Dear TSA Workers and Baggage Handlers,

I know you have a tough job and aren't paid very much, but I'd like to implore you to please not steal anything from my luggage tomorrow. I know that the last time I traveled, my half-used body lotion, mobile phone charger and perfume were too much of a temptation, but this time please resist. I'm going so far as to say, pretty please don't do anything to my Knitpicks needle set, the Gnarled Oakwoods stole or any of the half-finished knitting in my bags. If I were to find any of these things missing, it might turn nasty.

Thanks,

Mcknitus



P.S. Thankyou, Jean and Helen, I would love to meet over a cup of tea - you both know so much about so many things I'm sure the conversation would be animated and fun! I'm going to be without the computer for a couple of weeks, but if the offer still stands when I get back on-line, I'll be in touch.

More knitting

Here are (some of) the things I've been working on the in past couple of weeks.




This is my version of the Twisted Tree pullover. I'm knitting it for F. For some reason, this has become a long plod. I've finished the body, and have nearly finished one of the arms, but I seem to have stopped dead. The sleeve has taken forever - something you wouldn't normally associate with a jumper for a four year old. Perhaps it's the yarn - it very grey and dreich, and just a little depressing. Still, I'm intending to finish this before we go, so I'll grit my teeth and push on.




This is the Classic Child's pinafore (Ravelry link) from A Gathering of Lace. The yarn is Knitpicks cotlin - my first time using it, and if I wasn't leaving their stomping ground it wouldn't be my last. I'm surprised to see only one project on Ravelry - it's easy, quick. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned when it comes to children's wear, but I really like it. It was my first time doing double knitting, and I enjoyed it. I think the cleverness of slipping stitches and knitting two sides at once appeals to me. I only have to knit the straps, but they're double knitting too, so you effectively knit double the amount of stitches for the same length. I'm sure I'll get to it one night this week.


The weekend was spent in a blur of saying goodbye to people and places. Most difficult was our last trip to the zoo. I often forget that a small child's cognitive make-up is so, so, different from an adult's. As we were leaving, F said, "Bye-bye zoo, we'll see you next week", despite our best efforts to work with him on the whole 'moving thing'. He's trying really hard to wrap his head around our move, but I think we're fighting a losing battle with his developing ability to form and remember abstract concepts. It made me a bit sad, though, because I can't help thinking that he's going to feel very disappointed when he finally gets that we're going and not coming back.

Phew!

So...one week left here. Lots of strange contradictory emotions about it all. Being honest, I'm not going to miss San Diego much - there's nothing particularly wrong with the place, it's just not my cup of tea. Too conservative, too suburban, too deserty. It's a nice place for a holiday, or perhaps to be stationed in the military, but not really for me.

I'm glad we lived in Altadena for a couple of years first. I loved being there. Our house was at the very bottom of the San Gabriel mountains, at the very end of Lake Avenue. It felt like we were part of the town, but could escape into the wild whenever we liked. It really was wild, too. A mountain lion came to visit our neighbourhood once. All we had to do was cross the road to get up into high, beautiful land.

Of course, that was before I'd lived through a serious fire season. I'm not sure how much peace of mind I'd have now.

Anyway, knitting has continued amidst the packing.



Someone loves the yarn stash more than me!

I decided on Monday that I needed a practical scarf - easy care, not too long, but kind of interesting. So I decided on an Adamas Shawl. I have history with this. I bought it from Knitpicks when I first started knitting, and it was one of the first things I ever knit. I remember pouring over the charts like they were some ancient grimoire. It took me weeks to struggle through, and in the end I still managed to screw up one of the pattern repeats because I blatantly didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Fast forward to last Monday night. I cast on using Ultra Alpaca Fine which I had hanging around. I didn't knit on Tuesday because I wasn't feeling well, but I still managed to cast off last night. That's four nights' work! To be fair, I only did 10 pattern repeats because I wanted it a manageable size, but still I impressed myself with the learning curve I must have undertaken in the intervening four years since my first attempt.



It might not be completely perfect, but it's perfect for me!

I've also got another two projects on the go - a jumper for F, and a dress for A. I want to see how much I can get done today on them both before I post photos.

I'm trying to get all the internet access I can at the moment. I'm not taking the laptop back with me (I figured 2 kids, a pushchair, 2 (large) carry-on bags and three planes might put me right at the edge, so taking a computer in and out a bag at security might push me over).R is coming back in October, so he'll bring it then.

Our plans have changed a bit - he's returning to stay in the US until February to finish a project. Needless to say, my fantasies of leisurely afternoons perusing the yarn in K1 have been dashed by my temporary single-parent status. Never mind, I can use up all the stash that A loves so much.

