’m trying to remind myself that I’m knitting the back and the front simultaneously, so of course it seems slower.

Finally, we have the Lotus Blossom Shawl. I’m just getting the feel of this pattern, but I love the Helen’s Lace and cheery poppy color. A big thank-you to Amanda for lending me her Denise circs for this one – I knew it was going to be too slippery for Addis. Here’s a close-up:

Behold the creation of my noodly appendage.

Not that it looks like much yet. This one’s going to need a serious blocking odyssey.