Special Day

Recognize this? Well, I wouldn't expect you to unless you're living in or have been to Southern California.
This is the baptistry at the San Gabriel Mission. It's had some restoration work, but in the main it's pretty much the same as it was in 1771.
Looking up at the top of the dome, this is what you see. I'm sure in the 1700's or so the candelabra was lit by actual candles, but nowadays it's light bulbs. Bare bulbs like this were quite a style statement in the late 1800's--early 1900's when electric light was brand new.
Inside the baptistry, you'll find the original hammered copper font, and a painting that has definitely been restored more than once.
In case you wanted more details about it, there's a plaque at the side of the entrance explaining all the details.

This is where all my kids were baptized, and now the latest in the line: the grand-carrot, oblivious of the history, family and otherwise, did not enjoy this part. However, it was all over soon and he was able to dry off and return to his nap. Celebrations followed, of course, including lots of yummy food.

Want to see pictures? Of course you do! (If you don't, then you can stop reading here.)

Lumpia. Mmmm!

Pancit noodles.

Lechon and adobo chicken.

Veggies with sauce and quail eggs.

Yes, there was a definite Filipino flair to the food!

Finishing touch: fruit tart. This came from a Cuban bakery, as did the cake. Mmmm.

Tomorrow there may actually be knitting content. I have some new yarn, and I'm going to try to work on CPH some more and take pics of "where it's at," and then I'll even tell you about my newest crazy-making project.

Too bad there wasn't any of that fruit tart left over!

Now For Something Completely Different

Three guesses where I went today. Or what this is.
No, it's not Tinkertoys, nor is it Lincoln Logs. It isn't even an Erector Set, although it sorta does look like one of those creations, doesn't it?
Actually, it's the dome of this:

Atrium at the Brea Mall.
Quite a lovely shopping venue, one I'd never ventured out to before.
It was a Girls Day Out with my SIL/Roomie and D3, aka the Fashionista. A certain upscale department store is having its Half-Yearly Sale for Women and of course that's always a big draw.
Well, for a Fashionista and her mummy and auntie, at least. Besides, the Grandcarrot needed a new pair of shoes.
White shoes. For a certain event on Saturday, starring the boy.
News at 11. Or maybe on the 11th. We'll see.
This is another view of that ceiling. I love exposed beams and trusses like this. Architecture snoop, that's me.
My shopping companions protected me from passersby while I snapped these. Getting knocked over while I'm looking up up up and trying to get a skylight in focus is not in the plan. In addition to the protection, I also took quite a bit of teasing. Oh well. One must suffer for one's art, such as it is!
Today was one of those days that start out with a snail's pace and move on into frustration as the day goes on. I had an early-ish doctor's appt. in the depths of Monterey Park, which is a lovely community just a few miles away. I left home at 8:15, pretty confident of making my 8:45 date.
Hah. Double Hah! I arrived at 9:15, after circling the block a couple of times looking for a place to abandon the vehicle. Never mind parking; just some place to leave it. No wonder the ol' blood pressure was up. (The weight too, but that's another whole blog post. Not today.)
However, the day did get better after that. I left the doctor with a few centiliters of blood and took off for shopping. You know the old truism:
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
There are no yarn or fabric shops at the Brea Mall. This is A Good Thing for my budget.
So on to something more cheerful: quilts!
French quilts, for sale at the artists' street fair in Uzes. This artist uses silks and ribbons to construct her gorgeous pieces, then mounts them like the art they are so that they can be hung on the wall.
They are basically log cabins constructed in the classic Courthouse Steps layout. She folds the narrow pieces of silk/ribbon/satin/brocade and then stitches them carefully to a backing.
Her work is exquisite. The detailing, when you look closely at them, is precise and her stitching is meticulous. No wavering seams or mismatched corners. Those strips in the larger quilt finish at about 1/2 inch wide. Most of the smaller pieces have the same strip widths, although the smallest ones with the scenes in the center have slightly wider strips.
Nifty, huh?
No, I am not planning on making any of these myself any time soon. I have a rather large-ish backlog of quilt WIPs and UFOs which I have not listed on the sidebar, for the simple reason that I can't find them all. But that will change, I hope. My summer projects include organizing my quilting as well as my knitting life. (Yeah, the rubber stamps and scrapbook supplies too. But there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many spots in this house to spread things out.)
Now I am going to take my weary feet to bed. For a little while today, they thought maybe we were back in France. Then they realized, nah, no cobblestones!

Project Spectrum and...

First, just cause I thought it was so cute to see a Harry Potter poster in French. This was in the post office (La poste) and translates to, Long live the magic of the stamp and the written word. The scroll says: With the Post Office, you don't have to be a wizard to write!

