Saturday, Stephanie came to Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos, CA. I got to the store at about 3 pm. Because Stephanie wasn’t due to speak until 5:30, I sat down in an empty chair at the front of the store, pulled out my knitting, and chatted with the other knitters. One of the knitters I met was Sarah, what was working away on an Icarus while wearing a very nice Handmaiden silk shawl.

They decided to seat us a little early. On my way out to the parking lot/seating area, I ran into Kathy from San Jose. I hadn’t seen her since Stitches West, so we chatted for a bit.

I ended up with a seat at the front of the middle, next to a knitter I see quite often at my LYS, who’s name completely escapes me at the moment. Once my seat was claimed I ran off and found a crepes shop just up the street. I had been heading for Le Boulanger, but could smell the crepes from across the street. I got a turkey and cheese crepes and it was delicious. May have to go back sometime to try a sweet crepes.

The only real unfortunate thing about getting seated an hour and a half before the talk was to begin was we were sitting right out in the sun. While yesterday was not hot, sitting right out in the open still gets warm. I kept kicking myself in the ass for leaving my sun hat in the car when the husband dropped me off. I knew it was supposed to be outside, but my brain didn’t make the connection.

By the time Stephanie came out the sun was headed down behind the building, so the temperature changed quite a bit. Thankfully, the knitting I had chosen to bring with me was the lace scarf I’m making out of the River Bend Alpacas yarn (33% alpaca, 33% silk, 33% cashmere) that I got in Ontario last month. It has gotten long enough that I could wrap it around my neck and kept knitting on it.

Stephanie was as funny as ever, simply put.

I was in group 5 for signing, so decided to run off with Kathy and some others (who’s names also all escape me) for dinner. We went to Maltby’s, which has a bathroom that… well… you just have to see it for yourself. All I can say is, boy, that’s a lot of red, for such a small room.

After dinner, I headed back to Full Thread Ahead to do some shopping. It is very easy to pass a lot of time touring a new yarn shop. By the time I was getting rung up, it was time for me to get in line. I had fun standing in line talking to the knitters around me that I both knew and were meeting for the first time. The knitter behind me had driven all the way from Tracey to be there.

When I got up to the table, Stephanie signed my books, and I got a picture with her and the sock. I had thought to bring a Canadian beer with me in case Stephanie was going through withdraw down here in the land of Bud. But, she told me not to worry since she can get that particular beer when she gets home. It was kind of fun to learn I have good taste in Canadian beer. 🙂

I did forget to thank Stephanie for mentioning about butter tarts on her blog. I’ve been with my husband for 8 years now, and in that time we had been to Canada together 3 times and not once was I told about butter tarts. When I saw it on Stephanie’s blog, I asked him about it, and he told me that they’re like pecan pies without the nuts. After finally getting to taste my first butter tart last month, I can say that they are much better than that. 🙂 Now, I need to get my mom to teach me how to make pie crust so I can make my own butter tarts.

Today’s Eye Candy is a swatch I made of Jodi‘s Durrow sweater cable. The swatch was done in KnitPicks Main Line (75% Pima Cotton, 25% Wool) in Dusty Lavender. I got gauge easily. Sadly, something about it didn’t do it for me. The yarn felt uncomfortable, and look a little sloppy in the cables. I ripped it out and made a stockinette swatch, and the yarn feels wonderful. It’s seems to be happier in a nice orderly medium tight st st. I may have to consider a basic vee neck sweater for the Main Line. For now, I love the cable, and there’s some Silky Wool winging its way to me from Webs (sales are great!).

So, for now, you can enjoy the simplicity of the cable.

And my thanks to Jodi. I had never heard of the Book of Durrow until I saw this sweater design, and now I’m studying the Book of Durrow for my manuscripts and incunabula class this semester. It’s a beautiful example of Insular manuscript work.

Day 11: August 9
On Day 11, we crossed the border at Sarnia, north of Detroit, to avoid the whole Detroit-Windsor mess. The day was nothing but driving and road construction.

We actually managed to make it to Davenport, Iowa. This is when we made the crazy decision that we could make it home in 3 days.

