beach knitting

I was a bit apprehensive about the idea of a lab beach trip. My preferred style of beachgoing involves weather no warmer than about 70ºF and a lot of wandering around and looking at/for shells and small animals and plants (and tide pools when possible), and I was pretty sure that at least the weather wasn’t going to happen at the Jersey Shore in August. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be the one person who didn’t go, because it couldn’t be all that bad, right?

It turned out to be fun, despite disgustingly hot weather and a lack of appropriate clothing on my part. Since I didn’t have a swimsuit, I stuck to wading and knitting and photographing. (Click the thumbnails for larger images.) Fortunately, my advisor brought a beach umbrella, so I got to sit in the shade.

my labmates in the water; the beach

horseshoe crab; sand crab

I took this photo for the texture of the shell, but I like the way the texture of my fingerprint comes through so strongly.

V., knitting; the flower basket shawl at the end of the day

As you can see, I wasn’t the only person knitting at the beach, just the only one knitting lace. V. knit a square of about 2″ on a side with the cotton I’d had sitting over my desk for a year. It was waiting for me to be willing to finish the towel I was going to give my grandma for her birthday last August. Since I forgot to send her the present I bought her in Boston, I’ll just send them both–I cast off the towel so V. could learn to cast on. I didn’t get a lot knit on the flower basket shawl, just about two pattern rows, but I did get in a lot of gazing at the breaking waves. Eventually, when I settle into one place to live for many years, I want it to be someplace with both ocean and mountains easily accessible. (Okay, fine, one of the two can be merely visible, as long as it’s a reasonable day trip.)