Backyard in progress - lucky break

We had a very lucky break with the irrigation. When we started to excavate

to run the lines under the concrete walkways we discovered, quite by accident that some clever person ALREADY ran 3/4" PVC pipes underneath, YEAH!

This find probably saved us several hours of muddy mess. The new valves are now installed and ready to be wired to the automatic controller (wires already run through the attic 4 years ago : )

Guest Bathroom Makeover

The great Spring Fever indoor project will be the guest bathroom. It's always been just OK, but really needs a little lipstick makeover to become great. You can see below I've been experimenting with paint shades, I feel like Goldilocks; "this shade it too light, this shade is too dark, and this shade is too icky". I haven't hit on the right shade yet, but I'm definitely narrowing in on it, thank heavens the local Ace sells paint testers in tiny little jars.

The floor has a big gray stain, likely water damage at some point, that hasn't gotten worse, just stays ugly. I am thinking of using the click together laminate that looks like tile and just go right over this old linoleum.

The other eyesore is the original stain peeling off the side of the cabinet. I'm not in love with this cabinet style, but it's in good shape and it's such a waste to throw it away to install something new, so we are going to strip and re-stain it a darker color. I got something called "Citristrip", which looks environmentally friendly and not as likely to give me cancer as some of the other chemicals strippers on the market. I hope it works as I'm not real excited about sanding this till my arms fall off and I want to do the same thing in the kitchen eventually.

last, but not least, is replacing all the shiny brass fixtures, which I really don't like. I am thinking of going for a dark bronze or brushed nickel look. Unless we somehow mess the whole thing up, we will also keep the white tile, sink and original shower/tub enclosure, they are in good shape and we don't want to dump too much money into this project.

Landscaping the backyard

Our backyard has become quite a mess, a desert in summer because we have no automatic irrigation, only non-functional valves, and a jungle in spring with the rains.

The plan is to convert the old lawn sprinkler system to a drip system with all new automatic valves and drip lines laid throughout the dirt areas.

The biggest remaining hurdle to getting the irrigation is tunnelling under the concrete walkway to get to the new tree, which is currently marooned in a sea of concrete with no water source.

After that is should be smooth sailing, we will be contouring the dirt, laying out a dry creek bed/walkway for the doggies, then putting down landscape fabric, decomposed granite and several boulders. Once the rock is laid down we can start putting in the plants, which will be mostly decorative grasses, lavender and rosemary with scattered butterfly bushes for some height.

Step 1 completed - clear cutting the jungle

Suisun Valley WineTasting

Craig got a tip from one of his co-workers who suggested we visit several wineries in the nearby Suisun Valley. Who knew there were such great wineries, practically in our own backyard and quite affordable too. It was a beautiful, sunny and not too warm day in the valley.

First stop was Wooden Valley , a family winery with affordable and quite good wine. We came away with some of the Chardonnay, a buttery, oaky white and the Sauvignon Blanc, which is much greener and lighter, putting me in mind of spring.

Next stop, The Vintage Cafe on the recommendation of the nice lady at Wooden Valley.

The food was delicious, the service fast and friendly and the prices fair. Craig really enjoyed his plate of Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken.

Across from the cafe is this towing business with a gold statue of what we both assumed must be Chief Mankas watching over the parking lot.We visited the Ledgewood Creek winery, which is beautifully situated in the middle of the valley and surrounded by fields of wild mustard in bright yellow bloom. They have 38 large nest boxes on the site for the local barn owls, who pay rent by keeping the rodent population in check. They also had a very nice Mediterranean style garden that we strolled through getting some good ideas for our own backyard in progress. I liked the 2005 Syrah, Craig didn't care for any of them too much. Overall, this was a very relaxing place to visit.

Last stop was to the Suisun Valley Wine Cooperative, or Co-Op as everyone else referred to it. They had an impressively large selection of wine for free tasting as this one tasting room is a cooperative venture for six local wineries. At this point both Craig and I were feeling a bit light headed, so we had to be very selective in our choices. This winery turned out to have what we both agreed were the best wines of the day, a Winterhawk Winery 2007 Petite Syrah (my favorite varietal grape) and a fabulous Sunset Cellars 2004 Barbera, an Italian varietal. The Barbera knocked both our socks off, it is GOOD. Needless to say, we went home with a bottle of each.

