Back from our annual no-computer vacation on Cape Cod. Seven days of blissful nothing in North Truro.

This year's round of nothing included lots of knitting and reading time, a whale watch, some golf, watching the opening night of a thoroughly enjoyable Much Ado About Nothing, a couple of excellent dinners out, plus several equally excellent ones we prepared ourselves. Including paella on the beach - cooked on the grill against a Provincetown sunset:

The only less than ideal moment of the week was the last voyage of the Feckless, seen here in happier days:

Our Gannet II model two-person open cockpit kayak was swept away from the beach behind the Top Mast Hotel in North Truro by a pre-dawn storm on 5 July. We searched Beach Point, and the Provincetown area surf and mud flats for two days, but never found it. The loss has been reported to the Harbor Masters at Truro and Provincetown, and to the police in North Truro. In the remote chance that there's anyone on the bay side of the Outer Cape reading this, there's a finder's reward out for the Feckless, please keep an eye out for it.

In knitting news, I spent the week working on a small baby blanket. I'm using Lana Grossa Merino 2000 (aka Cool Wool) - an extremely soft multi-strand machine washable Merino, in a weight somewhat between sport and DK. It's well twisted although like any yarn made up of huge number of tiny plies, it can split. Stitch definition is superior thanks to its spring and almost tubular construction. I've adapted yet another pattern from the Duchrow series. This garter stitch based double zig-zag pattern has particularly nice eyelet roses in the center of each diamond. It was meant as a strip insertion. I've used it three times across my blanket, separated and framed by plain stockinette. For the edging, I added a garter stitch adaptation of a large eyelet border, shamelessly plucked from Heirloom Knitting, but altered a bit to better match the garter stitch all SSK eyelet texture of the main body. Also, I'm attempting to miter my corners on the fly. So far I like the second one I did, but not the first (I may rip back the edging to that point and re-do #1 now that I understand how to do it better. Second corner is shown in detail below:

I probably won't be posting this pattern here because there hasn't been very much interest in my recent pattern posts, and also because I've been working without making notes. The corners in particular would be difficult to explain.

So there you have it. Where I've been and what I've been doing. Standard post vacation let-down here, contemplating the 51 weeks before I get to do it again.

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