This weekend, while it was raining pretty much everywhere within 120 miles of Chicago, we were enjoying the 80 degree temperature and sunny skies camping in Turkey Run State Park in Indiana. We just went for one night but got up super early Saturday morning to leave, so we were already setting up camp by about 11 am. I swear once we were home Sunday afternoon I felt like we’d been away for days. It was perfect!

I even got a bit of knitting in. It’s a pattern from the book A Stitch in Time 1920-1949, Vol. 1, by Jane Waller and Susan Crawford. This is a republication of a book that was published in 1972 with knitting patterns from the 1920s through 1940s. A Stitch in Time, oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways.

1. Jam-packed book. Not 5 patterns, not 10 patterns, 60 freakin’ patterns.

2. Beautiful, glossy color photos.

3. Artsy but useful photos. Not stupid angles that don’t show you how the garment actually looks on a human being.

4. Not only do you get the revamped version of the vintage pattern with a modern photograph, you also get the original vintage pattern and original photograph! This is priceless, as you get a modern and historically accurate version of the fit and you can be left to your own devices to interpret that as you will.

5. Ease information is included in the pattern, as well as what size the model is wearing. While it doesn’t always seem 100% accurate (the pattern I’m knitting supposedly calls for 10” of negative ease for my size, yet it does not really seem to be modeled with 10” of negative ease), it’s a good starting point and more information than many patterns offer.

6. Some of the people involved in the book are on Ravelry! Well that’s just neat, if you ask me.

You can order it directly from them in the UK on their website. It took about a week for mine to arrive.

That’s several inches of the pattern, called It Cannot Fail to Please. I mean now really, how can you go wrong with a name like that? I’m looking forward to more camping (and knitting) (and knitting while camping) this summer.

My birthday was last Friday. And where did we go on vacation? To the home of glitz, for Viva Las Vegas. Where else can you find an Egyptian pyramid, a castle and the Eiffel Tower on the same street?

About four days before we left, I finally finished my first (and certainly not the last) short-sleeved sweater, Maude. I love it. LOVE IT. Love that is worth shouting in capital letters, even.

It used a lot less than two full balls of Wollmeise 100% superwash in the Petit Poison Nr. 5 colorway, dark intensity. The pattern was overall pretty easy, except you have to figure out on your that there is an uneven number of repeats for each side of the center section of this chart. I cleared that hurdle before I started and away I went. It was difficult to accurately determine gauge on this, and I decided halfway through the lace that the medium would be too big, so I opted for kind of a small/medium combo which worked out well. I have a ton of notes on my Ravelry project page.

Oh, and just so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on all the fun we had in Vegas, here are a few photos.

Me at the Car Show.

Umbrellas hanging from the ceiling inside the Bellagio.

Inside the world’s cutest vintage trailer.

Wearing a vintage Hawaiian dress that my mom probably thrifted in the 80s for a buck.

Oh, and did I mention that the first photo of my Maude involved me carrying around the top in my purse in Vegas, trying to find a nice place to photograph it, then throwing it on over my dress?