WIP Wednesday and Travel Tales

Mostly reporting in that we are back from our wonderful vacation in Northern California!  D and I decided we'd go visit the beach when no one else was there, and we spent most of our time in the town of Mendocino - which is fun and artsy and just about the right size.  We rented the upper floor of a house overlooking Mendocino Bay with a porch, and other than one really drizzly and cold day (Sunday), we had an evening glass of wine before walking down the main street to find a place for dinner.  Very fun, very relaxing - just what we needed.

So while I do have some knitterly things to report in on, I'll save those for later in the week and into next week and just share some vacation photos with you for now.

Mendocino Bay at Sunrise (the view from our porch):

Fort Cabrillo Lighthouse:

The view of Mendocino from one of the rock outcroppings:

Dew on a spiderweb in the redwood grove:

Point Arena Light:

And a foggy morning on the bay:

We took several driving tours, did some wine tastings, ate seafood, and had a great tour of the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse and buildings.  Loved the area, and I suspect we'll venture back for other vacations in the future!

Weekending

Mostly just trying to get caught up on things this weekend, post-TNNA conference in Columbus. Elizabeth, my partner at Stitch Definition, and I decided to go to advertise our venture, and it was definitely a successful trip - we got a chance to meet several folks in person we only knew from emails, and to reconnect with a lot of other folks we hadn't seen in a while.  I would have really liked NOT to have been stranded in Denver overnight on the way home, but so it goes.

Losing that extra day coming back kind of threw my planned schedule into a tizzy... so.... mostly just trying to get caught up before I head off to Austin this upcoming week to teach and do a book signing/trunk show at The Happy Ewe in Jonestown.  I shipped class materials and samples out yesterday, and Misty ordered a bunch of book copies, plus yarn so I think we'll have a great turnout. Her shop is very fun and so welcoming - kind of hard to beat it!

After this tour out, I'm hopefully done with travel until September.  And honestly?  I'm tired and very ready for a break - this is more travel than I've done in years and with show prep, and still keeping up with dyeing at home - I definitely could use a few quiet(ish) months.

Finally, in this rambling update, I'm very excited as My Book with Interweave is in the final editing stages.  I will have a copy to review on Monday to make any final corrections or tweaks before it moves on to the printer next month.  I have to say my editor(s) have done a fabulous job of it.  The photo proofs I've seen and some of the preliminary layout pages are absolutely gorgeous, so I'm very excited to see the rest of the book!

WIP Wednesday: New Year's Eve Edition

A few updates on my projects as we head into the new year of 2015!

Sekret Knitting:  While away visiting my folks and D's family (with innumerable hours of travel in between), I cast on for a new shawl and a new sweater.  I worked through perhaps a third of the shawl - I was not happy with the third motif I'm using, so I need to rework that chart and then I can continue along with that project.  I'll probably focus on that for a while and get it finished before tackling the sweater again.  I like to not have too many large design projects on the needles, if I can help it.  I get too distracted.  All my other projects have been finished up and are ready to head to the tech editor.

Personal Knitting:  I'm this close to finishing up the double-layered watchman's cap for D.  He asked for a kind of neutral light "camo color", so I dyed up two skeins of my DK MCN blend (Aerten DK) in a randomly-dyed colorway that appears to satisfy that.  I need to knit 14 more rounds of ribbing and then I can finish up the decreases for the top.   I'm hoping to have this done in the next 24 hours, as he'd like to wear it when walking the dog and it's supposed to be snowing AND brutally cold here for the next 3-4 days.

While traveling, I also cast on my Hecate shawl by Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops.  I'm using Wooly Wonka Fibers' Ceridwen Sock for this instead of the original organic merino sock weight I dyed up for club members.  I've finished the first section (which is all gray) and started on the alternating stripes section, which I'm about halfway finished.

My hope is to get the hat finished this week, and knit through the striped section of the shawl.

I've got a couple other smaller projects queued up in the wings in the world of personal knitting for early 2015, but I'll share those with you as I get going on them!

