Monday Pictures (from Sunday)

It's Monday and we had a nice weekend. It was a little chilly for us California weather wimps. I don't think it went higher than 59 yesterday, but it's a beautiful spring as you can see from the new growth on the tree above. Will and I went over to Ken and Diann's to help Ken clear space for a shed. Clearing space means moving wood because there was wood for the fireplace where the shed will go. Will helped, Diann gardened in her lovely raised vegetable beds, and I kept her company and did some knitting and took some pictures. Hopefully I learned some things about raised beds.

A much deserved rest. This is not their house, but the very large shop.

Their backyard is huge and backs up to the train tracks. Here comes an Amtrak going south to San Jose (from Sacramento). Bye bye Amtrak. We also saw an Amtrak coming in the northerly direction, and a small freight train. It's great watching the trains from their yard!

The back end of the Amtrak a few seconds later. They go by fast, so it's hard to capture in a photo.
Caterpiller on the side of a raised bed. I didn't get a picture of the plants because I was going for the caterpiller!

Their cat SparkPlug wandering around checking us out. He's even harder to photograph than the fast-moving trains!

Back at home, Kandyman from next door is guarding our heirloom tomato plant. The plant behind it looks like a houseplant and just shows up - I didn't plant it, and I see it all around the neighborhood. Who knew? K-man was perfectly posed UNTIL I showed up with the camera. Typical cat!

It's Spring - with pictures to prove it!

No sound, unfortunately, otherwise you'd hear the birds chirping, the speed boats on the cove racing and even the dogs barking. The barking dogs are annoying, but it's all part of having the windows open.

The sky is blue, it's still chilly (52 with 4 mph winds according to "weatherbug" on my computer), but warming up. I've done some gardening (weeding and clipping), Will put a water heater blanket on the water heater and fixed the fence out front between us and our neighbor, and I've taken pictures. Who had more fun?The white azaeleas came from out front at our townhouse and now lives in the shade under the non-producing avocado tree out back, and is apparently likes it judging by the flowers and buds.

Everything is in bloom! Left - white azaeleas (like the ones in the photo above, but planted in the ground by the former owner). To the right of them are the dark pink cyclamens from Ken and Diann. To the right of the statue is lavender planted by me. I'm not sure why, but I was surprised to see the purple flowers come back. In front of the statue in the pot is a miniature rose, and all around is the Alyssum that I planted by pouring the entire seed packed into the ground. I do NOT like this red lava rock, and I like the white rock surrounding the planted area even less, but that's what was here, so it stays.Apparently Alyssum self-seeds, so it has spread everywhere, including here! Above is the heirloom tomato plant today. Below is the heirloom tomato plant a week ago. You be the judge. I think it's grown. Another BIG tomato plant? It's called the South African Giant Tomato (or was it South American?) so it will be large.

Below is the regular (not heirloom) Roma tomato plant that is growing in a pot out back. I don't think this one has grown (yet). I have copper tape around the planter with the artichoke plant but it looks like a snail has managed to get to one left. I really hate snails and they should know their fate if they enter my yard.

Below are the flowers I got from the neighbor across the street. It's already started blooming! I understand it spreads, and that's okay with me. It's between two geranium plants.
This is the scarf I started with the yarn I bought at the garage sale yesterday. I've already ripped out a checkerboard stitch. I almost always end up coming back to this stitch. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's used for dish towels and I've used it for baby blankets and scarves.
You can't really see the stitch in the picture, but that gives me a chance to see if I like how the colors are looking without being distracted by the stitch.

Saturday Pictures

It's gray and wet but not raining. It rained last night.


We went to the library booksale. It's Friday night for members, Saturday for the public and then Sunday clearance. We usually go on Sunday when it's $3 a bag instead of 75 cents per inch, but we decided we'd get a better selection, and maybe there'd be fewer people, if we went early enough on Saturday. (If we went late Saturday we could just wait until Sunday opening and get it for $3 a bag with the same selection). Maybe we'd also be more selective. We got there about 15 minutes after it opened, and it got crowded during that time. Will bought a few hardback books, and I bought a book about the 1965 New York World's Fair with great ads (to read and maybe sell on ebay?) and another little book. There were no knitting books. There were lots of cookbooks, but I didn't see any I had to have. Mystery hardbacks were 25 cents each, but I can get those at the library, or from my friend, Diann, who has a wall of mysteries and she doesn't mind loaning them to me.


Then we went to a garage sale that we almost skipped because of the chilly, gray weather. It was a yarn fest. I was looking around and noticed circular knitting needles in their sealed packages, when the woman selling told me she had yarn. It was right behind where I was looking, where I had just come from - how could I have missed it? LOTS of yarn.


I bought a bunch of yarn, two circular needles and wine charms for $5. Diann has taught me to not use much acrylic (acrylic has its place). There was some wool, some acrylic. The most expensive skein was 50 cents for the skein, and the cheapest were 10 cents a skein. I could have stayed longer, but out of defference to the very patient Will, and the fact that I didn't really need much, I tried to hurry myself along.


The blue, white and pink are for my baby blanket stash. When I work for someone while they are on maternity leave, I sometimes make them a baby blanket. I didn't get a gig for a maternity leave coverage that I thought I was going to get, but I like this woman, and it was her boss, not her, who chose someone else for bogus reasons, but don't get me (or her) started, and since I like her, I will make her a baby blanket.

The beige/burgundy is wool, the turqouise-ish is Peruvian wool from KnitPicks. I'm hoping I have enough for the short little scarves I like to make.

This is the whole bunch I got.

These purple, beige, blue, gray socks were the first pair of socks I knitted.

My cousin says the pictures of my socks on this blog look, well, sort of misformed. She was afraid to tell me. As you can see above, they do look kind of funny, but they fit on my feet perfectly! Look!

Tonight we're going to dinner at friends who live in an old farmhouse that was built in 1860. They also rescue cats (she does, he tolerates) so they have many cats, along withtwo geese. The geese live outside and are quite amusing. They hang out all day in the gated yard, and are kept in a pen at night.

They are friends with our realtors, so they will also be there. The husband was giving a talk in the library that we attended two years ago, and I had my knitting in a bag that I got from a professional association conference. She was sitting behind me, noticed my bag, and we started talking. She was very helpful, loaning us things to "stage" our townhouse after we moved out and were trying to sell it. I can't believe I just used the word "stage" - it makes me cringe when realtors use that word, except when a house is empty, I can understand wanting to put some things in it. Every time I think about this I am reminded again of how happy I am that we are DONE with that process.

It's noon and it's only 55 degrees outside. That's COLD for California! We're still in California, right?

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It's chillier today. I noticed that it was in the low 40s at 8:00 am here, but warmer in Montrose, CO. It's 10 am here now and it's 49 degrees, but it's one hour later in Montrose and it's 60 degrees there. At least we're not in Jackson Hole, WY where it looked like this yesterday. Beautiful, but very very cold. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

First - the good (in no special order):

Peonies in our front yard. We have two of these plants, and when we first moved in they looked like they were dead, so we trimmed them very low. Much to our surprise, they came back - who knew! They are BEAUTIFUL with a very strong scent.

Didn't photgraph well, but the best ice cream around - Dreyer's LIGHT Chocolate Fudge Chunk. MMMMMMMMMMMM. If you like chocolate, try it and let me know what you think!

Will offered to manually wind my yarn. It was a pretty big ball, but smaller than either of us thought it would be.

I started a sweater with the yarn, but even though the gauge is exact (on purpose so I didn't have to do any manipulation of the instructions), it was too small, so I'm making the L/XL which seems wrong, but is working. I guess when the instructions say Knit 4, Purl 4 (that would be 8) and then say to cast on 108 stitches (which is NOT divisable by 8) I should expect that even with exact gauge I'll be doing some calculations. It's the same pattern as my bright green cotton sweater, but the gauge was not the same for that and it is smaller than I wanted. It will fit, but I want this one bigger. It's Alice from Daily Knitter, and I tried to find out how to contact them to tell them, but I didn't find a way on their site.

This is the sweater on the Daily Knitter site.

Mowry likes my sweater better.

THE BAD:

What is with these tire marks down the street from our house? I can only hope one of the people in these houses heard this and reported it. The house on the left with the bushes and the place to park an RV is the house we originally tried to buy. It's about 4 or 5 houses down from our house.

THE UGLY:

Nothing's sacred in this house when you're a cat!

Sunday in Niles

After we did some "gonna hurt tomorrow" type trimming of our pineapple guava tree, and Will did some fence repair, and we watered out front and back, we walked into town and dropped off a bag of lemons at a local restaurant, got a cup of mocha decaf and a chocolate chip cookie to share from another restaurant, and then we went to see the woman who sells the heirloom tomatoes. We bought one, and we'll see how it goes. It was very quiet in town, and delightful!

Above is the $0.97 tomato plant from Navlet's nursery that I bought yesterday.

Above is the avocado plant. I hope it grows! Oops, Diann reminded me that this is NOT an avocado plant, but an artichoke. I knew that, but I must have had avocadoes on the brain since we have two avocado trees, one that produces, and one that doesn't, and we did pruning of the tree next to the avocado on Sunday. Above is the heirloom tomato plant we bought today.

Above is the lamp Will bought at a garage sale yesterday that goes perfectly with the jungle theme on the table in the sunroom. .Mowry exercises his camoflauge capabilities often. He blends in with EVERYTHING! Maybe hiding under the rocking chair isn't a great idea, except we know he's there!

Today was another beautiful day, but we may get some rain later in the week.

