My Brain Is Fried

Hi Dear Folk,

Do you just love filing things, like Taxes and FAFSA?  Especially when you get right to the end and they want a PIN number, not just one PIN number but two PIN numbers and one you don't know.  Then you try and retrieve it and answer all their questions and you still can't get it AAAHHH!!!  This results in fried brain syndrome.  Plus you are under a deadline, today being the final day, talk about pressure.

Also the printer won't work and you have to phone your Boss and ask if you can go into work and print forms up there.  So drive into office, print up the appropriate forms there, feeling pretty good about this, then get home and find out that certain forms were not on the files you printed.  So more phoning needed to get this data.

Eventually, after being on phone with son, who has to phone off as his minutes were running out.  Trying to retrieve my Skpe PIN and every other PIN on earth, I think, I have eventually filed everything.  At least I'm in hope that I have, it did say I had.

Now I'm going to make myself another cup of tea, after already taking an ibuprophen, sit and crochet and watch a movie.

Does anyone relate to this?

Christy

Crochet Shawl and Skirt Showing

Hi Dear Folk,

How was your weekend?

Saturday was 2 f and snowing, today 42 f and melting, tomorrow 22 f and freezing over again, what a yo-yo in temperature.

This might be a slight photo overload, but it's taken me so long to take these photos, so here we are.

Last year I finished this crochet shawl and skirt, I've been meaning to take photos with me wearing it. I used up a lot of yarn I already had, this pink and also grey with metallic I had found at the thrift along with the white wool.  The other yarn I bought and worked in.

After I finished it I thought the white looked too stark and too much of it, so I crocheted a braid and threaded it through the triple crochet, it looked so much better.  I like the ruffle around the edge and it's warm and cozy.  The pattern was from a 1970s crochet book.  I do think the seventies were a crochet heaven period and it's taken forty years to get back there again. 

I enjoyed working on the skirt, but I don't think the tie is good for the waist.  I will replace it with elastic, because I don't like it hanging down.  I was pleased with the bottom edging, which is the same stitch as you use around the Japanese Flowers I made. I will make more crochet skirts, because they're fun and pretty easy.  After crocheting the yarn up I can see that there's a slight variation in colour, although I know I bought the same yarn lots, I'm always careful with that.

I took these photos with the camera on the tripod with multiple bursts as I swirled around.

Here my foot slipped out and I almost went over.

This afternoon we went to the Tea and Symphony concert, The Copeland Quartet at The Highlands, so took the opportunity to take these shots there.

I wore my new jumper underneath the one with the reindeer on.  I think all the colours tied in nicely.  I like pattern on pattern if it's right.

My sister and I had a conversation today about our projects, you know BB is the knitting queen and has always been so, right from her early teens.  She's just finished her anemone cardigan, a black, long, mohair cardigan, with eyelash yarn in sea colours up the front opening and eyelash bobbles all over and therefore called the Anemone Cardigan.

She is a master at choosing the correct colours and that's an art when you are putting colours together.  She also has a talent at dressing the fuller figure in her creations.  It's easier to make someone thin look good, but making someone heavier look good takes talent.

The afternoon was spent listening to Dvorak and Beethoven.  The Dvorak American Quintet composed while he was living in American, and has been influenced by Indian music and Southern music and you can hear that.  Very nice.

Plus afternoon Assam tea, sandwiches and deserts in the intermission.  A nice afternoon.

So at last it's posted, done.

Christy

Sand and Snow

Hi Dear Folk,

It's snowing outside but I've been sequestered by the fire with my crochet what else to do on a day like this.  I've been watching Berkley Place on You Tube, a BBC series from the eighties tried and true, you never know what's going to pop on the screen with the more modern series.

I did stop in and buy the two Woolrich wool jumpers that I've been looking at, one is wool and mohair, with a little angora I think, will have to look.  I mentioned Woolrich before, a company that started over 150 years ago in Pennsylvania, unfortunately their jumpers are no longer made in Pennsylvania , but still nice.  I do love the one because it has sheep right around the yoke their logo emblem, the other has stags on it very traditional winter design.  They were 60% off and then I received a coupon for another 15%, so that made them 75% off, OK that's a better price.

I was in a sorting mood the other weekend and the little area that needed sorting was under our bed.  When you live in a 1920s house you have very little closet space, so all my sweaters are stored under the bed in zipper bags.  All the lovely jumpers my sister knitted for me and other knitted items. The zipper bags were getting old and tatty, not to mention the over abundance of dust bunnies, so I vacuumed and got a nice bucket of warm water and soap and washed all the wooden floor under the bed.  Bought myself nice new Ziploc zipper bags, sorted and discarded some jumpers and now I feel much better.  I still have to pull out my bags from under the bed when I want a jumper, but at least I know where they are now.

