knitting camp

I did practically no knitting of my own last week, since I was teaching a knitting camp at my school. I spent all day fixing the various problems of my 11 students and actually found myself quite sick of yarn by the end of every day. The camp went fine, though. Interestingly enough, by far the biggest hit of the week with just about everyone was using my ball-winder and swift to wind yarn. Here are a few photos from the week:
Winding some yarn that we dyed with Kool-Aid.
Weaving on popsicle stick looms that we made.

a very dignified greeting

...from my graceful feline friend Sophie. This was not an action shot, mind you....she was listlessly sprawled in this position for about 15 minutes. I can't really blame her, though. I've been lounging around in much the same fashion for a good deal of this hot and relatively muggy weekend.

giving up....

Obviously, I have not been living up to my goal of posting every day....mostly because I haven't been crafting enough. So I'm going to abandon that pursuit. It made for really boring post titles anyway. I avoided all knitting today, since my wrists are really hurting. And I will have a very yarn-centric week ahead of me come Monday, when my fiber arts camp begins. I have been reading a lot of knitting books and planning madly all week, though.

I also couldn't muster up the will to start a sewing project, and I have several that I want to do. In fact, my only creative endeavor for the day was making a peach-blueberry pie to bring to a cookout tomorrow evening.

day 12

This picture (taken from my balcony) does not at all capture how nice an evening it was here.

My day included a book group meeting in a park, knitting and drinking lemonade in my friend Jenny's backyard, a little work at school, some reading on my couch, and a short bike-ride.

day 11

After making some scones for breakfast, I taught a voice lesson, went on a walk, went to the bookstore, did some grocery shopping at Whole Foods, which is always a treat, and read. A nice leisurely day in windy Boulder.

day 10

Today was spent almost entirely in cleaning out my closet. What a satisfying feeling to be done with that! My ankle was swollen and aching (from my 2 1/2 hour salsa class last night, I suppose) so I didn't get out for the hike that I was hoping for. But I did get a little knitting done.

Speaking of which, here's the status of my two current WIP's: I had to rip back about 8 rows of the Lillian tank since I realized that my lace pattern wasn't quite lining up right, but I've fixed the problem and now all is going along smoothly.I got quite a bit done on the lotus blossom tank while I was away. However, I ended up ripping back quite a lot of that, too, after reading about some other knitters' issues with the pattern and their solutions. I'm not following anyone's modifications per se. But I have decided to lengthen it, so I'm adding several inches of stockinette stitch before the armhole (I couldn't bear to knit another repeat of the lace and besides, I think less is more when it comes to lace.) I also included three decrease rounds after the lace section instead of just one to add a little more waist shaping. I will probably get back to that tomorrow, but I'm taking a break from it today as my wrists are kind of hurting since the yarn does not have very much give at all.

days 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9

I've been visiting friends in Oakland for the weekend, so no posting going on, but there has been some knitting, as you can see above! There's also been cooking:
and hanging out with my friends and their kids: