Golden Gate National Recreation Area

I was planning on hiking around Angel Island, but I got going late and did you know that the ferry stops running at 4:00 pm?  I didn't want to be thinking about not making the ferry back, since then I wouldn't be enjoying the experience, I'd just be thinking about missing the ferry. Yes, I am a basket case.

As usual, when it's hot weather in the East Bay, it's cold, windy and overcast on the coast. 

So, I ended up exploring the Marin Headlands and eventually made it over to Rodeo Beach. What I don't know is why I haven't been over to this area before because it was very scenic. I'll definitely be back.

I parked at the visitor's center and in the interests of getting at least a short hike took the trail from there down to Rodeo beach.

Along the way I saw some wild roses. They were growing in big bushes at various places along the trail. I love the smell of roses and these smelled amazing. The thorns were wicked though, I guess the pain of sticking myself was worth it.

The trail dipped down through a shaded glade and there were some of these tall purple flowers. I think they might be a variety of penstemon but I'm not sure.

Made it down to the beach and just sat for a while watching and listening to the ocean. It was nice and relaxing. I headed back when I started feeling really cold. The wind was blowing and it was overcast, although the sun did manage to break through here and there.







All in all it was a really great day.

Time flies...

...whenever you are not watching it closely. So, what am I doing this summer besides hanging out?

(1) Getting back into working out. Not exercising for 7 months and then working out - it's hard and very tiring. Who knew? Yes, I am out of shape but I'm working on it.
(2) Taking care of various things - car repair, dental repair, doctor's visit, DMV stuff - etc. etc. all that stuff that I never have time to take care of during school.
(3) Completing classes for Masters. I have two more.

Yep, just a tad busy. Anyway, not been working on any posted projects lately as quite some time ago I decided that making felted slippers for gifts would be a Good Idea. 4 pair had to be done by the end of July - so well, that's what I've been doing when not taking care of the above stuff.  These are DONE except for sewing up and then throwing in the washer for the magic shrinking process.

Yay! Now I can go back to other projects instead of working on one more pair of slippers.

And... here they are! All done and pretty.

Who works at the post office anyway?

So today I come home to this:

What is the problem here you may ask. A box? Cool. Someone sending me something? Even more cool.

The problem is that this is a box that I shipped out from the Post Office yesterday. Why is it on my doorstep? I really don't know. My only guess at this point is that the Postal Employee who looked at this did not know the meaning of the words From and To. So, off the post office tomorrow...

However, Clapotis is coming along. I've been knitting on it every day. Yes, it is boring but the drop stitches make it all worth it. There is a lot more than there was last time but the Giant Ball of Yarn has not appreciably diminished. Thank goodness for my kitchen scale which assures me that yes, this ball is 2 oz lighter than it used to be.

Knitting Project Gone Awry

So, last week as I was working on the lace pattern shrug I've been putting together I realized that somehow I had cast on 32 stitches for the left sleeve and only 24 for the right. The shrug is worked in one piece and the sleeves are cast on dolman style. Of course, I only found the error when I was actually finished with the sleeve section. I thought of many different things I could do, but really that's an unfixable error so... the shrug is currently back to balls of yarn and I'll have to start over. Seriously Disgusted. HOW did I MISS THAT?

To console myself I turned this giant hank of yarn:

Into a giant ball of yarn (which took a while). I think guesstimating that there's about 1600 yards in this hank. So... to ease my pain I cast on for Clapotis. Because, hey, everyone else has one so I should have one too. I like it so far, and there's no sleeves to make me crazy and I've got plenty of yarn.

Muir is Completed!

I am FINISHED with my friend's lace wedding shawl. I ended up with 11 pattern repeats instead of the 13 the pattern calls for. I really enjoyed this pattern, it was a very good introductory lace pattern. After the first repeat it also got fairly easy to determine where I was in the pattern and if things were lining up correctly. I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I steam blocked it and it easily blocked to 70" long which should be perfect for a shoulder wrap. I might make this again for myself, but... longer. And well, NOT in off-white. I also wonder what it would look like in garter stitch.

High School Graduation!

Last day of school happened, I finished everything I needed to get done, which is amazing and now the summer. Ahhh...

