more Jalama

Someone (and I'm not mentioning names here) wanted to see more photos from this weekend. So please forgive me if you're sick and tired of Jalama Beach. Many of the photos are of Marius so I figured I'd start out with a couple of me. That's right, the chick in the pics above is me. I know, it's hard to believe given the foreign looking garment I have on the lower half of my body, but it really is me (day-glow legs and all). For fun, check out the difference in skin color between my hands and my legs. It borders on a genetic impossibility.

Okay, everything else is Marius since I had the camera for most of the walk.



Including shots of Marius getting a little annoyed that there will suddenly be many photos of him. He's normally the one with the camera and regularly comments on the huge disparity in photos of each of us. And yet, when I try to rectify the situation, this is what I get:





Some of the kelp that he found so fascinating including a shot of the afore mentioned lady bugs.

Jalama Beach

We went to Jalama Beach this weekend despite the gray skies. The only folks there were the surfers so we had the beach to ourselves for the most part and only had to turn back from our walk when the tide started to come in and threatened to turn our stroll into a swim (and regardless of what you've heard about SoCal weather, it was WAY too cold to swim). Marius became obsessed with the number of lady bugs we found on the washed up kelp. So, if anyone knows why they seem to like kelp (other than just having been blown down from the grass covered bluffs above -my current hypothesis), feel free to comment so I can pass it along to him.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that I finally got an order of knitting books from amazon.com. So of course now I'm working on designing a yoke sweater that incorporates some of the charts from the Fassett book. Like I don't have enough projects to finish already...

The organisms in my life....

So I share my apartment with many other species (most by choice with the exception of the ubiquitous Santa Barbara ant infestation). This week they're giving me fits.

Sam went and got into yet another fight with probably the same cat that sent us to the vet a few weeks ago. I'm only grateful that it looks like he won't develop an edema since the cut is lower this time (directly below the last wound which nicked his jugular). So now he’s sleeping it off after having to deal with me washing the wound and applying antibiotic ointment. We're just waiting on the wonderful Dr. Sellers (http://www.catandbirds.com/bourdoctors/) to call back and let us know if Sam needs to make another trip in to the clinic. I wouldn’t mind that he fights except for the fact that he seems to always lose! He’s not the brightest creature in the world.

On a more cheerful subject, some of my plants are blooming. Two came from the university greenhouse when the collection was thinned out late last year and I have no idea what either of them are since the white flowers are from a plant that was hiding in a pot of another plant and the orange orchid came from some idiot who completely destroyed a potted plant they had and left behind tons of broken off pieces, two of which happily reside in a pot in my window right now.

However, the dark purple orchid is a Maxillovia variabilis that I just got along with a few other plants from a graduate student in our program. His neighbor is one of those crazy collectors with more plants than space and apparently their spouse insisted on a little downsizing. George, the grad student, very kindly brought them in for us to plunder and this lovely little plant was in bud. Thanks George!

Spinning WIP

I promised spinning projects yesterday and I deliver. First is some roving I've got on my wheel. The roving is superwash merino from Royal Hare (grabbed the last bit from their booth at Stitches West, unspun sample first). I can't wait to see what it turns into when I ply it on itself.

















And of course there are all of the all of the dye experiments Thuy and I have been trying out. Everything that isn't the Royal Hare roving up above is wool that we dyed with food coloring. Some of it is from the supermarket and some is Wilton's cake frosting dye. The colors are just amazing although we aren't certain how colorfast it all is.

Towards the bottom is some of it spun up both on one of my Bossie's and in a 2-ply where I just folded what I had in half and let it twist back on itself. The stuff in the shot with the spindle is BFL that I have several pounds of from John and Marsha up in Solvang. The rest is some unknown beasty that Barbara (Monday night spinning group) had in her stash and shared with us. It was dirty and fairly rough stuff but it cleaned up and softened up a bit in the dye bath and more junk came out when I spun up the first sample so it isn't too bad. Barbara was so impressed that she's going to be sending the rest of the stuff our way to play with (thanks Barbara!!!). I'd turn the stuff into fun socks except that food coloring has been known to bleed and dye your skin. I really don't think I need multicolored toes just yet so I'll have to come up with another project for it all.

Finally WIP photos

I know it seems like I just pretend to do fibery things as I have yet to post any evidence. But I have finally decided to silence the un-believers among you with photos of the things I'm working on right now. I'm sure I could drag out many other projects that are on needles but I'm not posting it if I haven't touched it in the last month.

To the left is Sam on the linen stitch (also called woven stitch) cotton throw blanket that I will be working on for forever. I found some great space dyed cotton a few years ago in a sale bin in a shop in Cary, NC. I haven't known what to do with it but I just finished a bag in linen stitch that was also in a space-dyed yarn. Space-dyed yarn does really nice things in linen stitch and so I figured I'd go ahead and try to turn it all into a blanket. I know, it may the project I work on for years, but it will be pretty if I ever finish it. Plus it's great for knitting nights since it's relatively mindless knitting.


I've also nearly finished the front of Marius' first sweater (see earlier post for photo from pattern). I have to redo the ribbing at the bottom and it doesn't look like much as the fun neck work is all done at the very end, but I think it will turn out okay.

The most recently started is the Babette for mom. I sent her the photo of this pattern to suggest I could alter it to match something else she was looking at and she decided she wanted this instead. Since I'm not one to reinvent the wheel, she's getting the babette. I'm just doing the sequins (the spotted looking bands have threads of sequins held together with the yarn) much more subtly by using another yarn with small copper colored sequins.

Tomorrow I'll post my spinning photos.

I GOT IT!!!

I will be employed next spring. Woo-hoo! The head of the department just called, said some lovely, complimentary things and offered me the job. Of course it's not tenure track or anything but that will be the next step. For now it's enough that I have a job that will help my career and I get to live with my husband for a while.