I have taken some downtime from knitting. I knitted about 4 rows in the last month. This is pretty dumb as I have about 4 rows left to knit to finish my current project; nevertheless, I am just not into it at the moment. This is partly about the heat and partly the normal ebb and flow of creative pursuits.

That’s not to say we haven’t been busy here at Chez Knitigating Circumstances. Let’s see, what have we been up to? We watched a LOT of Wimbledon and World Cup Football. Leah was lucky enough to spend the World Cup in Vancouver which was super fun.

She also took what I consider one of the best fan photos from the games:

Emma single-handedly built an entire wall of wardrobes. (In addition to a bed, a sofa, and dresser. We made IKEA happy.) I had to come to grips with the fact that my eldest actually likes IKEA instruction sheets; in fact, she thinks they are a piece of consummate design genius. And here I’ve always thought she was the normal one. All I did was help to move things out of the way and occasionally hand her a tool.

Doug has spent a month doing the most intensive brainstorming and paper writing in many years. First, he went to France for 10 days to write a paper with two collaborators. They ended up writing two. They were out in the country, during a heat wave, but also away from email interruptions and able to do some big picture thinking. Doug did take off a bit of time to admire Matisse, but it seems to have been part of the big picture thinking.

Then Doug and one of the collaborators, Juan, our very dear friend over many decades, came back here to continue working. The two of them plan to write a book together and they took almost 3 weeks to hash out the basics and produce a draft. They talked theory all day, every day, and wrote in the evenings. Despite the heat, they had a good spot in the garden to work:

Juan made us an authentic Galician paella:

We drank a lot of lovely wine and laughed alot:

I cleaned out my study, sorted through endless piles of paper, and bough a fabulous poster for my wall. How could a knitter resist?

On the very hottest day of the year (so far), while Doug was still in France, I decided to go through all of my yarn and organise it. At the same time, I wanted to get rid of yarn that I knew I would not be using. Having a big stash of yarn seems to just make me stressed, and I wanted a more manageable (and organised) stash. The second photo is me, very frazzled and sweaty in the heat, holding up the yarn that I am getting rid of. (Not to worry; it’s going to a good home.)

We have also been loving our garden.

And through all of this, I have been busy working, finishing out the academic year. Next week, we go on holiday. It’s quite likely a bit of knitting will find its way into my bags.