We’re back from a week in Kona, Hawaii. It was warm, wonderful, and very relaxing. And now I’m home with access to my stash, so I could have another crack at knitted words.
My guess was correct: Bigger yarn and tighter gauge, along with more tonal contrast, makes my letters much more readable. These letters are from the Knit Hello ebook by Rüdiger Schlömer. You can order a copy of this ebook from Modern Daily Knitting if you’d like to knit your words, too. What would you have your knitting say?
My favorite vacation activity was watching the Geminid meteor shower over several nights. At first I was watching at 5 am, because Orion is setting into the sea at that time, and Gemini is just above and to the right.
But then I realized that the meteors were all over the sky, not just out of Gemini. So I started watching in the evenings, too. Sometimes it’s easier to stay up late than to get up early!
One of our adult kids came to join us in Kona; we had fun doing the usual: Turtle spotting, star/meteor-gazing, tide pooling, hanging out on beaches, admiring sunsets. It’s nice to have some time to catch up with each other.
Carvings at Pu’uhonua ō HōnaunauHonu (green turtle) at Ai’opio BeachLooking back at fish trap and Ai’opio BeachSunset at Kailua Kona (in town)Lavaman Red (center) is only available at the source (brew pub)Last sunset from the lanai before going home
Now it’s time to get ready for Christmas! The tree is up.
We spent a week in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii earlier this month. This is a favorite place of ours. The west coast is on the dry side of the island, and we see more rocky lava than beach. We stayed in a different condo complex this year, the Keauhou Kona Surf and Racquet Club. Still oceanfront overlooking lava rock and the ocean.
We made it in time for sunset. I woke the next morning at 5 am, after moonset and before sunrise, so I had the joy of watching the Geminid meteor shower around the setting Orion constellation. I saw 12 meteors in the 45 minutes before the sky began to lighten. This was the only morning the Geminids were visible; on subsequent days there was too much light from either the setting moon or the rising sun.
I love hanging out on the lanai. I saw kayakers, canoers, dolphins, waves, and this beautiful rainbow.
Our complex was just south of Mākole’ā Beach. It has tide pools, black and tan sand, and Ke’eku Heiau, a restored temple.
West end of Ke’eku HeiauStatues at the east end of Ke’eku HeiauLooking north past Ke’eku Heiau towards Kahalu’uSpiny sea urchins
One morning I saw schools of yellow tang in the waves!
Sunset over tidepools at Mākole’ā Beach
It was a great place to watch the sunset, but I think I like sunset on the lanai even more.
Aloha Costco!
We explored more of Kaloko Honokōhau National Historic Park. The park ranger advised starting the loop with the lava field and ending with the more pleasant beach and petroglyphs. Good advice; a mile over lava rock trail wasn’t very pleasant. Glad to have my hiking poles.
The next feature was Kaloko Fish Pond. This was built by native Hawaiians for raising fish. The ocean is to your left. The rock wall has been rebuilt; it’s impressively level.
The trail continues along part of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail, which follows the coast. It eventually comes to Honokōhau Beach, which is my favorite place to look for honu (green turtles).
I wasn’t that close; this is zoomed *and* cropped!
The trail continues on to Ai’opio Beach, which has a fish trap and heiau, another favorite place for turtle spotting. The trail then heads back up towards the welcome center and lava fields, while passing a petroglyph field.
I see people, a long gun, a fish hook…what do you see?
Of course there was knitting on the lanai. Heres a sneak peek at my latest design project.
It was a lovely relaxing week, and we came back ready to tackle Christmas and Hanukkah prep. Which was good, because I hadn’t done any beforehand!
I hope your holidays are merry and bright. Looking forward to new adventures in 2025!
These are my finished designs of 2023; there are still 3 in the hopper that will be published in 2024. Assigned pooling was definitely a big part of my year! Pooling is a Cinch, Firefly Trails, Fanfare, Starfall, and the Star Flower Shawl were my pooling pieces.
I started the year with the Aspen Leaf Coasters, which were a brainstorm off my re-worked Aspen Leaf brioche scarf for Knit Picks. Because what if you only had to knit one leaf instead of a whole scarf?That was a fun idea, and I designed them so I could use them for a class on brioche increases and decreases. (I’m teaching it at Red Alder on February 16.) I finished the year with the Aspen Leaf Brioche Cowl (center bottom) because I love that leaf motif. I’m back to my beloved brioche and leaves after my assigned pooling detour.
