I certainly didn’t intend to have such a long blogging hiatus but it happened anyway.  It  started with my summer from hell.  Soon after the lovely birthday party, summer camp started.  Lots went wrong- mostly database issues resulting in registration issues and unhappy parents mad at me- but also 3 staff members quitting in the 1st 2 weeks of camp for a variety of (mostly) understandable reasons and it all made me want to go home and not come back.

Oh, it wasn’t all bad.  In the end almost 1000 kids had a great time and my cool-on-the-outside-freaking-out-on-the-inside demeanor served me well and resulted in what everyone said was the best summer of camp ever.  Yay me.  In the midst of that, I had no energy left to write and once I stopped it was hard to start back up.  I’ve probably written 25 posts in my head but that does you no good.

Since I left you, my garden grew and grew and we canned a whole lot of delicious produce.  We planted giant sunflowers and now have so many seeds!

Buffy, Oolong and Wynonna grew up and started laying delicious eggs.   One hen tried to fake us out by laying 14 eggs in a secret spot before we found them!  Then last month, sadly and suddenly, Wynonna died mysteriously, and seemingly peacefully, overnight.  So we got 2 new hens- Matcha (an Americauna) and Brown Betty (a Welsummer) but they’re not laying yet and I don’t have any pictures of them yet.  Now Oolong is molting so she’s not laying either so we’re down to one laying hen.  For now.

After camp was over we took an fun, relaxing camping trip to Paradise Creek in the Gifford Pinchot Forest in Washington.  We relaxed and explored, ate smores,  hiked on a path to nowhere and admired the pretty colors of the volcanic rocks that were all along the creek.

I’ve  only really been knitting in the past couple of weeks but I have plenty of projects that will show up here in the next few weeks.  The same goes for spinning.

I renamed my business and moved everything over to a brand new shop and website.  The story of why will come soon.  I love my new name and logo and am gearing up for the busy shopping season.

That’s the quick and dirty lowdown.  I’ve got to start small.  It feels good to get some words out there and I’ll be a little more detailed in my next posts.

-It’s hot, really hot. Most of my drives through Redding happen during the summer and I am not a lover of hot weather.

-Redding was the site of our “Worst Pizza Ever” dining experience.

-It’s confusing. The lovely (okay, mostly boring), straight, easy to follow I5 crosses another highway in Redding, making it difficult to get back to I5 if you get off at the wrong place.

-Then there’s this Redding story:’ 7 years ago Mike and I moved from California to Washington. Mike and his brother, Mark,’ (and a cat) drove the moving van and I followed in our car (also with a cat- the one who never shut up.)’ This was before everyone had a cell phone and I didn’t have one. What we did have were cb radios so we could talk to each other. When they worked. Now, you never really notice how many U-Haul trucks are on the road until you are trying to follow one. The one we rented had Arizona plates and a particular scene painted in the side so it was fairly easy to keep track of. Then came Redding. Mike exited I5 onto the other highway, which I thought was strange. Maybe they were looking for a bathroom break?’ But we had recently stopped at a rest area. Hmmm. I tried to use the CB radio to ask them what they were doing but they didn’t answer. I pulled in to the other lane and sped up to get along side of them so I could wave and give them the “where are we going?” shrug. That’s when I saw that the driver of the U-Haul wasn’t Mike. I had been following the WRONG U-Haul on the WRONG highway! I was totally lost and had to stop and call Mike from a pay phone, which, come to think of it, may have been the last time I used one of those relics. I eventually met up with them at a rest stop 30 miles or so north and I kept a closer watch for the rest of the trip.

After so many years, I have finally found something good in Redding! The Turtle Bay Exploration Park (sweetened by the fact that we got in free thanks to our OMSI membership) made an awesome rest stop on our road trip with the toddler! It’s close to the highway and there was no getting lost. We saw lots of cool animals and walked across the gorgeous Sundial Bridge. On the other side of the bridge is a large botanical garden but we didn’t venture that far due to the chilly wind.

There was also a nice outdoor play area for kiddos and a nice spot to have our picnic lunch before getting back in the car for 7 more hours.

