Amazing Lace Challenge 4: What is it now?

If I had to find a use for Peacock in her present state?

Modern art!

I call it Lace, Interrupted.

Knitting and Baseball

Last night was Stitch & Pitch night at our local AAA baseball stadium. It was well over 100 degrees, but more than 30 hardy knitters packed up their knitting and took it out to the ballgame. The Sacramento RiverCats printed up some special canvas tote bags for us (that's Christi from the 'Cats marketing department making sure every knitter got one!)

And a knitter from the Sacramento Stitch 'n' Bitch group, Marin -- who worked with the 'Cats to organize the whole thing -- was invited to throw out the first pitch! We wondered if she would opt to throw a ball of wool or acrylic, but in the end, she threw an ordinary baseball -- and did a fine job of it, too!
After the sun set, it was a beautiful (and warm) evening. Raley Field has a picture-postcard view of the city skyline, and the Tower Bridge. It was $1 hotdog and ice cream night, so guess what we ate? Oh, yeah -- the game was fun, too! We are definitely planning to do this again!

Cooling Off

What to do when it's too hot to knit? Do something impulsive: Jump in the car with some knitting buddies and head for the hills! So here we are, knitting in the cool shade of some obliging Sierra pines. Temperature in the mountains: 80 degrees. Temperature at home: 104. Good choice, huh?
We even managed some FOs! Here are my watermelon socks from Vicki Suan's yarn, and Cindi's first of two.
Emmy finished two scarves for her niece from yarn selected during Brittanie's visit last month.

Betsy finished the back of her cabled sweater and made great progress on the front.

Laura completed her fabulous Rogue cardigan -- and sewed on matching silver Celtic buttons. And the best part was -- it was cool enough to wear it!!

Needles just seem to knit faster at higher (and cooler) elevations.

The Sock Plot Thickens

Ya know, sometimes the only way to beat 'em is to just finish 'em up. So there they are, just in time for our 100+ degrees 4th of July weather!

And yes, that is a stitch marker knit right into the sock. I make coordinating stitch markers for each of my sock projects, just for fun. When you do toe up, you really don't need them, but I like to use a marker to mark the rounds during the toe increases. After that, they are just "knitting jewelry." When I'm nearly finished with the second sock, my faithful stitch marker, as a reward for stitcking out the whole project, gets knit in right above the ankle. Kinda like a sockish ankle charm. These socks are for me, hence the frog in the marker.

I also knit up a pair of socks for my daughter, who has an affinity for camelids -- alpacas and camels in particular. So here are her socks ---

And here is her special stitch marker. She didn't care if it was 100 degrees -- she pulled them right on and wore them in the house for her whole weekend visit. In fact, she was so grateful, she is probably going to get another pair of socks in the very near future! :)