Three pictures or maybe more

I was so sure I would get a ton of knitting done on this last trip.

Here we have the "before" picture. This is what I took to the airport Wednesday morning.

And this is the state at the end of that first flight. Not bad!

After a few days, I had not much more, but I got to the LA airport many, many hours early for my flight and knit and knit. When I got on the plane, I put the knitting away and tried to sleep!

So it is not finished, but I had a really good time in LA and Venice Beach.

I stayed one night in Silver Lake, which was really just a base for one night and I didn't really know why that's a cool neighbourhood. The next day we went to Sherman Oaks for a Saori weaving class. Now that is a nice neighbourhood!

I made this!

The piece is rather larger than that, and you can see more of it, plus our happy faces, on the instagram of the weaving instructor. I suppose I could take more pictures of it myself, but now this is the only one I have!

A few Uber rides later, and we were out in Venice Beach. We rented a house on a canal! There were originally a large number of these canals when Venice was first developed, but they were mostly filled in for paved streets for cars. There are 4 or 5 "blocks" surrounded by canals.

Nice reflections on a morning walk.

Palm trees everywhere.

We went to the beach. One of those dots in the water is our New Zealand friend swimming.

You're never too old to notice the pretty boys on the beach.

We went into lots of shops.

I got a tattoo with my friend.

On our last day, we had to be out of the house at 11, and could keep our bags there till 1pm. My plane wasn't until 10 pm! There were 7 of us, and after 1 pm, we broke into two groups. Some with early flights went to the airport while three of us went to Santa Monica and had a nice lunch, which we strung out as long as we could. The others had big rolling suitcases so it wasn't practical to go for a walk at all,  but we saw the beach and then went off to the airport around 3 or 4 pm.

I had plenty of time to play with my photo collage app on my phone.

The many flamingos of Venice:

I flew through the night and got in to Toronto at 6 am Sunday. Ugh, I'll take care to avoid the red-eye in future! I got in so early that the subway wasn't running, and I didn't have much cash left, so I took the UP Express train most of the way home and then picked up a bike-share and rode home as the sun was coming up! 

Ta-da, that's my California adventure!

All sorts of travel knitting

I travelled in August and can show you this, which will one day soon be a blanket:

I made some of it in the past months, and some on this last trip. I have to finish the strip I am working on and then see how much yarn I have left. There is another ball, tiger-striped, that Elaine is making socks with! Yes, indeed, socks unto the next generation!

So, when she finishes the second sock, I will grab the leftovers back and see if I can make a bit of a border on this wee blanket. This might be the last thing for the charity bag: I am taking it all to a shelter in October.

I shall be travelling this week! I am going to Los Angeles for a few days to see Helen and a few other of my mom-pals. I met some in NYC a few (um, eleven) years ago, and another few a mere five years ago in Niagara Falls.

I have a 5-hour flight there and another one back again, and I hope a few evenings of hanging around. There will be seven or eight of us in a house in Venice, so who knows what shenanigans we will get up to. I suspect there will be wine and finger food, but otherwise have no idea what we will do.

In any case, I will need some knitting.

I got this sock yarn about a million years ago (2006, to be exact) and I will now make a hat out of it. Portable, mindless, one more for the charity bag, perhaps, or maybe a nice fall hat for one of us.

Finally, I will be travelling next May (I think) and I wanted to make a new sweater for the occasion. I have settled on a vest of DK single skeins in a sort of beige/blue/green/yellow colour scheme!

It'll look a bit wacko, perhaps, but I have high hopes for it. I will tell you about my planned trip when it becomes a bit more planned!

Places to go and people to see, and things to knit!

It's September

It's so hot here! Sitting with a laptop actually on my lap is very uncomfortable because it just heats me up even more.

I did finish some knitting.

This was supposed to be a Yes, Checks hat. I'd seen something about increasing the stitch count for finer yarn, but when I actually cast on, I just thought, I will cast on 160 stitches, without consulting even the original pattern.

It is enormous for a hat but makes a fine cowl, so I just left it open. The yarn was in the latest charity-yarn-donation bag I picked up, and I think I will take a bagful of the gazillion things I knitted this year to a women's shelter pretty darn soon. Winter, believe it or not, is coming. And then I shall look at my yarn pile and give a bag of that to the next charity knitter.

