Big Sur and the Coast

After leaving Santa Barbara we drove up the coast staying in San Luis Obispo and Monteray on the way to San Fransisco. One of the things I really loved about seeing the coast was the pelicans. They look so prehistoric. I spent a lot of time almost falling over backwards while I tried to take a photo of them flying past.

The aquarium in Monteray was really interesting. While we were watching the deepsea tank a shark took a big bite out of one of the smaller fish and then all the sharks started chasing this poor fish until it gave up and was eaten. The other small fish got really jumpy, swimming and changing direction quickly in their school.

The bay itself was full of seals and sea lions, with the odd sea otter and dolphin swimming in the bay.

Further up the coast we saw a group of elephant seals on a beach, who have returned to the coast after many years of absence. They were enormous, with rolls of fat with rippled when they moved. This time of year only the males are on shore.

Big Sur was amazing to see with its massive cliffs, mountains and beaches.

We stopped at a the Nepenthe cafe on the way, which turned out to be owned by Kaffe Fasset and his family. The gift shop had some of his knitted items for sale. I had one of those moments when I picked up something looked at the tag and realised I really shouldn't be touching it at all. $148 for a pair of entralac socks. I daren't even look at the sweaters. I'm sure they are collectors items, but totally not worth it. I can knit my own socks thankyou. I must say while I admire Kaffe Fasset's ability to select beautiful colour schemes I can't say I like his knitwear designs enough to go to the effort. They remind me too much of the 80s.

The reason we stopped at the cafe was because during the recent forest fires the cafe owners had been the only people who refused to evacuate the area. Shortly after leaving we passed the fire site. It is still burning in the back country.

Santa Barbara

Graeme has been away for a long term and so when school finished 2 weeks ago I was finally able to fly out and join him for his final week in Santa Barbara, California (Yey!). All the time he has been there Graeme has been protesting that "It's actually not that warm". Well I can testify that while not being much more than 25 degrees celcius because of the cooling sea breezes and mists, it was certainly warmer than the 12 degree highs we were treated to in the North East the two days before I left. I was finally able to wear my skirts and shorts which I hadn't even bothered to get out of the winter boxes at home.

It was lovely to see Graeme again after so long and I was finally able to see his charming appartment and to give him credit he had put effort into raising it above the "bachelor level of cleanliness" it was advertised as having. I won't go in to any detail but the toilet stopped working properly the day after I got there, which was more than a little inconvenient and I'm pretty sure the landlord was convinced I'd done it. Anyway, here are some of the highlights of the eclectic decor:

• Poodle lamp in the badroom.
  

• Tasteful oriental lamp in the living room.
  

• This exciting plaque of two knights in combat, just outside the entrance.

While G was hard at work I visted all the sights of the city he hadn't got round to. Santa Barabra has no buildings higher than 4 storeys and the ones in the centre are all build in Spanish Colonial revival style using adobe bricks (dried mud bricks) like this.

So, the whole place feels a bit more European than other American cities. The old mission still exists although most of the original buildings were destroyed during an earthquake in the 1920s.

I also visited a couple of knitting shops although the one that sounded and looked most interesting (Loop and Leaf) was shut because the owners had gone on holiday. How inconsiderate. I visited the Knit and Pearl Boutique and had a couple of good chats with the owner. I was chatting so much I forgot to take photos of the shop, which is a shame as it was my favourite one of the trip. I also bought some sock yarn and some yarn to make a jumper for G which has long been promised.

I visited the local craft store which was fairly sole destroying in a Hobbycraft type way but less up market. I made a brief visit to Cardigans, which was a little out of town. This store looked really charming and had a group of ladies who were sitting round and knitting. Maybe I'm just shy but I felt a little bit like I was intruding here. They talked to me a bit, but I didn't really feel like I could sit and knit with them. The shop had a collection of really expensive luxury yarns, including a lot of British stuff. If money and mass were no object I would have indulged, but I didn't want to blow $60 on some Tilly Tomas yarn when I could get a whole lot more for that. So I just bought some sock yarn and left it at that.

Anyway, that was Santa Barbara. I put all the photos from there here, for people (probably just my family really) to look at that.

Coming soon further up the coast and Big Sur!

Close-ups

My parents visited at the weekend, so on Saturday we drove up to Alnwick to visit the gardens there. I'd never been in Summer and was looking forward to seeing everything in bloom. Unfortunately the weather stuck to form and was drizzly in time for the weekend but we managed to get a couple of hours of dry weather to look around.

I recently discovered how to take close up photos with my camera without upsetting the focus so I tried it out on some of the flowers. I'm particularly proud of this one.

I love the colours of these flowers and of the lupins.

In the grease...

I've been pretty rubbish about posting on my blog recently (well so my mother keeps telling me), but it's more to do with wanting to be doing things other than sitting at the computer than not having anything to write.

A few weeks ago a kind colleague of my mum's gave me the fleeces from her 8 jacobs sheep, which she usually burns. They're now sitting in my garage in sacks. Noone else seems to want to take any off my hands and I was at a bit of a loss as to how to tackle this huge pile. I don't mind washing the fleeces but I hate carding fleece and so hardly ever make time to do it. On a rainy weekend two weeks ago I decided to have a go at spinning it in the grease.

I wanted to see how the yarn would come out and be able to knit a tension square and see how it washed. So I span two singles, plied them and washed the resulting skein a couple of times in washing up liquid and hung it on the line. I started off knitting a large tension square which was potentially to become a bag. Because the wool is jacobs it is relatively corse, but I was surprised that it didn't itch me that much. The square got a bit out of hand and I started to take a fancy to the colouring so the strip turned into a sleeve.

Now I have two sleeves and the bottom half of the back. I'm spinning as I knit which gives me a nice combination of activities and there's something pleasing about taking handspun and knitting with it straight away. Unfortunately this is barely making a dent on my pile of fleece but it's a start. I'm thinking I might try some 4 ply next and crochet something householdy. Maybe some table matts.