Last weekend’s stop on the Summer Wedding Circuit was Okoboji, Iowa, home of one of my beloved college roommates. The thing that’s special about Okoboji (well, one of the things) is the lake. Here’s the handsome husband posing on the Queen II in said lake:

I’m under the impression that every boat owner in the whole midwest visits Okoboji in the summer. It’s quite the hopping scene. After our freshman year of college, Mia and I came out to see Kate’s hometown for the 4th of July, and there was much merriment. So I was delighted to have the chance to go back this year for Kate’s wedding. It was an excellent reunion with college friends and Kate’s wonderful family, and the wedding couldn’t have been more perfect (well, maybe if it hadn’t been 100 degrees outside…).

I even did a little knitting on the plane and in Kate’s mom’s coffee shop. Now that my US #0 circs are free from the baby booties, I finally got to pull out my Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in “Sand Ridge”. I’m such a fan of this yarn, and this colorway, but I know how many people have had pooling problems with it. And I really hate pooling. So I knew exactly what this yarn was destined to become: feather-and-fan socks, of course. I’ve wanted to make these for ages, and although I don’t own Socks, Socks, Socks, I was able to steal a peek at it in the LYS and quickly memorize the pattern. Kate is always up for any goofiness, so I asked her to hold the sock for a picture the morning after the wedding:

All too soon, it was time to head back to NYC. But on the drive up to the Minneapolis airport, we had to stop to see the Green Giant.

And here’s a sock’s eye view:

It’s been rather slow going with this sock. I had to tink a bunch of rows yesterday because I’d missed a yarn over. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that I had the wrong number of stitches. But hopefully I’ll have a pair done in time for sock weather.

Friday was an utter fiasco. Let’s just say it involved boneheaded yours truly and airplanes and one more airport than it should have, and let’s just leave it at that, because it’s still too painful to speak of. The upshot was that I spent about five more hours traveling to North Carolina than I should have, and I missed my friends’ rehearsal dinner on a river boat and spent the evening in a hotel room with Domino’s Pizza and Whose Line Is It Anyway? reruns.

After allowing ample time for feeling sorry for myself, I decided to look on the bright side. On a sow’s ear of a day, what to do but make a silk purse? Actually, the Bible proclaims this is impossible, and not wanting to provoke any more retaliation from Upstairs, I settled for a cotton/nylon purse:

I didn’t have the right handbag to go with my outfit, so I grabbed a ball of Adrienne Vittadini Allegra in a pinky salmon shade and whipped up this little Regency Reticule to hold my essentials. It matched my hat quite nicely.

I also had plenty of time to work on Rosalind, my second Crusoe sock, and a pair of Ruffled Rib Baby Socks (by Ann Budd from Interweave) I’m making for some friends in England. I’m madly in love with these booties. And I love this fabulous Koigu colorway, which I picked out of the Koigu oddments bowl at Purl. Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn halfway through the foot of the second booty, as you can see above. So I’ll be dashing over there at lunch today to see if I can find any more of it. If not, I’ll have to get creative. These are just too cute not to finish.

Ah, the beautiful summer weekends in New York City. The thrill of the triathlon. The cheering onlookers. The smell of the Hudson. And then, the monotony of waiting in line for free Shakespeare in the Park tickets. It was an eventful Sunday indeed.

The thrill of the triathlon belongs to my husband, who found out he’d gotten off the waiting list at the last moment on Saturday. Dauntless, he merrily prepared his gear, despite not having trained as he would have liked. And of course I had to turn up to support him. I was down at the river by 6:45.

This was the scene – you can see the dock where the athletes climbed out of the water after the 1.5k swim. That’s not Adam. He was actually so much faster in the water than I expected that he appeared before I could get the camera ready. I watched him head out on the bike around 7:20 and then booked it over to the park to get in line for Shakespeare tickets. The theatre distributes the tickets at 1:00, but you need to be in line before 8:30 to be assured of getting any. We’ve done this every year since we’ve lived in New York. So while I waited, I knit. I worked my apricot jacket sleeve up to the shoulder cap before I ran out of yarn (I’d foolishly left the remaining two balls at the office – yes, I have stash overflow there.), and then I spent some time with the sock. I took a break to watch Adam run by:

He joined me after he finished in the excellent time of 2:39:38. Yay, Husband!

And there was more than one sock on a bike this weekend:

And when I tired of the sock stranding (I’m working the foot), I cast on for a new project. It’s design number five from the Vogue spring/summer issue, but I’m making some modifications, including removing the arms. I’m also knitting it in some nifty French yarn, courtesy of Becky. It’s Bouton d’Or Organdi in color “tilleul”, which means “linden”, my favorite tree. The Organdi is quite intriguing in its content and construction. There’s a viscose/polyamide core of chain links, rather like Southwest Trading Company’s Bamboo yarn, only more pliable when knit, and it’s woven together with strands of linen. The result is a fairly soft but textural yarn with a lot of shine, and the color is a beautiful greeny gold, like a field of wheat.

Since Vogue is so pathetic about naming their designs (this one is called…wait for it…”Short Sleeve Top”!), I’ve taken it upon myself to give this one a name. In honor of As You Like It, which is the play we saw, I shall call her Rosalind.