Now on to this month's series of Project Spectrum colors. First, the metallic: the Statue of Liberty's torch, full size, is mounted on the Alma Bridge. It's gilded with real gold leaf, as are many of the monuments in Paris.

For red, how about a field of blooming poppies? This was a pretty spectacular one, found by our good friend and bus driver Jean-Luc. The man is good-looking and can really drive that thing. He also spends his days off driving around, looking for places he can take "his" tourists. His wife rides along and helps him figure out if the lanes can take the bus.

For black, this little cat with books. I was going to post another picture of Simon, the Black Cat in Residence, changed my mind, dithered around a bit.

Here he is. Underwhelmed by the attention, as usual.

Ah, the problem of the paparazzi--always snapping your picture when you really just want to sleep!

I know, I know--I need to get out some of my red and black and metallic yarns. No problem with the reds--just check back to my Black Sheep treasures; black is a little more iffy, but I know there is some around here somewhere. Metallic? Well, not something I generally knit with. Or wear. Guess I'll have to really dig to see what I can come up with! There's certainly no dearth of yarn around here...

Resolutions, and Goals, and Such-Like

What is it about a new month, especially one that will contain a season change, that makes us want to take stock of where we are and where we want to go? (Or is it just that, back from a long break from my daily life, I'm ready to take another look at that life?) Whatever it is, I'm falling for it, and ready to muse about what's ahead for this coming season.
But first, a semi-gratuitous cat photo. I wanted to take a picture of this afghan for Ellen, anyway, and last night Simon was posed just too fetchingly in the chair. (It always amuses me that he photographs so grey. I guess the flash lights up the white undercoat and shows through, cause in person he is definitely a black cat. A tuxedo cat!) Anyway, the story on this afghan is that I found it on the upper level, wayyy in the back, of an antique mall in Monrovia, one of those days when I'd taken Himself out for a bit of an airing and his favorite activity, Depression glass hunting. The afghan was in a heap on the floor, smelled funny, and has a couple of spots where it looks as if there might have been some heat damage. I rescued it--hey, $10 was a great price! Once it got run through the washer and dryer, it smelled great and was nice and soft. It's wool, nicely crocheted at a smallish gauge, and a good sub for the one I had made many long years ago which is now in some unknown location--may have been moved on, or else it's in the back of a closet.

Carrot says hi. He's on the cusp of learning to walk, and at that really busy 1-year-old stage. No more cuddly baby! Now he's on the go and might, if you're lucky, sit still for a momentary cuddle.

None of this, now, has anything to do with my new goal-setting-stock-taking mood, does it?
I'm so distractible these days!
But here goes. By summer's end, I'd like to:
*finish most of my WIPs
*lose 15 pounds (that's the compromise between the do-able 10 and the desired 20) by eating healthy and walking/exercising more
*have the house in much better shape, maybe even ready for new carpeting
*have the garage door replaced and the garage semi-emptied, and the storage unit gone (this means moving A LOT of things out!)
*get my yarns organized
*get my fabric organized
*find my sewing machine table, get that set up, and work on some of my quilting WIPs and UFOs. Hey, there's a quilt that has needed quilting on it--it's got a few blocks hand-quilted, but I'll finish it by machine--for the last 20-mumble-years. UFO or WIP? Plus, there's a couple of projects that would make good classes if they were finished quilts instead of tops. And there's a giant stack of boxes of my "charity quilt" stuff, too. Time to get back to that!
Well, that's enough for now. I think I'll print out this list and post it at the top of my computer to remind me of what I need to be doing instead of sitting here... And yes, I will be honest and report my successes as well as my failures!

First Things First

Go on over to Alex and Paige's Lemonade Stand and toss a little cash in the lemonade cup, to help fight childhood cancer. The story is all on the page, and it's a quick and easy way to make a little bit of difference. Hey, all those little bits add up! Do it now, while you're still thinking about it.

Hello Blue Moon, Au Revoir, Mai!

Yes, tonight will be a Blue Moon. It's the second full moon this month, which, regardless of what color it appears to be, it's called a blue moon. I was fascinated to read that, because in some parts of the world, the moon won't be completely "full" until after midnight, those countries will be seeing it as the first full moon in June, and will get their blue moon on June 30.
Moving right along.
While I was gone, my yarns from See Jayne Knit came. Gorgeous, aren't they? Lemon-lime and Autumn in New England. Soft and colorful and a real delight.
Then I went out into my yard and found this:

A daylily with exactly the same coloration.

Amazing. Especially since this particular plant grows in a tiny corner next to the sidewalk and the trunk of the crape myrtle, and the gardener keeps whacking at it. At one point last year it was hard to see any green at all. And now, here it is.
It's jacaranda season in SoCal, and mine is blooming away. The yard is carpeted with purple blossoms, and one doesn't dare go outside barefooted because the bees are having a field day. Seems they have trouble getting the nectar from these, although the hummingbirds love them; but when the flowers fall, the bees have learned to get the nectar from the base of the flower. Very ingenious, but we've also had a few stings from unwary feet landing on a bee.

