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Well, another successful year of Family Camp! It was the 30-something-th annual, but only BN & KT’s second time. Unlike last year, we went for the weekend when more people are there and there are special events like Friday’s Night of Illusion and Saturday’s Water Balloon War and the Talent Show.

Highlights include: Digging into the book of Malachi, meeting new people, getting to know JT, ML, DY and others in the WBC family better, eating popcorn, BN: playing volleyball all afternoon; me: Knittin’ with the Wits under a shade tree, Night of Delusion, hot sun and cool water, seeing my first crawdad, the super M’s and their Tae Kwon Do powers, a baptism at the swimming hole, CatchPhrase, “diamonds on the inside,” swimming at Colliding Rivers, and stopping for treats at Rice Hill on the way home.

Isn’t it great to finish something? Gosh, I haven’t finished much of anything lately, except that 10K. I have 3 or 4 design projects in progress, including the one I started late last year. I guess that’s what you get in software design - applications are never finished.

BUT! I started knitting a set of 6 placemats last summer, and I finished the last one this week! With knitting projects, finishing one means I have permission to start another. Not to say that I only work on one at a time - on the contrary! I usually have 3 or 4 going at once. You know those design projects I mentioned? Yeah, well, I’ve been too busy to knit. If I’m too busy to knit, I’m for sure too busy to blog! Whew. I cheat a lot by editing my post timestamps. So now I’ve admitted it. I used to be really good about writing a journal, but even then I would get behind and have to write “catch up” entries. The best eras for my journal were early college, when I often felt lonely; and when I was single and living alone, ditto. Now that I have my best friend living right in the same apartment, I get things off my chest without using a pen.

Did I ever tell you how I ramble on? You might want to see the new placemats, here they are:

I used 6 skeins of Lion Brand Cotton, to make 6 placemats with 4 colors each. I’m pretty obsessive about color (among other things!) so I made sure to make 6 unique combinations of 4 colors for each mat. I’m quite pleased with the way the checkerboard texture “blends” the colors and gives them a bit more subtlety. The checkering is accomplished by using the “linen stitch” which uses slipped stitches rather than stranding to create the effect of multiple colors in each row of knitting. In actuality, every row is knit using only one color. So, that made them fairly quick and very simple to knit. It was a good project because I didn’t have to count stitches or pay very close attention, but it wasn’t boring either because it wasn’t straight knitting and when I got sick of a color combination it was time to switch colors.

I’ve been working on them slowly and steadily for the last year - if I got bored or frustrated with my current projects or needed a “mindless” knit for some reason (like riding in the car) this was there for me to pick up again.

We choose to go to the moon! says JFK, as if it’s simply a matter of making up our minds. I think if I’d been alive during the Moon decade, as an adult, I wouldn’t have felt that going to the moon was a big priority. I mean, it seems there are a lot of social issues pretty “close to home.” The Vietnam war was going on concurrently!

But, I was totally captivated by this drama-documentary (produced by Tom Hanks.) I didn’t expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Twelve episodes, each exploring the Moon project from different angles and perspectives. We got to see through the eyes of the computer geeks at MIT, the wives of test-pilots-turned astronauts, the TV anchorman battling an upstart reporter, the engineering firm president whose brain child was the Lunar Module. Alan Shepard was 47 when he landed on the moon - after a decade hiatus from being an astronaut. Al Bean was a goofy young rookie along for the ride with his goofy pals - in their matching yellow corvettes, and on their journey to the moon. Jack Schmidt was a geologist who helped turn his fellow astronauts on to studying rocks, and finally got to land on the ultimate rock himself, in the last trip to date.

The miniseries is definitely dramatized, with characters and facts adapted to make a good story. Each episode was quite different - even the cinematography varied to fit the theme. I had a little bit of trouble keeping track of all the people, because they were sometimes introduced in a rapid-fire succession and each episode had mostly a different set of characters altogether. But on the whole, the acting was excellent. And, the scenes in the spacecraft and out on the moon were very convincing. I literally forgot that it wasn’t actual footage of the mission.

The “moral of the story,” which was emphasized more toward the end, is that the moon landing was proof that the human race is capable of anything - we can do anything we put our minds to. (If we all work together and have a little faith… no, just kidding, this wasn’t a Disney movie.) I guess that’s pretty inspiring, even to me, and I’m not exactly a modernist, certainly not a humanist, and not even that much of an optimist. I wouldn’t have agreed with Kennedy that making it to the moon was very essential. But, I have to wonder - if we hadn’t done it, would the world (or at least America) be a different place? Maybe the accomplishment had wider reaching effects than I realize.

If you have Netflix and are up for a fascinating educational/entertaining show, get From the Earth to the Moon!

Did you know I’m in charge of a knitting club? It’s not very big, just a few ladies from my church. One of my friends, LL, was all excited about forming a knitting circle after I taught her to knit early this year. Another friend, GC, has been knitting for about a decade and was the only one at church with more knitting experience than me. (I just learned to knit after we moved here, about 2 years ago. But I’ve made a lot of progress in that short time, since I don’t have children and I work at home.) The funny thing is we are the youngest of the knitters, many of the ladies are our mothers’ age. MC and BH are quilters by day, picking up their knitting needles on the side. They are attracted to knitting for its portability - as am I. I have to say I love knitting - it’s the best hobby ever. You can take it anywhere, and make so many different kinds of garments and accessories. Everything from rugs and pillows to bags and blankets to scarves and shawls. And sweaters, of course! I have only knit one of those, a baby sweater for T’s little Z. I hope to knit more sweaters in the future, as I plan to be a lifelong knitter. It may be in a popular phase, “the new yoga,” but I’m playing for keeps!

Last week BH (one of the quilters) brought a huge box of secondhand knitting needles that didn’t sell at her mother’s yard sale. Wow! There had to be at least 35 pairs of needles, probably more. She was sick of carting them around so I took them home and sorted them into pairs and gauged the ones that weren’t marked with the size. I picked out a set to keep, at least one pair in every size from 0 to 15, including straight, circular and double-pointed. There were plenty left over for the rest of the Knit Wits. Knitting can be an expensive hobby so it was a real boon to all of us to have free needles in abundance. Thanks, BH!