My favorite part? The gecko exhibit and this cool one with the equally cool name. I must admit that were I on the naming committee (if such a thing existed) for this guy and I heard the suggestion of Satanic Leaf-Tailed gecko, I probably would have argued against putting such an evil-sounding name on a cool little creature. What’s done is done so I may as well enjoy it now. I don’t know about the satanic part, but his tail sure does look like a leaf!

Here are some highlights from our Easter and Grandparent extravaganza:

1. We were able to find a happy vegetarian, organic breakfast place when we stopped in Medford, OR on our drive down. I never would have guessed. (Of course, Sesame mostly just ate butter.)

2. Stop #1 was Mill Valley, CA to stay with Mike’s parents and Sesame tried her hand at dying Easter eggs.

A few eggs were smushed in the process and she did taste the dye but we managed to get a bunch of pretty eggs at the end.

3. She got the hang of the Easter egg hunt pretty quickly, though at first she pointed to the eggs and wanted someone else to do the hard work of actually picking it up and putting it in her basket.

She sure spent a lot of time admiring her pretty eggs!

4. Grandma Diane made a fabulous coconut cake for an early Easter dinner.

Okay, the cake was for dessert, not dinner, but it was the highlight. Thanks to Grandma, Sesame got her first taste of cake batter and loved it, of course.

5. We met my mom at Traintown and waded through a sea of a thousand excited toddlers. Here are the 2 grandmas together on the train. The best part was the petting zoo but we were too busy feeding the animals to take any pictures.

6. Off to Napa to stay with my mom for a few days and Easter egg hunt #2, this one actually on Easter.

Sesame got smart this time and didn’t let the basket hold her back. She set down her basket in a central location and then ran back and forth from egg to basket. Yes, I did make her dress. It’s the same pattern as this one and I’ll share some better pictures another time.

7. We visited a friend’s chickens and had fun feeding them pretzels and trying to catch one so we could pet it.

Mike was the successful chicken wrangler.

You know you’re in Napa when the chickens have wine boxes to lay their eggs in.

It was cool to see adult versions of some of the same breeds that we have. I can’t wait for ours to grow up!

It was a fun trip and now we’re tired.

California was fun. We saw the grandparents and sesame did really well with all the traveling and sleeping in different places. In addition to all the family, we saw my dear friend Rebecca (who really is like family too) and had a great time out at the coast!

As I was packing, I brought some etsy custom orders to work on but didn’t have room for any knitting. I’ve never traveled without anything to knit and I almost threw in a baby sweater I’m working on but there just wasn’t any room. With extra stuff for the baby and an airline that charges for checked bags, I had to leave it at home.

That was a good thing because I got tons of yarn in CA! Mike’s dad has a hauling business in a wealthy area so he gets paid to take perfectly good things away. So many people just can’t be bothered to sell things themselves, or take their stuff to the Goodwill so Jeff hauls it away and then Mike’s mom sells the good stuff on Ebay or Craigslist. So a lot of times they make money off of things they were already paid to take! It’s pretty crazy. Our visit was timed really well because while Mike and I were staying with them, Jeff did a hauling job and was paid to take away a cabinet full of someone’s yarn! It’s mostly small balls and remnants but there are really nice yarns (including a bag full of cashmere!) and plenty to make some sweaters for the wee one or fun striped scarves for the winter. I love free yarn! I also got several pairs of J Crew and Banana Republic pants for free from a family that regularly gets rid of clothes that they’ve hardly worn. It was a pretty good score!

I got some freebies from my side of the family too. My cousin is a tattoo artist and one of her clients is one of the editors of Craft Magazine so Jen gave me some mags that her client gave to her. I love Craft but don’t buy it because it’s kind of pricey. Yep, free stuff is awesome! Maybe I should take more trips to see the fam.

Let’s begin.

We went on Baby’s First Camping Trip and it was a ton of fun and way easier than I thought camping with sesame would be. We were at the beautiful Lake Selmac in southern Oregon.

Sesame had her first encounter with blackberries and they turned her into a blackberry monster!

Mike and I picked a ton of fruit (57 pounds of peaches alone!) while sesame just ate the berries and got good and dirty. We did a ton of jam-making, canning and freezing. Come on over in February and we’ll serve you some delicious peach pie!

