Spring Break

Good Friday is like the "Sunday Afternoon" of Spring Break to me, besides it religious significance. I've had a wonderful break, but I'm starting to feel that little bit of angst connected with the fact that I have school work to do that I will probably postpone until Sunday night. Oh well, it's been fun while it lasted. Russ and I started the week by spending a day on the coast on Saturday. We went to our favorite spots mostly, including a walk near a beach called Pirate's Cove. When I was a kid, it was known as a nude beach, but now that there's easy access to it, I think those days are gone, if they ever existed to begin with. Some rather obnoxious-sounding twenty something men on the trail asked us if we knew where the nude beach was. I told them that it was just a legend. They were very sad to hear that and had to use the F-word a little more excessively than before as they turned around to go back to the parking lot.

Monday, we went on a hike we've been meaning to go on for years. It's called the Rock Fort Ranch Trail, and it's a popular place for rock climbing. We just hiked. In over two hours, we only saw one person. My cell phone worked though, so I didn't feel too isolated.

 I hadn't anticipated how strenuous the trail was going to be. It was a nice wide trail, but steep most of the way, so steep that it was kind of slow going, even going back down.

 I was thinking that this footprint was a vulture's, but we saw a big turkey later, so that solved the mystery. We also saw some bobcat tracks, which was kind of neat, but it made me wish that maybe we'd brought along some pepper spray in case we ran into some of its larger relatives.

I managed to watch several Netflix movies too. One of them was Bottle Shock, which is about how wine from the Napa Valley beat out French wines in a competition during the 1970s, and ended up helping to start the Napa Valley wine boom. It wasn't a very well-acted movie, even Bill Pullman, who I usually love just didn't seem that good to me. But, it did get me more interested in Napa Vallley wine, and it is the reason that somehow Russ and I left Trader Joe's on Tuesday with a $44 bottle of Grgich Hill Estate Cabernet. We've never come close to paying that much for wine, but I'll say it was worth it, although I'm thinking we better go back to our normal $10 dollar bottles for quite a while.

I did manage to do a little bit of knitting this week too. I even actually finished a sock.  L'amour et la Morte is one of my favorite patterns, even though I'm not really a skull fan, so I just did the heart part for these. Now, if I can just complete the second one, even though I won't be wearing these until next year.

There's Always Something

    Our beloved beagle Rowdy, died a couple of weeks ago.  He was only eight,  but we called him "the Old Man." He had pancreatitis and almost died a couple of years ago, but he's been healthy and happy most of the time since then. On the other hand, we weren't that shocked when the vet said that he had it again and that his kidneys were failing, but we were so sad.. .He was Kai's dog, and they were a perfect match for each other.  I don't really want to write about it too much, but since I've used this blog to record milestones, I wanted to at least mention Rowdy's passing. He was an incredible dog!

I told Russ that I was even going to miss saying the name "Rowdy." Kai chose it because it was the boy's dog in Summer of the Monkeys, a book by Wilson Rawls, the author of Where the Red Fern Grows, two books we all loved. I do still get to use it a little though. The picture above is of Rowdy Jr., Rowdy's son. A good friend owns him, and we're dog sitting him this week. It's been nice having a Rowdy "Look-a-Like" around, especially for his sister Gidget, who's keeps looking for Old Rowdy everywhere.

Spring Time Rituals

 Yes, as a matter of fact, I do knit. I just don't finish anything. I bought this pretty Lornas Laces yarn last year some time, and I've started several sock patterns with it. I've always had a little trouble with "perfectionism," not that I strive for perfection really. It's more that I don't usually think that my finished products are good enough. So, this is "Friday Harbor" from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road, and I've successfully knit socks from this pattern at least three times. Somehow, though, this just wasn't what I wanted with this sock yarn, so I unraveled it. And started another pattern, which I am about to unravel again. Focus, Caroline, Focus. I don't know if unraveling projects is an actual ritual, but I sure do a lot of it, especially when it starts getting warmer, and I'm just knitting because I like it, not because I think I'm going to actually wear anything I'm knitting, in the near future.

