Hawaii Day 4 - Maui

Today we did Molokini again, but not the drift part. We were more towards the center of the crater. The visibility wasn't quite as good as the day before, but it was still in the 100 range, so nothing to complain about.

Before we got in the water the dive guide was telling us how rare turtles were at Molokini. Then we get in the water, a few minutes later a turtle swims right over my head. Only I didn't have the camera Steven did. 

The next two photos are of the same turtle in the same spot at the same time. The first one was taken by a fancy camera with hundreds of dollars of lighting equipment. The second was taken by our point and shoot camera. Even with color correction, it isn't nearly as awesome. 

Here are more pictures by the awesome camera. They are much more able to express how beautiful things looked underwater, than the ones our camera took. It was a day of beautiful diving. 

Sharks!

A few months ago I went to imagineKnits in San Francisco. I found yarn made out of neoprene. I bought it with the intention of doing something completely ridiculous with it. And now I have, 3 min safety stop entertainment. :) It is weird knitting with yarn while it is floating away. 

After a day of diving, we headed back down to front street. I was tired from days of diving, but we ended up walking down and back almost the entire street.

Here is a picture of Steven at Bubba Gump, in the Forrest Gump shoes.

When we first got to Hawaii Steven told his phone "Navigate to Lahaina". We weren't sure then if we were going to drop off our luggage or go straight to the dive boat. We had some extra time, so we decided to see where it put us. It was right in front of π Artisan Pizza. We finally made it there to eat, it was delicious. This is the Ahi Pizza. 

After dinner on our way back to the car we made it to the beach for the first time this trip. It was a tiny patch of sand off Front Street. We watched the sunset set over the ocean. 

Hawaii Day 3 - Maui

Day 3 in Maui was a great day of diving. We really wanted to dive the Molokini Backwall. Enough that we got up and drove an hour for a 6:30 am departure in Kihei. It was one of my favorite days of diving. The visibility was fabulous, 100 ft+. Our first dive was a drift dive, but unlike our last drift dive we actually wanted to go in the direction it was pulling us. 

Between dives we stayed at Molokini. We got to do some swimming and snorkeling. I had some fun diving (the head first kind that doesn't need gear) off the boat. The guy leading the dives is a very experienced diver. He was talking about the problems of carrying too much extra weight, and also describing the problems I was having. So per his suggestion I tried diving with 4lbs less. It was really nice, and certainly made getting back on to the boat easier. 

A picture Steven took of me from below. 

Steven being silly underwater.

I like this fish. 

Steven got a video of this fish. It swims strangely.

Our diving for the day was finished by 11 am. So we spent some time exploring Kihei. There isn't much there, despite it being a larger city. I googled what to do in Kihei and looked at the guidebook, and all of the things suggested leaving it. There was a quilt shop, so we went there. And found a fun Fish-n-chips place for lunch. On the way back we found a farmers market and got some funky fruit.

Maui Pineapple, apple bananas, dragonfruit, and a papaya?

In the evening we went out for a nice dinner, with some lovely sunsets. 

Hawaii Day 2 - Maui

Today was our second day of diving. We got up super early because of the whole time zone difference. This gave us time to have a leisurely breakfast. Scrambled eggs, a croissant, and salami. After breakfast was the drive thru Starbucks, essential stuff.

The dive today was the Lanai drift dive. The first dive was fun. Lots of tall reefs, and lots of fish. The most interesting thing was thermocline. Because it has rained here recently the lava rocks absorbed the rain water and it then leaked down into the ocean. It was much colder, so you could be swimming along and suddenly have one side of you be warm and the other cold. It made a pretty shimmering in the water. Hard to capture in a picture, but still neat.

The best part of the trip happened between dives. The boat was followed by a large group of dolphins. They were jumping and doing spins and swimming right in front of the boat. We even saw a baby dolphin.

The second dive started off with a turtle. :) It didn't seem has drifty as the first, but it was still fun. I used my dive light for the first time. It was really useful for looking into holes and shining at Steven's head to get his attention.

After diving we were walking back from the boat and saw a sign for lobster and crab grilled cheese. So we had that. It was good.

And since it was Thursday and all, yarn shopping!

Despite being tired from diving we ended up spending the evening walking around Front Street in Lahaina. There were lots of art galleries. I found this art sculpture, if I liked art that sits on tables I might have wanted it. Despite appearances it is made of metal not paper. 

Hawaii Day 1 - Maui

This is the first day our our trip to Hawaii. The flight was annoying, Hawaiian Airlines is very disorganized. Once we landed it was better. First we went to find our third breakfast (Starbucks, airplane, then we landed at 9:30 am but it was lunch time for us) at a lovely bento place. It was quick and delicious. It was a fusion between Hawaiian and Japanese food. I tried other bento places the rest of the trip, but none were as tasty as this one. 

We were allowed to do an early check in at our AirBnb place, which gave us a chance to drop off our luggage before heading off to dive. The place had a nice outside area with a blue hammock. You would think since I love blue and hammocks so much I would have spent all my time here. But, as expected this part of the vacation was eat, sleep, dive. 

We couldn't possibly wait an entire day after arriving to dive, so we scheduled one for 3 hours after landing. Day 1 of diving was in Turtle Reef in Maui. This dive site was Olowalu. As far as diving in Hawaii goes, it wasn't the most exciting. It was near the shore, so not overly deep. The visibility was only about 60 feet. (Only 60 is an odd complaint since diving locally 60 is worth an actual happy dance.) As appropriate to it's name, we saw turtles. 

This is obviously not a turtle. I've included it, because it is weird. It looks like a face, but it is just a bubble.

There was a beautiful sunset the first night we were there. We saw it as we were leaving to go find snacks and tacos. This was a close to the beach as we made it, before it was over. 

Merry Christmas!

It was pointed out to me recently that I love Christmas and knitting hats, but somehow hadn't combined these things. So I went to the yarn store and bought some red yarn, as most of my yarn is blue. :)

This was a really easy knit. I started at the point and knit in a cone until it fit my head. Then went a few more inches, conveniently until I ran out of yarn. Then added the fuzzy white. The top is a pompom made of the same yarn as the bottom, brushed suri. The red is a super soft alpaca. 

Now I just need to wait for Christmas, luckily it comes earlier and earlier every year.

Book Review: Paper Goods Projects

I was disappointed with this book. The preview I saw showed some actually nice things that can be made out of paper projects. I was hoping for more of things like that. There are maybe 2 or 3 adult level projects in the entire book. The rest is cheesy kids things, like stuff you would make in preschool.

This is a picture of the project I saw in the preview. It's a water lily made from a coffee filter and food coloring. It is actually pretty. I might just that to decorate for something, or put it on a gift. 

This is what most the book actually looked like. It is a paper cone made from a brown paper bag, and probably painted by the child in the picture. It might be useful to have a book full of projects like that, but they belong is a different book. Probably one marked to an audience looking for that.

Another book Review

I really wanted to like this book. I enjoy reading about how the brain works. This book doesn't seem to contain much useful information. It reminds me of a magazine, those little one or two line blurbs that give you a tiny piece of information but doesn't go into depth. That's fine for a magazine teaser, but this is an entire book. It did have some interesting things in it, but it just didn't give enough information to be interesting.

An example: in one chapter the book makes the claim that a dating website can best predict the success of couples by the following three questions.
Do you like horror movies?
Have you ever travelled around the country alone?
Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?
That is random and as potential to be interesting, but it doesn't say why. Is there something about these questions that is actually relevant? Is it just a coincidence?

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