I should have a few other things to show you in the coming days. Perhaps one of those oh, so helpful lists of the things I hope to accomplish in the coming month! First I just have to accomplish all the straggling things leftover from the summer.

A picture a day of our holiday

We flew out to Victoria on the 8th of August. It seems like an age ago! I could go on and on about our adventures, but will just do a quick dump of pictures right now. I could do a whole post on the treasures I found in various thrift shops! It was wonderful, but it was so smoky from the fires all over BC. We managed to spend time with family and catch up with old friends. Stay tuned!

View from our rental downtown

Feeding the pigeons with Grandma

I found this 20-year-old Koigu in a thrift shop!

Dragon boats in Victoria Harbour

Selfies in the park

On Salt Spring Island on a smoky day

Table at a hippy coffee shop

The view, the view, the smoke

Met up with Stephen's family for a walk on Prevost Island

Oh, there's a long, long story that goes with this

Arbutus tree

The woods are not on fire; fireworks at Butchart Gardens from a boat

Sea glass from Sidney beach; no green!

We went to a show of my friend's art

Mail box in the Empress Hotel

Finishing up a 1000-piece puzzle! 

Some blog news and some plans for the future

Exciting news from the blog world: Jane is blogging again about her new house (in Cambridge) and stained glass and cooking and sewing and looking at things! Always something nice to see there, and I'm glad she's back!

Exciting news from me: I'm going away for two weeks. I don't think you'll miss me, since two weeks without a post is not that unusual around here. I have, of course, picked out some knitting to take. I believe I will make a hat and maybe a scarf, or maybe I'll take out the bit of the scarf I've started and do something else. (See below, plans change on the fly...)

Exciting thing #2: We put Elaine on the bus this morning and she is off on another camping adventure in the wild woods.

She has a raincoat and sunscreen, and long johns and a bug jacket, so I think she'll survive. I have a friend whose daughter is off on a dig in Europe, texting constantly about the scorpions and snakes. Is that better or worse than no communication at all for three weeks?

I realised recently that I have done nothing this year on UFOs from the past. Sweaters started decades ago that need a bit of edging; squares that should be a cushion cover or blanket by now. Perhaps in the fall I'll get on that. I also, duh, want to start something new.

I had a whim which seems to have become a plan: walking across Hadrian's Wall next spring. Now, there is much to be sorted out about that, but one question looms large -- do I get to knit a cool new sweater? I suggested three to a group on Ravelry: Ceilidh, Rogue and Hiker. All of them are made with heavyish yarn, suitable for gallivanting about on the moors and the dales and the crags and all that, I thought. But no, everyone is telling me to make something lighter. Right now it is in the 30s Celsius around here in the daytime and I can't quite get my head around the weather in May in the north of England, but I think if I can't wear a big sweater then, when can I?

Look, it's perfect:

It's Rowan's picture

I could make a multicoloured waistcoat, I suppose. That would keep me warm and chic, but not too warm. How about this? I have the pattern and I have the yarn. It's a slip-stitch pattern, not stranded, so I wouldn't likely go completely bonkers knitting it. Possible, possible.

So tomorrow I just have to pack to go away, swatch a bit of this pattern (having first found the magazine that the pattern is in), do all the dishes and clean up the living room, oh, sew a new tote bag to take....

Arrivederci! (No, I'm not going to Italy.)

Muffin Monday: Double Chocolate Blueberry

Today I made muffins for the first time in a while.

I think this recipe might have been a "reader favourite," suggested by one of you!

Cocoa powder, chocolate chips, blueberries!

Be careful to mix your brown sugar in properly or you might get a blob!

It's a darn lie about the 14 muffins, I must say. I could have got 12 big ones, but the recipe said 14 so I got out a tiny loaf pan for the rest, and had about half the batter I needed for that. Twelve gigantic muffins, I'd say.

But, delicious! Arthur was not entirely convinced by the chocolate/blueberry combo, but the rest of us are quite pleased indeed.

Eye Candy Friday

I've seen more butterflies than usual this year, I think. 

It's hard to get them to pose in the sunshine.

