If it's Wednesday this must be Oakland

We arrived in Oakland on Monday and we're having a good visit with our friends here.  The sand and surf socks are for our friend Dave, so we had a fitting the first night, and now I'm well into the second sock.  Here are the socks posing in the front yard.  It looks like an arid landscape suits them as well as a beach, which is good, since this is where they'll be living!

I've been knitting these socks using the magic loop method, on a needle that I bought at The Neverending Yarn in Vernon.  It's a Chiao Goo Red, and I love it.  The points are pointy, the steel and joins are very smooth, and the cable is wonderfully flexible.   The price is good too, and I strongly recommend them.

I got to try Judy's spinning wheel last night and it is lovely!  It's a Schacht Matchless, and it has great weighting and was easy to use even though I haven't done much wheel spinning, and not for some time.  It was fun!  There may well be a spinning wheel in my future, when the right one comes along!

California Knitting

Here is a photo of my sock-in-progress posing in the lemon tree in my sister-in-law's backyard in Gilroy.  This was a couple of days ago, so it did grow a few more inches in the car yesterday as we sped down the I-5 to "SoCal" (that's Southern California to most of us!).

I bought the yarn for these socks at Websters in Ashland.  It's Opal 2010 Cotton and it's knitting up very nicely.  We might need to stop on our way home and get some more!

We also went to Carmel that afternoon, and visited Knitting by the Sea.  We bought some Tofootsie to make my niece some socks, and also a skein of Noro Kochoran to make her this bag that she fell in love with.  She totally wanted to learn to knit after seeing this shop, which was fun, but there wasn't enough time on this trip to fit that in.

Here she is with the sample purse.  She really likes it, can you tell?  We got the same colourway for her bag.

Greetings from Mendocino

To make up for the silence I took some socks to the beach in northern California for a photo shoot!  Here are the socks that I finished in late June but I have left lingering this long without a photograph.  Don't they look happy?

Next up is a sock that I finished in Ashland, Oregon a couple of days ago.  I started this one the last weekend in June.  It got to be knit on the I5, and in all kinds of interesting places.

I very rarely leave a pair of socks unfinished to start a new one, but I've held off on the second blue stripey one in order to start this next one.  This pair will be for a friend that we're going to be staying with in Oakland next week.  It's a cotton blend, since it doesn't get cold in Oakland, and I found the yarn in Ashland the other day.

Finally, Dave wanted me to show you a picture of the pair of socks he just finished.  These just had the second toe grafted shut on Highway 101 today, because they were dying for a photo op - we ended up giving them their moment to shine in Trinidad.  They much enjoyed the sand and surf!

Oh yes, I did finish knitting my cardigan just before we left on our holiday.  Unfortunately I didn't get all the ends darned in or the sweater blocked in time so it had to miss out on its chance to keep me warm in San Francisco.  I think it has come out well, though, and I look forward to wearing it in the fall.

Summertime...

School has ended for another year, and summer has begun.  I've spent several days trying not to work my brain too hard, and the weather has been conducive to knitting, and occasionally to gardening, so we're off to a good start.

I have been working hard on my cardigan for the last few days and feel like I'm making good progress.  This evening I joined the sleeves to the body to begin the yoke, so the end is in sight now.  I'm still hoping to be finished in time to wear this in the San Francisco fogs, so I have about 10 days!

We bought a new camera the other day, and we are very pleased with it so far.  This picture doesn't do the camera justice.  It turns out that the camera doesn't talk to iPhoto very well without its own software interceding, but it's too late in the evening for me to fiddle around with that, so you'll have to take my word for it that this picture looks a lot better on the camera!  It does show you a cardigan yoke in progress, though, which will do for now.  Now just one more row before bed time!