Holiday Road Trip Day 5 - Last day of the year

We decided to take the coast road up from San Diego. This led us to a cute little knitting shop with a lovely clearance section. We wandered around for a bit looking at the stores in various downtowns. 

Driving down a hill we saw this beach, which happened to have an easy to get to parking lot. I also happened to have my emergency flip flops and a blanket stuffed in the back of the car. So we took an hour break to enjoy the ocean. Steven claimed it was warm enough to go swimming, and that he would have if his swimsuit had been accessible. I think he was crazy. It was nice enough to sit there in a sweater, and that's about it. 

After this beach we went to Venice beach for some walking around and dinner with the friends we came down to LA with. I again wished I had brought my roller skates. I will come back there in May with them, or maybe rent a bike. 

After this we got some supplies for New Year's Eve. Our plan was to have a bonfire at the fire pit in their backyard. So we got some wood, s'mores stuff, and other snacks. Turns out the fire pit is gas powered. Also, it was so windy we couldn't sit near enough to the fire to stay warm. We lasted about 20 min, but took a picture like we were having fun.

New plan, use the indoor fireplace. It was much warmer inside. We had lovely snack, but no s'mores. Then made a huge mess with party poppers at midnight. There are too many things you are supposed to do at midnight. How can you make a toast, kiss your husband, and use the noise makers all at the same time. Despite the change in plans it was a fun night.

Holiday Road Trip Day 3 & 4

Tuesday was dinosaur day! I've probably seen dinosaur skeletons before, but I don't remember it. Steven and I went to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. They were having a special exhibit on mummies of Peru and Egypt. We saw that. I didn't take any pictures. Then we went to the regular collection of dinosaurs. They are huge as you would expect them to be. It was difficult to get them into one picture. Especially with the lighting changes, even panoramas didn't work well. 

Things I learned from this trip. Long neck dinosaurs have really really long necks. I always thought of them as having necks about as long as their tails. This seems to be incorrect. Stegosaurus' have very tiny heads. Their heads didn't seem much bigger than mine, and they are easily 4 times my size.

Wednesday we were heading down to San Diego to visit some friends. I had been told about a Harry Potter store that sounded really fun. The original plan was to go see that and the Le Brea tar pits, and then drive to San Diego. The tar pits isn't just a tar pit, it is a whole museum, with a timed ticket to go to the actual pit. We didn't want to spend that much time and effort, so we decided to have brunch and check out the store.

The brunch place had many problems. But it was very cute and the food and the coffee were delicious. The Harry Potter store was just down the street. It wasn't just Harry Potter. They also had Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and Doctor Who. They even had a wand shop. It was a cute store. If I was a "fan" type person I would have wanted a lot of things there. 

The most exciting thing was unplanned. Between the brunch place and the Harry Potter store was Mood. I hadn't even thought to look for Mood. It is the fabric store from Project Runway. In the show there are flashes of them running around like crazy trying to find something in 30 min. Having been in this store I can't see how this is possible. I spent over 30 min there and I couldn't find anything, if I was trying to find something specific it would have been impossible. The fabric is all on huge rolls and in piles on shelves. It is hard to see. I would need hours to look at it all. Luckily we will be back in May and I will have time to plan a project. 

Holiday Road Trip Day 3

Today the plan was to hike to see the Hollywood sign. You'd think this would be easy enough, but no. Apparently it is on private property, so you can't get up there or really anywhere close without trespassing. The internet said to go to the Griffith Observatory and do a hike from there. 

We tried to do this and the first path was closed. Which ended up being ok, because it was a good excuse to turn around and stop at this little coffee place. It was in the middle of Griffith Park, and not expecting there to be a coffee place we didn't see it in time to stop. It turned out to be fabulous. They had pesto eggs in a basket and perfect latte's. More parks need mini coffee shops.  

There was so much traffic in the park getting to the hiking trail. Which was weird because the observatory was closed. We ended up parking a half mile from it, just to avoid being the the traffic. This is the view from our hike. Hard to believe that all this open space is in there is Los Angeles. 

The Hollywood sign. As close as we got.

