How I Spent My Summer Holiday

How I Spent My Summer Holiday

by Haley Waxberg

Most of my summer was spent here, with you, but for one fleeting week I escaped and ran away to California.  I went to visit friends who live in Oakland, and celebrate my friend Richard`s 40th birthday.  The party was awesome, I have no photos - I`m sure you understand, they would be incriminate any number of people. 

Above is my gift to Richard, a little installation in his yard.  You can see all of the pictures HERE. It's made of the same flowers I used for the Bicycle.  I think Rich liked it. 

We took a road trip up to Monterey to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you can see me above with my new friend Mr. Seahorse.  The aquarium has some amazing exhibits including seahorses, jelly fish, and a kelp forest.  I got to pet a Ray too - it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be, it was slimy, cold and indifferent. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that a fish would be slimy and cold. Somewhere in the back of my mind I must have been expecting it to be like other petting zoos with docile, wide eyed animals eager to make your acquaintance for the price of a little feed. 

After the Aquarium closed we took a stroll up the "boardwalk" on Cannery Row. It's not a real boardwalk, just highly polished kitsch, but entertainment was there if you looked closely. While on the hunt for an awesomely tacky fridge magnet, I came across something even better ... kitsch-wear. Above I model the Burger Hat. It was so awesome it had to come home. Maybe I'll try and render it as a knit pattern?

And here's the runner up, Mr. Krabs!  He also made it back to Canada. As an aside, this beanie is really, really comfy. 

The sea life and the kitsch were awesome, but the best part of this road trip was the drive. We took two cars up, and I was in the girls car (named as such because it was only Jessica and me - 2 girls, one car). Almost as soon as the engine turned over I started rooting through the box of CDs, which was full of I don't know what, when I came across a hand written CD titled Amy's Answering Machine.  Me-  "WHAT is Amy's Answering Machine?" Jessica - "Oh my God! You've *never* heard  Amy's Answering Machine?!" OMG, it's roll on the ground, snarf your latte funny! (listen to some of it yourself).  It's the answering machine messages left by a neurotic mother for her only daughter. And by neurotic, I mean  she makes Woody Allen look like a dilettante. Jessica and I spent the next two hours listening to the disc over and over and over, trying to figure out who these people where, where they were from, and if it real?  In the end, we decided that we wanted it to be real, so it is. 

The next day (or maybe the day before?) we went to Berkeley. Above is some Yarn Bombing I came across. No, it is not as exciting as Amy's Answering Machine. Nothing is as fabulous as Amy's Answering Machine.

Here's my knitting listening to Big Audio Dynamite on the first day of the Outside Lands music festival in Panhandle Park in San Francisco. My knitting had lots of fun there. I had to figure out how to do a tubular cast-on in the middle of a field, without internet or books. I'm very impressed with the amount of knowledge crammed up in the corners of my brain, I didn't even know it was all up there. 

In the end, I had an awesome time and will be going back to California some time when the weather sucks here.  :-)

As always, you can find me at Knitomatic.com!

New Staff

Please welcome our newest team member ... Mr. Sheep.  I picked him up at the One Of A Kind show last week.  He's from Felt Factory and is part of their Faux Fauna series (read about them from the National Post).  

There is a lame little story that goes along with the aquisition of Mr Sheep. And a caveat, i'm a terrible storyteller, which will make it a boring story too. That said, I still intend to submit you to it - Hee-hee-hee!

So here it is .... I was at the OOAK show with my parents, aunt & uncle. They move too slow, so I take off ahead of them. The show is sooooo boring, until 1/3 of the way through I come across the new artists section, and low and behold I stumble across the jewel of the show - a tiny four foot by four foot display made out of ancient reclaimed wood, and handing on it is needle felted taxidermy. Brilliant! It crosses my mind that my friends in San Fran, the Bermans, would LOVE this. And then I look up and who should be right in front of me, but the the Bermans' coolest of the cool friends, Jodi! The vendor was wrapping up a moose for her, and she talked me into purchasing the sheep for the store, although it wasn't particularly hard, I'm impressionable at times. And now, Mr Sheep happily resides above the return policy and cash register, and I LOVE him!  :-)