Category: Blog

Please forgive the awful red-eye in this picture. It’s my brother Scott, his wife Renee, their gorgeous babe Sydney & me! We had a quick 2 hour visit but it was awesome! Gotta love li’l babies!

For how few posts with words lately you would think nothing at all is going on in life. Some of you may have seen Tracy’s post about our lovely ‘croptoberfest’ (scrapbooking, get it ‘crop’) extravaganza in Solvang this past weekend. As we so lovingly called it ‘craptoberfest’ since Tracy & I don’t scrapbook. It was put together by one of my friends that is a demonstrator for creative memories. She lovingly decided to include a few knitters this year just so we wouldn’t miss out on all the fun! It actually was very fun, we hung out slack-jawed watching all the scrap-happiness happen around us. Now let me just say that my kids each have scrapbooks, painstakingly done by me. I went on a little knitting/crochet hiatus (if you call only using yarn a couple of times a week a hiatus, I do) about 4 years back. My sister also is a demonstrator but for another company, Close to My Heart, and happily shares supplies with me (for free). So I was more than happy at the time to get some kind of memories booked for the kids. That promptly ended when I got slightly addicted & realized my needles & yarn were so lonely over in their basket by my chair. I half finished the last scrapbook & put it all away telling myself at the time that I would get back to it soon enough to finish. Now, 4 years later, Trevor has a half finished album. I did ‘power layouts’ with the papers & pics I wanted & put them in the sheet covers in the album. That is where they are to this day. That is, if Tyler didn’t get into them all & remove the pictures. Part of his ‘thing’ is to gather. He likes to be tactile with items so pictures in an album are  not good enough. He needs to stroke & touch the photo in detail. Needless to say, all his scrapbooks are rearranged & more than half of the pictures are removed & I have yet to figure out where he is putting them. Every once in a while I find a picture loose on the floor that used to be in a scrapbook. I now do not worry about it. If he enjoys them that much then I will just be sure to have plenty of pictures for him to abscond with.

Sadie on the other hand enjoys her things I make her immensely. She will look through her books over & over being very careful not to lose anything or hurt it at all.  You know, I could have her do all the scrapbooking! She loves pictures & art. hmmm…the only downfall that I can think of is that it may not be asthetically pleasing to me. Yeah, nevermind that won’t work. I am just way too picky with how they will look & last through the years. Dated is a bad thing. THe pictures add date to the book.

Back to the actual topic at hand, croptoberfest!

There is the greatest store in Solvang, Village spinning & weaving.

Tracy & I went up early to make sure we had plenty to keep us busy during our knit/cropfest. They had a good amount of Trekking xxl there so we loaded up & my knitting time was spent making Tracy a pair of socks. One of the fun things about the weekend was that we stayed in the same hotel in Buellton that they used for filming Sideways. That was a good movie, now that we stayed there I will have to pay closer attention to the movie next time. I have 2 sister-in-laws that have live in the Buellton/Solvang/Santa Ynez area for over 10 years now so we know the area well. Oh yeah, and the fact that my husband grew up in Denmark. Duh, Solvang is his little danish escape.

Once again, I digress from the croptoberfest topic. Do you get the feeling that there really isn’t much to be said on the topic? Yeah, pretty much that is all there is to talk about. Well there is the fact that I nearly peed my pants laughing so hard late, late Friday night. Just lame (but ridiculously funny) topics & jokes. I love laughing so hard that my face cramps all up & I am crying profusely! love it  Can I just say we are a really witty bunch, Tracy, Betsy, Hannah, Tawny & I?? Oh, the women next to us had their own drama happening. They had a full-on bar in their hotel room & by 11pm they were plastered. Drunk scrapbookers, never ever thought I would see that! Now drunk knitters is another thing, I think the 2 go hand in hand!

I would love to do a knitting get away to somewhere fun like that, Solvang has 2 decent yarn stores & plenty of other shops. Lots of cute  hotels with conference rooms & plenty of food. I may just look into it & put it together. Any input on the topic let me know. Yay’s or nay’s welcome!

