Stitches West was fun! I met my roommate, button-maker extraordinaire Gail Hughes, at DFW Airport and we flew to San Jose together, talking the whole time.
I went with her to Pleasanton, California, on a sales call. Well, she went on the sales call and I had breakfast and went to a bookstore. Then we drove over the Oakland Bridge into San Francisco and visited Chinatown for a couple of hours. I loved this Chinese-style bank nestled among the brick buildings.
Back at the convention hotel, I sewed flowers onto my book-advertising cape. The goal was to wear it at the market and banquet on Saturday. I wouldn’t have gotten much sleep, if Gail hadn’t helped me sew flowers one evening.
Here’s someone cute, modeling the finished cape. Instructions for crocheting all the flowers are in Crochet Bouquet. Let us say, it is noticeable.
In fact, when Erica and I arranged to meet in person (we’ve known each other online for a couple of years), I said, “I’ll be wearing a pink and black poncho or a flowery cape.” She recognized me right away, and from a distance. We had coffee and a good talk about kids and knitting, before we went to the market. See us here!
Crowds of people admired yarn, knitting accessories and jewelry, and books. Several popular booths had long lines at the check-out. I bought some buttons and trims, which I’ll show next time. Then it was off to my Dotty Knits class, and later, to the banquet.
My plane didn’t leave until Sunday afternoon, so we went to Santa Cruz for the morning. We went down to the beach, but the damp wind and cold and spray from the pounding surf quickly drove us back to the car. When Charles and I were here over twenty summers ago, we loved the ice-plant covered hills. The succulent leaves were red then. In the coolness of February, they were green and blooming. These little black birds liked them too.
We had a delicious breakfast at Kelly’s French Bakery in Santa Cruz–I recommend it! A kind lady at the restaurant told us where we could find a good used book store downtown. “It’s wonderful,” she said. And it was, with two big floors of used books (and some new). We could have spent hours there, but I had to get back to the airport.
I love to take pictures of clouds, when I’m traveling by plane. This time, we passed over large patches of cloudless desert, and it was just as fascinating. The afternoon sun threw everything into sharp relief. These hills remind me of knitted cables. Charles often talks about ‘braided streams.’ Could these be braided hills? This image makes me want to knit a wall hanging. The Oakland Bridge does, too.