WWKIPD

For WWKIPD - World Wide Knit in Public Day (not "what would KIP do"), I went to the West Hollywood Stitch n Bitch group that I attend sporadically, at the Farmers Market on Fairfax (which is 75 years old this year, and that's very old for LA).

Had great fun chatting with people and admiring their knitting. Ellen will be posting pix on her blog shortly here. I wore my new Feb Lady sweater and showed it off just a bit.

I'm almost finished the baby blanket, but it's too big to carry around and has too many ball of yarn trailing it, so I didn't bring it. Instead I brought the baby sweater I started.

One of the other knitters there had brought her 6 month old grandson along, so I had the (brilliant) idea of measuring the baby to see how big a 6 month old actually is. He was very cooperative and didn't mind a bit. :-)

After that I went to the gym, and had a lazy afternoon.
Our good friends K & T came over later, we chatted a bit, then went to a fabulous tapas place, Cobras and Matadors. They have a woodburning oven, and all the food is wonderful. Sweet potato fries, smoky eggplant, baby lambchops, artichoke croquettes, and roasted mushrooms are just some of the yummy things we ate.

From there we walked to the Grove (shopping center with a village street atmosphere which is attached to the Farmers Market mentioned above) and from there headed back to our place for coffee and dessert - delicious baclava from Trader Joe's.


All in all a great day!

I'm back - Did you miss me ?

Hi everyone,

Sorry to stay away so long, stuff just gets in the way.

I'm not caught up on email either :-)

I thought I’d check in and bring you all somewhat up to date.

DH got laid off from his job (this is one that was literally around the corner) so is just retired now. He’s not looking for anything else.

I don’t have any consulting gigs on the horizon, but I’m content to have the summer off.

So far I’ve worked 50% of the time since taking the company early retirement package, and that is just fine with me. (They have since laid off 1000's of people, and decimated my department, so it was a good decision to leave when I did.)

I finished up my project at xxx Insurance Company in Feb, then we went to Australia for most of the month of March. DS and DDIL moved there in Sept. 2007.

We had a great time visiting them, as we hadn’t seen them in 2 years. Here they are.

We spent one week together (all 4 of us) on the Gold Coast (near Brisbane) which is a beach resort area.

It has the most gorgeous beaches I’ve seen anywhere – very wide and clean, great waves, warm water. Perfect. We went to great restaurants, and had a couple of BBQs and picnics. Visited a National Park, played mini-golf, relaxed, swam, hiked. Did a little shopping.

Sydney (particularly the area where they live - Newtown) has lots of ethnic restaurants – Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, African, Caribbean, you name it – and we had fun trying them out.

Here's me at Doyle's with a yummy seafood platter, with fish and chips featured prominently!

On a visit to the Art Museum of Sydney, I noticed this.

See the woman on the left?

Yes, she is knitting a sock.

I had a chance to visit the largest yarn shop in Sydney, Tapestrycraft aka J. Morris, and bought some very soft Merino wool.

I also went to a nice button shop - All Buttons Great and Small - and got coconut shell buttons for my February Lady sweater.

They lend an exotic touch, don't you think ?

DDIL's parents had us over to their house for a BBQ and we enjoyed that too. They are warm, lovely people. Both are school teachers.

Our flight home had a 2 day stopover in Tahiti on the way back, and that was VERY nice too.

I do have some news. DS and DDIL are expecting a baby! In October. They told us the news when we were there, so that was pretty cool.

Yes, DH and I will be grandparents soon! Very exciting. So, I guess we’ll be back for more frequent visits in the future.

Of course I don’t feel old enough to be a grandmother – I still feel about 30. When did this getting old happen? I never noticed it. ;-)

Naturally, there are lots of baby knitting projects planned and on the needles. I will discuss these in my next post. Baby knitting is loads of fun !

I'm in a podcast

If you like to listen to knitting-related podcasts, check this one out. I submitted a story – which is featured here. Never Not Knitting

It’s about halfway through… but I recommend listening to the whole thing ;-)
Enjoy!

P.S. The pictures can be found on my post for Jan 2, 2009, here.

Warm Ewe Up Swap - Number 3

I just got back from my trip to Australia (more on that in another post) and I just received my 3rd package from my wonderful swap partner "AlwaysNancy". She is so thoughtful and so generous!

Here is the 3rd, lovely, amazing package! How sweet of Nancy to use the theme of spring – everything is so coordinated. I’m a bit confused on the seasons at the moment. In Australia they are going into autumn, and here it feels like summer!