27 finished projects in 2023
I counted up all my projects for the year, and there were 25 FOs. Two were from other designers, the Sink Mates mini washcloths by Lorilee Beltman, and the Buggiflooer cowl adapted from the Buggiflooer Beanie by Alison Rendall (for Shetland Wool Week). The other 23 were from my own designs.
I knit several of these pieces more than once while developing or revising the designs. I love second (and third) chances, don’t you?
Ebb and Flow in variegated, long gradient (pink), mini skeins (blues/greens)
I designed Ebb and Flow to use a souvenir skein of Moss Fibers yarn from Knit Maine 2022. Then I knit it again with the long pink gradient. I loved the color, but I think the yak/silk blend doesn’t have enough bounce to help it hold its shape (it didn’t help that I made the neckline wider, but that was a good thing to learn for the design). And then I knit it with mini skeins, and that was awesome.
I knit two more Starfall cowls for the upcoming knit along with Knits All Done/Yarn Snob, and found that a bigger, fuller star was ideal based on Keith’s dyeing patterns, along with an extended lace edging due to his generous yardage. (I had to knit through an entire skein to make sure there would be enough.)
Second chances can add a lot to an experience, whether it’s knitting or something else. While we were on vacation this month in Hawaii, we took advantage of two second chances. I had gone rock hopping with the kids at Wawaloli Beach in 2018, but we never came to the wave crashing tide pools that were pictured in our guide book.
Wawaloli Beach tide pools…found ‘em!
These are great for wading, if you’ve got kids. The calm pools that we saw before were full of interesting sea life, including shingle urchins.
It was definitely worth going back and doing it again for the short Coastal Trail; the tide pools were full of interesting fauna. Why do sea urchins put things on themselves? Camouflage, maybe?
Looking back from 1871 Trail at lava shelf/tide poolsLooking north, 1871 TrailGoats!
I was a little sorry to learn that we were going to be on vacation during the new moon, which meant no moonsets. But after several days of waking at 5 AM by accident, I decided to have my coffee in the dark on the lanai.
Orion, December 15 (amazing to capture with iPhone)
The sky was perfectly clear, and I saw Orion setting over the ocean. A green shooting star dropped from his shoulder. I saw six more meteors in the next half hour as Orion sank to the sea. Apparently the Geminid meteor shower happens at this time of year, who knew? Gemini is near Orion in the night sky. There is also an Orionid meteor shower, but that one peaks in October.
Do you knit/do things more than once? I do! And learn a little more each time.
Well, I didn’t get my swatching done for the When Harry Met Lucy KAL, but I have a good excuse. I went on vacation and couldn’t fit bulky yarn into my luggage!
Knitting on the go with qiviut and POG mimosa
But one ounce of laceweight qiviut, 200 yards, doesn’t take up much space at all. And yes, that’s a tiny yarn scale because I didn’t want to have a yarn chicken issue when coming to the end. I wanted to use as much of the yarn as possible.
No yarn chicken here!
I ended up with just over half a gram left, which was less than one round’s worth of yarn. Perfect.
Souvenir qiviut cowl
I gave it a light steam blocking. The top edge doesn’t wave as much as the bottom; that’s the nature of this stitch pattern (Old Shale). It doesn’t matter; the whole thing will collapse around my neck. I began and ended with a garter stitch edge to give it some heft, and to avoid curling.
Old Shale stitch pattern detail
I’m glad I chose this stitch pattern; it has just enough going on to make it interesting, but I was never fighting with not being able to see the stitches with this dark and fuzzy yarn.
Qiviut cowl
I’m really happy with how this souvenir qiviut cowl turned out. I didn’t have much use for this cowl on vacation in Hawaii, but I put it on right after we landed back in Portland. I was so glad that I had it with me in my carry-on bag! 36 degrees F which was quite a shock to the system. This cowl is so lightweight, soft, and warm. I love it.
Is it worth writing up a pattern, or should it just be one and done? It’s great for any precious souvenir yarn. This particular yarn began in Alaska and ended in Hawaii, the 49th and 50th states. It’s been a good knitting year.
I did bring some fingering weight yarn with me for a design project, too. It didn’t take up too much room!
