The good news is that I did manage to get my self-designed knitting item completely finished and bound off - twice, in fact (I bound it off last night but then ripped out the ends and tacked on another foot of length Saturday morning), which means that the total time it took to knit falls quite comfortably in the requirements for projects that Knitty is looking for. Not, mind you, that this is any guarentee in the remotest possibility that they will actually decide to publish my design, since I suspect that they likely get swamped with designs from hundreds of other hopeful knitters come submission deadline week, but I am currently doing my best to maintain my optimism, and at the very least, this made me actually *do* the darn thing, if nothing else.

The bad news is that by the time we woke up on thi morning, the apple tree was back down on its side again, and this time I saw what looks like possible fresh splitting near the base. Ugh. Although the wind couldn't have been all that strong last night since our makeshift stake and prop method for the tangelo tree (slighly warped pole from bird feeder plus large plastic bag) seems to be holding just fine.

Richard's parents and his little sister came up for the Scottish Games this afternoon, and I convinced his sister to play scarf model for me (mainly so I don't have to do it myself) and dragged her outside into 90 degree weather and wrapped her in a coat and scarf and told her to look cold. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find somewhere to pose a knitted winter item outside where it might actually look wintery, when it is 90 degrees outside and the trees are all still leafy and green?

The Scottish Games this year were kind of tired and small. We'd heard rumors that the person in charge of organizing the music kind of dropped the ball, but it looks like they weren't the only one who flubbed up. There were only about half as many booths from clans there, and only about half as many vendors, and even the band we ended up listening to had only about half the amount of energy (or even talent) as what we're accustomed to seeing. I hope this is just a fluke and that next year's Games are back to their former strength, but it was a bit disappointing.

We met up with my parents for dinner at an Italian place in Davis, since they had a play this later evening and that way they were closer to where they needed to be. Richard and I did not renew our season tickets for the musical theater this year, mainly because we both needed a break, but also because this season they are scheduled to do Oliver again, and I am quite frankly still traumatized by the last time they did Oliver (the main character attempted to make up for the fact that he could not sing by increasing his volume and thus, his painful off-key-ness. It was...well, I still cannot speak of it without cringing). My mom and dad are slowly starting to eat out again, so that they can work out how to find ways for my dad to meet his dietary restrictions when he goes back on the road for work. Dinner was fun and noisy and involved a lot of laughing which is usually the case when our families get together, and it was nice to see my dad looking much more like his normal self.