new mexico

Got back tonight from a road trip to Taos and Santa Fe. A gorgeous area....I'm so glad I finally got around to exploring this part of the Southwest a little bit. The week was filled with drooling over art (pottery, woven fabrics, painting, metalwork, drums, etc...) going to the opera (there was a bit of drooling involved in that, too, particularly in regard to the baritone who sang Billy Budd) and gorging on Mexican food. I'm glad to be home, though. Here are a few more photos from the trip:

aspen

I spent this weekend in Aspen visiting friends at the music festival there. What a glorious setting for such an event. We saw a fabulous concert on Sunday afternoon; Julia Fischer played the heck out of the Dvorak violin concerto and the orchestra also played Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe--a phenomenal piece. My friends, who are the members of the Tazman quartet, also performed a Haydn quartet that they're working on for me, which was a treat!

I did get some knitting done, too....my Lillian tank is now all in one piece. Pictures of that soon. I'm off to Santa Fe tomorrow!

getting close

I've finished the armhole shaping and I don't have too far to go before the Lillian tank is finished. I tried it on this morning and it's looking like it's going to fit. So maybe I'll be able to actually wear something hand-knit this summer!

I'm also still plugging along on my lotus blossom tank. Pictures of that coming soon, though it's going to be several more weeks til it's finished.

knit-along

My friend Jenny and I are doing a knit-along, just the two of us. We're doing the Shetland Triangle Shawl from wrap style. (We were inspired by the beautiful pictures of this shawl on Green Apples....I absolutely drool over just about everything she makes!) I'm using Panda Silk from Crystal Palace Yarns--it is the most gorgeous bamboo/wool/silk yarn.

It was very hard to take pictures due to my annoyingly curly needles, but here's a close-up.

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.