Spring Saturday

Today was a gorgeous day. It was in the low 70s and my long sleeved shirt was too warm. I went with Diann to two nurseries. One is Regan Nursery http://www.regannursery.com/. Diann bought lots of flowers and vegetables. I almost bought some ground cover, but changed my mind.

I didn't want to buy tomatoes because there is a woman nearby who sells heirloom tomatoes and she will be ready to sell them tomorrow. If you recall from earlier blog posts and from the pictures below, I had the most amazing tomato plant last year, so I'm hoping she'll remember what I bought from my description, so I can get another one. Remember my huge tomato plant?I wasn't sure what else I wanted or needed, so I didnt' buy anything at Regan's.

It's a beautiful nursery with amazing colors!

Then we went to another nursery - Navlet's. http://www.navlets.com/ I bought an artichoke plant (probably inspired by the two artichokes Darlene brought over last night because she had bought several last weekend fresh from an artichoke farm and couldn't use them all), a small Roma tomato plant (yes, I still plan to buy another from the local gal selling them) and seeds to grow cilantro. I couldn't resist any longer!

Will started doing some clipping before I got home, and when I returned we did some together.

Mowry has decided he likes this new cat bed that we found at a garage sale a few weeks ago. Up until this week he wouldn't go near it. I actually found Alex sleeping in it last night. Mow used to sleep on the back of the chair (thus the throw that covers it to protect it from his claws) but since he discovered the cat bed, he seems to be ignoring the chair and the throw. He always has such a funny look on his face when he's sleeping!

Friday Pictures

I'm just about done with a project for my Mom's birthday (I know it was LAST week), but I've set it aside temporarily to work on my very portable sock. I don't want to photograph and post the Mom item just in case they get it together and look at my blog. While I don't like surprise parties (if you know me, you know this - nothing more annoying than lying to people you care about, then everyone jumping out at that person you supposedly care about and yelling "surprise", case in point the surprise party last January for my 95 year old uncle that he thwarted because he was sick and almost didn't get to his own party) but I digress, because I think surprise birthday presents are fine.

So here is my sock - the finished one looks oddly shaped, but it fits like a, well, sock! Socks, daffodils, freesia and lavendar from my garden, and my 1970s avocado green stove! Let's hear it for retro. Yeah, granite counters and stainless steel appliances are beautiful, but in my unique nature (I like to be different) who else has a retro cool kitchen like mine? Notice the cool bowls to the left of the flowers.

Last night we had a beautiful view of the full moon rising (isn't that a song?) but it just didn't photograph as well as the site. I still have that spot on the lens of my camera that I see in this picture.

Thursday Before Good Friday...isn't every Friday Good?

What's with Good Friday? When you work, isn't every Friday good?

Last night I went to a professional association chapter board meeting at a restaurant in San Francisco. It reminded me why I prefer quiet evenings at home with TV, cat, and husband, and not particularly in that order. It was loud, especially the bar we had to walk thru to get to the restaurant, and even at our table in the back, we were screaming over each other to hear each other talk. While I waited in the hotel lobby where the restaurant is located, I watched some guy escort the token sick drunk woman to the restroom. When they later sat her down next to where I was sitting, I got up and left. The meal was very good, and the company was good, but I'm looking forward to an evening at home tonight, especially since I went to another chapter professional association meeting luncheon this afternoon. Another good meal, good lecture (if you can make international stock plan rules interesting) and good company, but Dorothy was right - there's no place like home!

Then I went with the person who drove with me to the lunch meeting to the Costco in Sunnyvale. The Costco I swore I'd never return to since last time it was such a zoo, but they are one of the few Costcos to carry our San Francisco Bay DECAF French Roast coffee beans, and for $12.95 I got 3 lbs instead of Peets, which I love, but is $12.95 for one lb. Yes, I LOVE Peet's coffee, but I don't notice a 3x difference in it from SF Bay, so SF Bay it is. The Costco experience was good - NOT crowded, they had all that I needed, and $120 later, I stocked up on coffee, cat litter, cashews, and other things that I can't remember right now.

Pictures - - - -

Our avocado tree, but no visible avocadoes. They are WAY up high this year!

Freesias and daffodils - bulbs planted by the former owner. The smell fabulous!

Night blooming jasmine coming over the fence from next door. This was taken from inside, thus the glare from the window. There are going to be a lot of flowers soon, as evidenced by the pink blooms.

Birds of paradise and our neighbor's lemon tree.

And speaking of birds, we are all looking out the open window at the birds. Our humans think it's a good thing we don't go outside, otherwise Mowry (orange tabby boy) would be catching birds every 15 minutes. You can practically see his tail swishing in this picture. Cinders has a proven track record, but she was younger then. She still seems interested (on the right). Alex, on the left, is only mildly interested. He's a lazy boy.