After seeing the Hollywood sign we went to Hollywood. There was a movie I had been meaning to see. Can you guess which one? It was playing at the Chinese Theater laser 3D IMAX. The theater is huge and it had assigned seats, so that's nice. In addition to seeing the movie, they had displays of various costumes. I assume they were the actual ones since we were on Hollywood and all. Going to the movie at the theater allowed us to see the handprints in front of the theater close up. 

There wasn't much else we were interested in seeing on Hollywood Blvd. We are bad tourists. We did stop at a souvenir store on the way back to the car. They sold emmys or oscars or one of those award things for random things. We took a selfie with a fun one, but didn't buy it. 

Best Couple - and the award to prove it

Holiday Road Trip Day 2

After a slow start to the day we decided to go check out Rodeo Drive. It is full of fancy shops that most sane people would never buy anything at. It is near the cupcake ATM, which I wanted to go to. One store did have a necklace I saw in a magazine and liked. One of those price upon request ones. It was modeled after the lock bridges of Paris. Seeing it in person was neat. 

The first set of pictures is of the ridiculous shoes I found in the stores there. 

The cupcake ATM was about a 2 blocks from Rodeo Drive. I had wanted to go in the middle of the night, when the store wasn't open. The line at the ATM was longer than the line in the actual bakery.

The next set of pictures is some of the window displays in the stores there. They were a lot of fun to look at.

After all this fancy shopping we did the opposite by checking out some thift stores. I had a list of the best 12 in LA, but just picked two near where we were. Turns out they were both on the list.

Our evening plans were to visit with a local friend. He suggested a place called The Last Bookstore. This place turned out to be the coolest place ever. It was filled with all sorts of book sculptures and more importantly a yarn store. 

I've always wanted to arrange my books in this way.

Despite the huge lit up sign that said YARN, when I was looking upstairs I saw the yarn hanging there in skeins. I thought that looks a lot like yarn I wonder what it is... Then felt completely blind for having missed the yarn sign.

It was a fun day. It is strange having a completely unplanned vacation, but it seems to be working so far.

Holiday Road Trip Day 1

Our first stop of this road trip was all the way in Campbell. There was a monthly meeting of the machine knitting guild and I wanted to go see what a good knitting machine looked like. Also they were doing a demo of an arduino hacked knitting machine, so that needed to be seen. I didn't take any pictures of this, but it was interesting.

The next stop was Gilroy for dinner. We met up with the friends who encouraged the trip at Mimi's there. I was dubious about it since the one on Saratoga is so awful I've had to leave without food before because it never came. Also it's French food... It ended up being quite pleasant, and a much better option than a place that only has American cheese....

After dinner we decided to go to Starbucks for coffee, since it was getting late and we still had a long drive. This was the slowest Starbucks I have ever been to. I think it took over a half hour just waiting for our drinks. Another person waiting for his drinks was writing people's names in calligraphy. He wrote mine all nice and pretty.

Driving down I5 in the dark is just as boring as driving down I5 when it isn't dark. Except I couldn't knit. It was an excellent time to cast on approximately 400 stitches for a new project. (I ended up being about 20 over, so not to bad.) We made it up to mostly the top of the Grapevine and stopped for gas. There was snow, proof that it was cold. Going down the other side we got excellent gas mileage.

We made it into the northern part of LA a little before midnight, and promptly went to bed. 

Charity Knitting

My normal contributions to donated knitting involve projects that turn out fine, but that I just don't like or don't fit. I've donated a lot of hats in this way. A friend of mine goes to a charity knitting group that knows where to donate all the things, even wool. Apparently it's hard to donate wool. I've been meaning to go knit with them, but I always seem to be busy that day. This group got a huge yarn donation when a local yarn shop closed. 

I was given 20 balls of yarn to make a blanket with. Over the last few years I've been given two knitting machines, The ultimate sweater machine. It's enough of a machine to show you how cool machine knitting can be, but awful enough that you never want to use it again. I gave up on it after about 20 min, but Steven was able to make it cooperate. With the parts of two machines we step up a larger machine to knit the width of the blanket. I suggested that we do stripes of increasing and decreasing width. Steven then mathed at it, and made a Fibonacci blanket. I crocheted a border, which took longer than the rest of the blanket. But, it is done. It turned out a decent size too. 

