California Expedition

This is the story about how I got to go to California.

John works for a company and they want him to expand his knowledge. So they said, we’ll send you to this Adobe conference in LA. You know Adobe, right? If it’s on the internet they’re trying to talk about it. So John was like, sure thing! Then, because he’s a sweet guy, he was like, hey, do you want to come with me?

Hell yeah I do.

For some reason I wasn’t attracted to all of the attractions in LA and instead focused on shopping and seeing what was different about it from other places. These animal print leggings? Choice.

This was one of the many places in Santee Alley. Which, LA definitely does things differently because our alleys don’t have their own websites.

I thought this place looked cool. It was in a mall that we went to eat in. After, we tried to find this other place called Q Pop Shop. Meaning: we got terribly lost.

It was a neat little store… but I like Wholly Craft better.

We also visited a Fry’s while out there because there aren’t too many close to us here. I loved all of the random displays they had in that sci-fi themed version. (Julie told me she’s been to an Aztec themed one before. I feel compelled, like I should catch them all.)

Then I headed out for a day to visit the Winchester Mystery House and San Francisco, so I could visit/meet my internet friend TeeKay[rav link]. She told me that I had taken the less scenic route, which I found hilarious because ^that^ is way more scenic than 70.

On the way, I unwittingly stopped at Casa de Fruta. A place that had both a peacock and a two-storied carousel. Way crazy, I know. So far I feel like I’ve posted some pointless photos and words because I know what you really came here for. It’s to find out if this internet stranger murdered me.

Maybe you think you’re being really clever and are like, well obviously they didn’t murder you because you’re sitting at your computer, probably naked, typing this whole thing to us right now. But you don’t know! I could be a brain in a glass jar sending out electron waves that the internet/you are receiving right now.

AVENGE ME INTERNET! AVENGE ME!

This is her sweet group that meets every Tuesday. It’s called Purl Jam, if you’re in the area and interested. Which you should be. It made me all nostalgic for my old group, because these ladies are a fun time!

This is me and teekay! Aren’t we the cutest? (Even if I look a little crazy.) She even tried to show me some of her beautiful city while I was visiting her.

Although, I feel like I disappointed her because I was only there a tiny amount of time so she really only got to show me a small area of her city. But it was her neighborhood and I was excited to learn more about her, since we’ve been exchanging ravelry messages for a while now but that doesn’t tell you everything about someones’ personality, you know?

This is the kiln at her ceramics studio where she’s like the SUPER LEADER IN CHARGE. Once, she sent me the coolest mugs, out of the blue, just being nice.

Now here she is showing you a Porta-Pagoda.

I’ve always heard them called Porta john’s or Porta potty but she called it a blue room.

Not to keep you in suspense much longer, it was a fun, successful trip and she did not murder me. I didn’t murder her. Nobody got murdered that I know of. Yay! In fact, on my way back to LA, I saw three rainbows while leaving SF. The last one was super brilliant and was a double rainbow. All the way.

If you’re interested, here are the rest of my photos from my trip. So far we’ve had a pretty exciting year. I’m hoping to buckle down and knit some holiday presents now.

This felting nonsense

I love doing stuff the hobo way!

I know you’re supposed to felt stuff in like a washer… However, that takes forever and I wouldn’t have been able to use those freakishly huge spatula things. Seriously, what are those things even used for anyways? I figured, kitchen sink is good enough for dishes, which I eat off of, it should be good enough for a pumpkin I won’t be eating.

I’m a machine!

Also, sorry about the random dishes there. Yikes! Maybe I should actually do the dishes and quit the knitting. Nonsense, I say. So the pumpkin is close to being totally dry, it takes forever for wool to dry out. I’m going to stuff it tonight and I’ll hopefully have some completed pictures up for you later.

I was making good progress on the cat sweater, I decided to knit both sleeves at once. Since I don’t have two skeins though I was knitting out of both ends of the different colors and it became a giant knot. So, I’ve been slightly deterred from that. I think I’m also kind of in a weird place because I’m leaving next week and it seems like I have a lot of projects to do but I can’t think of any of them. Not good.

(My stem is a little long. The man of the house suggested pipe cleaners to hold it upright. Apparently duck tape and pipes cleaners are the staples in my husbands MacGuyver catalog.)