I entered some knitting in the state fair and everything got a ribbon! The empty space on the bottom right should have a picture of this cardigan (it got 3rd) but somehow it didn’t make it onto flickr.

We went on camping trip #2 and braved a cold, drizzly weekend at Cape Lookout with 5 other families and 7 kids.

We did a lot of playing and I knitted and, oh yeah, worked full time and made stuff for my etsy shop.

That was a busy 2 months!!

Next up- what I knitted this summer.

Sidenote: I was unenthusiastic to say the least about going to the reunion. To make it worse, we get to the place in SF and it’s right next door to a YARN STORE! Oh, how I wanted to break in and spend a couple hours knitting in my $400 party dress (of course I didn’t spend that much- $32 at Nordstrom Rack!!) while Mike talked about the good ol’ days with people I didn’t know. It wasn’t that bad, though , and I even got the compliment of all compliments from a stranger- the coveted “You just had a baby?! You look amazing!” So it was pretty good after all.

I did get a fair amount of knitting done. My bpt only needs a zipper sewn in and then I’ll show it to you. I did cheat and wear it today with a pretty pin to close it. I will sew in the zipper. I will.

In the car, on the way to California, I started knitting the Spiral Scarf from Knitting Nature. I’m using yarn I dyed a year ago and I’ve wanted to knit this scarf with it ever since I saw the pretty shades of blue and green that appeared. I’m really excited to finally be knitting it!

I’m pretty sure there’s an error in the pattern, even though it’s not on the official errata for the book. I hate that. Each hexagon is 1 stitch smaller than the previous one so there are basically 2 patterns- one for hexagons with an odd number of stitches per side and one for even numbered sides. The problem is for odd numbered sides. The directions say to knit, purl across, ending with a knit stitch. The problem is that now the next side starts with a knit stitch so there are 2 columns of knit stitches next to each other . It messes up the ribbing and looks bad on the reverse side as well. It doesn’t look that way in the photos in the book.
So, the next time I started and ended my rows with a purl. Yes, there are two purls stitches in a row, but the last 2 stitches of each side are knit together on every round. This means that after the first row, it’s a regular 1×1 rib. Perfect, right?That pesky purl stitch makes an unsightly purl bump in an otherwise pretty column of knit stitches. I just wasn’t happy with that. So, I tried again. I still started each side with a purl stitch but I knit the last 2 stitches of each side. On the second row, where the decreases begin, those 2 knits are knit together and everything else falls nicely into place. See?Perfect. By the way, this is the real color of my yarn. Pretty, no? It reminds me of a slightly foggy day at the beach. I love it. You probably haven’t even made it to the bottom of this post but one day you just might want to knit this scarf and you’ll Google it to see if there’s a pattern error or if your hexagons are supposed to turn out differently. You’ll find this post and then you’ll thank me. I hope.

EDIT: I love Ravelry! Nora Gaughan herself replied to me to tell me that I was right and no one had pointed that mistake out to her yet! I’m just excited that she “talked” to me.

Knit on, people.

Now that Christmas is over, I’ve been knitting for myself. I finally finished my Over-the-Knee Socks, though not by the Christmas deadline I had set for myself. They are so pretty, if I do say so myself! I have also started a new sweater for myself. It’s a maternity sweater from last summer’s IK. I’m using Knitpicks Wool of the Andes and I’m really liking it. The bump in the front is because it has short rows under the bustline to accommodate a baby belly. Here’s a modeled picture of the front. I can’t believe I’m half done with being pregnant! One good thing about being back from my beach vacation is that I get to go to the doctor tomorrow and see if baby Sesame is a boy or a girl! I’m really excited but a little nervous too. We call the baby Sesame because when I first found out I was pregnant, I read that the baby was as big as a sesame seed and the name stuck. It’s a lot bigger than a sesame seed now but my family is starting to think that maybe the baby should actually be named Sesame!

I need to say a great big THANK YOU to my secret pal! She got me a ball winder!! I have already used and I love, love, love it. I don’t know how I went this long without one!

Backing up a little, here’s a picture of me knitting the second sleeve in El Salvador. The cute yellow building is the hotel we stayed at in Apaneca, a little town in the mountains. Rocking chairs and hammocks- what more could a knitter want? Okay, maybe cooler weather so that I actually felt like knitting, but I didn’t want to be picky.

Finally, here is a finished picture of the pillow I knitted for my friends that got married. I am still finishing the second, but the 1st one had a special assignment.
As part of the ceremony, they got lassoed together. As my friend Cindy said, “I’t like a unity candle but we get lassoed together instead.” Yep, those are exactly the same. Anyway, they needed a pretty pillow to kneel on so my gift was very fitting. You can just barely see the corner of my (their) pillow below.I had to fancy up the pillow a little for it’s big day. I folded the flap inside and then safey pinned some ribbons to the inside so I could tie it closed. To make it look balanced, I tied some bows and pinned them to the other end as well, keeping the pillow case snug around the pillow. The happy couple loved it!
Last but not least, my secret pal deserves a huge thank-you shout out. I got this great package, along with a stitch pattern book that didn’t make it into the photo. I got some soap (I love cute soaps!), pretty needles, felted tweed to make the knucks from the latest knitty, and some really pretty hand-dyed yarn that I’ve already started swatching.
Thank you, secret pal and good luck to all you knitters who entered things in your local fairs this summer!!

This was my 1st (and last) view of El Salvador as it’s the view from the airport window. Getting off the plane, it was immediately apparent I wasn’t in the US anymore! It was a great feeling. Mayan ruins near the location of my friend’s wedding site. It’s the rainy season so we were caught in a rainstorm there. The ruins in El Salvador aren’t as big as those in Guatemala or Mexico and they’re not completely excavated yet, but still interesting to visit. For me, the highlight was learning how they used to make indigo dye. The wedding was fun! That’s my soleil tank top that I knitted and the skirt I made. I didn’t set out to wear a totally handmade outfit. It just worked out that way.This is Apaneca, the highest town in El Salvador. We spent a few days there and it was really nice. It was cooler and less humid than the city, which was a nice break. If you look closely at the picture, the bright orange house on the left is where we stayed. The hills are covered with coffee trees as it’s one of the coffee growing regions in the country. This is Mike and our guide from the hotel taking us on a hike through a coffee plantation and the surrounding beauty. We were on our way to see some old Mayan statues that are on the property. Everything was so green and pretty thanks to the rainy season. It was really fun and I will show what I’ve been knitting soon.

You could be looking at pictures right now but Blogger is being stupid.

I saw Mayan ruins, cool birds, and lots of tropical flowers. I hiked through a coffee plantation, ate lots of pupusas (kind of like tamales but better), got caught in a rainstorm, stayed in a hotel in the highest town in the country, ate breakfast for only $1, rode buses with crazy drivers, saw only 2 other Americans (other than my friends who also came for the wedding) the entire time, drank soda out of a bag, learned that my Spanish is not as good as it used to be, got stuck in the biggest market in San Salvador between 2 buses that didn’t move for the longest time, knitted while at a bus stop at what felt like the middle of nowhere, met lots of nice El Salvadorans and generally had a great time!

And now, for your knitting content, here are my answers to the latest batch of secret pal questions:

1. What is your favorite season of the year and why?
I love the fall. I love the leaves changing colors and the (usually) slow transition from flip flops and tank tops to long sleeved shirts and then sweaters and jackets.

2. Summer is hot. What do you knit in the summer?
Usually I knit tank tops and lacy things. This summer I’m knitting a wool sweater, though. Hopefully I’ll have it done in time to enter in the fair although time is starting to run out.

3. If money was no object…..what would you buy at the LYS?
Everything. To narrow it down, I’d have to say everything that’s soft. No scratchy wool for me. I love merino and angora and alpaca. Mmmm . . . soft . . .

4. What are some activities that have become family traditions for your family?
Mike and I love to go camping and every year my extended family and friends have a reunion camping at Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe. We try to go every year and it’s a lot of fun. We couldn’t go this year because of our trip to El Salvador.

5. What is the weather right now?
It’s cool and cloudy in the mornings but sunny in the afternoons. It’s pretty nice. We missed the crazy hot heat wave that happened while we were in El Salvador and I’m so thankful for that! I do like the summer but I’m definately more of a cool weather girl.