Beaches - here is Finlay on Sugar Pine point state beach on the west side of the lake close to where we stayed. Despite wearing the life jacket he refused to go in our tiny boat saying that he prefers bigger boats, preferably with a roof (!).
Adam spent hours in our inflatable boat at Sand Harbour State Beach. Sand Harbour is in Nevada on the east side of the lake.
Adam got to go 'proper offroad mountain biking' with Nigel along the Pacific Rim Trail near our cabin. He was thrilled.
We all did several bike rides - here we are on the trail from Tahoe City along the Truckee river to Alpine Meadows. That day we did a 7 mile ride.
We also did a rafting trip along the Truckee river more or less next to the bike trail. We survived Class 1 rapids!
It was a lovely trip. We were all sorry to leave - but its also nice to be home again.
There was some knitting but that will have to wait for another post (sorry Duncan, I know how much you wanted to see the knitting content!).
and a sock.
Finlay is the equally proud owner of a red razor scooter with 2 wheels - not 3 wheels like babies have - as he pointed out to Esme in the park as she rode her 3-wheeled Barbie scooter.
ps these photos were actually taken on different days - Adam is in exactly the same position 24 hours later!
This is the cashmere feather and fan scarf. Its knitted in a modified feather and fan pattern in a large guage to make the most of the yarn yardage. The wool is a 100% cashmere from Colourworks (its an ebay store but of course I can't find the link now). Colour is 'oxide' and the photo is a pretty good representation.
It was 106 degrees all day, every day, cooling to 90 degrees at night. The conference pretty well took up all my time, but I did make some time to enjoy the hotel.
After my final presentation I retired to the pool with a margarita!
In fact its too hot to do anything much other than hide out in the air conditioned house, or swim. This weekend Adam has learned to dive and also to swim a length of the pool underwater (it must be mentioned that a length of our pool is no great distance however). Here is an action shot...
And what else to do during a heatwave? Knit and wear some woolen socks of course. This is Nigel modelling his new socks...
The wool is Mountain Colors Bearfoot which is a mostly wool mixed with some nylon for wear and mohair for fuzziness. I really liked knitting with this wool - much more than the much-raved-over Koigu - it has a much softer hand.
The colour is called Thunderhead which really captures the purply blue grey colours - the photo is not such a good representation of the colour since while just about acceptable to try on wool socks - taking them outside for the photo would have been too cruel.
The pattern is a generic top-down plain sock - I didnt really make many changes apart from the adjustments in size and to make the toes less pointy ( sock patterns always seem to default to a pointy toe - no good for feet like ours).
I'm off to Vegas tomorrow - so probably limited blogging. I am however taking my new knitting project with me - and it's not socks!
I did do some sewing myself last weekend. I made a bias cut skirt, but unfortunately my inaccurate measurement (and fat tummy) make this rather an unflattering garment.
I cast on during a particularly dull solutions assurance review and it was about 12" but Thursday night. Its now about 36" and close to completion. Its really a bit short, I had intended a long skinny scarf (partly because I only have 250 years of this wool), but I am hoping that "The Magic of Blocking" will work again and transform this rather mean looking scarf into an item of elegance and high fashion.
Knitted in knitpicks Shine and with some modifications to the pattern. I lengthened the body and shortened the sleeves (thanks Billie and Fran for sleeve advice). Im not thrilled with the results - the fabric (sorry...fabrrrrrrrrrk) is rather heavy and floppy, I think I would prefer a tighter crisper knit. But it looks OK on and I will probably wear it. I am very pleased with the buttons however which were frightfully expensive but the perfect colour. I picked them up at Knitting Arts on my way out of the door after our knitting meetup.
At the weekend we went to Natural Bridges State Park. Its a lovely beach, one of my favourites. We saw loads of pelicans and cormorants on the 'bridge'. We took the boogie board and actually got Adam on it with Nigel. Finlay is still, rightfully, rather cautious about the sea.
(Note to self - do not let Nigel take photos of me from Sofa thus highlighting chins).
Althogh Nigel thinks this is imperceptible, I am going to unpick it. I was not really pleased with the buttonholes either so its a good opportunity to fix them.
Of course before they could ride the bikes they had to be sworn in as junior officers...
The sheets came from garnethill which has some lovely childrens bedding but frankly I'm far too mean to pay $75 for a child's duvet cover!
I also spent an evening with the NoMoCo (North Montgomery County) Stitch and Bitch which was entertaining.
Im pretty pleased with it - although of course I put it on for the photo and immediately took it off and put it away for autumn. The only comment I have is that the sleeves were too short in the pattern. According to the picture this is not a 3/4 sleeve sweater, but the measurements indicated that they would only reach to below my elbows so I increased the sleeve length. I do think this is a common problem with Rowans styling of their photos - they are all very artistic, but dont actually reflect what the item will look like.
The campsite is also small - there were only about 6 other tents when we were there plus a cub scout camp at the group site. There are no showers which limits how long I would want to stay there - but otherwise its gone to the top of my favourite sites. No raccoons or skunks though (some might consider that a benefit).
Once nice thing was that, because the site was so quiet, we let the boys go off together which is really a first for them. They played some great games with sticks ( surprise).
The boys were absolutely thrilled!
however, I didnt take an 'after' photo, so this is Christina's photo not including a ruler. Anyway, it shrank about 25-30% after felting.
We spent the afternoon in the pool - literally all afternoon. We heated it (for a change) and the boys were in the water from 3-6pm. Even I got in for a swim!
I think they were asleep before their heads hit their pillows...I imagine I might be the same way!
This is the new purchase. Its Koigu premium merino and is intended for socks. The photo does not really do justice to the colour as its much more muted shade than shown here. Im planning to try the embossed leaves socks from IK Winter 2005 but will see if my knitting skills are up to it.
Finlay came with me to Knitting Arts as he was on a mission of his own. He spent all morning talking about needing to get his spaceship from Sunnyvale where it was apparently parked in a car park. I persuaded him that Saratoga was a good substitute and he happily came with me on the promise that we would go and search the car park.
We didnt find the spaceship (apparently orange and green, but containing a chemical that made it look like a car) but we did find the patch of oil from where it had blasted off, and heard it (although that may have been a Harley in the street). However, F was happy with this resolution and went home pleased with his discovery.
I was amazed that he maintained this fantasy basically all day without any input from anyone else except substituting Saratoga for Sunnyvale. We were getting afraid that we were going to have to actually go to Sunnyvale to stop him worrying about the spaceship!