One of my true spring-time rituals is to visit The Malibu Getty with my honors English students. Actually, that's a lie. My friend, who teaches A.P. U.S. History arranges the trip for our students, and I just tag along. If I had a million dollars or so, I might consider living in Malibu because of the beautiful weather and scenery, but I'm pretty happy to live close enough to just visit a couple times a year.

My favorite part of the Getty Malibu is the gardens. They're Mediterranean, which means that most of the plants and trees they have growing there can be grown in the Central Valley of California, where I live. There are innumerable herbs, and fig, peach, and citrus trees. There's even a citron tree, which is intriguing to me since I've never tasted actual "citron" other than in a fruitcake at Christmas.

Another springtime ritual for me is to go to swim meets. This is the first year that I don't have a kid in the pool, but I went to the first swim meet of the season last week, and who should show up but my  son Kai. I think he misses it a little too. I know he does since he's been working with the Master's Swim team for the last coupe of weeks. I used to bring knitting projects to swim meets, but this time, I just came and sat and enjoyed myself. Maybe next week, I'll do a little knitting...or stay home where it's warm since spring swim meets are notorious for being cold and wet places to be.

Stuck in Lodi Again

I think John Fogerty should have given Lodi more of a chance. We had an awesome time there this weekend at the Lodi Wine and Chocolate Weekend. I have to admit that we've passed the exit for Lodi while traveling up Interstate 5 probably a hundred times, and we've never thought to stop there, but it's a great town with cute shops and interesting-sounding restaurants. After an afternoon of tasting wine at some wonderful wineries and indulging in decadent treats like "Pigs in the Mud," chocolate dipped linguica sausage, you'd think we wouldn't have been interested in eating a real meal at the end of the day. Being the troopers that we are, however, we persevered and had a delicious meal at the Dancing Fox in downtown Lodi. It was just about a perfect day with good friends and perfect weather too!

To add to our fun, Lodi is only about 40 minutes from Davis, where our daughter attends school, so we ditched our friends who are more devoted wine fans than we are and had planned for a second day of wine tasting, and drove up to see Paige.

We missed the local Davis farmer's market, which is held on Saturdays, but, no surprise, there were still plenty of things to keep us occupied, including a little "peddler's fair," in the park with a couple of yarn booths. I bought some alpaca yarn at this little booth which lured me by displaying this darling, purple platypus!

I was happy to see that Paige was wearing her headband that I sent her last week. She even said she'd like another one. Yay! An excuse to knit a simple project again! Russ and I went for a little run in the afternoon, and then finished our day by dining at the Yeti Restaurant, which serves Indian and Nepalese food. It was really good and not too expensive. Still, I'm thinking that maybe it's time to go on a financial and food diet for the next couple of months!

Kind of Productive

I live in a very peaceful neighborhood. When we first moved into our house eighteen years ago, there were lots of kids around, so it makes sense that it's very quiet new since all of those kids, including mine, have grown up and "flown the coup." Last year, a young couple moved in a couple of houses down from us. They got to work on their house right away, updating, and working in the yard on weekends, so, of course, I instantly liked them since I approve of hard workers. Last Christmas they gave us some delicious homemade jam for Christmas, and I told them thank you, but never recipricated. OK, so this is a little embarrassing. They had a baby this fall, and I had never even noticed that our cute, little neighbor girl was pregnant. I am pretty sure that they had a girl, since I've seen little hints of pink when I've seen them unloading the baby from the car, etc. So, I knit a little hat for that, little anonymous baby this week. It even has hearts on it for Valentine's Day. I'm pretty sure it's too big for a fairly young baby, but, oh well. I even thought of trying to shrink it a little, but it's super wash wool, so shrinking, unfortunately, isn't going to work. It's all good though. Someday, this cap will fit our little neighbor baby, who I hope is a girl, or, at least, a boy who doesn't mind a wearing a feminine little cap.

Hearts

I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day really although I loved trading Valentines when I was a little girl in school. My mom always got me supplies, and I would make them out of red construction paper and paper doilies. My mom wasn't big on candy, but my Valentines were very popular because I would stick red lollypops through each one. I still like the "crafty" side of Valentine's Day, and I've been knitting little hearts as decorations for the last couple of years. I have a couple of patterns I like, but my main pattern has been the free Love Heart pattern from Jackie Z's Craft's blog. It's an easy pattern to adjust, so I've made big and small hearts with it and felted and unfelted ones. She calls for using five needles altogether, but I like using three.