Just a quick hat set

I've just got to stop putting my hand in the air when people offer up free yarn for charity knitting. I got myself another bagful the other day.

There was one skein of Lorna's Laces Swirl Chunky, a wool and silk blend, soft, warm, bright!

In the skein, which of course I forgot to photograph, the yarn looked like I could make a regular stripe pattern, like this. But alas, I think you need a yarn that is machine-dyed. My colour pattern soon slipped a few stitches out of sync, no matter what I tried.

So I just made a hat. It is knit flat on the number of stitches I was using for my last attempt at lining things up, I think 49. It is not quite big enough for me; great for a 10-year-old or so.

But that didn't take all the yarn, so then I knit a teeny tiny scarf.

I will have to find a nice button or two and then a child can make a tight or loose cowl/collar/scarflette.

Perhaps I could have knit a less pointy hat and had more yarn left for a bigger scarf. Next time.

We are ready for our close-ups...

Went to the beach

The last couple of days I have been in London, Ontario, visiting my brother who has been away for a year.

We went to Grand Bend for an afternoon, looking at the beach and the lake and the sailboats and the ice cream stores.

lifeguard chair

How many colours!? 

As far as the eye can see, it's blue (and green and white and...)

At his house, we were awash in wildlife. First a woodpecker, then a shrew, a gopher, and finally this lovely deer, right outside the kitchen window! 

Apparently the neighbours have an attractive apple tree. She did like munching on some of John's flowers, too.

I got some knitting done, but will have to show you another day. (I took three projects, of course, and finished one.)

Startitis and high fashion

I have a few things on the go right now. It is 32°C out, and forecast to be over 30° all week! So of course, I have to pick my knitting carefully. It's too hot for a wool scarf,  or a wool hat, so now there's this:

Yes, Kate Moss and I have much in common. This is a still from a movie about Vivienne Westwood. And I love the sweater!

I have some DK cotton yarn to use. I couldn't find anything like it on Ravelry, but I found this pattern, which has been on my shelf since the day it came out in 1987.

Big rectangles knitted on 8 mm needles. Really big rectangles. It was 1987, and a sweater 50 inches around was not out of the ordinary. Kate's isn't oversized at all.

And then there's Westknits' Loosey Goosey. Super oversized, knitted on 10 mm needles. 

I think I will more or less follow the pattern for the green sweater, so the holes are not ginormous, but I will add rows knitted with a much bigger needle, and I will add some dropped stitches here and there. And I have 4 different yarns, that oughta spice things up, too!

It won't really look like the one at the top, but I'm not Kate Moss, either.

Muffin Monday: Yogurt Bran

It seems like it's been a while since I made muffins, and we happened to have a litre of buttermilk in the fridge, and 2 kilos of frozen berries, so I gave these a go. Sort of this recipe, sort of that.

I have made these before; the page in the book is pretty splattered! It says it makes 2 dozen muffins, and my notes say 1 dozen regular and 1 dozen small. This time it made 3 dozen small and an 8-inch round cake! Who knows how these things work!

I used buttermilk instead of yogurt; the recipe calls for vegetable oil and as it happened I only had about 1/4 of a cup, so these are made with mostly olive oil; and I had no white flour, so they are all whole wheat.

My regular muffin pan was dirty because I just made some cloverleaf buns for a potluck party. (Very good, made the dough in the breadmaker!) I didn't think the paper muffin cups were quite the right size, so I sprayed the one pan and crossed my fingers and trusted the "no-stick" coating on the other. Bad move.

Some came out easily, but some didn't. There will be a lot of half-mini-muffins around here.

But tasty! And I think if one actually follows the recipe, they would be perfect!

A new hat

This has been Ascot Week, and the hats have been divine. Of course, people other than the royal family wear fantastic hats; I suggest the Daily Mail's coverage if you are interested!

So, I was looking at hats and knitting on a boring scarf. Of course, I put that aside to knit a hat! In perfect pond scum colours, from a dyer in town who was moving and had a big sale on her front porch.

I wasn't sure I had enough of that, so added a stripe of the green tweed I used to make Arthur's Harry Potter sweater in 2006. (OMG, those kids are so cute; where are they now?!)

That is terribly washed-out, sorry! It's a very long hat indeed.