Although there has been lots of fun activity to talk about the last two weeks, I have neglected to write it all down.  All of the hiking, walking, eating, hot tubbing, drinking, running, shopping and knitting in the perfect, dry 80 degree heat of the desert prevented me from it.  You may now curse me openly.  You may even feel I need to be punished in some way.

Many of you know that I got the pattern and yarn for the Forest Path Stole the evening before I left for Arizona.  I was excited to be able to take this project on the trip so I immediately wound the yarn and cast on…I wanted to get to the “real” part of the pattern before I got on the plane.  A couple hours on the departure day got me to the point where all of the triangles were ready.  Fortunately, it was too dark and I was too tired on the plane to work on it then.  The “fun” part of the patterned entrelac sections therefore started (to refresh your memory, this is my first entrelac project) at the AZ home on the couch in the evenings after all the hiking, shopping, drinking (do not speak to me about KUI…I am fully aware of the risks involved) etc.  Portions of this went pretty well until I got to the Lily of the Valley chart.  For reasons unknown to me I had to tink on this one little square about 46 times before I finally got it right.  Part of it was those stupid flower buds (knit/make 5 sts in 1 st and then purl them all together on the next row…try that with size two needles, black yarn and the lack of proper lighting…I finally learned to make the stitches much looser…which by the way created its own issues) and part of it was??? (ok, maybe the wine)  My husband kept commenting on the face I was making while knitting this project and “isn’t this supposed to be fun and relaxing?”  Oh, why yes!  I must have forgotten that part while lost in the seeming futility of these tiny squares (which, by the way, have 800 stitches each).  At any rate, I got through that first Lily of the Valley square and then began to make a little progress (at the rate of about one square per night, but progress nonetheless).  All this time I was not blogging, I was still recording the progress thinking any day I would be writing this and saying “Lookee here!  My stole is progressing quite nicely.”  So here they are:

The other thing I keep meaning to write about is how freaking cute the Carefree/Cave Creek area is.  Obviously we love it since we chose to buy a house here but sometime I will share it with you in detail.  Definitely worth visiting if you’re ever in the area.  There are so many cute shops, restaurants and galleries along with plenty of hiking, biking and festivals.  For example, this weekend the Fiesta Days celebration in honor of the western heritage of the area.  A parade and rodeos mark the event.  Yesterday was the Desert Foothills Library sale (something they do monthly) and the farmers market.  Now here is another part where you may want to curse me and wish me ill…I got 18 books for…$40.50.  There was only one knitting book but it is one of the great reference books… Vogue Knitting.  A bit out of date (original version 1989) but a bargain at $3.  The others are a variety of fiction with some other reference books including one on gardening in Arizona.

While I continue to distract you before I go back to the forest path stole, you may be wondering “what is up with that title?”  It was inspired by my dinner last night.  I am not use to the stove out here…it is maddeningly slow compared to my high power cook top at home.  When I added the tortellini to the water it was at a gentle boil…pretty much all this cook top ever does.  Five minutes into the cooking though it was a different story.  With the lid on a rolling boil was reached and there were tortellini guts everywhere.  Fortunately, tortellini still taste good regardless of appearance.  Doesn’t this look tasty?

At this point you may be wondering, “What does she mean continue to distract us?  She already showed us the stupid stole.  We get it…progress.  Quit boring us with the darn thing until there is something substantial, ok?”  Well…ok.  But remember about the cursing and wishing me ill since I am out here in the beautiful warm and sunny desert, on holiday, knitting and otherwise cavorting while most of you are at work and enduring crappy, below average temps and snow?  Well…someone got their wish.  Since knitters are such a caring and lovely group and generally do not go around cursing wishing others ill, I sincerely doubt it was any of you so I instead suspect the knitting goddess.  She must not have cared for my lackadaisical, wine influenced approach to the entrelac.  No…it must deserve much more respect.  Again, on a lily of the valley square, I began to have trouble.  While doing the p2t at the end of the row something happened.  Something I still can’t explain.  All of the sudden there were about 7 stitches live, free and running down the panel.  It’s that stupid edge…apparently one of the stithces slipped off while I was going the p2t…that releases so many of those p2t all down the edge which, trust me, is a BIG problem.  I picked them up and fixed it the best I could, which was no semblance of the original pattern but it would have to do.  I continued on.  It happened again.  And AGAIN.  At this point it was not only a mess but there was the real possibility that somewhere in there a live stitch was hanging out just waiting to run as soon as I had finished and blocked the stole.  I thought about this for a while.  There were about 4,652 mistakes in the whole thing already and so I made a rash decision.  I frogged.  The. Whole. Thing.  I admit, a little crazy but there were several things I wasn’t happy about anyway.  Like the cast on should have been looser.  And where the first triangles joined there was a little hole in one of the joints just mocking me. 

If anyone says lifeline to me I will seriously drop everything I’m doing to come and kick your *#!.  That will be all.