A good weekend after a tough week

This past week verged on apocalyptic in California. An unusually dry spring coupled with a weekend of freak dry lightning strikes has brought the usual wildfire season to a ferocious and early start, with more than 1,100 wildfires burning throughout the state (Update - it's up to 1,400 wild fires as of Monday, 6/30/08. See news story here). While none of them have been anywhere near enough to me to be dangerous, that's not been the case for a number of friends of mine but as of the last I have heard everyone I know is safe, unharmed, and still has a home. But the air quality has been appalling. Smoke hangs heavy in the air, and the sun has been deep red at sunrise and sunset, casting blood-red streaks across the waters of the Bay and the Carquinez Strait near my home. It's an oppressive feeling having the air hang so heavy and making breathing difficult. But at last the winds have finally picked up a bit in the Bay Area to help clear out the air, so hopefully the scent of smoke will soon be swept away. Fires are still burning, but at least the air feels more normal now.
But life goes on, and I had a chance to spend some time with my friends from Sew Group today. We met at Patricia's house and had a nice sized group - 11 of us, which meant we had the opportunity to spend more time chatting with each other than sometimes is possible when the crowd is larger. As always, we had a wonderful time showing off our recent sewing adventures or bemoaning our failures, and I found new and happy homes for three of my items that were nice garments, but for various reasons just didn't work for me. Patricia's house is beautiful, the weather was comfortably warm without being too hot, our potluck was stellar, and the company fabulous. What more can one ask for?!

I have very few (as in, only 1!) knitting pictures of things as I am only working on a single knitting project at the moment (hard to believe, but true). I've been doing a little more sewing lately, but with mixed success, so there is no photographic evidence of that, but which partly explains the number of items I had to give away today. But the Must Have Cardigan is progressing very well - I've just started the armhole shaping on the back, so that piece will soon be done, and then I just have the fronts left to do. As can bee seen in this photo, I have added waist shaping to the back and will do likewise on the fronts. Cables have a tendency to be a bit bulky and stiff, and I thought a little shaping would help keep the cardigan from making me look bigger than I actually am.

I doubt I am going to make my goal of finishing the whole things before my trip to Seattle. TW and I plan to leave on the 14th, and time is getting a little short. But I don't really mind as I can now tell that this will be a very warm garment, and even with Seattle's cooler summers I don't think I'm going to need that kind of warmth.