Las Vegas

Strictly speaking, Manchester first - a 25 hour travelling day to Las Vegas that we survived surprisingly well.



And that is why we went there in the first place! Taken from the pool - on our first day, we had never intended to do very much but potter around, rest, get our bearings. Las Vegas is - weird. It is like being in a giant bubble of artificiality. We didn't step out of the resort apart from going out to the pool area that first day. Everything we needed - and even more that we didn't - was right there, up to and including a tattoo place.

Right outside the resort entrance was a volcano. So, ok, not a real one. A fake one, that erupted every hour from dusk until (I think) midnight. Unmissable (?)



However they do it, there was a considerable amount of heat involved. Actually, it was pretty impressive. If you have to have that sort of thing.


Then there was the Atrium. With a mini tropical rain forest.





And crysanthemums. See what I mean by weird?

Something we saw very little of, though, was gamblers. There may have been serious heavy duty stuff going on behind the doors of the high stakes rooms, but at the tables and slots in the main areas, there were very, very few people. Those that there were looked bored out of their skulls, and many of them were smoking. Amazing how quickly that has become such an unusual sight.

Day two, back to the pool in the morning, and then a trip out to Red Rock Canyon in the afternoon. In a pink Hummer. Bizarre, no?

But stunningly beautiful and really interesting. The contrast between the natural raw beauty of the canyon and the rather down at heel artificiality of the city was marked.

A few photos - there are more on Flickr, just click on through if interested.







An agave plant. Look closely and you should be able to see the fibres.



Then as a complete contrast, that evening we went to see "Love". It was amazing. It was, actually, well worth going to Vegas for.

I didn't dislike Vagas as much as I had thought that I would. At one and the same time, my brain was telling me that this was awful, this place should not exist in the middle of the desert and that it represented the worst kind of excesses; and that in fact, it was not so bad to suspend ones' disbelief and principles for a couple of days to enjoy relaxing by the pool with the biggest mojito conceivable (I never did finish it) and to watch a show stuffed full of extremely talented people that was beautiful and exciting and reminded one of one's youth! So, yeah, glad we went.

And glad to leave, to get on the road. And more fabulousness.

Laters.

(Waving.....)

From where I sit in Berkeley CA (nearly). We have one more day before we fly home.

At least, I do so hope that is the case and that the terrible storm that has been battering the East Coast will have passed, and likewise all the knock-on effects that can ensue. I haven't actually seen any TV news, but I have been reading on line, and it all looks to have been pretty bad.

And in other news of fresh disasters.......those of you who know of Judith Mckenzie, US fibre crafts teacher and author extraordinaire, may not have heard that yesterday her studio burned down, destroying all her equipment and supplies, not to mention work space. She had not even made it back from SOAR.

OK, hiatus for an evening of wine and pizza with visitors from SOAR. So, I won't write more now after all. Hopefully, the trip will go well, and allowing for jet lag recovery I will upload the photos and get cracking on the posts! Thanks for your patience, and a bientot.

Carpe diem

By which I mean, seizing the opportunity to do a quick post to say - I am not lost forever!

Despite my good intentions, I couldn't find the time to do a post before leaving. And since then, Internet access has existed but can be decidedly eccentric!

For instance, after wonderful, potable* travels, we have arrived at Point Reyes Station, and the lovely yurt-type lodging that we have visited before. It has wi-fi. Which seems to let us take turn and turn about to use. Yesterday, The DSM had a connection on the netbook, although by the time I got there, it had diminished to a trickle. Today, I have quite a good signal on the iPad. Quite unfathomable.

I have not taken many photos with the iPad camera, and actually, am not sure just how that works for uploading (learning curve!) to Blogger. So, I am going to post a bit, when I can, and if neccesary do mega illustrated posts when I either have a good signal on the netbook, or - get home!

Let's just say that the trip has been wonderful so far. Las Vegas was much more enjoyable than I had expected, and the drive from there to here, over four days was beautiful in the extreme.

And now, here we are at Point Reyes Station, a little town that I love, and indeed, could live in. It was the weekly Farmers Narket today, so we delayed doing much shopping on the way in yesterday until we had seen what there was on offer. We bought the most luscious ripe tomatoes, sweet onions, baby yellow courgettes, garlic and a huge bunch of purple basil to make a fantastic pasta sauce for supper tonight, also potatoes, a lovely big bunch of rainbow chard that would not look out of place in a vase, and an ORANGE cauliflower. Also local cheese.

And, almost best of all, LOCAL FIBRE. Could not believe my eyes - a stall selling hand spun yarn, and Akers full of roving. Of course, we bought some - a pound of Corriedale, and a pound of a blend of that, alpaca, and, I think, whatever else she had to throw in the mix.

I also passed by the local weaving shop (did I say, U love this place?) which had some great looking batts in the window.......

*I have absolutely no idea what 'potable' is supposed to be - sometime the iPad's predictive thingummy is so bizarre that I am totally defeated. But potable is rather sweet, so it can stay.

