vacations!

Short notes:

In a rare turn of events, my uncle and several cousins have come to visit, and we find ourselves in a glorious mass of family. For my mother's 50th birthday, we hosted a bbq behind her house. The boys blew up the grill, and one of the tiki torches caught fire and nearly burned down the tent, so we cheered the event as a success.

In the in-between moments when the crew bundled off to the beach, my mother and I curled up in her bedroom spinning stories while I finished knitting the unseasonal sweater, which I could not persuade the infink to model. 89 degree weather, pshaw.

We forgot the camera cord, so I've had to point the laptop at things instead:









And then I bought 4 more skeins of yarn. "Why don't you do projects you already have yarn for?" asks dxfh. "I just did that. Now I get to fill the holes in my stash with fancy alpaca." Yes, that - and the giant rolls of mohair my mother plundered from a crazy knitting cat lady's stash. One of our friends is a psychiatrist, and has been purging her client of a mountainous stash (studded with cats) which has threatened to overwhelm the old lady's home and sanity. I fear I may have seen my fate here. It works, though; I started knitting to ward off heartbreak, and now when unexpected reminders of days long gone pop up to kick my knees out, I find myself fingering fluffy fibers and visualizing knitted motorcycle cozies [organ pillows, robots, etc] long enough for it to pass. Boring for onlookers, but effective for the tender-hearted.

In other news: Ben has been writing the outline to his great American zombie novel, Mikey ate beef tendons, Jen survived a landslide and only nearly lost her leg, Uncle Mark has thrown himself off of cliffs into horrifying surf, my mom turned a cot into a chaise lounge, dxfh bought new beer-making supplies, and Gavin lost a tooth and has all the skin peeling off his face. Quite a remarkable week. ^_^