To cap off this little adventure we conducted a brief exploration of the area and Craig determined that while quite lovely to look at this Magnolia did not have a lovely fragrance to match it's beauty.

Stitches West 2009

On Saturday, Feb 28th we went to the knitter's mecca known as Stitches West. There was a special 7 car train just for all the knitters that took us from Davis to Santa Clara. 500 of us enjoyed a bright, sunny ride on the train. Mary and Yvette brought delicious breakfast food and we met one of Yvette's friends from work there, Alison, who joined us for the ride.
this is THE way to travel! Quite relaxed, enjoying each others company, snacking and oh, yeah some knitting.

We were interviewed and photographed extensively by a reporter from the Enterprise, but I have not seen if we actually made the paper. This was some subtle payback by Yvette for a previous incident when Mary sicced a photographer-in-training on us who needed portraits for her final class project. Yvette kept that reporter at our table for at least 45 minutes, egging her on to ask Mary all about her project.

The event itself was, like last year, overwhelming in the sheer numbers. There were 262 booths and it was crowded! No pictures inside allowed, but this is what I remember most:

• Best: guy vest with removable sleeves at the Fashion show
• Worst: getting trapped in the back of a popular booth
• Oddest: hay bale twine knitting (ok, this was actually Mary's test project to see if it's even possible to recycle the plastic twine that comes on the goat hay and turn it into a market bag).

The ride home was a relief from the maddening crowd and last minute buying frenzy, Yvette actually witnessed some pushing/shoving/yelling to get at some highly sought after yarn.

We took the time to admire our lovely new yarn. Mary was quite a sweetheart and gifted both Yvette and I with some cool sockyarn made out of wool and Tencel, a fiber made from woodpulp. It's one of the many new "green" fibers, which is nice, but really we just thought it made the yarn sort of shiny, and you know how we like shiny stuff. Alison scored some gorgeous handdyed silk yarn for a sweater she has been dreaming up in her head for a while and I finally found the perfect yarn for a sweater I've been itching to make since the time I first laid eyes on the pattern.
below is a wool/tencel skein I will most likely turn into socks on the tinest needles I've used yet, #1.5 (2.5mm), about the size of ballpoint pen refills. and this is the fabulous, slightly variegated brown wool yarn I intend to turn into a sweater with the cutest cabled owls you've ever seen on the yoke. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

Knitting update

the Swallowtail shawl is progressing, sometimes at a good clip (finished all the Lily of the Valley pattern without a headache), sometimes agonizingly slowly (having trouble getting the pattern to match up between Lily of the Valley and Peaked Edging). I've ripped back 3 times so far trying to get it right, had to put it aside until the frustration subsides.

In the meantime, I've completed my first sock ever, YAH!

Wicked Weekend in the City

This was definitely my best birthday weekend EVER! Craig and I went to San Francisco for a weekend getaway. We parked the car in Concord and took BART into San Francisco, which is a great way to beat the traffic and especially the parking nightmares in the City.



I spent too much time at home messing around, so we didn't get there until 1pm which didn't leave time to do much as we had dinner reservations at 5:45. Craig claimed he would faint from hunger if we didn't eat before then, so we found this fun diner, Lori's, to catch a quick bite. They had an actual 1959 Edsel automobile inside the diner, a placard indicated that it had been moved in prior to the actual diner construction, which was build around it, kind of cheesy, but also cool.





I only had a little snack as I was eagerly anticipating our dinner at Fleur De Lys, a well known and loved french restaurant. The dinner was spectacular! The inside of the restaurant is lush and romantic with warm, rich fabrics and flowers everywhere. The food was sublime and lived up to our expectations in both the richness as well as the artistically small portion sizes. Craig experienced a Gulliver's Travel moment enjoying his "soup and muffin"

Below are our menu choices

Appetizers:

Roasted foie gras with truffles

White and green asparagus salad with truffles

Main:

Roasted sea scallops with a hazelnut crust

Pan seared buffalo strip steak with rustic vegetables

Dessert:

Butternut squash pie (tasted somewhat like pumpkin pie)

Vanilla cheesecake

Keep in mind that this is my recital from memory of the items, they actually all had fancy french names and the exquisite tastes and presentations one would expect from such a world renown chef.