The soaps are just darling and smell great – almost too nice too use. I have that bad habit of saving really nice things and not using them. Then my candles, soaps, etc., lose their scent over time, and that's a real shame. I will try to either use them or give them to someone who will !

I’ve never used Tofutsies sock yarn before, it will be fun trying it out. Such a pretty colour! Maybe for a certain future grandchild of mine ;-) And the Tilli Thomas silk in browns and greens is so luxurious – I will have to find something wonderful for that.

Jelly Bellies are a perennial favourite in our house, and I’m sure DH will be happy to share these with me.
And the pansies are great, one of my all time favourite flowers. Did you know that here in LA we call them winter flowers? Yup, we plant them in the fall and they bloom all winter. In spring it gets too hot for them and they die off.

Anyway, thanks so so much for the thoughtful, wonderful package -- this one and the 2 previous ones were all fantastic.
This swap (my first) has been a lot of fun, and I hope that Nancy had a good swap partner too.

Enjoy the springtime season!

Happy Birthday to me

My birthday.

Well, I don’t like being reminded that I’m getting older, but – as a friend of ours says – it’s better than the alternative !
DH was very sweet and attentive. Last night we went out to dinner at one of LA’s best restaurants, Spago. Didn’t see any movie stars, but enjoyed the dinner immensely. I had a sashimi appetizer, roasted duck breast, and raspberry soufflé for dessert. Delicious.
There was also a cosmo and a nice glass of wine. Lovely !

DH’s gift to me was a bunch of tulips (which he has finally learned that I prefer to roses) and a bottle of Calyx perfume (eau de parfum to be exact). It’s definitely one of my faves, and my current supply was getting very low, which he must have noticed. So it was a very good choice.

I had told him I wanted gift certificates to a yarn store, or membership in a sock club, but I think he doesn’t quite get my obsession with all things knitting and didn’t quite believe me.
Oh well, I’ll just buy the yarn I want anyway ;-)

I’m currently destashing some yarn I’m no longer excited about, and in turn buying some items that others are getting rid of. Here is my destash page if you want to take a look.
(link)
So it’s working out OK…

I received birthday cards – both paper and electronic – from lots of friends so I’m happy. We had plans to visit Huntington Gardens today ( a huge botanical garden plus museum), but I have had problems with my foot, so I’d better rest it. I have a long awaited vacation trip to Australia starting Tuesday, and I want to be healed by then.

On my actual birthday, Sunday, I taught DH how to make coffee (I KNOW, right?) and he made me some. We hung around the house a bit (he has a bad cold), and then I sat outside and knitted in the sunshine while he napped indoors.

We went out for late lunch/early supper at Joan’s on Third, where I had a yummy muffelata sandwich. We had planned to see a movie after, but DH’s cold was really bothering him so we came home again. He pointed out that we will be seeing a lot of movies on our flight to Australia, which I thought was a valid point. We ended up watching a Netflix movie at home instead. And more knitting of course. So a very quiet evening.

That’s about it !

….
Edited:
NJ - you asked if I see stars in LA.
Yes, sometimes we actually do. We have spotted: Jack nicholson, Jerry seinfeld (when his show was still being produced), Brooke Shields, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Sean Connery, Rod Stewart, Bill murray, Steve Martin, Ron Howard, Al Pacino. Oh just yesterday I saw James Denton, who plays Mike on Desperate Housewives.

Warm Ewe Up Swap - Question #5

The question for this week:
What knitting pattern could you make again and again?

The only patterns that I've made more than once are these felted purses. link
A friend asked me to make some for her and some for her to give as gifts. link2 link3
I also made a bunch of cell phone/iPod cases for her to give as gifts as well. cases

She paid me a fair price, and I enjoyed doing them, but I didn't want to do any more!
Now I'm all about trying something new with every project.
Oh yeah, except for these...

Now I've got Spring Forward socks, a Noro striped scarf, and a February Lady sweater on the needles. Lots of variety there :-)

Swap package #2 arrived

I want to thank my sweet and thoughtful swap partner. She is somewhat of a psychic, having guessed correctly about my tastes and preferences.

Where to start? She knew that I have a trip coming up, so she included a travel journal and travel size lotions.

She added hand dyed yarn in gorgeous blue and deep purple tones.

A sheep themed tape measure, and Canadian maple sugar candy (a rare treat) complete the package.

Thanks so much, swap partner! I hope you get equally nice goodies.