I must say I am looking forward to tomorrow night with knitters. It is always interesting to get a glimpse into other peoples passions/obsessions but I think the knitting/crochet life is by far the best & possibly less expensive if you can believe that!

 

I am doing exactly what I said I would not do! I am overloading myself with christmas gifts. Gifts that I know will be loved, used & appreciated. Unfortunately my eyes and brain are conspiring against me! I see yarn & a pattern or an idea & I  MUST make it for someone! I couldn’t possibly buy a gift for that person that is nearly so perfect! aaaaahhh!!! breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out

I must say that the gifts have all been started (a few completed), all but clogs for my nephew & sweaters for my kids. I am holding off on the sweaters for my kids until I am sure that I will finish the rest of the gifts. Not that they aren’t important, I just don’t think my kids are dying for new knit sweaters from me. They hardly wear the ones they have now.

Yesterday my order from hpy came. Gorgeous idn’t it??

I needed one more hank of the verdeadriana super bulky merino to have enough for a cardigan. Not sure what cardigan I would like to do but I am sure I will come up with something fun.

The brown & pink mix is called shell pink & knit with size 9’s it is just perfect! Dumbshit that I am I only ordered 3 hanks instead of the 4 I need to a good sized project. Not exactly where it’s going to be used yet but we’ll see what jumps out at me once I start looking.

The blues/olives will (as of right now, I can always change my mind) become a deep V, high ribbed vest for moi!

As of right now that is about all I have to say about that! So off to k-n-i-t!

311 is mine. Period.

Last night was spent at the Santa Barbara Bowl with my favorite people (sans Tracy, she stayed with the kids for us cuz she’s not a freak like me) George & 311. It was like going to see old friends that we haven’t hung with in a while, with rockin’ music of course! Some of you may shake your heads & think “aren’t they a little old to be going to serious rock concerts?” In answer to you I say ” I will see 311 yearly until the day I die, or they don’t tour anymore”. Considering the fact that they are all my age (in their 30’s) I think I have a pretty good chance of another dozen years of concerts! Yippee for George & I! How frickin’ lucky am I that my husband shares in the same musical obsession that I do? Okay, I am worse than he is but he’s the one that buys the concert tickets for me!

I am not an obsessive/addictive person but for some reason I have 2 things in my life that I can truly call an addiction (Tracy might call 311 an affliction, meany) 311 and knitting. On the way to the concert last night I told George that the only thing to make a 311 concert more perfect would be if it were just the band & us & I could knit the whole time. I am pretty sure I could knit in a mosh pit, at least on the fringe of one I could. But preferably just them & us. No talking, just music. Any song I wanted at the drop of a hat, yeah that’s what I want…sigh…they make me happy….sorry I sound like a teenager but I just can’t help it on this one topic! Maybe it’s the one thing I hang on to from my youth that makes me happy & doesn’t hurt anyone, including myself. Concerts were a huge part of my teen/college years. My first live show I saw was 7Seconds at the Cattle Club in Sacramento when I was 14. I snuck there with my friends when we were supposed to be at a dance. Rebels that we were, monthly from then on I was hooked on local shows. Until I was about 18 and life got more serious & I had a really sucky boyfriend that didn’t like my Punk side. Then it went down to more of a sporatic event that I went to concerts.  Why I am telling you all this I don’t know other than it is something that defined me. Now I am a stay at home mom/ business manager and I am just way too responsible. So if once a year I get to go see my favorite band with my husband live at the most amazing venue in the world, I am going to do it & then chat all y’all up about it! So there!

I will leave you with this, I have seen 311 in the following cities:

Sacramento 2 times

San Fransisco 3 times

Berkeley 2 times

Santa Barbara 2 times  (it would be 3 but we had no babysitter last year & gave the tickets to a friend)

LA 1 time

Sick aren’t I?? You can say it, it’s okay, I own it!