It's A Mystery

My buddy Alina and I went to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot yesterday. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I really had a lot of fun. (That guy behind me laughed at Alina and I while we took jumping pictures. I think he was jealous of all the fun we were having)

At the center of the mystery spot, you truly lean about 17 degrees and it feels upright. I even closed my eyes to see if I could right myself, but in order to not fall over, you really have to lean. Check out Alina's ankles. Definitely leaning.

There are multiple demonstrations on how distorted gravity is there. In this demonstration, the board appears lower on the right hand side. But when the guide,Ned, put a level on it, (which Alina checked out) the board was level. When the tube of chap stick was put on it, the tube rolled upwards. Weird.

Into The Wild Blue Yonder

Knitters often gravitate towards a particular color when shopping for yarn. Mooncalf likes grey, Ewenique likes Yellow, and Coopknits likes green. I suspected my color, but was able to confirm it once I pulled out the stash. I definitely like my blues. (The four skeins on the bottom left row were a recent purchase and are for my next sweater, which I'm not allowed to start until I finish my other sweater.) I almost brought out my entire stash to take a giant yarn rainbow picture, but then it occurred to me that I could be a bit more productive with my time...

Kiwiyarns was talking about Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting in her blog today. Talk about a coincidence. A half hour before I read that entry, my copy of the book arrived. I've only leafed through it, but I already love it.

Mothra Ate My Wool

I had been going through my wool box looking for a certain color when I saw evidence of a moth invasion. Needless to say, I felt like a big old idiot for not putting all my wool into ziplock bags like I should have. For those of you not in the know, I thought I'd let you know what you should do if you find moths eating your fiber. First off, you should have all your fiber in air-tight containers. I did not, so I'm paying the price.

How do you know you have an invasion? Well, the first sign is seeing moths. The moth itself doesn't eat fiber. But their larva do. If you see moths around, be extra vigilant. You can tell you actually have a problem when you find larva poo. It looks like little grains of sand.

The fiber will have chunks missing. The larva just bites right into the fiber. There will be a bunch of poo around missing chunks as well.

You may even find a live larva. They are pretty gross.

Put all your fiber in the "infected" bag into quarantine. Even if the fiber appears to be untouched, if it was next to mothy fiber, bag it up. Then put it all in the freezer for 2-3 days. The temperature will kill off all the larva and moths. Conversely, if you have a rather hot garage during the summer, the fiber could be left there for a few days. Extreme heat will also kill off any unwanted pests.

While I was able to salvage a bunch of my fiber, I did lose a bag to moths. It was just filled with little larva poo and every few inches of the roving had a chunk missing. I learned that moth larva have good taste. They ate the angora-wool blend.

Are We Done Yet?

Sometimes when no one else is around and I need a picture taken, I'll recruit my brother. He's a good sport. And I have to admit that I like his style of photography. (Don't tell him that I said so though.) His style is: I don't care about this, can we be done yet? He holds the camera haphazardly and doesn't even bother looking through the viewfinder... and he gets a kick out of taking a bunch of dumb pictures of me. Eventually we get what I was aiming for, but honestly, his relaxed, "Are we done yet?" style is better than what I ever direct him to do.

In this one I'm laughing because I couldn't get a sock off and ended up hopping on one foot in circles.

He's getting a bit more pushy too. I was informed that if I didn't smile for this one, I'd look like an idiot.

In other news, I finished my Koolhaas. I had planned to give it away, but after adding the pom pom, I've become smitten with it. Maybe if someone really awesome asks me, I'll send it their way...

The Latest Buzz

The Free Bees pattern is now available and it is free! (Get it... free bees... freebies. Haha.) You can get a copy on bearears.com or on ravelry.

This is my very first sock pattern. The pattern is adapted from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Patterns, pg. 273 : Honeybee Pattern with Faggoting. It's a toe-up pattern with short row toes and heels. No worries if you don't know how to do short rows. I've explained them in the pattern.

I'd never really considered myself a sock knitter, but I may have been bitten by the bug. Socks are just so portable. I love being able to throw a sock in my purse and know that it will continue to fit no matter how much more I add to it.

Twisted Stitches And Holey Armpits

I've had a bunch of new opportunities crop up in the last month and on Monday one came to pass. I started my new job! And it's at Green Planet Yarn. Green Planet Yarn is the first thing I blogged about. I wouldn't have ever thought that I might work there one day when I started this blog. Anyways, one of the first things I was asked to do was touch straighten all the yarn. I can already predict what will be happening to all my future pay checks...

I also started a new project. I'm making a Koolhaas so that I can understand twisted stitches better. Although I'm not really sure who will get the finished hat, so if anyone is interested....

The sweater is slowly being finished. It took me a week to decide that I was indeed going to put sleeves on it. The number one reason I decided on sleeves (even though a vest would be neat) is that I bought extra yarn for the sleeves and wound it into balls, so the skeins can't be returned.

The only problem I'm now having is that when I attached the sleeve, a large hole appeared in the armpit. I'm not really worried about closing the hole. I left an extra long yarn tail to help stitch it up. But I sure would like to know why it even occurred and what I can do to prevent it from happening on the other sleeve. The stitches for the sleeves are put on stitch holders and knit after the sweater is done. Does anyone know why the hole showed up?

Spirit Guides

The next morning at Yosemite, Natalie discovered this amazing view right behind our tent cabin. I enjoyed the sun for a little bit before we all had breakfast.

After breakfast we started on another hike. We past right by this doe and her three fawns. It's rather unusual to see a doe with more than two, but all of them looked healthy. I even got a picture of one of the fawns nursing.

On our way up to Vernal Falls, I was taking pictures and nearly stepped on this guy. He actually frightened me a little. I wasn't expecting to turn around and have another little spirit guide staring up at me. He kind of reminded me of Scooter since I'm pretty sure he was begging for food.

The Mist Trail was pretty slick, but it afforded us a lovely view of Vernal Falls. The way the mist was being pushed around at the base of the falls is indescribable. You really have to see it yourself. It was a little hard on my camera, though. I kept having to wipe off my lens.

At the top of the falls there were two baby squirrels playing with each other. The rock was pretty steep, so they would wrestle around and roll downwards, then pause to run back up and wrestle some more.

Instead of descending the million steps that we had climbed up, Mum, Natalie and I decided to take a bit of the John Muir Trail. We climbed a bunch, decided that we might be going the wrong direction and descended. After asking a park ranger we found that we had been going the right way and climbed again. I got a little cranky about going up, down, and up again. Eventually we got to the top and saw Nevada Falls.

It was pretty late by the time we finally headed home. I really love seeing all the orchards around the Escalon and Manteca area, especially when the sky is on fire.