I've been knitting my hearts with my new Knitter's Pride Dreamz needles. I'm pretty partial to Brittany knitting needles, but I really like these, and they aren't very expensive. They're colored-coded too, which I love since I can never tell my size 0 needles from my size 1s. I think the size 2s are going to be my favorite though since they're pink!

Care Package

We live in the southern end of Central California, and we do have chilly weather during the winter months, foggy and often freezing at night; on the other hand, it's not freezing cold past eight or nine in the morning usually, so Paige is having a little "weather" shock going to school in Davis, which gets a little colder than we do. She uses her bike to get to classes, but I'm pretty sure her dad gave her a pair of bicycling gloves that should keep her  hands toasty on her commute. Still, I decided to knit her a pair of fingerless gloves this week, thinking it would help take the edge off the cold. I'm sending her a little care package tomorrow, which includes the cupcake mitlets, a catnip toy for her cat, her Women's Health Magazine, and a new ATM card that she had to have sent to us since they wouldn't send it to her college address. Maybe if I add a little candy, it will be a more exciting little gift, but I'm sure she'll be happy to see that ATM, considering she lost hers over a week ago, so she hasn't been able to access any cash to do her laundry .

This was a fun and easy pattern to knit although I still managed to have troubles with it. The original pattern has a pretty narrow ribbing section and quite a few repeats of the pattern before starting the thumb gusset. I knit one "mittlet," and decided that it was just too big and clumsy. I went back and made the ribbing longer, and I'm happy with my adjustments now.

I Love the Central Coast

Russ and I like adventures a lot, but we're also creatures of habit. This Saturday's activities centered on one of our old familiar routines. I couldn't sleep very well on Friday night, so Russ let me sleep in until nine o'clock, which meant we didn't leave home until nearly ten, we really could have just eaten lunch when we arrived at one of our favorite little towns, Arroyo Grande. We almost always have to stop for coffee at  Cafe Andreinini's, so we postponed lunch by sitting in the sun there before heading for the Arroyo Grande Farmer's Market, which opens at noon.

Then, we headed over to The Village Butcher Shoppe. Everything we've tried from them has been delicious, but we went there to buy Kai their buffalo hot dogs. They're incredible. Oh, and why we were at it, we bought some raspberry apple sausage, some French breakfast sausage, and some tri tip.

I've been going to the Central Coast since I was a baby, but we've never stopped at a park along Highway 101 called Dinosaur Caves Park, just outside of Pismo Beach. We did yesterday, and weren't disappointed. We walked through the neighborhood a little bit too, trying to imagine how nice it would be to live in one of the little million dollar bungalows along the way. We don't even bother considering what it would be like to live in the small mansions nearby.

We ended our day in San Luis. It was nearly 75 degrees, and we almost got tired of telling each other what a beautiful day it was. Russ offered to wait for me if I wanted to visit the Nordic Mart, but I have more yarn then I know what to do with, so I let him off the hook. We celebrated my frugality by having another cup of coffee at the Bello Mundo Cafe, which was well worth the $10 we paid for two pour overs and a pice of lemon rosemary cake.

Did I knit? Of course, I did, but not anything worth sharing just yet. 

Comfort Knitting

I didn't think I even wanted to blog about this at all, but I teach at Taft High School, which was in the news on Thursday because of an on-campus shooting. I tried writing about it yesterday but couldn't, and I don't want to say that much today either, other than to say that I'm working through it. I've had a lot of emotions in the last couple of days, mostly sadness for the kids in the classroom where the shooting took place, who have had their sense of security destroyed forever, relief that the boy who was shot is expected to recover, comfort that I live among many wonderful, brave, compassionate people, and just a general feeling of vulnerability and disbelief.

