Quick update

I figured that since two months have passed since I last updated, it would be better to do something than to leave this until my angst level reached some sort of overload. Since last we spoke, I’ve been very busy. Very little angst, really. We went to San Fran and had a great time. The communications conference went very well, although trying to keep up with normal work while also attending day-long sessions was exhausting.

View from our room at the Westin St. Francis, San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 2011
View from our room at the Westin St. Francis

The view from our room was really nice, though the room itself wasn’t.

Myr and I played tourist where we could. We had a fantastic dinner at The Slanted Door, we rode the cable cars to Fisherman’s wharf, I bought a bunch of nice yarn at Artfibers, we did get to see the Britex store, and we were really glad that we’d brought warm clothes, as after the second day of unusually warm weather, the fabled rain closed in, and our trip to the north shore area was very damp, though still stupendously scenic.

Harbor View
View from the cable car on the way to Fisherman's Wharf
Knitting a swatch at Artfibers
Knitting a swatch at Artfibers
surf breaking
Surf along the coast north of SF

 

Crossing the street outside the Weston
Oncoming cable car seen while crossing the street outside the Weston

Back home, I’m actually knitting with some of the yarn I got at Artfibers. This is a simple basket-weave scarf that I’ve been knitting on as my ‘train knitting.’ It’s coming out okay. This will be my scarf for next winter.

a basketweave scarf made using cable techniques
A scarf I am making from some Artfibers silk and angora yarn

The weather continues to improve here in Indian Land. One of my favorite spring trees is blooming. I love the colors of American Redbud.

Redbud blossom
Closeup of flowers of the American Redbud

On the knitting front, I am only two fingers away from completing the second of a pair of knitted gloves. I finished the first one about a year ago. It will be very nice to have the pair done. I can count it as a half pair for the 11/2011 challenge on Rav, too. I’ve also finally cast on for the first of the Electric Purple Eisblume, which look to be the most-advanced knitting I’ve tried yet.

Also since my last post, I went to a technical conference in Denver, and on both the SF and the Denver trip I spent the flights knitting two pairs of baby mittens. These turned out well, but I’ve managed to lose one mitten, and I still haven’t bound off on another. They were uninteresting except that on the Denver flight the light was bad, and I forced myself to do most of the body knitting without looking more than occasionally at my hands. I’ve never previously been able to knit more than one or two stitches without looking.

Okay, that’s enough for now. More to come, I hope.