Home

When I got home last night, I noticed three things:

- I'm pretty darn sure I made my bed prior to leaving, and it was, uh, no longer made. The cats like to crawl under the covers, so it was probably their fault.

- There was a former ball of yarn that stretched, in clumps, from the front door to the back of the bedroom. Don't think that was there before I left either.

- The apartment smelled like stale cat litter. I suppose this is a consequence of keeping an apartment closed up for roughly three weeks.

tasty crepes

I took another trip down into Arcata today, and among other things, ate some very tasty crepes. I got to sit at the counter of Renata's Creperie, where I could watch them making the crepes. The Crepe Normandy was yummy tastiness, and the dessert crepe, involving pears and blackberries and strawberries was also fantastic. Mmmmmm.

mmmm gyoza

I started the shawl last night, and worked a fair bit on it today.  It starts in the middle, and works out in a half-circle from there.  The lace pattern is not too difficult and the shawl is starting to take shape.  Yay.

We made gyoza today.  Gyoza are so much more fun to make when one has access to a food processor.  The finer you chop the various ingredients, the better they are.  This is a somewhat slow and tedious process when using a knife and a cutting board, but it's not bad using a food processor.  Then comes the wrapping - which is also a bit slow, but more fun if there's a movie and other people to help.  We used square wonton wrappers instead of round gyoza wrappers... one must make do with what's available :)  And then we cooked them, and then we ate them.  There was much tastiness, and it turns out that 1 1/2 year old boys also like them.  Yay.

cable hat

I bought more yarn at Knitter's Lane.  I seem to have been doing that a lot.  This is a light purple brushed suri fingering weight yarn... I saw it and wanted it, and decided I was going to make a shawl.  It's fuzzy and soft.  Which is sort of the point of brushed suri yarn.  It turns out that suri is a breed of alpaca that has a finer hair than regular alpacas.

We got home and made my first hat ever using a super soft alpaca yarn from yesterday's shopping trip.  Cables are fun.  And hats, it turns out, are also fun.

let it... snow?

Pumpkin pie is a tasty thing. It involves pumpkin, maple syrup, brown sugar, egg, milk, a pie crust and some spices.

We had eaten a bit of the pumpkin the day before, so we didn't have quite enough for what the recipe called for. Oh well. We also discovered that we didn't have maple syrup - so we used honey. Furthermore, the pie crust recipe I was going to use was invisible (or rather, in a book in a box 300 miles to the south), so we used a different one. And then it took a while to bake the pie. We hoped it worked.

As we had not managed to find everything we'd wanted on our grocery store run the day before, and we wanted to visit the local yarn store (I wanted to learn to make hats!), we drove into Arcata, the nearest largeish town, which is about a 30 minute drive to the west over/through some hills/mountains.

river

After a breakfast of pancakes shared with a small child and my friend, the four of us (if you count Lani the dog) went down to the river visible from my friend's back porch.

sea lion

I stopped at a beach outside Eureka on the drive south to Willow Creek, and there was a sea lion.  And the weather was beautiful.

halloween

Some people don't do much on Halloween other than eat too much candy.  Some people buy costumes.  And some people make them.

shrooms

The morning started with waffles.  Waffles are a good way to start the morning.

This was followed by mushrooms, which is a good way to continue the day.

It finished with s'mores, which is an excellent way to finish.

pumpkins, owls and skinny owls

Eugene, OR, has a totally cool Saturday Market. It's kind of like Davis' Whole Earth Festival, except it's apparently pretty much every weekend, and it's a whole heck of a lot bigger. There is a farmer's market associated with it as well. I recognized more than one booth at the Saturday Market from the WEF, in fact.

owls, marshmallows and a capella

My friend works at the Portland Audubon's rehab center, so I spent the morning with her, seeing the birds they have at their center.  I got to see some neat animals - among other things, a saw whet owl, a flammulated owl, some Canada geese wandering around the treatment room, a brush rabbit.

fog and leaves

I woke up in the morning, and took a peek out my window - the Space Needle was beautifully visible.  I went to take a shower, intending to take some pictures once I was out... and it was foggy.  Over the next hour or two, the fog shifted and the Needle was visible on and off.

water still comes from the sky

I chose to take the ferry from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen to the mainland, rather than the same ferry I took coming in (Victoria to Port Angeles, WA) for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it appears that Seattle (my next stop) is on the other side of some random water from Port Angeles, which seems to involve another ferry or something.

fish, tea, and checkers

Brady's Fish and Chips provided our lunch today, which we shared with my cousin near the water. It was very tasty - not too much batter (a common failing of fish and chips), plenty of chips, still hot and crunchy by the time we got to our lunch spot. After lunch (and delivering my cousin back to work), my aunt and I walked along the water near downtown Victoria.

plastic and salmon

After a waffle breakfast (homemade waffles + whipped cream + strawberries + blueberries + bananas = happiness), my aunt and I spent a bit of time helping my cousin, who is in the process of renovating the kitchen of his (and his wife's) newly purchased home.  They've gutted the kitchen, and taken it down to studs.  He wanted a little help with getting the plastic up prior to the drywall going up, so we helped.  Apparently, being tall is occasionally useful - he was able to staple the plastic to the ceiling without needing a stool of any kind.  The dog helped by trying her darnedest to get us to play with her.

