Hodge Podge

Thursday, the week is nearly over (yay!). My body is recovering well, I am only sore where I am bruised or scraped (basically left elbow, right thigh and left hip). This weekend is the Boston Vegetarian Festival, which I am planning on going to with The Bitter Knitter.

Last work week ended with a high note. I received my tea swap package from Shannan, down in Maryland. My package was full of goodies, there was some vanilla almond loose tea from the Republic of Tea, a green tea sampler from Stash, and some wild orange decaf tea from Tazo, and some cinnamon honey. To snack on, there was a package of Milano cookies, which are gone now, and a box of caramel chocolates (dark and milk) from Bomboy's in Havre de Grace, these chocolates are about half way gone now too. The chocolates would be completely gone, except for the fact that I am trying to savor them. To knit, there were two beautiful skeins of yarn, on is Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and the other is Sockotta sock yarn. I have never worked with either before. In addition to all those goodies, there were 3 Yankee candles. So far, I have been burning a "biscotti" scented one at home.

I feel like my lump of brown lace will never be done. I had planned on waiting until all of the edging was knit before sharing photos of the piece. That, of course, was when I thought that the edging would be done in a matter of days. The shawl is a square (when done) and each side of the square seems to have between 400-500 stitches, which means that there are almost 400-500 rows per edging size. The shawl pattern is the Frost Flowers shawl from A Gathering of Lace. I knit it at a smaller gauges, and so did extra rows in the center, which means extra rows of edging. I am not yet halfway done the edging, and I spent a good part of Tuesday working on this thing.

A little about my weekend bike ride, first though, I managed to raise $125 for the NYC chapter of the National MS Society. Thanks again to those of you who donated for my ride, sorry that I wasn't able to do the 60 miles I told I would be doing. The ride is really an amazing one. I heard about it from one of my Aunts, who lives in Jersey and worked in NYC. There are/were 4 routes/lengths. A thirty mile ride (which both of my parents did this year) which takes you around the outside of Manhattan island. They close down part of the FDR, a couple other roads, and the Harlem River Drive, for the ride. There were over 4,000 bicyclist this year. The 60 mile ride (which is actually 66 miles long) starts the same as the 30 mile ride, but then takes you through the Lincoln Tunnel, they close one of the tubes, and into New Jersey, and up into the Palisades park (not parkway), you go up and down hills and have lunch at the top of one of the hills, before returning to Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge. If you, for some reason, can't do the 60 mile ride, they have an unadvertized option of doing 45 miles, instead of going into the Palisades you can go straight on to the GW Bridge. Finally, there is a 100 mile ride which takes you further north of the Palisades before returning you to Manhattan via the GW Bridge. Some day I hope to do the 100 mile ride.