On the road

I am typing this blog post as we drive down the I-95 towards Virginia. How cool is that? (It'll be posted when we reach Alexandria.) We're now entering Maryland, I'd been knitting up to Delaware, see?

Thank you onboard laptop webcam! I worked on the sock for a bit, then I dropped a dpn down the side of the seat, so that puts paid to that until we stop.

Apart from that, not a lot of knitting has been going on. We've been busy all day, and I've been generally exhausted when we get back to the hotel at night. I did work on the sock while Em did her dance class with the Rockettes on Thursday.

I have been visiting yarn stores though! On Boxing Day (Dec 26), we had an aborted trip to the Statue of Liberty. Afterwards, Em and I went yarn store hunting. We tracked down Purl, but we ended up sadly disappointed again.

Closed. We peered in the window, and pouted a little, then we moved on to The Point. This was a really nice store with great friendly staff. It was also really, really nice to escape the cold and sit down with the first decent cup of coffee I'd found! It's not a very large store, and it doesn't have a huge selection, but I managed to find something to buy.

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Child's Play to make "My So Called Scarf" for Em. And I'd managed to arrive just as they were unpacking a new shipment of books, and the lovely guy there showed me the Vogue sock book. That's all it took to sell me on that one! David and his sister joined us after a little while, and as you can see, David was very happy to find a good coffee.

So The Point was well worth the visit, even though it's small with a not overly large selection. And I've already started the scarf.

On Thursday after Em's dance class, we went to Habu. Very nice, but very small. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take any pictures. I didn't buy anything though. I looked at the Stainless Steel, and at some of the gorgeous laceweights, but I just didn't know what I wanted. So I left empty handed. We moved on to School Products. I think this is probably the largest yrn store we visited. Lots of nice stuff again, but when you're space restricted, and you're not buying for a specific project, it's hard to decide what to buy. Some Koigu did manage to come home with me though.

Mmmm, Koigu.

Yesterday was out last day in New York, and we ended up around Central Park and Fifth Avenue again. Somehow I happened across Stitches East. (It may have had something to do with the slip of paper in my pocket with the yarn store addresses on it.) Nice selection, including the coveted Noro Sock yarn! Guess what I brought home?

I'm hoping it softens up with washing, as it feels really scratchy in the ball. They only had two colours left, and after I bought this one, there was only one colour left!

I didn't make it to Gotta Knit!, Knit NY, Downtown Yarns or String. Does that mean I have to come back to New York?!?

Just the knitting

I can't jam the last four days into a single blog post. Suffice to say, it's been jam packed and exciting, and full on. If you want more details than that, the travel blog is at http://worldtour.avocadia.net/.

Not a great deal of knitting has been happening. In fact, all I've managed is the toe on one sock, and that was done on flights. Here is how the sock looked somewhere between San Francisco and New York.

I haven't managed much more than that since then. I have however, managed to visit two yarn stores.

Yesterday we went to the Museum of Natural History. The museum happens to be only about two blocks away from Knitty City, so we popped in there when we finished at the museum. It's a great store! I was pretty restrained, only picking up some Malabrigo lace weight and some gift yarn.

I didn't think to take pictures, but David managed to snap one.

Great range at this store! Lots of very tempting sock yarn, but I resisted. Sad, but true. I kept picking things up and putting them down again, thinking that I still had more stores to visit, and not wanting to spend everything at the first store I visited.

Today we went to Seaport Yarns. I was disappointed by this one. First of all, it's hard to find. It's on the corner of William and Fulton streets, and there are *no* signs to indicate that you're at the right building. It's an office building, not a retail space, and you have to go into the foyer and sign in to the building before you go up to the fifth floor where the "store" is. It's obviously an office space, with yarn shelves in the hallways and the offices. A bit awkward, really, and haphazard, I felt. The owner seemed helpful, but the few yarns I asked about she didn't carry, and gave me several reasons why I wouldn't want to buy them anyway, then tried to push yarns she did carry on to me instead. I bought a ball of Fortissima Socka, mainly because I felt that I really should buy something while I was there.

I still have plans to visit Habu, School Products and Gotta Knit! before I leave, will let you all know what I think of them after I visit.

It's about 9pm Christmas Eve here, and it feels a bit odd to know that you're all sitting down to Christmas lunch at home! I'm going to call the family soon, but to everyone else, Merry Christmas!!

And off we go!

We're packed, we're as ready as we'll ever be, and we're waiting for the taxi that is due in an hour and a quarter. Twinkie has been delivered to Lara, and the travel blog is ready and waiting for our first post. You can find it at

http://worldtour.avocadia.net/

If I don't catch up with you beforehand, I'm wishing you all a very happy and safe holiday season, from all of us

To all of you!

Tuesday already?

Who keeps stealing my days? It's Tuesday! We fly out the day after tomorrow. And with my usual sense of excellent timing, I've come down with a rotten head cold.

I'm already a bad flier. Cross your fingers for me that I'm over the worst of it by Thursday, please!

The beret for Em was a disaster. When will I ever learn to check my gauge? It's about the right size for a three or four year old, I think. So, back to Buttercup. Which is coming along beautifully. I'm hoping I can finish the second front before we leave.

And my holiday knitting has been prepared.

Yup, that's it. Two skeins of ShibuiKnits sock yarn in my Loopy Ewe project bag. That's all I'm taking, along with my Knitpicks Options needle set.