Day 12: August 10
From Davenport, IA we made it to Evanston, WY. Yes, it was insane. We once again had had hope to stay in Rock Springs, but we were told there were no room available when we called for reservations. We were, however, told that there was room in Evanston, a full 100 miles further down the highway.

We got in hideously late, feeling absolutely terrible. But, it put us that much closer to home.

Day 13: August 11
I could tell when we had crossed back into California, I had to start passing everyone on the right.

We had the joys of hitting Sacremento during rush hour, but that gave us carpool. When we got closer to home, we put in a pick-up order to a local Chinese restaurant cause there was no way dinner was actually going to be cooked in our apartment; the husband had cleaned out the fridge before we had left.

I called my mom to let her know we’d gotten home early and got the good news that my dad would be getting home from Kuwait that night as well.

There were showers and we crashed into bed, our own bed. We had a whole weekend to recoup and go shopping to stock up on essentials.

Day 8: August 6
The morning of Day 8 saw me horribly hungover. My stomach’s reminder to me that one should not drink 2 rum and cokes, then follow them up with several glasses of wine. Bad idea, mixing grains and grapes.

We loaded up the car and headed west. Once we got into New York a ways, we turned north. Following small backroad highways, leading us ever onward to Watertown. In Watertown, we joined up with 81, which took us to the Thousand Islands Bridge. It was my first time crossing at this border crossing, and I must say it’s quite a bridge. Up and over you go, over the water.

The 401 whisked us off towards Brockville. Then, we headed for Merrickville and Smith Falls where the in-laws live. We arrived in time for a very tasty dinner.

Day 9: August 7
Day 9 was spent blissfully quiet. The only time we ventured out was to get fresh corn on the cob for dinner and to see the alpacas. They looked extremely funny for they had recently been shorn. Their bodies and necks were shaved clean off leaving tuffs of fiber on their legs and heads. Funny.

Day 10: August 8
Day 10 we had plans in Merrickville, which apparently was named Canada’s most beautiful village. On the left, you can see the Merrickville lock station on the Rideau Canal. This is the lock station the husband worked at. The locks are operated manually with big gears and chains. If you enlarge the picture, you can see the gears for this gate.

We were at the lock station to meet up with the Kawartha Voyageur.

The husband worked as a deckhand on this boat. So, he and his family know the captain, and it was arranged for us to meet up with the boat and get on for a ride down to the next lock station where the in-laws would pick us up.

The section of the canal that we went down is called the Kilmarnock Reach. Part of it is a bird sactuary. It is beautiful, simply put. I had forgotten what real green looks like. Living in California, you become used to spending 8-9 months a year surrounded by dull golden brown hills with dark green live oak trees. There’s no variation in shades of green. The northeast has multiple shades of green, dark, light, everything inbetween. I almost missed living out east, just have to keep reminding myself about the snow.

When we got back into Merrickville, I got to go into the store run by the people from the alpaca farm. I found a beautiful woven alpaca/mohair shawl. I also got the only yarn purchased on the whole trip — alpaca, cashmere, and silk — 2 skeins. There was also spinning fiber — alpaca, cashmere, silk, and wool. They raise nice fiber.

A quick spin by the Hersey factory for chocolate covered almonds (I haven’t found any that taste better here), then onto dinner with friends in Brockville.

The next day would see us leaving Canada. But, before we went I did manage to get my first butter tart (although I thought it was wonderful, I’m not sure how is stacks up in available butter tarts as it was from Tim Horton’s… mmm, Tim Horton’s… we don’t have anything comparable here). The only sad part of my Canadian sorjourn was the lack of Canadian beer. So, we hit The Beer Store before we left and picked up a two-four of Upper Canada Lager. Tasty. 🙂

I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and try to enliven Fridays. However, I’m not starting off with a photo.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has just put another Great White Shark on display. It’s a juvenile male, 5 feet 8 inches long, and 104 lbs. And, they have a Webcam, so you can see him swimming around in the Outer Bay tank no matter where you are.

Play spot the Great White Shark

The page also has links to information about the White Shark.

