Hello summer my old friend......

We bought this house in LBI in the winter. We have been coming down here almost every weekend. The entire island was like a ghost town. Stores were closed. Restaurants were closed. Houses were winterized and abandoned for the winter months. I got used to being the only house with lights on at night. I never saw any neighbors. Needless to say, LBI was peaceful and private. My special introspective place. Well, all that has changed. To start, the car ride which just last weekend took only 1 hour and 10 minutes, took us almost 2 hours to get here. There are cars everywhere. People riding bikes. Families walking to the beach. Stores and restaurants are opened. Kites flying in the air. The only thing to do, other than cry and become a hermit, is to embrace the summertime and enjoy all of the chaos that has creeped onto my little island.

At least there are children for Zachary (10) and Sarah (8) to play with outside. Yesterday, they found many kids right on our street to have fun with outside. They kept themselves busy playing football and frisbee for hours. Guess what, that left a few hours for me to knit. I finished the 6th row of rectangles. I love when I get to the end of a rectangle row because I can spread out the blanket and really appreciate the entire blanket. Debbie Bliss' pattern is excellent. I figured out entrelac just by abandoning reason and following the pattern to the letter. I really thought that it would not work but, by the time I was making the first few rectangles I realized all was well in the knitting universe.

I love to challenge myself with knitting. I have knit complicated cabled arans, guernsies, lace, top down sweaters, designed many knits, afghans, intarsia, nordic two color, slippers, felted bags,and socks. I knit in public all of the time. I have taught many people to knit. My best student thus far is my friend and neighbor Diane. She has kept up with knitting and always has a project on her needles. We love to go to yarn stores together. I wish I had more people to knit with.

I found online knitters as a way to be part of a knitting community. I have learned so much. I would not be the knitter I am today without the invaluable resourses the internet has to offer. I learned about design, new yarns, new techniques, old techniques, designers, magazines, books, forums, online stores, knitting tutorials, free patterns, and finally blogs. The internet has opened up knitting to me in a way that is liberating and purposeful. As soon as I figure out how to post pictures I will share with you some of my finished knitting and current projects. I want to set up links to my daily blogs which I read. I want to set up a 100 things about me. I want to set up a link to my favorite web sites. I want ....I want....I want to learn more about computing and blogs.