We got back home from a great visit with my parents in Austin this past Monday.
Awaiting me was soft, sunny yarn (Melange in a new color, Saffron) from Blue Sky Alpacas for a sweater for the Winter Knitcircus; gorgeous soft alpaca/merino/silk from Spirit Trail Fiberworks for the hat for the Fresh Designs book; and 2 balls of pretty blue Wool Bam Boo for mitts for Classic Elite.  I’m still waiting for yarn for a couple projects (raven mitts for Knitting Iceland, some yarn from Mackintosh for the 2nd iteration of the stranded mitts).
The new sweater is coming along swimmingly — it’s top down, seamless, with a scoop neck and cabling and a lace pattern adapted from one of the Japanese stitch dictionaries (very like the one in my Kelpie mitts). It’s going to have some gentle waist shaping as well (darts).
I’ve noticed that sometimes I become very disenchanted with a design in the early to mid design stages. I’ve learned I need to persevere through the angst; the vast majority of the time I’m happy with the end product. With the winter sweater (I need a working name, if not the final name! it’s in Rav as Sweet Cicely, but that’s not quite doing it for me ) there was a brief hiccup with the final choice of stitch patterns (I ended up changing it a bit) but I’m actually very pleased with it. I’m still on the upper back and have a couple inches on it to go before I start doing the armhole shaping (I’m going to work the back & the front at the same time) but I’ve done enough to get a really good feel for the stitch pattern. The problem with large cable (or lace) motifs is that you have to do a fair bit of work, of course, to really see how it’s going to look (yes, even with having swatched, at least for me).
Otherwise I’ve been busy with veterinary work and tech editing.
Rosemary and Curtis, my in-laws, are visiting. Rosemary is a knitter so we get to do fun knitterly things together (including a knitting cruise around Alamitos Bay next Wednesday!).
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On gardening:
We need to start focusing on our fall garden: revitalizing the earthboxes, pruning the tomatoes, checking & distributing compost, going through seeds and ordering more if needed.  The native plants (especially the sages and Artemesia spp) also need a bit of pruning.
On working out:
I’m thinking I might want to do Vineman 70.3 next summer. Just sayin’.