The internet is for-

YARN!

So I’m going to preface all of this by saying that I do love my dad. Very much. That being said, he is absolutely infuriating sometimes! Especially when it comes to knitting.

Not in the sense that he hates knitting and thinks it’s worthless. My dad is actually one of the most supportive people about me doing crafts and he used to take me to bead shops all the time and stand around awkwardly and and nod yes or no when I asked him if stuff matched. He’s got a good eye for colors.

He’s infuriating in the sense that he’s a contradiction. He’ll go with me to yarn stores now and look around at stuff and talk about how nice knit hats are and point to patterns that have the ear flap and say, oh man this sure is nice, *nudge* look at how cool this stuff is Linds and I’m like, yeah Dad, subtle. My dad is the warmest person on Earth. He can walk around in the middle of winter with just a hoodie, if that. Sometimes he’ll go short sleeves and be like, it’s a little bit chilly, eh?

Yet the man wants the warmest hat on the planet. A hat that he will never wear because he will probably never be that cold. Ever. He had a whole collection of “tukes” that he got rid of because they were too warm, yet I’m pretty sure he wants me to knit him one.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I went into the yarn store. I mean, I have projects:

I’m just seaming this and soon I’ll try and felt it… I don’t know where yet. Probably not at our apartment’s laundry area. Oh yeah, and that sweater for that contest, which I’m starting to think it won’t be so bad, Sax seems to already like her sweater:

She’s laying on the back and one of the front panels. Don’t let her fool you though, she’s been a real pill lately.

Oh yeah, tomorrow I finish up my sewing class, and I’ll hopefully have completed my skirt. So far I’m the one farthest along, I’m the only one to put in my zipper- my first zipper!

Oh what the heck, here’s another picture:

I get so excited about this sewing stuff because it’s so much faster than knitting. I wish both were a little less expensive though. But honestly, I’ve never felt more accomplished than when I finish things I’ve made by myself… well maybe with some (a lot) of help.

So yeah, I went into this new yarn shop that’s pretty close to where I live. (Not good, it’s the nicest yarn shop I’ve probably ever been in.) I’m not looking for yarn. Then I think, I should think about making my dad something. That poor unsuspecting woman. I guess she was the owner, she reminded me of my high school senior english teacher.

“It looks like there’s something I can help you with!”

“Yeah, well maybe. I’m thinking about knitting a hat for my dad. Although he’s got kind of a huge head, and I mean, it’s pretty big. He heats up pretty quickly so it probably shouldn’t be wool or else he’ll never wear it. Even though he heats up he really likes those hats with the ear flaps, so I want to incorporate those. Oh yeah and if we could somehow add like a moose motif or something, that would be really great…”

It was a really nice store and everything, I just don’t think she wants to see me back anytime soon.

This weeks highlights

This week on Sick Sad World:

My husband is definitely a scarf knitter. What is pictured above is actually NINE scarves. All done in garter stitch. Does he know how to purl? Yes he does. However, to him, purling is the work of the Devil, so welcome to the land of garter stitch.

Sexy, right?

Also, in my husband’s world, there’s only one type of yarn, which would mysteriously just appear in our house in bulk. I was cleaning out the yarn and finally I was like, WTF is up with all of this damn Lion Brand Homespun yarn? It was like every time we went into a JoAnn’s or a Michael’s he would pick up a skein of that nasty boucle yarn and then hide it around the apartment for me to find and go: what the hell??

The tower is what we finally settled on. A blanket for our friends that are getting married. Since we didn’t have too many actual skeins left, I’ve spent my week ripping apart his beautiful garter stitch scarves so we would have enough to make a blanket and not just a towel. It was really kind of miserable to rip out all of his hard work, although he could care less because this way he’s making a bunch of mini-scarves.

Yeah, I kept the purple one because I actually wear that scarf. The other scarves were kind of ugly colors to be honest and they just went under to doors to stop drafts. Luckily I had some help doing the whole ‘scarf-into-something-productive’ thing:

Click for even BIGGER human hating cat.

There was also more drama about this apartment we’re moving into, I broke my friends car by putting down the window, we tried new dinners and they were hilarious and all that stuff, but all of that seems lame after pictures of kitties and yarn, right?