A very Happy New Year to all!

Hawaii: Part One

We are back from a week-long trip in Hawaii!  Long-time friends will note my last full week off was when D and I went to Ireland.  Which will be ten years ago as of July - FAR too long for an actual vacation for us!

We vacationed on the Big Island, flying into Kona last Saturday.  We had decided to rent a house for the week, which was actually much closer to Hilo (on the eastern coast), but since we were trying to use D's points with Delta to cover the tickets, we took what we could get and that got us into Kona.  Knowing we'd have about 3 hrs of driving across the island, we also used some of his Hilton points (yeah... he travelled a lot last year), and stayed at the Hilton Waikolola Resort for a night after we first arrived.  We got upgraded to a lovely oceanview room with a balcony for our 1-night stay there.

We woke up to some gorgeous early morning sunlight and hung out for a while on our balcony.  This is really a stunning resort - tons of walking trails and multiple restaurants and some of the few sandy beaches in the area (most are the volcanic rock).  We took our time getting packed up and then headed east through the grassland areas that raise Kona beef, and continued on to the east coast, south of Hilo.

Our rental house was just one lot away from Kehena Beach, which is about 10 miles south of the small (and funky) town of Pahoa.  The beach isn't exactly a "beach".  There is a space with black sand that's about the length of a half football field, but you have to clamber down a pretty steep set of rocks to get there.  It doesn't stop the locals, but D and I aren't really beach lovers anyway, so we were mostly looking for a secluded place near the water to relax and enjoy the week.

Here's the current view from our front deck of the house we rented - a much nicer view apparently since about 2 years ago the lot between our rental and the water fell off into the ocean, taking the structure with it.

The roofline you see over at the left is a covered portico to park the car under since the area is surrounded by coconut palms, banana palms and papaya trees, which have a habit of dropping fruits to the ground in the winds off the ocean.  It was glorious to wake up in the mornings and hear the ocean crashing against the rocks right across the street.  If you walked onto the now-empty lot, here's the view of the coastline and Kehena Beach to your left.

Monday, we mostly took it easy, puttering around the house, doing a bit of grocery shopping, reading a lot.  

Tuesday, we signed up for a great personalized tour from one of the locals.  She's a massage therapist and personal trainer, but Dawn-Marie also does 4-wheel drive tours of some gorgeous out-of-the-way locations, so she picked us up around 9:30 on Tuesday a.m. and took us to five of her favorite spots for snorkeling and seeing the sites.  We hiked through coconut groves and under towering ironwood trees, and she pointed out some of the local sea life - she cautioned us against damaging certain types of coral in the tidepools, pointed out a couple of giant green sea turtles, showed us some crispy citrusy-salty seaweed that was good to eat - and then took us out to some private land she has permission to tour. 

The drive out was amazing itself - I wish I had better photos, but it was a muddy 2-track that we were jostled around on while we drive under a maze of low-lying, intertwined branches.  It was like something out of The Shire - gorgeous and green and lush, but like being in an underground tunnel at the same time.  We came out onto a gorgeous black rock coastline with tons of little hidden inlets of water, where you could safely swim and snorkel.  D jumped right in and tried the water out.

The area has an amazing natural arch formed at the end of a lava tube, and we sat and watched the ocean crash against that for a while, then finally hiked back to the car.  Dawn-Marie obviously knows and loves the area.  She had all kinds of local information to share with us, from native plant life, to native terms and customs important to the local folks.   A busy but VERY fun day!

We capped the evening off with an ordered-in sampler tasting menu from a local caterer (who lives right behind the rental house, so she walked over the trays of delicious-smelling foods - from pork steamed in banana leaves, Kona beef, and a deconstructed local-caught Ahi tuna sushi, to a hand-made macadamia nut ice cream), shared a nice bottle of wine, and enjoyed the company of the local green gecko population (who were mostly outside, but also quite friendly and didn't mind perching on the interior walls to hang out with us in the evenings either!).

More to come.......