fudge

One of my cousins lives in Nanaimo (home of the Nanaimo bar), which is about an hour's drive north of Victoria, where my aunt and grandparents live. We got going in late morning, and made our way up island. We had brunch at the Longwood Brewpub, which was wonderful. It involved a buffet with lots of tasty food, and far too much dessert. :-)

water comes from the sky

So driving through Oregon and Washington isn't very exciting, though it takes a while.  It turns out that you're not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon.  That was a little weird.  The internets tells me that apparently, the general public can't be trusted to pump their own gas (even though 48 other states think it's ok... it seems New Jersey has a similar law).  It was a bit odd.  I'll just have to try to avoid getting gas in Oregon on the way back.  At least it's not any more expensive than it is anywhere else.

travelling pumpkin

Shiny phone

This morning, I went to the pumpkin patch with a small child.  We found him a pumpkin, though he was much more interested in holding my phone.

Preparing for travel (don't worry, it was not on the dashboard while driving)

Then we got back to my friend's house, and I acquired a travelling companion in the shape of a pie pumpkin, grown by my friend.

road trip

I am driving to visit my grandparents in Victoria, Canada. I decided to drive because I have friends along the way.

This morning, after many delays that involved not having cleaned sufficiently and not having packed prior to this morning (the planned departure date), I finally got on the road.

cotton musings

I have been knitting an inordinate number of dishcloths recently. This means that periodically, I'll do pictures of too many dishcloths :-) Boring post, but hey, it gives me something to put here :P

monkeying around

A few days ago, I finished my Monkey Socks.  They were quite fun to make, and I rather like the way the colors worked out.  These happen to be the socks I wore while sailing - and while my feet and legs got damp, my feet were never cold, so I consider them to be a triumph.  These are the same socks I was working on in the post about heels.

Perry helped.

sailing

Crowds on Pier 39

Yesterday, my father and I had an opportunity to go sailing out on San Francisco Bay on a catamaran.  The group we were with had arranged for the sunset tour - and it was spectacular.

rain

With the advent of the rainy season comes hot chocolate and blankets.  It's easy to make hot chocolate without resorting to overly sweetened instant packets.

blocks and turns

Tube pre-turn (i.e., the leg of the sock)

The heel turn is one of the niftiest parts of a sock.

The outside of the heel turn

A sock is essentially two tubes that go around a corner with one end closed off.  The tricky part, when knitting a sock, is how to get around that corner.

hawk trapping

 Falconry* is the art of working with a bird of prey (an animal that does not necessarily want to work with you) to go hunting.

In order to do this, you need a bird.

There are two common ways to acquire a bird - buy one, or trap one.

floppy yarn

A somewhat floppy ball of yarn with the tangled center for a center-pull ball of yarn.

Closeup of tangled center.

The remains after most of the center has been pulled out.

This yarn was knitted into half a dishcloth, and then I ran out.  It sat as half a dishcloth for a while, but I decided to make it a ball.  You can see the difference than some steam and a bit of tension makes on yarn - the near side is the kinky immediately-post-knitting yarn, and the far side is after holding it over a pot of boiling water and pulling a little.

Fish-shaped crochet dishcloth. You may recognize this yarn from the previous post.

Reverse mitered knit dishcloth.

A somewhat floppy ball of yarn with the tangled center for a center-pull ball of yarn.

Closeup of tangled center.

The remains after most of the center has been pulled out.

This yarn was knitted into half a dishcloth, and then I ran out.  It sat as half a dishcloth for a while, but I decided to make it a ball.  You can see the difference than some steam and a bit of tension makes on yarn - the near side is the kinky immediately-post-knitting yarn, and the far side is after holding it over a pot of boiling water and pulling a little.

Fish-shaped crochet dishcloth. You may recognize this yarn from the previous post.

Reverse mitered knit dishcloth.

The photos for this post are sort of a followup to yesterday's post to illustrate things.

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As I slowly work on sorting/cleaning/tossing/whatevering my stuff from after my apartment fire, I have turned my attention to the large plastic bag in which resides my yarn stash. The soot, it turns out, gets everywhere - including closed drawers, where the yarn was stashed.

I talked to somebody at one of my LYSs*, and have been told how to wash yarn that has inhabited the homes of smokers - and as my yarn has been contaminated by, but not totally coated in, soot, I thought I'd give it a try.

toilet paper rolls

When using a ball of yarn, there are generally two choices - use the yarn from the outside of the ball, so it unwinds from outside-in, or use the yarn from the center of the ball, so it unwinds from inside-out.

When you start from the outside, you have to figure out a way to keep the ball unrolling smoothly and not bounce/roll around all over the place. I'm sure there are other disadvantages as well, since I'm pretty sure at some point that I was told this is the "wrong" way to do it. However, it works, mostly.

the new purple sock

Well. I have been encouraged to start a blog about my newest hobby, knitting. I am currently working on a pair of purple socks, and since I like purple, and I like making socks (except for the fact that one has to make TWO matching socks...), I figured that was a good place to start.