Where did this week month go?

Shocking that tomorrow is the first day of August, no?

I meant to blog much more this week, but was overtaken by various and sundry. The biggest timesuck was finishing the second half of my Sock Summit yarns, which are shipping out to Portland today. I mentioned earlier in the month that Kathy Elkins offered to sell BBF yarn at the WEBS booth for me since I just couldn't swing the cash for a plane ticket right now (not to mention the logistics of trying to ship yarn and the other things I'd need to set up a booth all the way across the country...). If all goes well and UPS does its job with the remaining boxes, WEBS will have 15 colorways of Superwash Merino Classic to sell -- including the colorways that I entered in the Ravelry Dye for Glory contest. (Voting is still open so if you feel inclined to vote for BBF, please do so before 11:59 p.m. August 1st!)

In addition to Mary Cassatt:

(entered in the Watercolors category), and the other watercolor-like colorway I did, City of Roses:


you'll find the nearly solids Betsy Ross (entered in the Out-of-the-Box category, since I don't use only black to create the subtle color variations):


and Kathy's Cape (inspired by Kathy Elkins' vacation photos!):


Kathy will also have a bunch of the sample socks from the book on display, so if you are in Portland, you lucky thing, stop by!

Another exciting thing that happened this week was receiving a copy of the new Knit Simple magazine, and turning to the very last page, to see my essay published there! Grab a copy.

Despite all of these yarn-y things going on, I still had 3 kids to entertain. Luckily, my mom came for a quick visit and helped immensely by playing endless games of Monopoly and Operation. (I was aghast to discover that the new Operation does not merely buzz when you touch the edges to take out the wrenched ankle, but now has all sorts of annoying sound effects to drive one's parents crazy. Feh.)

We did the ever-popular fruit-picking expedition on Wednesday; here are the kids in the hayride out to the peach orchard:


The peaches were huge -- the size of baseballs.

We also picked some amazing blackberries, which were also incredibly large and sweet:

and even a dozen ears of sweet corn, right off the stalk:

My mother hates having her picture taken and always wears an American-Gothic-like expression in photos, even though she doesn't have a mean bone in her body

I still have some catching up to do on the blog (I haven't forgotten that I owe you a book review) so I'll try to catch up next week. Have a great weekend, everybody.