Ribbed Scarf

Is there anyone who doesn’t like carrying yarn around in their purse?  Ok, probably lots of people, including the plenty who don’t carry purses, like Munchkinhead and men outside of San Francisco.  I however, enjoy having a nice little knitting project tucked into my bag for all those unexpected or short down times throughout the day.

Most recently, I stuffed a small skein of sock yarn and a size 5 circular needle into my knitting pouch.  The skein was one of two given to me by my knitting teacher; the other had been used to make a pair of knee-highs.  I wanted to do something special with the second skein but wasn’t sure what at first.  Then an idea hit me.

Scarves are excellent pocket knitting projects because they don’t require a whole lot of attention.  That’s key for something you may knit on a few minutes at a time.  My uncle in California keeps his home very, very cold for inside, and his Anne is not such a huge fan of that.  A scarf for her would be perfect.  My original thought was that it should be a Christmas present.  That failed, but Fourth-Tuesday-in-March presents are nice, too.

I decided to do a bit of a pattern in the scarf so that it wouldn’t be too plain or too boring to knit, but something simple enough to knit a few minutes at a time.  The vertical ribbing turned out gorgeous and the seed stitch on the edges helps keep it from curling.  I also love the stretch that the ribbing gives the scarf. 

The colors look great on my uncle’s Anne and I hope it keeps her just a little bit warmer in my uncle’s ice cube home.

Fun with Munchkinhead Day 4

We started off the day with several games of bowling.  Albany Bowl has a great low price special on Thursday and Friday days.  I  won all the games, but that hardly mattered since Munchkinhead explained she doesn’t care how many pins she knocks down, she likes bowling because she likes throwing things.  O_o

Somehow, after bowling and a nice lunch at home, our day turned into a sort of accidental let’s-be-rich-people day.  We spent the afternoon at the race track and then went for dinner at the yacht club with our uncle.

I’ve driven past Golden Gate Fields well over a 100 times and had never been in it.  Munchkinhead’s visit seemed like a great excuse to finally check it out.  It was lots of fun, especially since it was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon with bright sun and not too much wind.  We watched 7 races and bet on a total of 11 horses from those races.  Munchkinhead had been to races in Kentucky before (she went to college in Kentucky), so she knew how to place the bets.

Overall, we won half our money back.  We started off picking horses based on the horses’ names.  That didn’t work too well.  By the end, we were picking based on jockeys and their rankings and the horses’ names.  That worked better.  In the 7th race, we picked 2 of the top 3 horses.

Here’s a fabulous picture of the two of us in the stands, in between races.  Munchkinhead borrowed my hat.  (Well, I put it on her head and she made a face.  But her faces are always so much better than mine.)

We almost got a picture of the two of us in front of the track when a gentleman offered to take a picture for us.  However, he turned out to be totally inept.  Couldn’t understand the concept of “no, you have to look through the viewfinder,” no matter how many times or ways Munchkinhead explained it.  Then he couldn’t find the shutter button.  Then the camera turned off, after which, in trying to turn it to find the power button, he dropped it 5 feet onto the hard concrete and said, “good thing it’s electronic!” 

Munchkinhead was horrified, especially when she discovered the fall had broken the camera.  Part of the retractable lens had come out, the lens couldn’t close and the camera screen would only give us “lens error. reset lens.”  Needless to say, by the end of this, we didn’t get our picture.  Though I did get Munchkinhead’s camera to work again after some minutes of futzing with it.

So instead of both of us in front of the field, here’s Munchkinhead in front of the field, and me in front of a tree in the parking lot.

 

Our Uncle had invited us for dinner at his yacht club, so we headed directly over to Sausalito after our day in Albany.  The yacht club is at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and it happened to be very clear and sunny when we got there.  The fog rolled in while were having dinner.  Munchkinhead was thrilled and super excited about the fog.  Until we went outside and she learned what the fog meant. Brrrr.

She got some great pictures of the bridge, and got a nice picture with it.

 

Spring Break Day #7: The Lawyer, the Commodore, and the Pro-Wrestler

And they all sailed out to sea.  Ok, not really, except maybe the commodore, but they weren't in a tub anyway.

Today, I went into the City (that's SF for you non-yayers) to have lunch with one of my fav attorneys from City Hall that I worked with a lot last summer.  It was a nice lunch (very yummy veggie burgers) and great to catch-up.  I also got to stop in and say hi to my old supervisor and other attorneys with whom I worked.

After lunch, I headed out to Daly City to hang out with my uncle some more.  Several years ago my Aunt Cindy was supposed to be Commodore of their yacht club.  Sadly, she passed away before she had the chance to serve.  So, Uncle Stevie served as Commodore for her instead.  (He sent Daddy a card that was like a get-in-free-anytime card for any yacht club.  Daddy had no idea what to with it.)  During the past year, Uncle Stevie's live-in friend was the Commodore.  She passed away near the end of last year.  Now, Uncle Stevie's the Commodore again.

We spent the afternoon just chillin, catching up on family gossip.  He also made a yummy snack of tomatoes with basil and mozzarella cheese. :)  And I showed him how to email a file.  (He's still light years ahead of Daddy, who can't send an email at all unless he's hitting reply.)

I headed back to the East Bay on one of the longest BART rides I've taken, from almost one end of the line, to almost the other end.  By the time I got back into El Cerrito, the sun had completely set, so Mr. Trizzle picked me up from the BART station.  That was really nice of him.

