Thanksgiving mouse

We spent Thanksgiving at Disneyland this year. We had a great time with the Beamishes. The weather was great, crowds not too bad, and the boys really enjoyed the rides.


Here they are just about to board the paddle steamer.
Their favourite was the "Star Tours" ride, with Pirates coming second. We followed our day with Mickey, with a day at the beach at Ventura. No turkey was consumed at any time...we ate Thanksgiving dinner at Tony Roma's, and the following night ended up at a Greek restaurant complete with belly dancers. Finlay was sitting right on the dancefloor and was transfixed, although to be truthful he was more impressed by the guy dancing with a glass of wine on his head.

Ayyrr Matey

The pirate hats are finished. These are for the boy's Christmas stockings so need to be modeled by the bears.


They are knitted from Knitpicks Swish which is the superwash worsted and the skull and crossbones are duplicate stitched.

This is the formal end of the Christmas knitting....so am relaxing with some socks. I've never knitted socks from the toe up, nor have I done a pair simultaneously. So, here they are: 2 at once, toe up socks. I'm using Kristen's pattern so am experimenting.

I wanted to knit these toe up so I can make them as long as possible. I plan to knit until I run out of wool.

Finally - a completed knitted garment

I have finished the green cardigan. Not sure about the fit as the intended recipient is most likely in Nancy's bedroom, but love the colour and style.


It is of course for Barbie. The pattern is from Nicky Epstein's Barbie patterns book. The yarn some nameless wool I got at Stitches last year. It was fun to knit, but took a surprisingly long time to make. The finishing alone took an hour...!

Anyway - in other knitting news I have finished my secret knitting...so expect more knitting content soon. Im currently working on a pair of pirate hats for the boys, but have had an interim request for sweater and trousers for Lamby. This presents a challenge as Lamby is a finger puppet. I might settle for miniature pirate hats for Lamby and Bunny.

Sea life continued

Today was Veteran's day and Adam had the day off school. We took the bikes to Wilder Ranch State Park. It's a lovely park with some great trails - we took the Landing Cove trail, then the Ohlone Cove trail both of which skirt the coast.

There are loads of terrific sea vistas (some with precipitous cliff edges which made me nervous as Adam would race off ahead). We saw lots of seals, as well as pelicans by the dozen.

The actual bike trail requires you to cross this beach, after decending a steep cliff. On our return we stopped here for our picnic.
The boys were really excited by an "off road" trail, and indeed it was somewhat rougher than I am used to and my bottom is feeling it now! We soothed our aches in the spa when we got home.

Sea life

On Thursday I went with Adam's class to Monterey Bay Aquarium.
We had a glorious day - often the weather is better at the coast in the winter than it is in the summer - yesterday was no exception.

We had an hour in the Discovery Lab with a lecturer. The theme was "Habitats" and it was very informative. (I didn't previously know how starfish digest their food*).There were lots of hands-on exhibits; we got to feed a sea cucumber, stroke a sea urchin and a starfish, and pet hermit crabs. Here I am helping Adam and James Glenn with the crabs.

After the hour-long school program we had an hour to visit the other exhibts. We saw the sea otters being fed, then visited the great white shark . The shark was predictably the big attraction.

It was an early start as we arrived at school at 7am, so when we got home at 2:30 we were both exhausted.

* they extrude their stomach through their mouth and surround the food to digest it. The lecturer had a great stuffed model of a starfish to demonstrate.

Too much chivalry?

I took Jon to SFO this afternoon, leaving the boys in the tender care of thier father. When I came home they were in the final stages of thier jousting competition.


Apparently Finlay won!

By the way - I know that the knitting content is few and far between these days; there is knitting going on, but I can't talk about it yet. Finlay and I did make a trip to Communknity on Friday to get another ball of wool - this store seems to get nicer and nicer. I also think that their prices are the best around this area. I made the discovery on Wednesday that Knitting Arts stocks the lovely Malabrigo yarn, so I really doubt I'll be trecking up to Sunnyvale again for that

Halloween update

There were some fearsome pirates in our neighbourhood last night...

Captain Jack Parrow [sic]:

...and fierce pirate Scurvy Adam aka Will Turner.
They had a great time both hassling our neighbours
Sample conversation:
neighbour: "who are you dressed up as?"
Finlay: "Where's the candy?"
Both parents: "WHERE ARE YOUR MANNERS?"

They came home overexcited and gorged on chocolate.

It was actually uncharacteristically quiet and we were left with loads of chocolate and plastic skeletons.