Sunday, December 20, 2009

Christmas in California: Day One

I'm writing this post from my hotel room in Garden Grove, California, just outside Anaheim which is home to the beloved Disneyland.  Instead of staying home and making a big deal about Christmas, my family has decided to spend the week in and around the happiest place on earth.  Yes, I see the irony in spending the holidays at some place that will be over-decorated as an effort to avoid Christmas.

Anyway, we flew into Orange County yesterday morning and spent the day exploring the J. Paul Getty Museum, a beach in Malibu, and part of West Hollywood. 

Thanks to the new Canon Powershot digital camera that I received as an early Christmas present from my folks, I have well over one hundred pictures to prove it!  It's amazing how much of a shutterbug I've become now that I have a 4gig memory card in the pretty new camera.  I'm still learning all the settings, but one of the best ones I think has been the "Sunset" setting, which I utilized while in Malibu just before sunset. 

This picture is my younger sister Gina, taking a picture with her own camera of our other sister Rachel.  The lighting is amazing and I'm very impressed with the camera.  I don't expect that every picture I shoot with this new camera will be amazingly artistic like this one, but I'm having a blast with it regardless.

Okay, I realize this is a craft blog and I haven't talked about any crafting yet!  I did bring three different knitting projects on this trip: the malabrigo scarf, a vanilla sock, and the lace shawl I started this summer.  I'm making decent progress on the scarf and it should be done on this trip I hope or shortly soon after.  It's hard to get much knitting in though with all the running around.  Sadly I get carsick fairly easily so I have to be careful with what I chose to work on.  But this was only the first day of a week-long trip so who knows what this week will bring.  Stay posted for another post soon!

Coffee and cashmere,
Lulu

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Old Picture, New Project



100_1170, originally uploaded by craftylulu.
When I was in Nashville with my dad in 2008, I purchased two gorgeous skeins of worsted weight malabrigo, seen here, in the colorway "velvet grapes". This was my first Malabrigo purchase after hearing so much stuff about the yarn online, making these two skeins very special. They wouldn't be knit into just anything--the selected project had to be special.

Over a year later, I finally figured out what this lovely yarn would become: a scarf. That may not sound very special or unique especially for an avid scarf-knitter such as myself, but this scarf will be gifted to a very special person eventually. I wanted something more unisex even though it is purple yarn. (Who says men can't wear purple just as well as women can anyway?) Reversible is good, and a mindless knit this time of year is always good in my book. And thus the journey of the seeded rib scarf came to be.

I do not have a current picture of the scarf yet for a couple different reasons I won't bore you with today. The pattern is easy and fairly enjoyable for being so mindless and repetitive. I'm using size US 8 needles. For being just under the two month mark, I've completely used the first skein and am well into knitting from the second one. I'm thinking some fringe will be necessary.

Details as to the lucky recipient of this scarf to come after the holidays. I have to keep some things a secret after all...