San Francisco: Muir Woods

Have you ever been to San Francisco?
Jill and I visited six years ago to celebrate her 21st birthday. For this trip with Elliott, there were some new-to-me sites, and some revisited favorites. Muir Woods was a new attraction, and I'm so glad we went.

Muir Woods is incredible, and we were lucky enough to have good weather for our early morning visit. Instead of renting a car and dealing with parking, we chose to go with a small tour group (there were only five people in our van), care of Extranomical Tours. We had about two hours to spend in the woods, and I made good use of my time and camera.

What struck me the most about the woods is that certain trees were positively glowing. I'm guessing it was a combination of the moss and sunlight.

Postively beautiful. Elliott and I walked along the trail for almost two hours, pausing to take pictures (pretty frequently) and enjoying existence.

It's a very magical place. I definitely want to go back someday, just to make sure the magic of these giant trees still exists.

I'm pretty sure I won't be disappointed.

FO: Betty

I've been slightly incommunicado lately. The main reason is that I hopped over to San Francisco for a few days last week. It was a much needed break with the boy, and I honestly didn't want to come back to work. We had a great time, and I'll be sharing pictures with you soon.

In the meantime, I finished my grandmother's shawl this weekend.

This worsted-weight shawl was made using Chrissy Prange's Followill pattern. It was really intuitive and well-written. I appreciated that Chrissy included the symbol legend on each page of charts; it was much easier than flipping back and forth.

I used Valley Yarns Northampton, a 100% Peruvian wool.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out (and please excuse the end that needs to be woven!). My sister was kind enough to take pictures for me yesterday.

She's really good about capturing silly moments like this one! If I haven't mentioned, she's working on her photography as more than just a hobby, and you can check her out here if you're interested.

I made no mods to the shawl, and I used approximately 520 yards of yarn. I'm hoping it will keep my grandmother warm. This is my fifth completed shawl of 2010. 50% of the goal isn't bad, but it's not great, either. Oh well.

Side note: my grandparents are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary early next year.

In.cred.ible.

Raveled

Proctor Pics

A few glimpses of my Thanksgiving weekend:

And my personal favorites, meet Duke, my grandparent's llama:

Duke loves:
-when we visit
-kitchen scraps
-and most especially, tortillas.

I promise I'll have some actual knitting content soon. I'm just a few rows from the finish line on the shawl for my grandmother, and I started a pair of Marlene socks. It's my first Cookie A pattern, and I'm using this lovely skein of MadelineTosh Sock: