Weekending

This weekend I am going to this lovely place with some lovely ladies.

Hopefully, it won't look like this:

Or this:

I shall take my camera, a good book, some movies, and of course plenty of knitting. Probably the Cashsoft...I went to my lys yesterday but ended up not choosing a pattern. Just too many options. I know I want to knit a cardigan, but there were so many choices--no collar, big collar, plain stockinette, ribbed, cabled. I left with ideas but no decision. I'm going to take my needles and cast on and see what happens.

An FO Alert

Last summer I went shopping in the Fashion District in Los Angeles. This is always a dangerous activity for me. I wonder along blocks and blocks of shops selling fabric, rugs, jewelry and more fabric. I'm not much of a shopper and have a lot of sales resistance to most consumer goods. But I do love fibers, fabrics and the color blue.

So, in a moment of weakness and total suspension of disbelief, I purchased a piece of filmy blue and white silky fabric thinking I'd whip up a little skirt. I was sure I didn't need a pattern and since my sewing machine doesn't much like light weight material, I decided I could hand stitch this little thing.

I forgot how annoying it is to cut out slippery material. You just can't get the stuff to lie still. It squirms all over the cutting board. Why did I think that a gored skirt with triangular inserts was a good idea?

But I really loved this material. I persevered until the weddings and moving hit, hand stitching those wiggling seams. Then I stuffed it away with all but the hem finished. It was too cold to wear during the winter anyway, right? There it might have stayed stuffed away in a box and hidden from the world except, you know, I'm moving again, and I have to pull out the boxes and empty them out and repack them again. Nothing like moving to reveal those UFOs, huh, Flea?




I love this fabric so much that I may even wear this skirt and hope that others will be equally mesmerized by the exquisite color and drape and not notice the horribly uneven hemline.

And look! The Rowan Cashsoft matches!

Mother's Day

I am so blessed! Mother's Day was a joy as always to me. My kids are wonderful!

Tim and Mia came up on Saturday afternoon to spend the rest of the weekend with us. They sneaked around at Trader Joe's after church on Sunday and got these flowers for me. I put them in the cobalt vase (naturally) that was a Mother's Day gift several years ago from Deb and Jeff.

It's nice to know that my children like me. They think I'm chic...

and a cooler than average mom.

Thanks to all of you for making my day so happy with cards, calls and flowers. Oh and thanks to John for making me a mom and cooking me salmon on the bbq.

Planning

I have spent quite a bit of time lately thinking about color, thinking in color, looking at color palettes, gathering paint color samples and picking up fabric swatches because we will need to paint the new place and furnish it.

We need to purchase a set of living room furniture (sofas and chairs) so we have visited a lot of furniture stores and sat on a lot of sofas. I want the furniture to have washable slipcovers, and the deal is that the sofa and chairs have to be comfortable for both of us, even though I am 5'4" and John is 6'2". We have found a set at a brand store and we can choose the color of the slipcovers. That's where the stress gets stepped up. I have to choose colors.

I spend a lot of my time working with fibers. But I seem to be color challenged or at least choosing color challenged. In the past, I have chosen colors and been disappointed. I have bought books about color and decorating and I still don't SEE it.

I know the colors I love:

cobalt

turquoise and other shades of blue

and beach and ocean colors

I know I'll figure it out. I THINK we will get blue sofa and chairs, light gray/stone carpets and paint with light, light blue and a grayish white.

What I Will Do During My Summer Vacation

Willow's Cottage is on the move. Again. After 4 1/2 years of living in Los Angeles's inner city, we have made the decision to change our surroundings. The reasons are many, but some of the more obvious ones are the changes in our family as Chaplain Dan leaves for the mideast soon, our approaching retirement, stresses of living with noise, dirt, air pollution and violence.

So, we have gone looking for housing and employment. First, where shall we live? We have life commitments and goals that in part guide our decisions. We want to be near our children, but they are scattering to the far reaches of the globe. (Why should we be surprised when our kids do this? It is what we did and what we taught them was normal behavior. We moved around a lot when D and D were young and we were in grad school, and ended up in Indonesia on the island of New Guinea for most of the 80s and M and M were born there. After 12 years in Oregon, we migrated south to Los Angeles. Our kids are just following our examples of wanderlust and adventure.) We want to be near other friends and family and not have to start all over again building community and putting down roots. We want to be able to afford to live without spending our whole lives, every day, for the next thirty years, working to make a house payment. We are committed to living simply, remaining physically active, having time to pursue our interests.

After long debate, discussion and prayer, we hit on the solution. It simply was an aha moment for us. Less house=less money=less work=less stress. This is how it works out for us:

We have purchased a place in a 55+ manufactured homes homeowners park in southwest Ventura County, California. John gets his freedom from lawn mowing, but I get enough space for gardening. We will be living less than 12 miles from one sibling, several close friends and a very good and supportive church where we have a lot of long time connections. We will have plenty of opportunities to hike, bike, and beach comb along the Pacific Coast and in the Santa Monica Mountains. Our children love this area and want to visit us there. The cost of living is lower than in Los Angeles County, but we are still close enough to hop the metro train for a day trip when we miss LA and all its weirdness. It looks like there will be ample job opportunities for both of us.

We like to use the term "semi retired" for what our lives will be like.

We will miss our friends and co workers here at World Impact. Over the past four years we have make some really close friends on staff. We'll miss our weekly dinners with our small group at the Peters' house and playing with Olivia and Naomi. We will deeply miss our church, Grace Brethren Church of Long Beach and our Bible studies at Journey of Faith Church in Manhattan Beach. Our plan is to stay connected to people with periodic visits to them and from them, email and phone calls. There is always the grief of parting and we are well acquainted with that grief, having parted so many times from friends through the years. But we will have our memories and we will still have the connections.

When will this all take place? June-July.

It's time to get out the boxes and start packing again.

Tuesday Was Eventful

The Griffith Park fire is big news here in Los Angeles. Yesterday afternoon, when we left our house at 2:30, John said, "There's a fire!" We thought at first it was a house/restaurant/warehouse fire, but we quickly realized that there was too much smoke. This was a much bigger blaze. Griffith Park is due north of us, about five miles away.

I snapped a photo from the 10 Fwy/110 Fwy interchange. We could see the orange flames. And of course, we thought of our Fireman Bob and prayed for his safety.

In the evening, I took my usual Tuesday walk along The Strand in Manhattan Beach.

Sunset

TRY AGAIN

I hope you can see these photos. They are the same ones I posted on Monday. I have crocheted a couple more since then.

I called this a blue-eyed daisy. It really is more a blue, yellow and white daisy with a white eye.

Camellia

Old rose


Have you all been following the story about the wild fire in Los Angeles? It's about 4 miles from us, almost due north.

Granny is moving along

I have made 36 of the 48 squares for the Granny Square Afghan.

I have not blocked any of them yet. They are lying quietly on the futon in the back of the cottage waiting for their stretching, shaping, and misting.

Each flower shines in its own way, reminding me of a bloom.

Blue-eyed Daisy

A camellia in my grandma's front yard

A damask red rose

I will slip stitch the squares together, then crochet an edging. I haven't decided on the edge trim. Does anyone have a suggestion?

That Which Was Lost Has Been Found

Last month was one of those months when you wonder if you're losing your mind because you keep losing your possessions. I lost a brand new pair of Skacel circular needles, my scissors, and several other items. While I was upset about the financial loss of the needles, I was especially sad about losing the scissors.

I like folding scissors and had bought this particular pair in Solvang after my former pair had literally fallen apart. I had also attached a scissors keep to it. This keep was a treasure. I had purchased the cross stitch kit for it in York, England, on our visit there in June 2004. I had stitched on it during the long car ride from Haltwhistle (near Hadrian's Wall) to Oxford and then had finished it just a few months ago. I thought I had left it in Mia's purse but she said no it wasn't there.

