Maine Trip Report

The state motto of Maine is "The way life should be" and after visiting, I can see why. We started our trip in Bar Harbor, which is located on Mt. Desert Island. The primary attraction here is Acadia National Park, which for me was the highlight of the trip (besides WEBS, duh).
On our first day in Bar Harbor, it rained. We spent most of the day relaxing and wandering around town, and around 4PM the rained started to clear. We strolled along the shore path in downtown Bar Harbor.

That night we went up to the top of Cadillac Mountain to see the sunset. It was beautiful but very chilly!

Attempting the self-portrait.

Sunset atop the mountain.

The next day we spent in Acadia. It was truly stunning...the blue waters, green trees and rocks made for many great pictures.

One of many lookout spots. We got better at taking pictures of ourselves as the trip went on.

Sand beach within the park. The water was quite cold!

We took a slight detour out of the park and explored Seal Harbor.

We then went back into the park and walked the trail around Jordan Pond.

After leaving Bar Harbor, we spent 3 more relaxing days in Camden. The highlights of Camden were some off the beaten path lobster pounds we found. I think I ate lobster at least once a day for the entire trip. Yum!

Hello. I am your dinner.

It was a wonderful week and we had beautiful weather. This weekend I'm getting ready to head back to work, knitting and visiting with family. Hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend as well.

Summer Vacay in Maine: Yarn

Bill and I just returned last night from our trip to Maine. We had a wonderful time! I will post some pictures and show you what we did in my next post, but I couldn't wait to fill you in with the yarn-related parts of our trip. I did only visit 2 stores while away, but they were goodies.

First was Heavenly Socks in Belfast, Maine.

It was an unexpected but cute little store that we happened to park in front of. We chatted with the owner and learned a lot about the area and I walked away with 2 skeins of Manos del Uruguay 100% wool. The colors are beautiful and I have a My So-Called Scarf in mind.

We spent the last 2 nights of vacation in Boston with a friend and although it was about an hour of of the way, Bill happily agreed to hit WEBS on the way back to Baltimore.

Aacck! I'm at WEBS!!!

I had in mind what I wanted to get, and luckily they had everything in stock! I got me some Rowan Felted Tweed (no project in mind yet) and 14 beautiful, soft skeins of Blue Sky Melange for the Ribbon Trimmed Cardigan.

The store is amazing and everything you'd expect it to be. It looks like a regular yarn store at first but then there is this entrance in the back to a huge warehouse with aisles and aisles and boxes and stacks and rows of yarn. They must also hide more yarn in another back section because an employee had to dig out the 14 skeins of Melange for me from the back (don't always believe their web site inventories, I suppose. It said they only had 11 and she said they had 30).

We had a wonderful time and I have spent today doing laundry, grocery shopping and re-organizing my yarn stash - and winding the Manos and Blue Sky....can't wait to dive into the fall knits. I did make a good dent in my WIPs while away and will update you on all that soon. But next in a day or so is a post on our trip itself - we saw some beautiful sites and ate lots of lobster!

FO: Clover Lace Cardigan

Here is my finished Clover Lace Cardigan:

Pattern: My own, heavily adapted from the Leafy Lace Cardi. I posted all of the details about how I made this on my Ravelry page.
Yarn: 7 1/2 balls of Rowan Cotton Glace in Candy Floss. 8 buttons and ribbon from Joann's.
Comments: I created this pattern assuming that my gauge would be relatively similar to the gauge I got for the Leafy Lace Cardi. Wrong! After starting the clover lace pattern, my gauge was much looser, so I ended up incorporating a lot of decreases for waist shaping. The change in gauge between ribbing and lace causes a slight "poof" effect at the waist, which is why I am not sure whether I prefer this cardigan with the ribbon at the waist or not.

The above photo and these are with the ribbon:

And here we are without the ribbon:

I feel that I can pull the sweater down for a leaner look without the ribbon, but I really do like the effect the ribbon gives at the waist. Comments? Preferences? I have blocked it but am thinking that I could block the ribbing out even more to help alleviate the poof factor at the waist. As I look at these photos, the poof factor doesn't seem that bad anymore, actually.

Anyway, this was a fun knit, but I am really anxious to get back to wools. The Red Lace Top is almost finished - my last cotton project! I chose not to formally compete in the Ravelympics this year because we are leaving for vacation this weekend and I didn't want to feel compelled to knit too much. If I had competed, I would probably have entered the WIP Wrestling, as I plan to dig up two projects that have been hibernating for quite a while and take only those with me on vacation.

We are going to Maine, by the way. Staying in Bar Harbor and Camden. Suggestions from anyone who's been there on what to see/where to eat? We plan to hike through Acadia while in Bar Harbor but have no other concrete plans.

This week in my knitting world

Happy Saturday! Thanks for all the nice comments on Orangina. Although the lace projects around here have been turning out well, I am getting close to needing a hiatus from lace patterns. I'm ready for some wool and cables....
But, before I can dive into fall knitting, here's what's going on in my knitting world.

The knitting for the Clover Lace Cardi is completed finished - yay! Now I just need to finish seaming. I actually don't mind this part at all and like how it's coming out so far. I hope to have this in the FO category this week.

I told you all last time that I started knitting Christmas stockings. I am using the striped Christmas stockings pattern from Holiday Knits. You may have noticed that I have never knit socks before and this is my first official piece of footwear. Wish me luck! I read through the pattern and it seems pretty straightforward. I am using leftovers from some sweaters of the past to make this, so it's a great stashbuster.

The last summer knit I have in the WIP category is the Red Lace Top. I haven't really given this much attention at all and would like to finish it this month. September is still warm and will allow me to wear it, but I am a little tired of cotton and lace right now.

Last week I did something I thought I would never do. I joined Facebook. I only did this to play the games on there with Bill (we are addicted to WordTwist), but I've found it less of a popularity contest than I thought it would be. I actually caught up with some old friends from college that I haven't talked to in a long time. But, Facebook also made me apprectate Ravelry even more and what a lovely, friendly, helpful and small (relative to Facebook) community of knitters we are.