Now that May is leaving, we are saying goodbye to its Project Spectrum colors. So toodle-oo, yellow and green and pink.
Yellow daylilies. In my front yard, also very hardy survivors of drought and kids and all the rest of the urban hazards.
Pink peonies, from our walk in Paris on our last day there. Peonies don't grow in SoCal, more's the pity.

Is this enough distraction from the lack of knitting content?
No quilting content either. I did move some of my knitting bags around, though. Does that count?
Yeah, I didn't think it did.
Well, we'll see what June brings. I'm currently in a mood to wipe out WIPs and organize stash, rather than add to it--unless of course it's something fab-u-lous like my SJK treasures! Oh yeah. I forgot. One of our local yarn/needlework stores starts its big sale tomorrow...

Paris Scarf

As a going-away present, Madgik gave me a skein of Sea Silk in the Paris colorway. Tucked into the package were the directions for the Shoalwater Scarf, which promptly got re-dubbed the Paris scarf for my purposes.
Very apropos, non?
So I blithely cast on and started the project as we taxied out of LAX on our British Airways flight. Yes, you can knit on the way over to Britain and the Continent. Knitting needles are NOT allowed on flights that originate on the continent. But I digress. I'm sure you want to know why the scarf is draped over a can of Pringles. Anyway, I left the pattern on the plane--sigh, a long sleepless flight will do that to a person. Luckily, I had done enough to memorize the pattern. The Pringles were part of our lunch on the train between Nice and Avignon. Not a flavor you can get in the US: Greek cheese, with avocado oil. Tasty, though.
You saw the picture in my previous post of what happened when my needle snapped.
I was able to get a replacement needle at a fabric store (Atelier d'Eglantine) we visited in Aix-en-Provence. The clerk was a bit aghast at being swarmed by 21 quilters/fabric enthusiasts, and while they did have a bit of yarn, they only had straight needles on display. I asked her if they had any circs, and she ran upstairs to their storage area. After a long time, she returned triumphantly with a single package of one 80 cm long 3mm needle! Well, it was a little smaller than my original, but the only one they had...and I figured, oh well! One doesn't complain when it means the difference between knitting or not knitting!

The scarf had other adventures too. It got to visit the poppy fields in Provence, and wave in the breeze from our hotel window in Paris.
Didn't get to knit on the flight home, unfortunately, so poor scarf didn't get any quality time--and gee, 11 hours in a plane is definitely quality knitting time.
Now to gather up the Paris scarf--which will always have its memories, I'm sure--and rustle up the rest of the WIP/UFO crew. Back to reality, doggone it!

She's Ba-ack!

That's right--back on home ground. It really doesn't feel as if I had a trip to France--it was more like 4 trips!



We saw Notre Dame de Paris from a bateau-mouche on the Seine, at twilight...
We saw a Russian cathedral in Nice...
We stood on a headland in the Mediterranean Sea, at the Villa Kerylos on the French Riviera...




We saw the Statue of Liberty in Paris. Did you know there are three of them, plus the full-size torch on the Pont d'Alma? (Which was not put up as a memorial to Princess Diana, although many people seem to think it was.) This one is person-sized; there is a smaller one in a park, and the smallest is in a museum, along with the sketches and plans for the "big" one in New York.


See, travel does make you learn new things.
We ate French food--this is a Salade Deux Palmiers, from the "Two Palms" restaurant in Nice. Mmmmm! We ate there so often that when our waiter found out it was our last night there, he gave us each a snifter of Chartreuse as a good-bye!
We saw beautiful flowers everywhere. In Nice. In Provence. In Paris. These are in a little flower shop along the Left Bank (Rive Gauche).
Yes, there was knitting. This is the Paris scarf, which had its own adventures. The pattern was lost on the flight over--luckily, it's an easy repeat. The needles--Bryspuns, ideal for flying since they're not metal--snapped. Luckily it only took an hour and a half to get it repaired, once a new needle was procured--not as easy a task as you'd imagine.


No, I did not spend the time "yarn crawling." There was some fabric shopping--how can you go to Souleiado, and the Toile de Jouy museum, and the home studio of a fabulous dye artist (in the Languedoc-Roussilon, yet!) without coming home with fabric? I saw some yarn but it was all comparable to what's available here.


I mean, after Black Sheep Knittery, what's left??
It was a wonderful, fabulous trip. It took the stamina of a triathlete (which I'm not) but it was well worth it. I've uploaded over 1600 photos to Flickr and now I'm busy organizing and captioning them. After all, you can't tell the rocks apart without a caption! For anyone who's interested, you can check that out as I will be posting only a few of the photos here.