Well sated and happy we trekked the 4 blocks back to the hotel to admire this spectacular view.

You can see Coit tower directly in front and off the right is the Transamerica building, wow!

Breakfast on Saturday was at the famous Sears Fine Foods just around the corner from the hotel.

where I ate 18 pancakes!

Our next day's adventure involved trying to find a yarn store. I have been to Imagiknits already several times and wanted to visit a different store this time. You would think in a city this big, that finding another yarn store would be pretty easy, well, you would be wrong.

This is our tale of yarn store woe.

11:00 am - walk 1 block from hotel to Britex Fabrics, a 4 story fabric and "yarn" store, find a wimpy selection of yucky novelty yarns, uhgg what a disappointment.

11:30 - am walk 3 blocks in other direction to Art Fibers only to find a couple of handymen painting an empty space, this store has closed, boo hoo.

12:00 - walk 6-7 blocks down to Market street to JB Yarns, where the very friendly, but English illiterate doorman informs us that "Yarn not......Tuesday, Tuesday", which we interpret to mean the business is closed today and will not open again until Tuesday.

OK, by now you would think I would be deterred, but noooo way, now I'm more determined than ever to FIND SOME *&%*$@YARN IN THIS CITY TODAY, DAMMIT!

1:30pm - take the bus uptown to Atelier on Divisidero, which sounded pretty promising, but, arghh, no go, THIS one was closed due to the owner's illness. Can you picture me screaming by now, yeah, that's right, screaming!

2:30pm - my ever patient husband agrees to accompany to one last store, so onward we go. We stop at a little deli for a beverage where I foolishly inquire if it's a reasonable walk to Lombard from here, where the snarky little store clerk says "Sure, it's only a couple of blocks, shouldn't take more that 2 minutes". BULLS**T.

that 2 minutes turned into a 20 minute uphill slog, literally crawling up the steep hills of SF. Our efforts were richly rewarded at the crest of the hill with spectacular views of the Bay and Golden Gate bridge as well as making us feel a little better about eating such a rich dinner the night before and all those pancakes for breakfast.


Hallelujah, finally, finally on the 5th try I found my yarn at this nice little shop, Greenwich Yarns. Craig got to sit down and practice his Spanish with another friendly patron while I perused the large selection of fine yarns to my hearts content. I ended up with some Kidsilk Haze to make a lacy scarf later and some beautiful hand-dyed merino to make some socks now.

Next stop, lunch in Chinatown as we had worked up quite an appetite with our cross-town yarn trek. Dim Sum, baby, Dim Sum, yum, yum.

In the gigantic, cafeteria looking place the dim sum carts come to your table to thrust unintelligibly named, but oh so delicious plates of yummies on you. They were quite emphatic about which plates we should sample, and who were we to gainsay them on their own cuisine, so sample we did.
bellies full, hands itching to knit, we wobbled back to the hotel for a rest before venturing forth for our evenings fun.

After rest and several rows of sock knitting we headed out for a quick bite of pizza and then off to the Orpheum to see Wicked. The play was spectacular and we had 8th row seats. This was by far the best musical/play we've ever attended. The singing was good, but what I really liked was the acting, the fantastic costumes, the many, many little witticisms and the way it linked the story back to the original but told from a completely different point of view.



Sunday was an altogether much quieter day. It was really pouring down rain by then, but we decided to brave the elements to go to Golden Gate park in hopes of getting into the newly remodeled Steinhart Aquarium, but the lines were just ridiculous, so we went across the plaza to the DeYoung instead and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee as well as some fine art.


Tired, but very, very happy we made our way back home to our overjoyed doggies.


Amusing side note, I noticed this elegant and refined bamboo decoration in the high class hotel lobby
which upon closer inspection was harboring this happy little, green alien. I hope he's still there many years from now.