Nana and The Cats: I Love a Parade!

Today was interesting. A lot of the towns and villages in our area have festivals this time of year to celebrate various meaningful events. These festivals usually include a parade or other kick-off extravaganza. So Linda signed the shop up to participate in one of the towns nearby where a lot of our customers are based. Since I don’t normally work on Saturday, she asked if I minded helping out, and since I actually hadn’t made any other plans for the weekend, I said sure! Why not, parades can be fun. So if you ever get asked to be in one, go for it. By my rough count, this makes about the 10th or so parade that I’ve been in. It was fun.

(I apologize for the quality, we all forgot our cameras and had to use my cell phone to take this. That's me on the left in my new Cardinals cap that DH sent for my birthday)

The hardest part was that we were one of the last entries, so by the time it got around to our turn to march, I had gotten past the heel turn on the sock I was knitting and was ready to pick up stitches for the gusset. This as I discovered is not really that easy to do while walking. So I just went with smiling at the crowd and waving my sock… I did the harlot proud! So, I know I promised a knitting post and this one is meant to be it. I’ll get back to the parade sock eventually. I finished the Monkey socks that I knitted on at every opportunity during TNNA. So without further ado, I present the Mixed Up Monkeys

Pattern: Monkey Socks, by Cookie A. Yarn: Claudia Hand Paint Fingering in Desert Dusk, dye lots 8030.01. 009 and 015 Needles: Size 0, magic loop I’ve also made reasonable progress on the Blue Simplicity socks, but they are just shy of being finished (but apparantly didn't take a picture). I started the second Diamond Delight Vest which I am calling Lakeshore, because the colors remind me of (wait for it) taking a walk along a lake shore (hee, hee). This is for a class / KAL that I am teaching at the shop. I’m knitting it in Rowan Pima cotton, seven different colors:

I also cast on for the Christmas Stocking that will be my July sock class, since we are doing a “Christmas in July” promotion at the shop. It’s not very interesting yet, so, no picture. Then there are the parade socks; just a simple striped anklet in Panda Cotton, in colors Baby Blues and Deep Water. It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but when it was taken before the parade I was just starting on the first dark stripe.... as I said, we had enough wait time for me to turn the heel before we actually started down the parade route. Even though I tried to pick up stitches during the times we had to stop for the cheerleaders in front of us, I ended up ripping out most of them.

But, as you can see, I fixed it, picked up the stitches and started the gusset after I got home. This sock will go on the back burner while I get serious on the Christmas Stocking and vest projects. But maybe I’ll try to finish the blue sock during the solstice party I’m going to tonight (it’s a knitting party!).

And one last thing: the front of the shirts we wore in the parade had our shop logo (same as sign), the back says: