Vacation was such a needful thing. I had a whole week off, but only had to burn 4 days of vacay time. I had time to catch up on my knitting. I had time to catch up on my blogroll, some of which had been sitting in my queue since April.
What a wild collection of things I missed while ignoring my blogroll.
Annie Modesitt’s husband is going through a hellish illness right now. She’s offering a pattern for a donation to help raise funds to make his life a little more comfortable. It’s beautiful. I am alternately awed and appalled by some of her garments. I’ve been wanting to knit the Morris Fern Cardigan for ages, and her corsets are beautiful, but then that bobbled thing from the (I think) winter Vogue scares me. 🙂 She’s an amazing architect, and could really use some help. This pattern can be knitted as a dress or a corset!
Then over at January One there was a row over whether or not a woman can post her own opinion of her own experiences on her own blog. Huh?
My most happy find were these from way back in May: Karen attended a class taught by Janine and showed one of the exercises they worked on for seeing how colors relate to each other for a fair isle. Seeing these swatches was such an ‘Aha!’ moment for me on what to do next. I’ve got several balls of Jamieson’s, Jamieson & Smith, and recently some of the KnitPicks heathered fingering weight yarns that I can’t wait to play with. Separating the color play from the pattern seems so liberating to me.
Earlier in the week, I re-read The Art of Fair Isle Knitting: History, Technique, Color & Patterns, but still wasn’t feeling the love. She does her swatches as solid rows of color stacked on top of each other. But I was having trouble envisioning which colors to stack. After reading Karen’s blog, now I don’t have to, I can use them all! Muahhahahahha!
Well, I didn’t quite finish the sweater, but here’s my progress mid-week. We went to Vegas to see Spamalot. I knitted all the way there and back on the plane.

Here’s a closeup of the clever waist shaping. Cables pull in — plus there are some decreases in there too. I love how it looks.
It was 116F in Vegas, (during the day, that is) and was 98F at midnight. Kinda hot. Not so much fun with the wool, dry heat or no. At some point, it’s just too hot for wool. But I pressed on.

We stayed at the Wynn. Wow, I think the suite was bigger than my house. Seriously. We could only afford to stay one night, but it was a beautiful thing. The bathroom was bigger than my master bedroom and guest room combined. If anyone ever offers to comp you a room there, say yes without even thinking about it, it was that good. They even had room service, pretty much unheard of in Vegas, unless that has started to change. I had an amazing Japanese breakfast, something I’ve always wanted to try. And for dinner before the show, I had a lobster sushi roll that I can still remember the taste of, it was so good. Spamalot was not as good as I had hoped. I laughed plenty, but I had higher hopes for it.
We came home and chilled in the A/C for a few days. Since Independence Day fell on our Stich n’ Bitch night, I didn’t get to knit with my women, so I visited up at the WEHO Stitch n’ Bitch at the Farmer’s Market. It was a pretty small crowd, a few women that I have known for a while from the Santa Monica Stitch n’ Bitch, and some complete strangers, and some in-betweens.
Then on Friday, we went to see something that I’ve never seen except on TV – the Giant Sequioas. All I could say was “Wow”. To see something that has been alive for over 3000 years is pretty awe-inspiring. It makes you wonder how anyone could see this bit of nature and not want to do everything possible to protect it.

Husband included for scale.
More crazy heat, plus the 7000 ft elevation + my asthma left me a little woozy up there. I lost my cable needle somewhere between the car and the room, so I had to cable with the clip of a pencil. I’ve made more progress on Eris, and am only a few rows from starting the hem cables. So maybe a couple more weeks to finally finish it. It was just so hot!

My husband and I went on a little field trip today down to Valley Center, CA to the Lavender Fields.

It was a small farm at the end of a dirt road with a number of different varieties of lavender. My favorite is this one – Lavendula x intermedia cv. Provence Lavender.

It has wonderful long stalks that you can use to make wands. I’m going to try and get some of these for my backyard. Right now we only have a single plant, and it’s Spanish Lavender, so I want to try a few other varieties, especially this one.

I learned to make this wand today; pretty good for a first-timer, eh? It was quite easy. If we lived closer to the farm, I would have bought a bundle of flowers but I was afraid they would dry out too soon on the way home, and they need to be pretty flexible to make the wands without breaking the stems. I’ll just have to grow my own.

At the entrance to the building where I made the wand, there was a woman spinning some wool, and so I stepped inside the “Wool Cottage” and picked up a couple of skeins of wool. It smells so good!
We only stayed about an hour, and I get the feeling they were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people that showed up because we were there only an hour after they opened, and the lemonade stand was sold out! They must have done quite well based on the number of people there and the lines in the stores. We also got some lavender infused honey. It looked like they weren’t affected by CCD, as there were tons of bees, the plants were humming with them.
It was worth the trip, I think if I can’t get a few plants going myself, we’ll have to go back next summer and plan ahead so I can get a few bundles of flowers and have plenty to make more wands to stash in my stash!

I love putting purple and green together. Always have, for as long as I remember. I had a great skirt in high school, all paisley (it was in fashion!) and teals and purples. And as long as I can remember, people have told me that purple and green don’t go together.
Yesterday, my husband and I were watching “CBS Sunday Morning” and there was a segment on the Ferrari. They said there is a two year waiting list because they are hand-made. They said you can choose the colors in just about anything you like, but they can overrule your decision if they feel it falls too far outside the Ferrari way. My husband looked right at me and said, “What colors do you want, babe?” I said “Dark green, with eggplant leather and dark green stitching.” He thought they would tell me “No!” because green and purple don’t go together.
Here are some photos I took yesterday in a park we discovered on Saturday – Monte Verde in Lakewood, CA.

Do you want to argue with Mother Nature about it?

Last night, I was watching Veronica Mars, which was preempted this week from Tuesday to Saturday nite. (Thank gord for DirecTivo!)
There was a character called Selma Hearst, who is missing through most of the episode, but then shows up at the end, and is played by Patty Hearst. Get it? Patty and Selma?

I love the TV shout-outs, especially when the shout out is to a show I love. Some recent ones:
On the first two episodes of this season’s Veronica Mars, the word “Frak” was used.

I think I also heard “Frak” on Gilmore Girls early in the current season, along with mention of someone not being a Cylon.

During last season’s Veronica Mars, there was a great scene where she sticks her cookie-fortune on her mirror. The camera zooms in and there are the Lost numbers. That was pretty cool, since the shows were in the same time slot.

On The Office, Dwight has had a few Lost shout-outs, including this year when he tied up Temp, and asked him “What is the Dharma Initiative??”

On Heros this week, one of the nerdlingers that voted for Claire to be homecoming queen was wearing a BSG t-shirt.

In the miniseries that started off the new Battlestar Galactica, Firefly’s Serenity makes an appearance in the sky over Caprica.

I was talking to an old friend on Friday about how amazing it is to be in a t-shirt in November. We both had lived elsewhere, somewhere that gets cold, before settling in CA. There are definitely trade-offs.
The traffic is insane. If there ever is a bit of weather, the drivers act like it’s the end of the world and they don’t know what to do. There’s a torrential downpour and people still drive like the freeway is wide open and they have room to go 80 mph. They act like the roads are cleaned by rain all the time and aren’t covered with the slick of a years worth of motor oil. The addition of the water does what water and oil always do… the oil floats and causes massive pileups on the sides of every freeway.
I can live with the traffic because I can flex time or telecommute and just avoid it all, because even the carpool lane doesn’t help on those kinds of days. Luckily, they don’t come that often, although I suspect the El Nino will be causing a few this winter.
We don’t have to shovel snow out of our driveways, or try to find our car in a completely blanketed parking lot after work. No ice scrapers, but I do keep a squeegee in the car for clearing off the side windows on moist mornings.
Some of the things that used to be local to SoCal are no longer exclusive, such as being able to get fresh fruits and veg year round. More often than not, the produce at supermarkets isn’t even from California, just like the rest of the country. But at Farmer’s Markets, which run all year round, you can get wonderful seasonal produce. And since our seasons are longer, that’s more stuff that isn’t in season elsewhere.
The first time I visited San Diego was during the first winter break of college. I remember going to La Jolla and having a picnic on Christmas day. It was beautiful. Back east, there was an ice storm and I heard all about it when I returned, and knew where I would end up when school was done. Four years later, I packed all my belongings in a U-Haul and headed west.
I don’t think you can go back though. Your blood thins, you get used to the warm, you get used to the morphing seasons. It’s wierd when suddenly it’s Christmas and it feels like it was just Independence Day a few weeks ago. But you get used to it.
It was 90F here today, and it’s November 19th. And I love that. Yesterday, we went for a walk on the beach. Surprisingly, there weren’t many other people on the paths, like there are in the summer. But the worst trade-off is living in a place where you can see the air.