And the Grandcarrot had his first birthday, with a pirate party, and a chocolate cupcake, and a wonderful time was had by all!

(And my CPH stayed home, and I'm dead last in the competition. Oh well. One can't have everything!)

Postcard from Paris

Just a quick note here--we're off to Versailles in a few minutes! This has been a truly fabulous trip and I can't wait to get home to upload all my photos--so far, well over 1500 of them. I will also write in more detail, but so far we've been to the French Riviera, all over Provence, and now in Paris. The City of Light is lovely!

My cell phone doesn't work here; internet access has been unreliable; and I've learned that some of my daily "necessities", aren't. I think that's one of the best things about traveling; too.

Once again: TTFN; BIAB!

TTFN, BIAB!

Just a quick post to let all y-all know that I'm going to be away from my computer for a while. I will try to post from "abroad" but I'm pretty sure you'll have to wait for pics till I get home. The family will be holding down the fort at home while I'm away--so not much will change here for the furballs!
Yes, I'm bringing some knitting, so hopefully there will be a few shots of Birch in exotic locales. You'll just have to wait and see!
And yes, I'm going to miss my knitting buds, and my kids, and the grandbabies, and the furkids too. But some things are just worth it!

When The Going Gets Tough...

...the wimp slacks off! Haven't touched the CPH since last Wed. Actually, haven't even picked up a knitting needle since then!

I did take the camera outside, though, to get a picture of the first Jude blossom--this is my David Austin Jude the Obscure rose. Love the color--pale ivory with a hint of peach.

Today there are several more blossoms, but they all look quite a bit like this one.

Some Project Spectrum colors:

Yellow,

pink,

and the first baby apricots on the tree. I am pretty much convinced that they will ripen and fall off while I'm gone. Ah well, can't have everything, right?

CPH Challenge Update

No photos. I tried to take pictures of the full moon tonight, but it wouldn't cooperate. Tonight's is a Full Flower Moon, by the way. I know you wait with bated breath (unless you've been eating sushi, in which case it's baited breath) to hear what the moon-of-the-month's name is!

The CPH Challenge is rolling right along. In fact, a little bird today might have spotted three knitters all cabling away on their CPHs, while in Seattle, another knitter was working on hers. The challengees are all on Sleeve Island, a lonely and endless black hole of cable, increase, cable, increase, increase, cable... 20 inches of endless knitting to the armpit decreases. I realized today that I have less than a week to go before taking off for "furrin parts" so I'd better hustle my bustle and get that puppy finished--before it winds up in disgrace like the MOTW!

Stay tuned for news... and maybe a picture or two.

Oh, all right, here's one... just to keep you from being too bored with this post!

Chihuly glass from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I love this!

These Shoes Are Made for Walking...

...and that's just what they did!
Newport Beach, California, April 29, 2007... March of Dimes Walkamerica!

Crossed under this archway twice. 5.5 miles.

I had forgotten how emotional an experience this walk can be. Many of the teams wear t-shirts commemorating babies who were born too soon--some of whom are there on the walk, and some of whom didn't make it. The whole last mile is given over to signs "in honor of" or "in memory of." Our family was lucky--our little premie-girl is strong and healthy today, with only a few after-effects of her early arrival.
Many babies aren't that lucky. So walking to raise funds for research is very important.

The Grandcarrot went on his first MOD walk, accompanied by Mom and Auntie L--she's really his great-aunt, but we just say she's a Great Aunt!

The boy enjoyed his outing. I think there were a couple of pictures taken of Memere walking and knitting, but so far they haven't been sent to me. If and when they are, I'll share them.

Yeah, I was able to walk and knit for most of the first mile and a half. Then we hit a bit of "heavy mist" and I couldn't manipulate the fuzzy yarn on the bamboo needles when they both got wet.
But, I got my ribbon:
The gardenia? Well, that certainly smells a lot better than I did at the end of the walk!

Cherub's got teeth! Happy Garrett shows off his new biters--I tried to get a picture of the restaurant where we celebrated his daddy's birthday, but it didn't come out well. Let's just say we "Thai'd" one on!

Mondays are for knitting in Montrose. Dim Sum Mary tried her Elf socks on little Mac, who came with his mom, Sadly Blogless Beth, for some knitting and "baby talk." Both Knit Devil and I were chugging away on our Challenge CPHs--poor KD has yarn burns on her fingers from knitting so fast and furiously. Watch out, LMM! The stakes are high!

Simon says, can we just stop talking now and get some sleep?

He's been keeping my laptop bag warm...and decorating it with artistic swirls of white tummy fur.