Yesterday I moved the cedar chest in my bedroom and there it was. I'm so happy! I hope my needles will appear serendipitously as well.

So Victorian and of course I had to have the lavender pattern.

More Spring Flowers

I walked back and forth from the house to the school several times this morning. The spring flowers are still blooming. In fact, a very tall hollyhock has bloomed along the fence. I could hardly photograph the top of it.

By standing on tippy toes and zooming in as much as possible, I could get a photo of the blooms.

The nasturiums are still blooming.

Even the berry vines are showing their stuff as they attempt to crowd out the nasturiums.

An apple pie is baking in the oven, sending out wonderful fruity smells. I have a pot of Earl Grey tea waiting for me. The crochet hook calls.

True Blue

Yesterday we went to the Dodgers game with The Soldier and The Princess, her parents and sister and another friend.

The sky was blue.

The grass was green.

A good time was had by all. We ate Dodger dogs, ice cream and popcorn.

And the Dodgers won!

Scroll Down

Please scroll down to Sunday's post about going to Olvera Street. I decided to write a post but wait to publish it and now I find out that posts publish to the date they were originally written. So now I learned something...

Where I Want to Be

Right There...with them...

Right Now

Soldiers and Princesses

Dan and Jennifer came this weekend to go to the Festival of Books at UCLA. Dan, Jennifer, Meli, John and I spent most of Saturday there, attending panel discussions, walking around looking at the book publisher booths, breathing the wonderful scent of paper and ink bound together with glue and string. Words, words, words on parchment!

Sunday was spent with them, also.

Brave Men and Lovely Ladies

Chaplain Dan and Chaplain Assistant David have a common goal--helping soldiers in their spiritual life. They will be spending a lot of time together over the next year or two, so I am very happy to have met David and his fiancee Christine. As the time draws near for the deployment of these two brave men, I'll be asking all my dear readers to remember them in your prayers, just as you did our Tim last year.

The weekend

Sunday night we joined the Soldier and the Princess and several other family members and friends in Olvera Street which is considered the birthplace of Los Angeles. Olvera Street is located across the street from Los Angeles Union Station, just east of downtown and west of the Los Angeles River, bordered on the north by Chinatown and the south by Little Tokyo. There are restaurants, shops, museums and old 18th and 19th century Spanish homes, art galleries, churches--all focusing on the Spanish/Mexican history of the city. We had dinner and enjoyed a walk down through the stalls in the center of the street.

One bougainvillea bush in bloom

A romantic place

Margaret and Meli

Two handsome men

Thursday Small Group Fun

The week has slipped by so quickly and much has happened at Willow's little cottage.

Each Thursday evening we spend with a small group of other World Impact people. We always have dinner together. Sometimes we do serious stuff like Bible study, reflecting on spiritual disciplines, and sometimes we are crazy and mess around. Last week we messed around and played a scavenger hunt game using our cameras.

Everyone in sunglasses (borrowed from the littles' toybox--yes, my adorable models)

Crab walking in front of the house. Mind you, we are on a street in South Central Los Angeles, about a mile from USC campus. We grabbed a man walking by to take our picture. He was a little bit tipsy and was returning from the liquor store with an open can in brown paper bag. He's Cynthia's neighbor and it worked out great because our craziness allowed us to meet him. There's not much higher level of trust than to give a new neighbor your camera to hold.

A piece of mail.

Granny Afghan

The first 20 grannies for the afghan to put on the guest bed.

Taking a (Crochet) Break

After the TKGA certification was finished and I pulled out the works in progress and did those, I decided I needed a break in my knitting. The next knitting project I have is going to take some thought and planning.

So I'm giving my brain a crochet break.

I decided to make granny squares.

Every square is different.

The theme is flowers. I look at my yarn assortment and choose colors and combinations that remind me of blooms in my garden, nurseries, even Trader Joe's flower department.

Every square is bordered with one to four rounds of light blue.

Each square has nine rounds.

I have crocheted fourteen flowers. I think I'm going to do forty-eight.