A Winner and a Long Weekend Recap

Hi all, and I hope you have a lovely long weekend if you are here in the U.S., and a lovely regular weekend otherwise.  Alas, as usual, all good things must end, and Monday has returned as we knew it would.  I have a dr appt this morning, and I don't have to leave as early as usual, so I figured I'd go ahead and get this post out there.

Because although it is Monday, something good is happening - we have a winner for the first week of Christmas in July!   Some commenters particularly said they did not want to be included in the giveaway, so I took the number that were still participating, and cranked up the old random number generator.  It chose #7, who is Anne in Virginia!  Here is what she had to say in response to my questions:

Hi! Longtime lurker here, not having posted before. But the Coffeehouse Knits is one I've considered getting for awhile, so here's a shot at it: Iced coffee, oh, iced coffee, definitely! I have some of my own home-roasted Ehiopian Yirga Cheffee black over ice at my right hand at this moment. On this 98 degree day, it's what is needed. And as for the salads, definitely green salad with a homemade dressing -- it's what's on the menu at my house most days from Spring through Fall.

Thanks for taking the time to share your life with us.

How exciting that someone "new" (at least to me) took the time to comment and then won the first giveaway.  Congratulations, Anne!  Please send me your full name and address at thekittyknitterATverizonDOTnet.  If you could also put GIVEAWAY in the subject line, that would mean that should your e-mail go to my Spam folder, I can suss it out easily.  I will probably wait until the end of July and send all of the prizes at once, but this way I can at least have your package set aside and ready to go.  

As for me, I must admit that my first choices would always be iced tea and potato salad.  Not that I don't like the other choices, just that I drink A LOT of tea, and anything involving potatoes will always be my favorite (you'd never guess my ancestors were Irish, right?).

Thank you to everyone who commented and participated.  Stay tuned to see what will be happening on Thursday of this week.  :-)

***

Our July 4 weekend was lovely.  We were both pretty wiped out by the heat, so we really didn't go out and about other than to walk Hamlet and run a few errands.  But I did get some cleaning done, and I got quite a bit of crafting done, which was so nice - having time to just work on something with no interruptions was great.  

I made some good progress on my Pabaigh:

It's a lot of stitches, in fingering weight yarn, but I am about 2/3 through the initial area where you do increases every eight rows.  I'm enjoying it, partly because of the color and partly because other than the decrease rows, it does not require any intense concentration.

Also, how cute is my crabby progress keeper?

I ordered him last week from Bad Wolf Girl Studios, and he is even cuter than I thought he would be.  This is the week my sister and all of her family will be at the beach, and since this year we can't join them at all, I decided that I deserved a treat - and what better thing to represent Maryland and Delaware (this year they are in Bethany Beach) than a blue crab?  

The other thing I did was watch the World Cup matches, particularly the final that was yesterday between the U.S. women and the Netherlands.  WOW - that was some match!  I have to say that the goalie for the Netherlands had some magic hands - I counted at least 4 times that she kept the U.S. from scoring.  I was so excited for the U.S. players when they won, and I hope that their attempts to get paid on par with the men will progress from here.  

So, on to this week - let's hope it's a good one!