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I hope everyone had a wonderful Fourth!

We spent the day from 9am-5pm at East Beach in SB, playing in the sand & surf. A bit of volleyball (though not much because the physical therapist has told George it’s too high impact) but mostly just boogie-boarding in the water. It was a perfect beach day, warm enough to be in the water but a nice breeze to keep cool on the sand.

After the beach, we went to see Ratatouille with the kids. It was much funnier than I expected it to be. That could also be that there was a man in the audience that had one of those catching laughs. He liked it a lot too. Tyler & Sadie enjoyed it but Trevor really didn’t care. He sat through it happy enough but came out saying he didn’t even like it a little bit. Odd considering it was geared more at his age, 6, than the other 2, almost 9 & 10.

Once the movie was done, 8:20pm, we started our walk from the theatres down to the pier for front row seats of the fireworks. It is about 1.25miles downhill the whole way. It was an easy walk, especially considering we were in a crowd of huge proportions. Nothing compared to after the fireworks though. It was an expected crowd of over 100,000. I could safely hazard a guess that when we walked off the sand & back onto State St to walk our way back up to the car, we were in a crowd of over 10,000. We filled up the sidewalks plus the 4 lanes (and a suicide lane) of State St that was closed down just for this reason. It was insane! Once we got past the freeway underpass we could move over one street and avoid the crowd completely.

When we got home we had ourselves some ice cream cones & turned on the History Channel to give a little perspective to the events of our day. We had a Birthday Party for our Nation. I will say this, meaning no disrespect to anyone, we sat next to people during the fireworks that spoke perfect english but referred to the day as ‘their independence day’ and couldn’t believe the band was playing a song about ‘America’. That disturbed me to my core! They live here, work here, probably have legal citizenship here, yet it’s not their county too. I am not sorry that I want my kids to have a full respect for our Nations history, that does include the Mexican American War & we won. I want our Independence Day to be ‘Our’ Independence Day, all living here included. Respect it, if not then don’t go take part in the celebration.

Off my high horse now, of which I fall face first rather often, I love this country. I love the people here, I love the capitalism (we own our own small business), I love freedom. Even if I don’t like what people do with their freedom I still love it. And respect it. That is what makes us a nation that hasn’t fallen apart, we are a self-leveling community for the most part. 2 sides to everything with a little mixed in. I love my Party, that would be the Republican party. I love the freedom to disagree with my party & vote differently if I want to. In all honesty, that doesn’t happen very often ;o) I just am so grateful & blessed to be an American. We are privileged beyond belief to have the society and nation we have.

And most of all, thank you to all of our Heroes, troops now & in the past, that fight for our freedoms!

Yay to being 231 years old!

Don’t get me wrong, the Mystery Stole is not running my life…but…those first 100 rows are so beautiful I can’t wait for the next 100 on Friday. So until then, what should I do?? What should I work on?
Last night I dug through my cupboards/drawers/stash to find something I could pick up & possibly finish by Friday. I found a sweater back I had started for George but it wasn’t wide enough. It’s long enough to make a Starsky type cardigan for myself though! I cast on the sleeves last night & with only 30 sts on size 10.5 needles I just might have a finished cardigan by Friday! We’ll see.

In my beachbag I have the Orangina by Glampyre. I am using size 4 Addi lace needles and Brown Sheep Cotton Fine yarn in Orange, of course.

You can see that I decided to do beads on the Orangina. I am very happy with that decision. I don’t know how many rows I will do them on. It may end up only that one row on the top edge. Nice & Simple.

Julie has had 2 of the Lantern Moon Fish Messenger Bags for a while & I was just waiting for someone to snatch up that green one so I didn’t have to buy it. But, none of you obliged so I was forced, forced I tell you, to buy it!

That’s the chevron scarf hanging out of it. It has 2 pair of socks (the class socks & Tyler’s tiger socks) in it as well. I am hoping to have all 3 done in the next week as well. The scarf I am in no hurry to finish other than just to be done with it.
The bag is roomy, has lots of pockets outside as well as a zippered pocket inside. I think it’s going to be a fantastic bag!

So here is the sacrifice I made to wear my new shoes, the patent black platforms to be exact:

OUCH! Walking up & down State St. for 8 blocks wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done in brand new shoes. Oh well, learned my lesson & now I must remember to get moleskin patches to keep in my wallet at all times! It will be about a week of flipflop type shoes before I can wear any of the other fun ones. Damn!

For years I have been saying I want some yarn from Denmark. So, while browsing one of the danish blogs that I read I found a link to Garnbutik, a danish store & site. I went there & bought some Kauni wool.
They came in just over a week and look at how huge these hanks are! 8″wide by 13″ long by 4″ thick

It’s a fingering weight, pink & cream has 880 meters and the green has 920 meters. Enough for a couple of lovely shawls. I am thinking Garden Path Shawl or some other simple yet beautiful pattern. They are pretty rough wool but I think once I wash the hanks in some SOAK they will be just fine.

Simple as that

It’s pinned very loosely, I didn’t want to stretch it out on the tablerunner because then the runner would just bunch up underneath it. So, that is the first 100 rows done. You can’t really see the beads too well but taht is an okay thing!
This is the Zephyr wool/silk in Steel on size 5 needles. No lifelines.

I posted a bunch on our family blog yesterday. Go have a look & someone, for crap’s sake, please leave us a comment!

ps. Ali gets a pass because she already commented on all of yesterday’s posts! Rock on Ali, Rock on!