Update Friday

Knitting

I am actually making decent progress on Good Friday. Last week I finished the Left Front and immediately started on the Right. As of today I am about two thirds done on it. I will most likely finish it up between tonight and tomorrow. The sleeves will be a work in progress by Sunday. I am actually thinking I could have this sweater completely done within a month.


Reading

Ya'll know I love love love to read and can rip through a book in no time at all. The last book I read was the latest installment from the Outlander series (Echo In The Bone). I actually took my time and prolonged finishing this book for as long as I could. I knew it was either going to be the last (which it isn't) or it would be a long time before another one was published (which it will be).

So now that I finished Echo, I decided to turn my attention to another wonderful historical series by Beverly Swerling.

Several years ago I read City of Dreams. Since then additional books have come out in the series and I never got a chance to read them. There are four altogether but I haven't decided if Book #2 Shadowbrook is actually part of the series (thus why I don't have it pictured here). From what I can tell none of the characters from Book #1 are in Book #2 but they do appear in Book #3.

Since it's been so long since I read City of Dreams I decided to reread it before progressing with the new ones. I wanted to have the characters fresh in my memory. The first book is set in Early New York around the 1600's. It's very cool for me to read a book that references places/streets in Manhattan from a long time ago.

If anyone is looking for a good set of books for light summer reading, I would recommend these in a heartbeat. Got my paperbacks from Amazon for roughly $7.00 a piece which is great considering they were originally $15.00.

Happy Friday everyone!

A Sweater In May

I finally found the perfect pattern for the Brooks Farm Yarn I bought at Rhinebeck 2008. For the past 1.5 years I have bounced this yarn from pattern to pattern thinking I figured out what I wanted to make with it. Finally about a month ago I settled on Girl Friday from Knitty Fall 2009. As of yesterday the back was complete.

I do love knitting with the Mas Acero yarn and this pattern suits it perfectly. With the exception of a small "thinking" moment on the pattern during the armhole shaping, the pattern is really easy to follow and knits up quickly. I generally wouldn't be knitting any sweaters until the fall since the warm weather is quickly approaching. However, with working nights 3 days a week I am finding that around 2am my body temperature drops and I freeze at work. So this will be a perfect addition to my wardrobe.

The weather hit over 80 degrees with high humidity this weekend and making it feel like summer big time. I love that the daylight hours are getting so much longer and am able to spend more time outside in the evenings.

Yesterday DB and I took advantage of the "summer" day and drove out to Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. It is such a quaint little village (click to see images). One where we both felt very comfortable and at home. We ate a beautiful late day outside lunch at Grasso's where the food was absolutely delicious. We walked along the small town strip and stumbled across the Cold Spring Harbor State Park. I noticed there was a hiking trail and, even despite being in a sundress and flip flops, we took a little adventure through the woods. Once we climbed up high we had an absolutely gorgeous view of the harbor. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera. After our climb back down to the water and walking back towards the Jeep, we ended our day sipping iced tea's in a small garden in the back of this little coffee shop (for the life of me I can't remember the name). We had it to ourselves where we could relax and enjoying the last remaining moments of a wonderful Sunday afternoon. We plan to go back and I will be armed with a camera.