*Computer issues have been taken care of, so there are actually pictures to share.*

Day 5: August 3
Thursday was our first full day in Boston, and I got to spend most of it in the hotel room. It was about 100 F outside with a Moderate air quality rating; the one time I went out for a walk around Harvard Square I melted, almost literally. In the end, it probably wasn’t too bad an idea as it gave me time to work on Icarus for the wedding.

Later that afternoon, Jason picked the husband and I up from the hotel and took us to his and Gena’s apartment. The husband had offered to cook dinner; his fingers were itching to do something, and the knives had come with us. The four of us took a nice walk to the neighborhood grocer, which also had a fishmonger next door. Some very good looking scallops came back with us.

The husband cooked up a tasty feast: seared scallops on a creamy mushroom sauce with aspargus and squash. The creamy mushroom sauce went beautifully with the scallops. Mmmm… must have him make that for me again sometime.

Day 6: August 4
Friday we had the day to ourselves, so we spent it rather low key. I continued to work furiously on the shawl.

That evening was the rehearsal at which I was reminder that I would be reading. We rearranged the chapel to give the ceremony a more intimate feel. We figured out where the important people would sit, and ran through the service quickly.

Then, it was back to the hotel to freshen up before the dinner that was a rehearsal dinner. Dinner went well considering the drama I had heard involving it. It was kind of odd seeing Jason’s parents and brother again — I hadn’t seen them in like 10 years.

We got back to the hotel and I went back to work on the shawl. At this point, I was torn — part of me was sure I could get it done, while another part of me was seriously beginning to doubt it and starting to wonder how well my Birch shawl would go with my dress. But, in the end, I finished… granted, it was at 1:30 am. I had the shawl blocked out on the hotel room floor atop the robe and a towel by 2 am.

Day 7: August 5
The Wedding Day

It wasn’t even my wedding and I was terribly nervous (not every day your best friend gets married); lack of sleep may have contributed. Thankfully, Gena had convinced Jason that a 9 am wedding was a bad idea, and it was set for 10 am. This gave me enough time to wake up, eat a bad in-room breakfast, and rush off to the salon for an updo (I’ve given up on trying to do my own hair for important events).

I was, of course, a few minutes late to my appointment. The city of Boston isn’t laid out in a straightforward fashion, and many streets don’t even have street signs. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I asked at a cafe for directions (I had gotten lost walking to the salon). The girl looked at me like I’d sprouted wings, and told me she had never heard of the street I was looking for. People, this street was 2 blocks away (and it had a street sign).

(When I mentioned this to other Bostonians later, they freely admit that no one who lives there knows where anything is. It’s quite an adventure to get in a cab, let me tell you. We took a cab to the ceremony cause I was wearing heels and Boston paves its sidewalks with bricks and cobblestones. We first tried giving the cab driver the address, then we tried the name of the school and the name of the church, we eventually got there with “It’s a stone church, on a corner, no, keep going, next block, big stone church, can’t miss it.” Gah!)

Hair done, make-up was quick, dress slipped right on. The shawl looked great as I pinned it to the strap of the dress. Shoes, check. Purse with wallet, check. Camera, check. Out in the hall, let’s go. Um, who has the room key? Yup, we got all dressed up and closed the door as we left only to realize we had both left our room keys in our jeans in the room.

We got to the church about 15 minutes before the ceremony was to start. Jason, his brother, the priest, the bishop, and I hung out in the bishops office. When it was time, we made our way to the front of the chapel to process in. The priest and the bishop went in first, then me, then Jason, with his brother taking up the rear (we figured he’d be able to run faster than me in my heels should Jason try to make a break for it).

We got up to the altar, got into position, and then it was Gena’s turn. Her sister and brother came in followed by Gena with her dad. This was about when I thought Jason was going to be sick; he looked so nervous.

The ceremony was really nice, although, the husband keeps saying it seemed awfully familiar. Jason had liked our wedding, so we gave him permission to use parts he liked. 🙂

We did pictures outside, then everyone was to walk back to our hotel where in the reception was to be held at Henrietta’s Table. Since there was only about 30 people, the layout was as a big family table, which was fun. The husband and I sat at one of the corners, and another couple, John and Laura, sat on the other side of the corner. We hit it right off. When Jason and Gena finally arrived, Jason took one look at our corner and said, “Uh oh, that corner’s going to be trouble.” All four of us gave him innocent looks. 🙂 We had a blast talking with them through lunch. Unfortunately, they had to go to Conneticut that night and wouldn’t be at the party that evening. But, we did tell them that if they ever got out ot SF, they should get our contact info from Jason so we could get together.

