Perks

362 days out of the year my neighborhood is (usually) peaceful and quiet. You know the type: lots of old homes, 100 year old live oaks creating a canopy over brick streets, neighbors who wave to each other, large 1920's Catholic cathedral smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood. I love it (which is surprising because I thought I'd always be a downtown urban chick). Then, for three days every March, the church has a fundraiser and the neighborhood gets all crazy and festival-y.

I love that I live five blocks away from this:





It was much more crowded than these photos make the festival out to be. For starters, every teenager in St. Petersburg that needed a place to make out was at the festival. By the time I got there most people had migrated from the rides to the food and beer. I didn't get a chance to photograph the food area (too busy eating, I suppose). In a 50 ft. row, there was a combination of foods that probably shouldn't all go into one's belly at once: chinese food, greek food, pancit noodles, fried green tomatoes, burritos, cookies baked by the nuns, and peach cobbler.

In knitting news, I think I'm suffering from startitis. I have a huge pile of sock yarn and patterns. For the past few days I've just stared at it all and thought, what to start next? Jaywalkers? Monkeys? STR club pattern? So many choices it makes my head spin! In the end I cast on for a project I bought the yarn for six months ago, the Veste Everest from IK Fall 2005. I'm using Harrisville Highland Style in #34 Aster.


This will be my first knitted sweater-type item. Read: this will be the first project I've knitted that actually needs to fit. Before starting I swatched, measured, washed, blocked and dried like a good knitter. So far so good: after one row I had the pattern memorized and have been able to knit on auto-pilot. Last night I finished several of the cable repeats while mostly concentrating on watching The Thin Man. Oh, that Asta!