We're Coming Home...

...on the 29th Sept, if Orbitz manages to confirm our reservation. R is going to stay for an extra week or two to finish things up here. A's passport is beautiful - I very nearly kissed the UPS guy when he brought it this morning.

Quickly

Here's another thing I knitted up quickly last week. It's just a very simple felted bag to use up scraps of wool I had lying around. My sister really likes knitted bags, so this one is for her. Enjoy, L, if you're not careful you might get one for your birthday!



Our fire from the other day thankfully just fizzled out under the attack of the zealous firefighters. I certainly don't want to live through a repeat of the fires from last October.

Still no passport for A. The embassy have been exceedingly vague about the reasons why. It should be a very easy case: first UK passport, both parents born in the UK with original supporting documents. The website said it should take four weeks. It's now been three months exactly. We should be well into the final stages of preparation to leave, and instead we have no idea now when we'll be back in Edinburgh. The collapse of Zoom airlines has also complicated things, with direct flights even harder and more expensive than they were before. Moan, moan, moan...I get bored of the broken record too sometimes!

Done!

Gnarled Oakwoods is done! This ended up feeling like a bit of a marathon, but an enjoyable one. The vine pattern in the middle of the stole never quite managed to make sense to me, so I had to invoke a reasonable amount of concentration to execute it. This meant that I didn't work on it nearly as often or as long as I could have.

I can't recommend this enough. Seriously. The pdf I bought from the Twist Collective is fab. As an extra special bonus, there are no mistakes in the charts, so no worries about getting into the weeds without a map! Kind of sad to be commenting on the fact there's nothing wrong with a pattern, but, hey, I struggled through the technical abomination that was the Spicy Fitted Tee from Fitted Knits, so I know all about errata.



Still no passport for A, but fate has proven that's not necessarily a bad thing. Chances are, we'd have booked tickets on this
airline, even though I had my suspicions they were a bit dodgy - their tickets were half the price of any others. So, we dodged a bullet on that one.

To return to my adventuring obsession mentioned in a few posts back, I discovered this documentary online about Reinhold Messner. I want to go the the Dolomites. And I want to live in a castle as well. I draw the line at climbing Everest without oxygen, though. In fact, I'm so unfit I'd probably have to have oxygen to get me to the top of a flight of stairs!

On the same website I also saw another documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the bear man of a few posts back. Gave me another, perhaps more pragmatic and less sympathetic view of his life. Snagfilm is a really good resource for little things like that. We don't have cable, so we watch a lot of online content - only from legit sites, I have a thing about the dodgy ones. Ive been reading that many companies are going to meter bandwidth usage, with some limits being set as low as 2G per month. Seems like we may end up with a big broadband bill in our future.

Edited to add: In yet more other news, we now have a fire burning in the canyon at the back of us. Joy! Fires: yet another reason to worry about the future of Southern California. It's kind of windy today, and we've not had rain in recent history, so the firefighters are on it with much gusto. Doesn't seem like it'll be too troublesome, but I'm not making any predictions after last year's fires.

Plodding Onwards

Well, knitting continues - one of the constants in life, I'm finding. There might be chaos everywhere, but I can still knit and purl myself into something resembling serenity.

I've finally finished the first half of Gnarled Oakwoods.



That's a close-up of the transition between the two main patterns. It's really pretty, but it's not really mindless knitting.

In other news - there is no news. Still no passport for A, so no firm plans to move yet. This is getting old.

Meanwhile, we're starting to say goodbye to the people we've got to know here. I had a farewell trip to the theatre last weekend with my book group. We've been getting together to discuss books that have been banned, or that people have attempted to have banned. It's been very interesting and has made me read things I would never have picked up before.

We went to see a version of a book that we read a few months ago. Big River is a musical (not my usual cup of tea), with roots in our city, so we thought it quite fitting. What made it interesting was that it was a youth company that were putting it on. Wow, they were so professional, although I suppose that's to be expected in Southern California.

I've just invested in a huge pile of knitting books and patterns to bring back to the UK. A thread on Ravelry clued me into the fact that the Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries might be harder/more expensive to come by in the UK. I get them out of the library all the time, so I decided to fork out for a full set from the Schoolhouse Press. Also, rather ambitiously, I've decided to put my mind to knitting something I've admired for years, Spider Queen. I can see it hanging from my wall in black. I'm not deluding myself; this is a project that will take a very long time, and a very large amount of effort. We'll see how daunted I feel when the chart arrives in the mail.