That night Jason and Gena had a party at their apartment for all their friends. I got to meet some more of Jason’s friends that he had wanted me to meet. I think the oddest thing about meeting a few of these people is I would have sworn I knew them already. We hit if right off (which is strange for me) and in some way they even looked familiar. I had a great time and didn’t even notice how late it had gotten. (This speaks volumes — I’m an introvert, so parties tend to exhaust me physically and mentally.)

Overall, it was a good day. It was really nice to see Jason so happy. 🙂

There always has to be a vacation recap, doesn’t there?

Day 1: July 30
We actually got up an moving early enough to go to Barefoot for fortification before getting on the road by 9 am. Our goal for the day was Rock Springs, WY. We didn’t quite make it, but that was because there wasn’t a hotel room to be booked in Rock Springs due to some county fair. We spent the night in Evanston, which is 100 miles short of Rock Springs.

Day 2: July 31
Because we had stopped short the night before, we were expecting to only make it to Omaha, NE on this day. And we almost didn’t make it that far.

We hit a huge string of thunderstorms just east of North Platte. When you see people with Nebraska plates pulling onto the shoulder of the highway to wait out the storm, it’s probably best if you do too. So, we sat on the side of the highway for about 15-20 minutes as the storm tried to kill us all. There was hail the size of nickels pounding away on the car. Then, the wind started. Scary wind, people, let me tell you. The world turned white… we couldn’t see the front of our car let alone anything else… no other cars, no trees, no road… nothing. The car was bounced back and forth, back and forth by the wind. This would be when I thought we were going to die as our car was sucked up into a massive tornado. (I grew up in the South where we had tornado drills in school… tornados scare the crap out of me… this is why I live in CA where all I have to worry about is earthquakes.)

The wind finally returned to normal (ha!) and we decided to brave it and head on. A few miles down the road we caught back up with the section of storm we had just sat through. So, we pulled off into a Rest Area where we stared at the rain with a few bikers and a family with a minivan. I called my mom in CA to see if we could find out what was going on stormwise. She passed on info that the storm was following the highway. Joy. Eventually, we decided we had no choice but to go and hope the worst of the storm had spent itself. It was still pretty bad, but we found a semi with lots of red tail lights and followed him through. It was all sunny and calm on the other side. Looking in the mirrors, we could see huge columns of dark grey rain falling… the line stretch away to the north.

We lost an hour of driving time to stopping, but running around in the rain woke us up a bit, so we decided to aim for Des Moines, IA. We got to the hotel at about 12:30 am.

Day 3: August 1
Day 3 turned out to be the worst driving day. We were doing pretty good, even got through Chicago before rush hour, when we found trouble in Indiana. We had switched from Route 80 to 90 outside Gary, IN. We were making good time. So, of course, there had to be an accident bad enough to close the highway. There was tons of traffic, hardly moving, until they shuttled us off at an exit and sent us all on our ways with no indication of a detour whatsoever. (Thankfully, the husband had purchased a new atlas before we left.)

Day 3 we only got to Cleveland when we had thought to get to Buffalo.

Day 4: August 2
The idea for Day 4 was to get to Boston. We chugged across NY state. (Toll roads are nice. The speed limit is 70, and we just set the cruise control for 80. The cops we passed never blinked.)

If anyone ever finds themselves in Liverpool, NY, I highly recommend the Gardenview Diner. They gave us just what we were expecting… diner food, and it was good.

We pulled into Boston around 8 pm, then we met up with my friend, Jason, and his fiance, Gena, for some tasty Indian food.

Because the weekend is the time I get most of my knitting in, it goes without saying that this is when I have the most knitting problems. I still need to post pictures from the lace fix that happened on the 15th (need to find the camera cable for that).