Mr. Trizzle found something totally new and different to do in the evening.  We stopped at El Cerrito plaza for dinner (Chinese for him, not Chinese for me), and then headed into Oakland to a place called Parkway Speakeasy.  It's an old-schoolish movie theater with just two screens.  No rows of cramped-in folding seat , no $20 popcorn that you have to put your own butter on,  no getting lost trying to find the right screen. 

The concession stand is huge, and serves real food like sandwiches, salads and pizza.  And get this, the popcorn is regular popcorn, with real butter!  The seats inside are couches and comfy chairs  with little end tables next to them.  If you order food that needed to be cooked, the staff brings it to you and takes the giant letter they gave you at the concession stand.

Mr. Trizzle and I found a nice comfy couch and I curled up into a nice warm ball.  Once it seemed like almost everyone was in the theater, Mr. Trizzle went back out into the lobby to get concessions.  He came back with a metal bowl of popcorn and a bottle of white wine.  I felt like I should have been sewing instead of watching a movie!  We ate popcorn, sipped on wine, and watched the guys that run the theaters tell us about what's coming to the speakeasies.  Then the movie started, and that was pretty much the end of eating or drinking for me.

Mr. Trizzle has this thing about only going to see movies that have ranked really highly on Rotten Tomatoes.  Personally, I think this is a really stupid way to pick movies.  It doesn't matter what it is, if Rotten Tomatoes gives it like a 97%, he'll go.  Why should a bunch of critics know better about what kind of movies you like than you do?  Anyway, the movie was filmed partially in that hand-held home-video way that the Blair Witch Project was notorious for.  I was getting really bad headaches from not being able to focus on anything, and nauseous from all the jolting on screen.  I gave up on eating and eventually even on looking at the screen.

Besides not really being able to enjoy the movie because I couldn't physically watch about half of it, the plot was boring and depressing.  I don't like to waste my time filling myself with other people's bad emotions.  I have enough of my own.  If I'm going to spend two hours (or more) of my life in a fictional land, it better be happy or at least vampire funny (i.e. House of Yes). 

I was quite disappointed.  The movie sounded bizarre when Mr. Trizzle read the info, but I was willing to give it a shot.  After all, I wanted to see the speakeasy, but uck!  Ok, ok.  There were two good things about the movie:  The Music, it was a lot of 80s hair metal except for when younger strippers were on stage, then it was Stuntin Like My Daddy and other newer hip hop; and the fact that about half the movie takes place inside a strip club.

I may stop agreeing to movies Mr. Trizzle picks out because of their Rotten Tomatoes rating.  He did that once before with a DVD.  Michael Clayton.  NOT a feel good movie.  (But has sticking ability - I just found the actual title of the movie by googling a quote I remembered from it.)  Actually, maybe I can use this Rotten Tomato thing against him.  I just Rotten Tomatoed a slew of my favorite films and THE Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth, got 100%!  Boogie Nights and The Producers are also in his "will-view" range, possible Arsenic and Old Lace, too. Hee hee.

Spring Break Day 4: Family Time in the City

Today, I spent most of the day hanging out with my Uncle Stevie.  We toured art galleries in San Francisco in the morning.  I had no idea there were so many art galleries tucked in all over the place like that!  There was some pretty interesting stuff and some pretty scary stuff as well.  We also visited the Yerba Buena gardens  and walked behind the MLK waterfall.  We toured the area a bit, too.  (Art galleries don't open very early....)

For lunch, we met up with Uncle Stevie's good friend who works just a few blocks from where we were.  We had a really yummy lunch at a Asian Fusion restaurant called Unicorn.  When we first arrived, we were still waiting for Uncle Stevie's friend.  The waiter sat us at a small table in the center of the main aisle and said he'd add a chair later.  Then Uncle Stevie's friend showed up.  He knew everybody.  They moved us to a bigger table out of the path of the wait-staff.

After lunch, Uncle Stevie and I walked down to the Embarcadero to go inside the ferry building.  We glanced at the shops, looked out over the water, and headed back inland to see some sculptures around the city.

It was raining on and off most of the day, but the rain was very nice to us.  It only rained when we weren't walking outside.  When we went to get the car out of the parking garage, it was sunny and actually starting to get warm.  As we pulled out of the garage in the car: torrential downpour!  It worked like that most of the day.

We headed over to the East Bay in the early afternoon to avoid traffic later.  We hadn't been out of the car 2 minutes in Berkeley when we saw a booth for signing petitions to overturn a state law.  Vampiring Berkeley.  We tried to find some good things to do in Berkeley, but didn't have much luck.  The Berkeley Botanical Gardens were closed because the first Tuesday of the month is maintenance day.  The Berkeley Art Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.  So we settled for wandering around, visiting bookshops and game stores and having an afternoon snack at a small Italian cafe.  It was still fun, but boy are my legs sore!

In the evening, we met Mr. Trizzle and his mother for dinner at that Chinese restaurant we almost went to on Sunday.  That's the reason Uncle Stevie and I had come into the East Bay in the first place.  Dinner was nice.  The food was good and the company quite enjoyable, despite the varied interests at the table.  Mr. Trizzle was still on a great high from having won a hard case in trial last week.  (Jury came back Monday, guilty on all counts.)  Trizzle's mom was glad to be out of her regular work/study routine.  (She's taking a teacher's exam in two weeks.)  Uncle Stevie said he enjoyed the day out and about (and wouldn't have to leave his house for another week after all this).  And I was glad to be with so many fun people and enjoying my spring break.

Hooray for another happy day. :)