Shopping, Struggles with Lace, Weekend Cycling

Friday night, on my nearly daily trip to the Barnes & Noble for Starbucks, I treated myself to two books. First, The Knitting Answer Book, with the hopes it might help with some of my lace knitting issues, and second, Victorian Knitted Lace, so I could enjoy all the lovely pictures of mainly rectangular lace with no armhole decreasing/shaping issues. I've been admiring VKL at the store for some time and finally had to have it home on my own coffee table. The pictures are gorgeous and there is something very romantic about beautiful fabrics draped over old stone statues, buildings, etc. I loved the imagery in the latest Jane Eyre film of the red scarf blowing from the tower and it instantly reminded me of the VKL book when I saw it.

I continue to be frustrated by the RYC lace top and can no longer fool myself into thinking that I can carry on with the two row asymmetry. I MUST get it right (or at least manage to thoroughly hide it in a seam) or it will bug me forever and end up thrown into the back of the closet in disgust. The good news is that I seem to be making slow progress towards getting it right as I work on the front yoke, but the bad news is that there will be a lot of frogging in my future if I get it right and then have to rip out the back and possibly the sleeves. Aarrrgh!!!

We had torrential rains on Friday morning. Even the Labradors, who generally live to play in water were thoroughly disgusted. It was liked having buckets of water poured over us and they both looked at me reproachfully like the weather was all my fault! Fortunately, after the rains cleared out on Friday afternoon, we had fantastic weather and I was able to get outside to enjoy the fresh air and at least temporarily clear my mind of knitting woes.

Saturday was our first really spring-like day! The temperature even got up into the low 50's! Jeff and I biked 26.25 miles along the ocean. The views were awesome. The surf was bottle green and the waves were very high from the stormy weather off the coast. We saw at least a hundred surfers in the waves. The seaspray hung in the air like fog and we tasted the saltiness on our lips. That night, we were able to view the lunar eclipse!

Sunday, we drove inland to the NW corner of Rhode Island to join the NBW club ride. I'd forgotten how much more snow they get over there! The snow banks were still melting and the temperature was several degrees colder. There was still a lot of salt and sand on the roads, so it was a cold, dirty ride. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the headwind that plagued us for most of the ride too! Not my favorite route! I guess we were warned, it is officially called the 'Ville' ride as it goes through Burrillville and Harrisville, but at the start of the ride, the organizer called it the 'Vile' ride. That was about right!! Well, I'm being a little hard on it. If weather conditions had been better, it probably would have been quite nice. We passed by farms including one with a beautiful stone barn. There were little villages with old stone mills and old wooden shop buildings too. Some of the ride went by frozen ponds. Other parts of the ride passed though dense pine and fir forests that I'm sure would be invitingly shady in summer, but were frigid this time of year. We rode 20.24 miles in all. I'll include the elevation profile from the ride as it shows we did some hills! It's kind of hard to find hills in most parts of Rhode Island, so that was a novelty for us. The overall elevation for the ride was 1,579 feet. That first climb was quite a workout, but the downhill that followed it was fantastic and seemed to go on and on. The downhill part followed a gently curving, tree lined county road with stonewalls and was definitely the highlight of the ride!