Sadly, I have no pictures from this past weekend’s yarn fiasco. I wish I did; it was truely spectacular for only being half my fault.

I had been happily knitting away on Chart 2 of Icarus when my center pull ball decided to vomit a little. It was sort of to be expected; there had been difficulties when winding it up. The yarn was slippery enough that, when it got to the top of the ball as the winder went ’round and ’round, it would just start wrapping around the ball winder’s core before getting caught in the groove. So, I knew going into this that there was a potential for problems down the road.

As I was sitting in my LYS contemplating how to handle the yarn vomit, the owner, Karen, offers to help out. No problem, I’ve seen her handle many a knot with ease. So, she pulls on the yarn vomit. I could tell that she was thinking to just pull out the problem center section, wrap it back up, and let me go my marry way.

Unfortunately, pulling on the yarn vomit only made the ball more sick. More yarn spilled out and tangled till we had a true mess on our hands.

In the end it took at least 6 hours total (could have been more) to unravel it all and get it back into usable ball form.

And I am now finally working on Chart 3… I may very well be blocking this in the hotel room before the wedding.

Nothing like your lace project, which you’re rushing to finish for a special event, giving you a bit of excitement on the weekend. There I was knitting along happily when I realized that I was missing a stitch. *cue suspenseful music*

I was in the 5th of 5 repeates section of the Icarus shawl. Once I had gotten a hang of the pattern several repeats back I had sort of stopped counting the knit stitches between each set of eyelets on a regular basis. For some reason I counted on section near the end of the row only to discover there were 6 stitches instead of 7. I held up the shawl and immediately saw where the problem was… 20 rows back.

I must have been distracted during one of the k2tog, yo, k1, yo, ssk and instead did k2tog, yo, ssk, and continued knitting on my merry way. This caused the rox of eyelets to shift over one stitch, and the missing yo was my missing stitch.

Since there was no way I was ripping back that much knitting, I decided to go for it and drop the stitches. Thankfully, this wasn’t the complicated section of lace. And, I paid close attention when Stephanie posted S.Kate’s pictures.

I put a stitch marker through the stitches just below the problem row, so the stitches wouldn’t go any further than that. I dropped the ssk stitch and its accompanying yo. This is when I actually realized what I had done… ssk the center stitch rather than just skipped a yo. So, the center stitch needed to be dropped as well. As I was dropping the ssk stitch another stitch popped up… this was from the ssk moving over a stitch.

Then, I took a deep breath.

I tried using pins to keep the strands separate, but they ended up just getting in the way. Thankfully, the tencel yarn is smooth so it doesn’t stick to itself and maintained a orderly queue.

I decided the best thing to do was to use a crochet hook to bring back up the straight knitted stitches: the center stitch and the previously missing 7th stitch. This left me with just the ssk and yo to worry about. It was slow going with the double point needles becuase they kept trying to slip out of the 2 stitches. But, I eventually got it back up to the top, and after straightening some of the stitches out, you can’t really tell there was ever a problem.

Whew. After describing all that I don’t think I have the energy to talk about when I found an extra stitch the next night.

Summer here in the SF Bay Area was ushered in by 5 Spare the Air days (3 of which were official) right in a row. Ever since I’ve been low-level miserable. I tried to very good and stay indoors, trying not to exert myself. This is probably why it wasn’t until the air quality began to improve that my asthma caught on. *ugh*

While my asthma has improved, my allergies in general have been annoying. The worst part being the off-and-on ear drum pain alternating with itchiness. So, I went to the doctor on Tuesday cause it didn’t look like it wanted to clear up on its own. Thankfully, she told me that it’s just fluid pressure and not an infection. Then, she gave me samples of Singulair to try out for both the allergies and the asthma.

I’m only on my second day, but I’m not sure what I think of it. It does seem to help at night (I take it in the evening, and it’s a once a day pill) even though it does seem to make me drowsy. But, today, I feel horribly draggy, and I don’t know if I’m simply tired, or if it’s the medicine. I think the reason I’m confised is because it’s not that drugged tired feeling most allergy medicines give me, it’s exhausted tired.

I’m supposed to try it out for a few weeks, and if it doesn’t work it’s on to something else.