The DSM is convinced that he saw a golden eagle today. I did gently point out that the last time we stayed here we convinced ourselves that we were looking at one, only to see it transform in to a turkey vulture at the last minute. But what do I know? It may have been, or there may be one in our future. I will report back!

Don't faint.........

I'm alive.

There have been concerns expressed. And nagging. Thank you for caring!

Basically, I am fine and there has been plenty of stuff going on. (Not necessarily blog-worthy.) It is true that in quite a short space of time, I had two cats, one aunt-by-marriage and one mother disappear from my life, which did leave me a tiny bit shell-shocked and lacking in concentration. It is also true that the ongoing state of horrible chaos in what is supposed to be a work room (and where the desk top is located) is not conducive to creating anything other than a nervous breakdown, and I do not find my beloved iPad a good tool for writing.

But - the biggest obstacle to blog or other writing or making of any sort - or anything very much at all - has been the endless pursuit of kitten watching.





We haven't been entirely idle or boring. We have had a couple of trips up to Gibson Mill, one for demonstrating cotton spinning, one for stewarding at the Bradford Guild exhibition.

We have had a weekend way down south, visiting family and going to a lovely birthday party.





They took ages to getting round to actually cutting that cake........

What I am working on at the moment is not particulalrly blogworthy, certainly. Nice, but slow-growing. In knitting, a commercial cotton yarn baby blanket. (What?? Yes!! I am going to be a Great Aunt! Love it!) My Wensleydale and silk stole, which took me ages and ages to decide on a stitch pattern for. Unfortunately, the one that looked by far the best is also the most boring to knit, so this is going to be a very slow labour of love. Good job I have all those blankets and teddies and Baby Surprises to conjure up.

And as for spinning, well I am still working on the lush pale grey alpaca and silk. The reason being that a certain two felines rush, positively rush to help me if I sit at my spinning wheel. (And just don't even think about spindling!) But I have managed to spin half the fibre and I have very nearly finished plying that - should be on to the second bag very soon now.

I am spindling - I decided to rerun the which sort of spindle can you get more fibre on experiment, but began with the bottom whorls as I like those less - I knew I would never finish if I did the top whorl part first, light-weight that I am.

Then yesterday, we went over to Liverpool. There is an exhibition at the Tate of later works by Turner, Monet and Twombly, and I had really wanted to see it. So glad we went - most interesting. I had never seen any work by Cy Twombly before, but I liked most of what was there. The juxtapositions worked really well, and I found the whole thing very stimulating.

No photographs, of course. But I did take this on Albert Dock.



Love it.

Then, coming home, the sunset was extraordinary, and we stopped up on the moor.





Good day, that.

Now, I will try very hard to produce another post in the next couple of weeks, but in just under, we are off to the States. Mega trip planned, and I will no doubt be inspired to blog more then. Anyway - it is nice to be back.

(Many) shades of (nondescript) colour.........

In rummaging through the brain for a title for a blog post, I did for a brief moment think about calling it something a little more precise than that above. Fortunately, I did see sense, otherwise I think that there might have been some Comments with a capital K.

So, ok, I shall just whinge on a bit bout the weather. Grey, grey, grey &etc. With added rain. Actually, I think that the Met Office lot have reclassified the nomenclature so that what was "rain" is now called "showers"; if they say "rain" they really mean "cloudburst"; and that is now more likely to be catastrophic, torrential and leading to flooding.

I am not entirely joking.

So, where was I? Well, the weekend before last was the annual AH gathering. And actually, it did not rain all the time. Indeed, we managed to sit outside for tea/coffee breaks on I think three occasions. Certainly helped to make everyone feel more light-hearted than they had been doing.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching my class - nearly everyone who had said that they were going to do it did, and really worked hard. We had a lovely time. Such a pity then to get home to no telephone and hence no broadband - a tree had come down, we subsequently discovered, some way away from the house, but in falling on to a line had put sufficient stress on it to yank our line off the wall. There were a few trials and tribulations before it was fixed, not the least being totally unable to talk to an actual human being. Interestingly, when the repair man came, he said more or less the same thing. We were not on his job list, and apparently in the good old days he would have phoned the office and had us added in, but now he coudn't talk to a human being either. However he was a lovely gent and fixed it anyway. Phew.

This Sunday, the sun shone again after a week's further rain. I sat outside and read the Sunday paper, and later knitted. But now it is back to the same old, same old.

So, motivation has been hard to come by. I am, however, keeping going! The Ashton shawlette - very nice to knit. I have risked putting in an extra "body" repeat, and am not quite convinced that I have sufficient yarn. But I was sensible enough to put in a lifeline before doing it, so I can rip back easily enough. I found the first pattern row of the border a nightmare to get right, so I ended up putting in a stitch marker for each repeat. I felt a bit of a wuss, but it is making things so much easier that I shall do the same again with another pattern.

In something of a fit of boredom, I cast on a simple lace shawl with some oh so pretty mohair yarn that I bought last year somewhere on or near Cape Cod. Urk. So fine that I can barely see it, and all too easy to knit a stitch and a yarn over together as the threads stick like glue. Ah, well, good for the soul.