My son's HS Graduation went well as shown by this awesome pic. My daughter is on the left. I'm cute but not as cute as she is. Of course, she's my kid so I have to say that.

Lace Knitting - Onward

Went to the KFOG KaBOOM this weekend which was, again, the best fireworks show EVER. The main artist this year was Melissa Etheridge so that was really awesome as she's one of my favorite singers. I, of course, took my son. Since he's graduating high school this year I don't know if he'll be able to come or not next year as he's going off to college. Tamara couldn't come since she's taking summer classes and stayed at college this year.

During the weekend, I asked him about his graduation (he lives with his dad) and it's a mystery to him. He doesn't know the date, the time or the location. I asked him if he was planning on being there, to which he answered "Yes!"  However, I guess he's just going to arrive magically. So, I'm thinking if I want to go to the ceremony, I'll have to figure it out for myself.

In current knitting news, after quite some time fighting with the laceweight yarn that I'm using for Muir it's being much nicer to me. I'm able to get some sort of tension and progress with the pattern. I did switch out SSK to SKP, as that seems a lot easier to complete for some reason. I've actually managed to complete 2 entire repeats and I'm in the middle of repeat 3 which I would have said was unlikely two weeks ago, but what a difference practice can make! Just gotta have a pic to document actual progress...

I find this quite cool since this is the first lace I've ever really attempted.

Lace Knitting

Man, I'm struggling on the lace knitting. I just can't seem to HOLD ON to the laceweight yarn. It keeps escaping my grasp. I've got to figure out a different way to hold it so that I can be somewhat successful in knitting with it.

I'm on row 12 of Muir and it has taken me at least 4 hours to get that far. I had to cast-on twice. I tried the provisional cast-on but I kept losing stitches the first row with all the yarn over's and SSK's. I'd be trying to get it and all of a sudden I'd have a big loop of yarn instead of stitches. So, re-did the cast on as a crochet cast-on which took approximately ummm... forever but did work better.

Then the stitch markers. Since this is my first major lace pattern I thought stitch markers would be a really good idea to mark the repeats. But, but, but since the increases/decreases move in diagonal sort've waves I have to keep moving them every few rows. The first couple of times it happened, I obsessively undid and recounted to make sure all stitches were there and they were - just that there was one more dec than inc BEFORE the stitch marker.  Kinda driving me crazy.

I thought that not needing to have this done until June 26 (friend's wedding) was plenty of time but... maybe not.

Why am I a teacher again?

This week was crazy at school because it's nice weather plus multi-cultural week which means all of the kids are bouncing off the walls and not thinking they have to do anything like learn, and especially not something hard, like learning math. Which is a problem cause I'm there to teach them. And, it looks like we're going to be under some re-structuring plan (which when it has been implemented at other sites, has not shown any IMPROVEMENT in test scores - so... why is it something that must be done to RAISE the scores?? I wonder.)

Also, started the next class towards my Master's which is Educational Law. Sounds like fun right? Not. I couldn't get the book for cheaper either, cause the edition that I need is a special edition only created for National University. But hey, they'll "give" me 50% if I want to sell it back to them. Sounds like a deal to me.

So, in the spirit of procrastination that I have down to a fine science I decided that working on various knitting projects was much more important.

I swatched for Heroine. I ended up with quite a large swatch because my stitch and row gauge is off. I think the Lamb's Pride Bulky is heavier than two strands of Cascade 220. I don't want to knit more tightly because in order to get a good felt, there needs to be space in between the fibers for the agitation needed, and the fabric I've got right now feels good. I also wanted to test out 1x1 rib because I don't know if I want those folded back sections in the front. This swatch ended up taking most of a skein. Good thing I've got a LOT of this yarn to play with!

I also spent quite a bit of time winding up a skein of laceweight that I'm going to use to make a wedding shawl for a good friend of mine. I'm planning to knit Muir. Winding this yarn turned into a challenge though. What is with the little bits? No, I didn't break it. So, apparently I have 1.60 ounces of laceweight and 0.15 ounces of random ends that they added into the skein to make weight. To add insult to injury, they didn't connect the ends in any way. Suddenly the end would appear, and then I'd have to hunt around in the skein for another end to start winding again. It might not have been so bad, but I managed to start from the crap end, so for a while there I was really wondering if I was going to end up with 50 little tiny balls of yarn. Finally, though  I hit the major portion and then I was much happier.