I have plans to collect a little (hee hee) yarn along the way on our trip, and I know I'll want to knit with my new yarn, so I'm not even going to bother packing any other yarn from home.

And Australian airlines are still in the dark ages. We're not allowed to knit on flights from Australia, so I won't need knitting for the long flights.

My other news is that I had a visitor yesterday. A very unwelcome one. I was sitting at my desk, and I could hear little noises. At first, I thought there might be someone out the front, so I checked, but no. The noises continued, and when I turned around, there was a bloody blue tongued lizard in my lounge room.

Apologies for the blurry photos, I was busy screaming down the phone at David, who thought it was the funniest thing he'd heard in a long time.

My yelling must have upset him, because he ran away from me but fortunately, he was heading straight for the back door. (The floor is a mess, ignore that bit!) The pictures got clearer about now, because he was further away from me and headed outside.

I had to take pictures, not only for blog fodder, but to show David that I wasn't making it up. I was beginning to worry that he wouldn't find the back door, but he eventually got out.

Twinkie showed no interest whatsoever in the whole shenanigans.

Saturday Sky in Sunny Sydney

Long time no see Saturday Sky.

Gorgeous Saturday, but it's gone grey again today. Watch out for next weeks sky, brought to you from another city!

I bought myself a present this week. Jejune, another Australian knitblogger, has opened a Cafepress store called Knitting Art. She paints gorgeous pictures of knitting, and has had them put onto tshirts, mugs, coasters, notebooks, all kinds of wonderful things.

So I got myself a new knitting bag!

The design I got is called "The Pink Shawl". I was pretty impressed when it showed up, I was expecting just a calico bag, but it's a nice heavy canvas, and it's a good size. Here's the zigzag scarf inside it.

Plenty of room! It has nice long straps too, so it goes over your shoulder easily.

Speaking of the zigzag scarf, I finished it yesterday. Here it is in it's unblocked state.

I've since blocked it, pictures later.

I had a ball and a bit left over of the darker pink, and seeing as Em keeps trying to run off with my Jo Sharp beret, I've cast one on for her.

I should be able to finish it before Thursday - just four days to go!!

A secret exposed.

So now that one of the secret projects has been received, I can reveal it here.

The Opal Prisma was paired together with some blue Opal Uni, and became "Devan" for young Inigo.

I made the six months size, seeing as that will be heading into the winter here. It was a fun knit, and it's a great way to use up some self striping sock yarn.
This may be the new favourite baby cardi!

Inigo's mum is the lovely Lara. They're part of the family now, because Lara is going to be Twinkie's foster mum while we're away. Twinkie will have a lovely time as part of Lara's menagerie. There's two more bunnies, a cockatoo, chickens, a cat, a baby and now Twink.

Poor Lara! I have no doubt that Twinkie will be the most demanding of the lot.

Speaking of Twinkie, here's a rare photo of her eating.

And here's what she'd look like if she were an ears up bunny.

Just doesn't look right, does it?!?

11 days to go!

11 days from now, I'll be in an airplane, on my way to the United States. No, I can't shut up about it!

Yesterday, we started preparations in earnest.

One large and one small suitcase each. Seeing as I want to bring home that much yarn, I'm not sure what to do about clothes ;)
I bought something else too.

It has a built in camera. We've been having some fun with it.

Yes, very easily amused, thank you for asking!

As you can probably tell, I haven't had much time to sit still, let alone knit, but there has been a little.

I've been working on Em's scarf, and I really need to get cracking on this if she's wearing it on holiday.

It's about 60cm long so far. I sat and wove in a bunch of ends on Friday, and I'm going to try to do them as I go now, because all at once nearly bored me to tears.

When I get tired of zigging and zagging, I've been working on Buttercup. I've nearly finished the first front.

I'm enjoying this a lot. I do wish I'd done both fronts together, though. I'll definitely do both sleeves at once, or the second one may never get done!

I'm freeeee!!!!!

Sorry for the blog blackout. I've been kind of snowed under. Well, busy at any rate.

Last night was Em's dance concert. Do you know what that means? That means that I'm free of dance lessons for the rest of the year! I don't have to go to the dance studio 7 times a week. Hip hooray!!
The concert was lovely, the best yet, I think. Em didn't win any of the major prizes this year, but she did receive a special award for having 10 years of perfect attendance. That's right, not one missed lesson in 10 years.

Her teacher gave her a lovely gold bracelet with her name engraved on it. See Emily? Up there? Over the moon?!

We did take time out for a nice relaxing day on Sunday. We had a beach day and headed down to Wollongong. The weather looked a little bit iffy, but it turned out gorgeous.

Beautiful view, and the skydivers were out, enjoying the weather.

We had fish and chips for lunch, ad the seagulls came along to check for leftovers.

I took along my knitting, of course.

I started the first front of Buttercup.

However, when I got home I took a good hard look at it, and I wasn't happy with it.

The picots looked a little crowded and messy to me. So I frogged it and started over. The picots are meant to be done every second row, but I'm doing them every fourth row. I'm happier with it now, but not totally happy. I'm not very good at nice, even, tidy picots.

I'm tempted to rip it out again and start over, abandoning the picots altogether. But I'm too lazy.

David came home bearing flowers yesterday.

For Twinkie, not me. Spoiled much?

15 days until we leave!