I didn't go out today, when you're out all week at work it's lovely just to have a day in your own house, so no snow photos.  I could take them out of the window, but it's been pretty dull.  So I'm going to leave you with not a snow scene but a sand scene.  Our last evening in Maui on the beach.  A storm is rolling in and you can just see a rainbow.  What better way to remember our lovely trip to the Hawaiian Islands.

Aloha!

The End,
Christy

Hawaiian Fabric Mart

Hi Dear Folk,

Now I saved the best to almost last, this is the Hawaiian Fabric Mart, I think they have stores on almost all of the islands, but you don't need to feel left out because they have an online store here

I did not take photos of all the goodies in this store.  I didn't know where to look first, I'm walking up and down each aisle just overwhelmed.  Definitely Hawaiian, oh no look at those wonderful prints from Japan, it was fabric lust overload.  Horror struck my mind in the vision of my already over stacked titchy little suitcase.

So I settle for a yard or quarter of a yard of this and that, just to have a little sampling.  A couple of truly Hawaiian prints, a print that the owner of the shop designed himself, a print designed on Oahu by a designer there and some Japanese fabrics.  The Japanese was the most expensive but here is love lust.

Don't feel left out though because their online store is pretty good at the Hawaiian Fabric Mart

Hawaiian fabric section.

Japanese fabric section.

And so much more.

Have fun looking around that website, and tell me if you just can't resist buying something.

Christy

Ali' i Kula Lavender Gardens, Maiu

Hi Dear Folk,

Near to the bottom of Haleakula are the Ali'i Kula Lavender Gardens  A friend had told me to stop here and it proved to be so nice.  The little lavender shop also has a café, so we were able to get breakfast and then wander around the gardens.  It was not the season for the lavender to be in bloom, although some was flowering.

 
Nothing here is a permanent structure, even the kitchen was in a trailer attached to the main building, but all could be easily taken down.  WC is just porta potty.

I liked the painted walls.

This is what I call a ladies breakfast, tortilla with egg, cheese, advocado and other goodies, with a cup of coffee and a view over the valley it surely hit the spot and was one of those special moments.

 

 

 

After getting such an early start we had the whole day ahead of us, so decided to stop at this town on the way back, Makawao.

Makawao, one of the state's last paniolo towns. The paniolos were the first cowboys in the United States. Long before there were cowboys in the old west, paniolos came to Hawaii in the early 1800's from Mexico to teach the Hawaiians how to herd cattle.  The shops still have the paniolo facades, although inside all arts and boutiques.

Except two stores that we loved, the Casanova Deli  and the Komoda Store where I bought a  fresh pastry and a cup of coffee, plus a lovely little cooler bag with Japanese Graphics and a tote, I love them and a very reasonable price, I think $6.00 each.

This was in someone's garden at the bottom of Haleakala.

Christy

Haleakala, Maui

Hi Dear Folk,

I'm going to take you to the top of Haleakala, almost 10,000 feet above sea level.  This is a trip to see the sunrise, so you have to get up very early, in fact you have to get up at 1:30 AM, to be on the road by 2:30 AM unless you are a super speedy person.  This trip takes a lot of thinking about, how do I dress out of a suitcase of almost entirely summer clothes.  Well you layer your clothes and then if all else fails you grab a blanket out of the closet which is what I did.

It took us one hour just to get to the base the volcano and another hour to get to the top.  Obviously when you get to the top there are no lights, because that would defeat the purpose.  So our eyes became accustomed to the darkness and we stumble off in the direction, heading where a few other people are heading.  Fortunately Barb had a little light on her phone, because we forgot to bring a flashlight/torch.

Eventually we get to a position that we think might be good, in all honesty we hadn't a clue.  I felt that I had just got off the ski lift at the top of Jay Peak in the middle of winter, facing Canada.  The wind is brutal, plus it is very cold and I wasn't dressed in ski clothes.  Let me tell you if I had not taken the blanket I would never had made it.

This is what we saw.  You are above the clouds.

What an amazing experience, you have to do it at least once.  Although next time I'm opting for sunset.

We crouched down behind the rocks for some protection from the wind and it did make a difference.

I am not even going to show you a photo of what I looked like, probably a refuge from a Siberian Gulag would most aptly fit my description.  Barb had packed some winter items, which I had not because of trying to pack very light.

 

My toes started to get cold because I had to wear my Aurora sandals up there, as the back strap on my walking shoes broke.  Stumbling up the steps I chipped a piece out of the front of them, oh well, such is life.

 

After the sun had risen we took refuge in the little shop there.

 

We could have thought we had been Apollo dropped on the moon.

 

     

 

What an amazing plant, it looks like it comes from Lost In Space.

 

And here we are at the observation point even higher.  You can just see this to the top left of the car park photo.

 

 

We were so tired on the way down, which is all switch back curves, that we pulled over in a lay by and slept for an hour.  It did us the world of good.

Christy