I have asthma, and though it’s under control since I gave up drinking milk, it still bothers me that the air is visible. I think there are some fires going east of here, so some of that is smoke, but still. That’s just gross. See the Hollywood sign there? It’s that little white line at the middle left. Not quite what you see in the movies, eh?
I’m staying anyway.

The NATO summit is going to present Latvian mittens to it’s guests in November. There’s a great photo here of some of the completed mittens, knitted by Latvians. Just beautiful.
NATO Summit 2006

I had a great time at the Knit in the City event on Saturday. It was a beautiful day, although it got a bit hot in the afternoon. Surprisingly, most of the people in the Yarn Lounge were there to learn to crochet, not to knit and I only ended up teaching 4 people to knit. I did wander off a bit to check Sandra’s progress on her giant 8 foot knitting needles, shown here. But every time I cycled back to the yarn lounge, there were only crocheters. I can crochet a little, but not well enough to teach. My swatches come out more trapezoidal than rectangular, because I don’t really get what to do at the end of the rows.
Here’s Sandra’s completed scarf for the Pink Scarf Style competition. She ended up winning honorable mention, I think, and was awarded with this book: . I thought that was pretty ironic, since the stuff she knit’s is sooo not rectangular!

I won this book. Now, I am not one to complain about free… but this isn’t a book I would have purchased. It’s full of garments made of simple shapes (triangles, squares, and rectangles), but out of all kinds of crazy yarns like Trendsetter and Prism. And something with balls of fox or rabbit fur. Just not my style. Monika, who has a vision I can only dream of, looked through the book and was oohing and ahing and saying wouldn’t this look great felted, or other ideas that pop into her head. I really tried to visualize some of these garments in, maybe, solid colored yarns, or something simple like cotton or wool, and really had trouble. Anyway, I will hang onto it for inspiration for color combinations and such.

LOVED the movie. Typical Joss, which I can’t elaborate on without spoilers, but the surprises were not surprising. It was much like ‘Firefly’ but richer, with more color and depth. Mal even changed his shirt a few times! Was Zoe wearing her wedding dress at the end of the movie? Is that woman gorgeous or what?
I have to admit that it started off a little stiffly, the dialog had a strange cadence that I didn’t notice on Firefly, but as the movie went on, it was like, the actors got their rhythm back and it was part of them again. I loved the opening credits scene as a single ‘Citizen Kane’ flyover and intro to all the characters (including Serenity). Well done.
One thing I love about the Whedonverse is that Joss can take some actors and put them in these great roles, then turn around and cast them for a season long ‘big bad’ in the Buffyverse, and then when they are back in the big damn movie, you don’t even remember that they were the big bads of elsewhen, because they are such loveable, likeable characters that you perceive the characters rather than the actors playing the roles. I hope that makes sense. As and example, whenever I see a movie with Tom Cruise in it, I never remember the character’s name or get very engrossed in the story because, whether the fault is his or the director’s, he never stops being Tom Cruise. (I do have an opinion on that but since he is one of those types, I’ll just hold on to that.)
Anyway, back to the movie – I wonder where they can go next? I have so many questions. Will we ever find out what the deal was with Shepherd Book? Will Inara stay with Serenity? What’s holding them back? Is it because Mal can’t ask her to give up her profession to be with him? It certainly would impact his income if she did but he’s managed without her for a while, could he keep doing that? Would she never allow Mal to ask her to give up her profession? If he asked, would she do it? All the other questions will have to wait until after everyone’s seen the movie, I wouldn’t want to be a spoiler.
And can I say thanks to everyone who saw the movie over the summer for not spoiling it for me? I’ve been a lurker on many a board and haven’t seen anything about the MAJOR events that happened in the movie. Considering that Harry Potter 6 was spoiled on the morning news only 3 days after it’s release, I am really happy that those who saw the movie early were kind enough to keep it quiet.
I can’t wait for the big damn sequel!

Serenity is finally here! I’ll post a review after I’ve seen it.

It’s not from the studio I work for, so I won’t paste a link, but I think you are clever enough to figure it out, eh?