The news that Mauna Loa was erupting when we already had plans to be on Hawaii kicked my planning instinct into high gear. Kīlauea has been erupting since September 2021 (it stopped in 2018, and started up again), so we hoped to see Kīlauea and a distant glow from Mauna Loa if we drove from Kona over to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and stayed overnight.
I booked an AirBnB in Volcano (the town) for Saturday night so we could drive over on Saturday, bask in the glow Saturday night, and come home on Sunday.
We scoped out the overlook on the Crater Rim Trail so we’d know where we were going to go after dark, planning a viewpoint that would include both Kīlauea and Mauna Loa. Halema’uma’u (the crater inside Kīlauea) was smoking that afternoon
and looked beautiful at sunset from Volcano House. (Although suspiciously less steamy?)
I spoke with a park ranger, and she pointed out Mauna Loa’s steam in the distance, but said that things had quieted down quite a bit. (Steam from Kīlauea’s Wahinekapu steam vents in left foreground.)
We went down Crater Rim Trail to the overlook after dinner, and this is what we saw. Yep, nothing. No lava glow from either Kīlauea or Mauna Loa. Too dark to see steam (the moon wasn’t up yet). I guess Madame Pele (Pelehonuamea, the volcano goddess) has her own timetable, which didn’t coincide with ours! But I have to say that the sky was stunning, with more stars than I’ve ever seen at once.
We rose before dawn to see the sunrise (in the rain) over Halema’uma’u from the Kīlauea Overlook. (We picked a different overlook, because there was no need to try to get Mauna Loa in the same view.)
No lava glow, but it was beautiful anyway. It looks like both Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are now taking a break. I think Pele is laughing at us! (If you’d like to see more glow from a previous visit in 2015, see this post.)
Of course I took a picture of my knitting with the volcano. I didn’t actually knit…it was rainy, windy, and cold. This is the little sample I’d be using the next day to review increases and decreases for the Brioche Buddies cast on party.
The nice thing about getting up before dawn is that there was nobody on the Chain of Craters Road, and we were the only people looking at the Hōlei Sea Arch before 8 a.m.
The arch in 2013 and 2022. It’s 90 feet tall, and was formed 550 years ago. You can see by the angle that they’ve moved the viewing overlook; heavy surf in July made the cliff less stable. The heavy surf also took some chunks out of the arch leg; at some point it will fall into the sea.
It was a beautiful, quiet, windy morning.
I’m glad we took this road trip, even if we didn’t get to see hot lava!
Sometimes you just have to chill out and go with the flow…
It’s been a minute or two, hasn’t it? I came home from Minnesota on a Friday, did a book signing and taught on the weekend, and left for Hawaii on Monday…two and a half weeks ago?!
We had planned for the kids to be with us, but after traveling at Thanksgiving and then learning of the omicron variant, they decided to opt out this year. That left us with the usual 3 BR condo, and lots of room to spread out. We worked *and* played.
Not a bad place to knit! I decided that I wanted the Dotty Bed Socks to have the dot pattern on the top of the instep, instead of an all striped instep, but some of my test knitters loved that wrap around stripe. Which do you like?
Knitter’s choice! Instructions for both insteps will be in the pattern. I’ll publish it next week, or the week after, along with the Slip Away Cowl. If you’re interested in a combo deal, make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter!
Slip Away Cowl
Now I’m home, and scrambling to catch up. (More aloha pictures at the end of this post.) I put up new Christmas lights on the house on Tuesday. I still need to put the knitted fairy lights on my wreath, hopefully today.
The tiny tree is up, and both Biscuit…
…and Calvin have investigated. One of my Korknisse was missing, but I found him under the piano, and all is well.
Three Wise Guys
I just made a batch of Irish Cream for gifts. The recipe is in this post, and the picture is a re-run because it’s biz (Bisquee?) as usual around here! Onto the next thing! But I’ll leave you with a little more aloha…
yellow billed cardinala brazen Zebra doveJava finches (Java sparrows)Honu! A rum pum pum pog…Moonset
We had our annual getaway to Hawaii in December; it was warm, wonderful, and relaxing. As one son said, it was vacation, not travel. Reading, knitting, long walks, watching the waves, the birds, the sunsets…and one day of turtle spotting.
You know I have a thing about moonsets. Our first morning coincided with the full moon, and this is what I saw at 5 a.m.