I came home late Thursday afternoon to a nice, clean living room and a very strong cup of coffee that Kai, who I didn't even know knew how to make coffee, had made for me. Russ said that he (Kai) had been planning to take it down to me if I didn't come home soon. I'm not sure how he had planned to get through all of the cop cars, media, and general chaos, but it was very nice of him. Since then, I've done the things that I usually do to make myself happy: knitting another pair of baby socks, using up leftovers in my stash, and going for a two-hour run with Russ in the foothills on Saturday, which wasn't actually that fun since it was near freezing and muddy and windy..and uphill. In fact, I had to have a little cry because Russ got ahead of me and I got to a fork in the road and didn't know which way he had gone. He came back for me before I got too stressed, but that was when I knew that I wasn't as OK as I had thought I was. Tomorrow, I'll return to work, and eventually things will get back to some kind of normalcy, but for now, life seems a little upside down.

Several years ago, Lornas Laces carried some yarn called "peppermint mocha." I loved the name, and I faithfully was reading a blog by a woman who also loved the name and the yarn. I had to buy some. Once I got the yarn though, I didn't really like the color combinations. I know I bought two skeins of it, and I seem to remember even knitting one sock with it, that I abandoned....because I just didn't like the color combinations. I'm on a quest this year to use up at least some of my sizable stash, and so my unloved peppermint mocha is now a cute, little pair of baby socks. I haven't decided for sure who they're going to. I'm thinking about giving them to our neighbors' new baby, but I think I need to include a little cap too, and I'm not sure I have enough yarn.

Extending Christmas

I took down our Christmas tree today. I have a fear of letting my reluctance to let go of Christmas get out of hand, something to do with me have a memory of our Christmas tree during childhood being up until February. (I'm not sure if this is an actual memory or just a childish remembrance of our tree being up long past my friends') Anyway, I'm pretty adamant about the tree being taken down by January 6, but I love to leave remnants of Christmas up around the house, our nativity scene, for example and a few other special decorations that can be considered "Epiphany-ish." As I was taking down ornaments today, I chuckled a couple times about how many knitting related ornaments I have. If there is even a semblance of "knitting" being a part of an ornament's theme, I'll buy it, which accounts for me having these two ornaments that I dutifully put away today.

I had company as I took down the tree today, but not of the human kind. Kitty (aka Josephine) sat curled up in my yarn basket. I'm not that excited about the fact that she enjoys my yarn basket because sometimes I will use a skein out of it and discover, to my dismay, that she has sharpened her claws on it. I'll be knitting along, and I'll keep coming to broken strands. It usually doesn't last for long, but it's pretty annoying.

Nameless Cowl

I was looking and looking for the pattern that I used for this cowl that I finished last week, and then I remembered that I didn't use one. I used some leftover yarn that Randi gave me several years ago. I have to admit that I didn't remember that she had done that until I went back and checked an old blog post.

The mitts that I originally knit with this yarn were very simple, but cute. I got the pattern from a blog called The Giving flower, but sad to say, it doesn't seem that there's been much activity there in like five years, and the link to the mitts doesn't appear to work.

Creek City Cowl

So, I'm pretty sure I need to get cowls out of my system because they're just about as useless as mittens to anyone in my family. I made this Creek City Cowl for Kai today, and I knew as soon as I tried it on that it would be too scratchy for him, besides the fact that it just doesn't get that cold here. It was 32 degrees this morning, but it's supposed to be in the 60s tomorrow. I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, which is a nice basic yarn, but it isn't meant to be right next to your skin. My pictures doesn't show a true representation of the color, which was a nice, dark cranberry, so Kai liked the color. I told Kai that it made me very sad that he didn't like it, and he wasn't even phases. He said, "No, it doesn't. You liked knitting it." He was right about that. I'm just happy to be getting my knitting mojo back.

Off To a Good Start!

The nice thing about not being a New Year's Eve partier is that New Year's Day is a nice, long, quiet day. I had one of my few nights that I couldn't sleep well, and ended up getting up at four o'clock. I worked on my latest cowl and read some blogs, and then after a little nap, I went for a seven-mile run. I'm so enjoying this vacation and having my main responsibilities be to exercise and knit, and occasionally cook.

I made kale pesto tonight. Russ loved it. Kai, not so much. I looked up a couple of recipes, but I basically just substituted kale for pesto in a basic pesto recipe. I sauteed some red onion and red bell pepper with some langoustine,  and added that to my pesto, and we had a pretty nice supper.