I also worked quite a bit on this basic shrug I'm putting together. I've got a diagonal V lace pattern going on. I have now found out that no matter how basic the lace pattern is I still have to pay attention, cause otherwise I end up with a lacy effect, but not necessarily the one I was going for. My autopilot brain has a different idea of where the holes should go apparently. I've done quite a bit of fixing along with knitting on this project.

So, I flatten it out and look at it this morning... (cue ominous music) and there is a hole where there's not supposed to be one. And not one row down or anything easy like that. No. It's 1/2 way down the fabric. HOW did it get there without me noticing? It's not like I haven't been checking and fixing errors along the way. I am looking at this nearly every row to make sure that I haven't yet again put a hole where it's not supposed to be.

So... what to do, what to do. I completely refuse to rip the whole thing back. That's at least 20 rows. No way.

So, I pull out the stitches until I can get to the hole and fix it. The thing is with a lace pattern, you can't just drop one stitch and then bring it back up. No. You have to get all of the associated k2togethers and Slip Knit Pass stitches too. I ended up with this messy looking stuff. Now I've got a diagonal ripped out section that I have to now recreate row by row.

I couldn't have done it if I didn't have the center back stitch as an anchor. Otherwise, I think I might have really had to take out the whole thing. It was a bit fiddly but finally..

Success!

And - I swear, I will check EVERY row to make sure that I haven't somehow messed up the pattern again.

Ripping...

Today I took a big breath and faced what had to be done with Angie's Aran Sweater.

Going...

Going... 

Gone.

I still love this yarn (cashmere mmmm...) and the pattern, (except I'm editing out all of those bobbles.) I just need to relax, relax, relax when I'm knitting with it. I start stressing that it's going to be too big, tighten up my knitting, and end up with something approximately doll sized. My sister is slender, but not THAT slender. Now at least I can move forward instead of feeling lame-o every time I looked at it. Especially since this is the SECOND time I've done the exact same thing. At least it was a different pattern the first time.

Shibori and Tye-Die

The skill I've been working on for the last year or so and which I want to get better at is shibori dyeing methods on silk. I've done tie-dye. Tie-dye has turned into a family summer event and we do a production run of around 100 items every other year. No, we don't sell it, that's just stuff for the immediate family (yes, we are crazy. If you knew what was involved you would know just HOW crazy.) We've dyed about everything you can. Underwear, socks, hats, all types of clothing, towels, sheets. Practically anything that can be made out of a natural fiber. Once we found Dharma as a dye source we never looked back.

The guitar was definitely the hardest to dye of the three as it involved sewing in the shape by hand, gathering it up to get the definition, and lots of plastic baggies protecting the parts that had just been dyed from the parts about to be dyed. It was a challenge. I've never worn this above twice, as the shirt is a basic box T and extremely unflattering. Until I figure out what to do with it, it lives safely and securely in a box where I can get it out once in a while and admire it. The other two shirts I actually do wear and get compliments on.




What I REALLY want to do though is somehow turn into someone like Carter Smith which means not only figuring out how to MAKE the stuff but how to market it, sell it and eventually make a living at it. That would be the bomb. I'm not on Carter's level, but here's a few attempts for silk-dyeing.

If you have anything nice to say please, please go right ahead - I won't mind at all.

Actual Knitting

Yes, this post will contain Actual Knitting Content, which is quite exciting.

First, this sweater. I am making this for my sister who bought the yarn, 12-ply Jade Sapphire Cashmere. Can you say SOFT? I love this yarn, and I am enjoying it vicariously. Although I'm going to have to RIP this back again. Why? Because although I THINK I am OK Tension Knitter in reality I am Super Tight Knitter especially with cabling. I need to go up a needle size, from 6mm (10 US) to 7mm (no size US).

I know this. So, why do I knit most of the back in the recommended needle size? Who knows. Some sort of sick proof. I also need to up the size a bit, as my sis is a small, but not XXS. It's gotta fit. It's pretty though, even though it must go back to the drawing board shortly. The pattern is from Vogue Knitting Winter 2005. It's #11 and the one with the mega sized bobbles which I am going to tastefully edit out.

So, now I'm just letting this sit as I don't want to think about the re-do.