All settled....

Two vacations all settled...well mostly anyway.

I'll be taking the week of the 19th off this month just to have a break.  Plans include visiting my cousin Andrea and maybe a shopping trip with her if we have the ability; a trip to the Oregon Zoo; a trip to Wildlife Safari; a trip to the coast; knitting; and relaxing.  All trips are necessarily day trips as I don't want to pay for hotels.   Not all trips may happen but it's fun to contemplate the possibilities.  Anyone else have ideas of fun day trips in Oregon?

Also, I have booked my flights and my condo to go to San Diego May 4th to 13th.  I'll be leaving PDX at 8:45 pm on Friday and returning to PDX at about the same time on a Sunday.  It will be nine days in the condo but slightly less actual time with Jay, Candy, Lukas, and PJ.  I also have an appointment to meet my High School bestie that I haven't seen since her marriage.  I actually hadn't even spoken to her in 15+ years before we found each other on Facebook.  It turns out her husband terminated all contact with me, for reasons yet unknown to me.  She left him several years ago but moved to CA and we had no contact information for each other.  Facebook reconnected us and I'd love to see her.  I'm looking forward to that part of the trip as well as seeing everyone else, including the new baby. 

In many ways this trip makes me feel all grown up, even though it's also a trip down memory lane.  I purchased and paid for my own flight.  I've never done that before.  I made arrangements for accommodations, although that involved asking mom if I could "Borrow the Condo." (My parents purchased a Worldmark membership this last year and have lots of points this year so I was able to take advantage of that).  I seriously could not have afforded the over $1000 that housing for 9 days would have cost me.  Someone asked me why I didn't just stay with Jay and Candy.  The answer to that is multifaceted but fairly straight forward: 1. Jay's Dad is moving in in March and it's not a large apartment. 2. Families with new babies need some alone time.  3.  Candy gets a bit territorial postpartum.  This has all the advantages of a visit but without the stink of visitors after 3 days (you know:  "Fish and visitors stink after 3 days.")  I will be borrowing Candy's car for the time I'm there but they'll have two others with his Dad's vehicle in the mix.  Hopefully it will all be good.  I'm really looking forward to seeing them.

Hrumph!

It must be because I'm tired and do all my knitting late at night but I tell you knitting has not been relaxing lately.
I'm working on the Advent calendar Scarf for 2011 I saw it worked with the Noro Kirameki yarn and loved the way the color changes worked with the pattern.  Basically this scarf has 24 different patterns which are proposed to be knit one per day during Advent.  I don't celebrate Advent but that doesn't prevent me from loving the scarf or at least in theory.  I'm using Noro Kirameki color #7.

In reality, I do still love the way the yarn works with the pattern but knitting one section per day would be rather ambitions with my schedule.  I'm on day 5 and I started on February 19th.  This last section I worked probably a total of 10 times but could not get it right.  Once, I knit two repeats on the wrong side of the scarf. ARGH!  I finally made it through that pattern but I really need to think about this when I'm knitting.  You can't get into the swing of a pattern when it changes every 20 or so rows. I do like the way it looks and feels (a little touch of Cashmere in the yarn helps) although it really is still so much spaghetti as lace is before blocking.

I CANNOT watch Downton Abbey while knitting this.  Even listening to Mansfield park on audio book was a little questionable.

Speaking of Downton Abbey, does anyone else get highly agitated by dramatic irony?  Does anyone else watch the sisters fighting and think, "seriously, you hate your sister so much you can't see how much your malice is going to destroy not just her but your entire family?"  I think I'm at the end of the third episode and the dramatic irony has me in a tizzy.  Stupid stupid girls.  It's a measure of a good show though, that you can get so involved as to think in such term, I suppose.