It's been a slow knitting week or two (or three)...

Yes, I'm back. (Linda thanks for noticing!) I have to tell you that it's been a rare break from knitting for me. I knit pretty much every day of my life, so to go a couple of weeks without working a stitch is a little weird...

First it was the big BIG dance show...



then Mike and I took a quickie but action packed trip to Chicago...

the highlight for me was the marvelous shopping... and Mike did pretty well with that too, however I think a close second was our visit to the kinda-freaky-quirky-weird International Museum of Surgery:


Not sure photography was allowed, but I snuck ( or is it sneaked...) this one of an old iron-lung, just looking at it kicked in a little claustrophobia attack...but really the coolest thing there were the ghastly old surgical knives and the preserved skulls with huge holes drilled in them (sans anesthesia by the by) to release the evil spirits...


and,

we ate really well at lots of cool places like RL, Ralph Lauren's restaurant...




After Chicago, my husband did have another (almost unheard of) SECOND WEEK OF VACATION, so we took lots of day trips with the kids, including our favorite: a trek into Cook's Forest.

4 miles down the Clarion River...








followed by an hour on horseback through the forest.





this was a particularly momentous moment for us... prior to getting on this horse, my son had watched his sisters ride for all nine of his years but had always REFUSED to even entertain the idea of getting up in the saddle...





so all that, plus, between the two girls, a seemingly never ending schedule of EYSA soccer games...


has sort of kept me away from my knitting. (I should note here that I did take my little woolly Ella Rae project to this game, however it was about 90 and the sun was beating down, and the wool was DRIVING ME CRAZY...so I gave up)



and just took pictures.







But....



it's the start of a new week, and I have just knit the ruffle of that baby hat in preparation for teaching the class in July... so I'm back in the saddle so to speak!

Yours in knitting,

Claire