California in springtime

I've never been to California in the spring before. I could get used to this. I have the window wide open, there's a gentle breeze blowing, and it's 20 degrees Celsius, although it feels a lot warmer in the sunshine.

I'm used to spring looking like this...

This is rather a surprise, though:

On the other hand, we saw more snow driving through the mountain passes of northern California a couple of days ago than we'd seen all winter:

Things did soon improve:

California is lovely and green at this time of year. It has been a particularly wet spring, but it makes the hills look lovely.

We had a lovely break when we spent a couple of nights in Ashland, Oregon on the drive down. We discovered an amazing fabric store there. It's called Fabric of Vision, and they carry an amazing selection of specialty and designer fabrics. I settled on these:

Yes, those are View-Masters (remember those? Dave and I each had one when we were kids) printed on that top one, and the one on the left has vintage radios. I love how they are folded up - I'll show them off in unfolded form when they are being turned into their intended ends: knitting project bags.

Our friend, Kat, who blogs here, discovered the line that include the View-Master and vintage radio fabrics in Portland, Oregon, at Bolt. I first saw them on her blog last month. The designer and her first line of fabrics can be found here.

I haven't been knitting a whole lot the last few days. We've either been traveling, 'touristing', or, most recently, working awfully hard to help Dave's sister around the house, as well as visiting with our niece, who's a delightful twelve now, and so knitting has fallen by the wayside. I did bring the second orange sock to the toe on the drive down. I'm thinking of doing sock fittings tonight, and then I should have some socks-on-feet photos!