I decided to plan a Learn to Knit Night for one of the meetup groups I regularly attend. I got a selection of acrylic yarn for people to pick from. Not all of it was used, and one ball I was curious how it would look knit up. I made the most basic hat ever, and then had fun with my pompom maker.

I also got a ball of huge lightly colored yarn to demonstrate with. I didn't need a whole ball for this, so I made a hat and kept the leftover for demonstrating. Again, went a little crazy with the pom pom maker. It is kind of fun making quick easy hats with pom poms. I'm not a big fan of them being on my head, but I keep seeing them on overpriced hats in stores. So, I guess they are in now...

Sweater

I finished my second sweater of the year. I started this one in the middle of working on Steven's sweater. His was so complicated since the pattern was so poorly written, so I needed a mindless knit. I ended up almost finishing it before I figured out his. This sweater is Lush by Tin Can Knits. I love their patterns. I made one change, half length sleeves. The pattern has instructions for full or 3/4 length. I tend to push up my sleeves and stretch them out, so I skipped that step and knit only to where my sleeves end up anyway. 

3 Hats

I've apparently been in a hat making mood this week. I have finished 3 hats. The first is a pattern from the new Knitworthy 2. I was very excited about it. The yarn is 100% Cashmere. We recently got a new coffee table thing and took the old beat up IKEA one to a thrift store. I wandered in to look at the used yarn (sweaters). This was from a beat up cashmere sweater with a few holes in it. I unravelled it, washed the yarn, tripled it to get to worsted weight and the result is the gray hat below. 

I am overall disappointed with the pattern. Both the modeled pictures in the pattern show the hat as slouchy. I don't like slouchy hats, but I have a longer head so often enough slouchy turns out to be long enough. This hat however was neither. It barely made it to my ears. It was so soft though. 

I ended up finding someone who loved it a lot more than I did and traded it and some other yarn I got sick of before I got around to knitting it for a loom she was trying to get rid of. So new incoming hobby!

The second hat I finished in a day. The pattern is from the book Metropolitan Knits. I plan to make a sweater from it soon (with yarn from another reclaimed sweater). I didn't really like this pattern either. The top decreases looked really cool in the picture, but the pattern was written terribly, especially for one from a published book. The neat effect on the top is from it being super gathered, the wasn't clear from the books picture. Also the pattern as written had a button with no button hole, which is just silly. I fixed that bit. The yarn is some yarn someone else got sick of at some point, I don't remember who or when. I liked the yarn, I have enough for another hat, which I will do in a better pattern. The button is from my button box. I like the button despite it being orange. I didn't want to use it for this hat, but it matched the yarn so well and oddly had holes big enough to use the bulky yarn to sew it on. It probably isn't enough to make me want to keep the hat. 

The last hat took a lot longer, but happened to be finished in the same week. It was a pattern I had been wanting for awhile from craftsy. It was only available in a kit. I searched all over the internet for a digital version and failed to find one. (Of course it is now...) But a few months ago Craftsy had a sale on my favorite yarn and I added the pattern in since shipping was no longer an issue. I like this hat. It was a quick knit despite being on tiny yarn. I might adapt the pattern to be a little smaller if I made it again, but overall it turned out well. Not sure if I am keeping this one. Maybe it will go to someone with a large head like me. 

Book Review - Hot Bread Kitchen

When I got this book I didn't know that Hot Bread Kitchen was a place. I thought the cover looked good, and I liked making bread at a recent bread making class I went to.

The story of the Hot Bread Kitchen is nice. It is a nice story. The kitchen provides education for low income minority women. It helps them get management track positions in the food industry. 

My favorite thing about this book is that is has recipes for all those tasty breads you get when you eat out. Some I enjoied eating but couldn't remember the name of or how to spell it even if I did. Now I can make them at home. 

I also like that the books assumes you know nothing about making bread and gives some great tips on how to get started. 

Noro Striped Scarf

This is quick and fun project I have been meaning to do for awhile. The idea is you take two balls of self striping yarn and alternate them. It ends up making a fun scarf that has different combinations of stripes the whole way through. 

I had a little extra yarn, so I made up a matching hat pattern. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn, or that the hat would be too small with the amount I had. But, it ended up fitting. :)