Six Months, Or Seven

Greetings from The Cottage!
I suppose I could say I've been too busy reading knitting blogs to update my own for the past seven months. But the real culprit has been a special project at my 'little' part-time job which caused it to become almost a full-time job. The deadline was June 30th and I now feel such a sense of freedom.
We recently traveled to Chicago to see 11-month granddaughter Kit. It's so much fun to have a baby in the family again. Kit weighed more than 11# at birth and continues to grow and develop above and beyond. Her mom says she is 'off the charts' for an 18-month old. We took walks with Kit to the playground and around the neighborhood and went to the birthday party of one of her baby friends.
Around the cottage: we've added a stone and gravel path from the front door through the hostas to the front garden area. This weekend I'll be adding cedar mulch under the hostas to the edge of the path. Flowers are blooming beautifully, but they are a little late because of all the spring rain that delayed digging in the dirt.
Blog of the week: Willow Way Knitting (http://www.jarlady.com/). Janice has such an inspirational blog with lots of recipes and an infectious enthusiasm for knitting bags and socks. When she learned to knit in 2006, she made many, many felted bags which she gifted and sold. She donated profits from the sales to a charity through her church. She also is training for a marathon in November 2008 to benefit the leukemia and lymphoma society and has a donation button on her blog. Her Ravelry name is Jarlady where many of her projects can be seen.
Yarn shop of the week: The Woolly Lamb http://www.woollylambyarn.com/ in the historic Norwood Park section of Chicago. What a charming little shop! I was there around noon on a Saturday and there were several people taking a class and four people knitting around a table in the display room. One of the yarns that got my attention is a Lang cashmere and I kept coming back to it, but the price is $33/skein so even though I touched it several times, I resisted. Mapquest says it's less than 2 miles from our son's house, so I'm sure I'll have the opportunity for a repeat visit.
Knitting project of the week: The Sunday Market Shawl in a pink colorway of Classic Elite Classic Silk. This is a simple drop-stitch pattern that can be found on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/) and I am giving it to my mother for her 91st birthday in early August.
Later ...