The next morning I saw the sunrise chasing the moonset. Tap the picture to embiggen. Gorgeous. I want these colors in gradient yarn!
Speaking of gradient, I finished my Aspen Leaf scarf; I love the gradient and brioche together. More on this later.
We loved the birds that visited our lanai. Mostly Java finches (Java sparrows) and yellow billed cardinals.
I learned that if you push the white still photo button while taking a video, you can get hilarious pictures of birds in action.
We spent one day at our favorite beaches, Ai’opio and Honokohau (they’re right next to each other and perfect for a walk to both). There’s a cool old stone fish trap in the water; fish would come in on the tide, and then be stuck in the pool when the tide went out. Passive fishing at its finest!
There are lots of honu, green sea turtles, lounging in the water.
We ran away to the sun in early December, and had a fabulous time. There was even knitting involved.
We saw turtles and tide pools.
Honu at Ai’opio Beach
Tide pool at Wawaloli Beach
Shingle urchins
We visited an octopus research facility…
And watched sunsets and moonsets.
Waning crescent moonset Dec. 8, 2018
Eventually we had to come home…
It’s been a good year, knit-wise. I published 13 patterns this year (the newest one, Concentric Bed Socks, will be out tomorrow), and taught at retreats, festivals, and yarn shops. Designing and teaching go hand in hand for me.
What will 2019 bring? More of the same, I hope!
I’m working on a collaboration with Knitted Wit for March. It’s flying along, and I hope to be done with the knitting next week.
A hat is a fiendishly simple thing. It’s a tube, closed at the top. Easy peasy, right?
I’ve been playing with this hat project all week. It’s been a Goldilocks experience. Too tall? Too short? Just right? The top of this pink hat has been reworked a couple times, but I can’t complain about the view.
The pink version is snug and a little (but not too) short; it’s a cute beanie.
The blue version has 12 more stitches than the pink one, and at the same height it doesn’t feel quite secure on my head. I’m re-working it to be a little taller so it can come further down over the ears, or folded up at the bottom.
I’ll be knitting one more for a size in-between. Who said hats were simple? There’s a lot of planning going on here!
Oddly enough, it’s been very comfortable knitting with this wooly yarn in Hawaii! I brought a fingering weight shawl project, too, but I’ve been so smitten by this brioche I can’t stop playing with it.
We’ve had a great week. We came over on December 26, and now it’s time to go home. But here are some pretty pix from the week.
Beautiful He’eia Bay is just around the corner from our condo.
Lots of honu (green sea turtles) at Ai’opio Beach, Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park.
More turtles at Kiholo Bay, and we saw this petroglyph at the water’s edge.
When Hualalai erupted, these shells were caught in the lava. They’re being revealed through erosion. They look like frosting!
Kiholo Bay
We went night snorkeling with the mantas! (Picture from the Eka Canoe Website; I highly recommend this.) There were at least five of these magnificent creatures swimming with us, somersaulting and backflipping, close enough to touch (but you’re not supposed to. One brushed by DH; he said it felt like a shoe.
We had a great vacation in December, and coming back to rain was tough! Missing this:
But we brought a little aloha home with us.
It seems like looking back on 2015 is the thing to do this week, so here’s mine.
I published 12 designs in 2015 (up from 9 in 2014). I began the year playing with a fun stitch pattern, and designed 4 accessories with them: The Criss Cross hat, beret, mitts, and cowl. It was also the year of the poncho, and I had two, Tilt Shift and Summertime Blues. Snowy Woods came back as a hat, and there’s more Snowy Woods in my future. I ended the year going down the gradient rabbit hole with Lobelia (Knit Circus yarns) and the Twin Leaf Crescent for Black Trillium Fibres.
There’s more in the pipeline, and lots of ideas rolling around in my head!
Are you on Instagram? You can find me there under the name pdxknitterati. There’s a cool end of year thing going on over there, #2015bestnine where you can see your nine most liked pictures. And everyone else’s, too. Here are mine:
All knitting related except for a lone camellia, seen on a walk. The Rose City Yarn Crawl is represented twice, and my lovely Edin Cardigan (design by Bonne Marie Burns) is also there twice.
I hope your 2015 was good to you, and that 2016 is even sweeter! Cheers!
Find my patterns on Ravelry: Michele Bernstein Designs
Here are some of my favorites, and the newest. Many of my designs are also available through my Payhip store.
PDXKnitterati 