Two free hats

Yesterday was the DUI DemoDays in Monterey. Steven and I try to go every year to keep current on our dry suit certifications. For $15 you get all day dry suit rentals, lunch and a hat. Over all a very good deal.

This year I signed us up to try out the blue heat system. It seems to be battery powered electric blanket pjs that you wear as the thermal layer under your dry suit. It took forever to get it set up. I will say, I did not get cold. I think for the water temperature in Northern California it really isn't necessary. The controls had two buttons. One for your torso, and one for hands and feet. My hands were very warm, my feet less so. I didn't notice too much difference in the torso, except towards the end when there were a few hot spots. Also the battery was supposed to last an hour on full power and powering a light. It lasted about 30 min without the light. I think I won't bother trying it again unless I'm going ice diving. But trying it out meant a bonus free hat.

This is a picture of where we were diving. It looks almost like a tropical beach, with beautiful clear water. It was a clear day, but not that great. I used my new measuring string and it was about 7m on the first dive, less on the second.

This is what the water looked like on our second dive. We forgot the camera for the first one.

Me trying out drysuit number 2.

Our friend Eric swimming through the kelp. 

This is a picture Steven took of some sea creatures. The water looks perfectly clear in it.

If you are interested here are even more photos.

It is finally done!

When I first started knitting I found this hat pattern on Raverly. It was tiny cables interwoven all over the hat. It was beautiful, but it wasn't free. At the time I thought it was silly to pay for a pattern when there were so many free ones available. I bookmarked it, and then slowly forgot about it.

I got over the buying pattern thing a few years later. I found this cable bag pattern that was perfect. I was considering modifying and combining all these other cable bag patterns. When I realized how much time I would be saving by just paying a few dollars for a pattern, I bought it. I'm still not sure why I would buy books, but not single patterns.

I knit a bunch of things and eventually stumbled on that first pattern. It was at stitches 3 years ago. There was a sample of it knit and it was beautiful. I was going to get the pattern and was told it was on Raverly. Turns out it was the same one I'd favorited years ago. I bought the pattern. Eventually I found yarn for it, and started knitting it.

That was a year and a half ago... I was on the first repeat of pattern of this hat at my family's reunion last July. It was tiny yarn on tiny needles and almost every other stitch was a cable. This thing was such a pain to knit. I never wanted to do it.

Last weekend I was at a convention and carried it around. When I had a few minutes and was bored I knit a little. Suddenly it went from feeling like the rows were never ending to being annoyed that I had to get out my phone to read the chart for the next one. I didn't finish the hat there, but I made actual visible progress. This was apparently inspiring enough to devote some actual time to finish it. It took hours upon hours. The second half of the decreases section took most of my free time Wednesday.

But it is done. I am never making this pattern again (well at least not with tiny yarn).

Book Review

This book reminded me of the movie Waterworld. It takes place in presumably the future when the world has been mostly flooded and only a few small islands remain. 

Most of people in the world don't live on land and are called damplings. The people who live on the land are called landlockers. The story follows a dampling girl named North, and a landlocker named Callanish. Their paths cross a few times, and the story is basically the events leading up to their ending up together. 

One thing I both liked and was frustrated by with this book was the story was very centered on the characters. The world was described in some detail, but mostly as related to things the characters were encountering. The world itself seemed interesting, but the book did not go into much detail about it. 

A few things I found confusing:
Most of the interactions of the dampling characters in the book are with the landlockers. If there are supposed to be so many people living on boats how do the characters rarely run into them?
The world has no discernible signs of technology, but the circus scenes describe some rather fancy lighting techniques. 

Overall I enjoyed the book. It was a quick and easy read.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Two Purses

On a shopping trip yesterday I found the perfect purse on clearance. 

I think we can all guess why this particular item is on clearance. However despite it's obvious downfalls, it did have parts I was looking for: a thin black purse strap and clasps that were easily detachable. 

I had an old purse that I love to death. It fell apart. It was sad. I was able to take the handle clasps and sew them on to my old purse. It covered the torn area and reinforced it, all while more or less matching. So until this new part falls apart too, I have my old purse back. 

A weekend of not diving

A friend of mine insisted that we have a weekend in Carmel. I think this came up from combining my weekly hiking goal and her wanting to show an out of town friend Carmel. The plan started with hiking at Point Lobos. Steven and I have been there a few time times, but only for diving. 

There are some nice trails with lots of beautiful views. We managed to see some sea creatures anyway. The last time we were there we got to swim with some of them. We hiked from Highway 1 around Point Lobos and back, it was a little over 3 miles. I would actually classify this hike as easy, unlike the last "easy" hike we tried. 

Here we are overlooking where we would normally dive.

After hiking we went to Carmel-by-the-Sea for a late lunch and wandering. Most of the stores were Art Galleries and fancy clothing stores. I did find a hat shop and a yarn shop. There wasn't much I wanted at the hat shop, but I did find the most ridiculous hat ever. Also it was huge, I don't have a small head, and it easily went to my nose. 

The yarn shop is called Knitting-by-the-Sea. At this point I was very tired, and happy to enjoy the chairs. The lady in the shop was very friendly, and I learned a new thing about the yarn store I went to in Montana. Apparently they are one of the older suppliers of hand painted yarn, they've been doing it long before it became the new in thing. 

I ended up getting a skein of yarn, because it looked really interesting. I really don't need more yarn, but it was pretty and soft. It is mostly shades of gray with bits of greens and lavenders in it. It has slight variances in textures, so I'm hoping it will look neat when knit. 

The original draw of this trip was to have a beach bonfire at night. I love being outside at night. Beaches are so much better when the sun isn't out turning you red. We lost about half the group to tiredness and other things before we made it to the beach. It took awhile to figure out where was nearby and legal to have a fire. We ended up lucky, right off the state beach line was almost dead fire left by someone else. Steven added a log to it, and it started right up. 

I thought this would be a good time to finally try spinning fire. I've been learning poi for awhile. I had been planning to get really good at it, and then try fire. I changed my mind and decided to just do the moves I knew well. It was much louder than I expected. It makes a big wooshing noise. 

Sunday we went to Cannery Row. We found another potential dive location. The water looked completely clear and Steven and I were sad that we missed a good day of diving. You can see the bottom, that is so rare. We ran into the divers later and asked them about the dive spot. Apparently out farther it wasn't so clear on 15-20 feet. 

Shopping at the stores along Cannery row there was yet another ridiculous hat. It is supposed to be a Jellyfish. I have no idea why anyone would want a hat like this. 

Part of the group wanted to walk out to Lover's Point. I was tired of walking and it was too sunny. Steven and I were going to go get coffee and wait for people to come back. The only problem was all the good looking coffee places were closed or far. The other yarn store and the one open coffee shop were both a few blocks from where we parked on the other side of Cannery Row. It turned out that the yarn store was out of business. The lady who runs the antique store told me about another shop. It sounded far away, but once we got to the coffee shop I looked it up and it was only a mile away. 

Dolphin statue outside of the coffee shop.

The yarn store was called Monarch Knitting. It was a beautiful store. Lots of light, hardwood floors, lots of yarn, comfortable chairs. They had by favorite yarn, books by my favorite designer, and I found this beautiful yarn. The colors are even prettier in person. 

For lunch we completed the weekend of not diving, by going another place by K-dock that we have gone to after diving. I got fish n chips because I could, it was delicious.