I finally finished plying the Wensleydale and silk. Totally yummy.




I'm sure that it is terribly disrespectful to HMQ to put a coin upside down like that, so sorry Ma'am.

I had to ply this before that, though. V nice, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is!



I am having to really sit on my hands - or, I suppose, more accurately, keep on knitting other things - to stop myself from casting on the W/S, I so badly want to see what it knits up like. The other yarn is rather nice, but I have yet to think what I might do with it. So no rush there.

Now, if you remember these:



They have become these:



Haven't they grown? We can go and collect them in a couple of weeks - scarily exciting. They have names, too, although until we meet them again, we don't know which is which. Sam(wise) and Ferdi(brand). Yes, back to hobbit names.

That'll put the kibosh on much knitting and spinning - particularly spindle spinning - for a while!

Oh dear oh dear

Seems as though if you take a hiatus from blogging, it is quite hard to get back to it regularly. Hence the silence again. Nothing wrong.

If you don't count the incessant rain and nearly getting flooded out of our holiday let while in Cockermouth for Woolfest!



We were packed and ready to evacuate, but fortunately the rain eased and the water subsided, albeit rather slowly.

Woolfest was as usual lovely. We saw more friends old and new than ever, and considering the state of the economy and that the show had enlarged considerably, we didn't do too badly saleswise. So, we shall sign up for next year.

Despite the weather, which after our first couple of days turned.......miserable, we had a lovely time. We even saw the Olympic torch by accident, just happened to be in Appleby shortly before it was due, so thought we might as well wait and see it.





Damp. Squib. Sorry. Ruined by the horrible sponsors' trucks, and also the total lack of razmatazz. To be fair, the torch bearers seemed to have had a wonderful time, and kudos to them for taking part. But what came across for me was that it was all about the money. I was highly amused as we were walking away, and a woman said to me in a puzzled kind of way "Is it over?" "Yup." "Is that it, then?" "Yup". Priceless expression that I really wish I had caught on camera! So, it wasn't just me, then......

Other pretty pictures:





But I didn't take many as we didn't go all that far and when we did it was grey, raining or both. The few that I took at Woolfest I did on my iPad. although Woolfest is not easy to photograph as it gets so crowded.

At least though, with the weather as it was, I did quite a bit of knitting and spinning. finished a sock that has been on the go for literally years (the other has yet to be cast on); made good progress on the Ashton Shawlette; and spun a new merino/silk blend (jury is out as yet).

Next weekend is the AH annual Retreat, and I am leading a class on improving your spinning. I had best go and do some more prep, although it is nearly all done. Should be fun.

And I will endeavour to be a better blogger.....

Ob-la-di

Well, it has been a while. I very much doubt that anyone out there, not to mention me, wants a full-blown recap of the last few weeks. Let us just say, it was not fun, things are improving and I feel like coming back.

So, let us give it a go.

There have been good things - a theatre visit, to see Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing". Wonderful play, less than totally sure about the production....but worth seing, though. Afterwards, knowing that I will need to read the thing if not see it again, I went on to Amazon and found that yes, indeed, there is a collected works of series, yeay! Unfortunately, over several volumes, all at quite a high price for what is I suppose a relatively minority interest. So, those go on the wish list for pressies!

Another cultural outing was to see Andrew Motion at the Square Chapel in Halifax. Another extremely good evening - seems a nice, unassuming sort of chap (I need an emoticon for gentle irony....) Seriously. Read from "Silver" and some poems, talked about his life. So, another visit to Amazon, a collected verse volume and the autobigraphy/memoir bought. We decided to get "Treasure Island" to read first, as neither of us had done so since childhood - free on the Kindle, can't be bad. We will get "Silver" later.

Knitting, well not so much. Couldn't concentrate on even the idiot scarf. But I have been spinning.





This is the 60/40 Wensleydale and silk. I wanted it fine, so it has taken ages to spin. Originally, I was going to chain ply it, but I decided that this was probably not such a good idea as the singles is perhaps a little - well not wire-like, but not over-soft and flexible. So having spun half by dividing the roving into four, I did the second half straight from the roving, so I have one bobbin with shorter, one with longer repeats.

I'm plying it now - it too is going to take ages - and it is coming out, I think, quite nicely. Going to be a stole when it grows up. I need to decide on a lace stitch pattern, and to ponder on whether I want a twisted fringe or a lace edging. I like dilemmas like that.

And then, spindles have been bought.



(Just by way of a change.....)

These are made by someone in France, and they are really rather nice. I have ordered a set of the smaller size for workshops, having wanted to find a suitable lighter-weight spindle for ages rather than to always use our own personal ones. So that is very satisfactory, too.

One more week and then Woolfest! We have had a shipment of Greensleeves spindles, and there is some Bonkers fibre that is just going to arrive in time, phew. I am really looking forward to it, both the relaxing in Cockermouth, and Woolfest itself, always one of the highlights of the year. Even if it does continue raining as in the last week or so......

So, yeah. Glimmers, eh?