Tag Archives: sunset

Aloha and brioche to ring out 2019

Posted on January 3, 2020 | 7 comments

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.

And at least one petroglyph!

I love spending time with the family.

Aloha!

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged birds, hawaii, honu, kona, moonset, sunset

OFFF tomorrow!

Posted on September 23, 2016 | 2 comments

Ready? Go! I’ve got my patterns printed, and class samples ready for my Braided Wristlets class tomorrow (Saturday) at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. It’s an all day class, 9:30 to 4:30, so I won’t have much time to play. Which only means that I’ll have to go back on Sunday, which promises to be a gorgeous day. Win! Come to the registration booth at 9 if you want to join us tomorrow.

Here’s my wristlet variation, since you’ve seen the others several times recently on the blog. Instructions for this variation are in the pattern, too.

Last week I was over in Sisters to visit friends who recently moved away. We worked on a song I’m writing; it’s about tumbleweeds, or really about friends moving away. This is number four in the last 2 years. Ouch! The song started in my head after V moved away, but is finally coming together now, a couple years later.

But it wasn’t all music. There was some trampoline time.

And a lovely walk along Whychus Creek.

With a view of the Three Sisters by day…

And night! We took the kids to watch the sunset and moonrise; they were conveniently at the same time and the moon was nearly full. The kids thought they needed to use our phones for flashlights, but the moon was so bright…nope!

Do you use Layout? It’s a free app from Instagram, and it makes great collages. It works great with my iPhone, and the only complaint that I have is that it doesn’t play nicely with my iPad; it doesn’t show me the pictures I’m choosing from until I click the blank space where it should be. But I can work around that.

Hope to see you this weekend, knit and spin peeps!

2 Comments

Posted in events, Portland area fun, travel

Tagged moonrise, OFFF 2016, Sisters Oregon, sunset

Crafty Moms Weekend catch up

Posted on March 8, 2016 | Comments Off

The weekend before the yarn crawl was the 13th annual Crafty Moms weekend at the coast. That’s a lot of tradition!

The Beanstalk Poncho that I wore Sunday?

I seamed it at Crafty Moms weekend.

I was going to use mattress stitch, but my blocking wires left a loopier and rufflier than expected edge, and I didn’t want to take up even more fabric in the seam allowance. Those holes ended up being perfect for slip stitch crochet. I didn’t have an appropriately sized crochet hook, but I had this little repair hook, and that did the trick.

I almost finished my Twin Leaf Crescent for the Black Trillium KAL, which wraps up at the end of this month on Ravelry. The view beyond the window was pretty, too.

Carole made the bracelet on the left for me with beads we bought at Shipwreck Beads on the way home from Madrona. The middle one is hers. And I made the one on the right, but I don’t love it. The orange beads with the brown leather don’t make me happy. So I’ll frog it and do it again, later.

It was rainy and not rainy, as is customary on the Oregon Coast. So there was walking and not walking!

The ocean likes beading, too. I think these beads may be anemones?

Here’s a little live action…

View this post on Instagram

Crafty Moms weekend at the #oregoncoast. Sometimes you have to go outside.

A post shared by Michele Lee Bernstein (@pdxknitterati) on Feb 28, 2016 at 5:37pm PST

It was a very relaxing weekend with 16 Crafty Moms!

Comments Off on Crafty Moms Weekend catch up

Posted in Knit, Other craftiness, travel

Tagged crafty moms, sunset

Goodbye 2015; Hello 2016!

Posted on January 2, 2016 | 2 comments

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!

2 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged #2015bestnine, hawaii, Instagram, sunset

Just enough yarn

Posted on June 10, 2014 | 1 comment

It’s so satisfying to have just enough yarn…

There was just enough in this ball of Lantern Moon Indochine to finish my project, leaving only 18 inches to spare. Glad I didn’t have to rip out that last repeat. I’ll show you what I made, but first I have an idea to coordinate with it. Soon!

A little more beachiness before moving on. What’s got the seagulls all in a twitter on top of Haystack Rock? Oh, just a couple of eagles looking for lunch…

Just before this, all the common murres took off in a big cloud, fleeing the rock. Apparently they’re the first course for lunch because they’re easy pickings. The gulls eventually ran the eagles off, but it took a while.

I finally found a good clump of starfish; I was getting a little worried that they weren’t as much in evidence as they were last August.

There’s an epidemic of starfish wasting disease on the west coast this year, and it’s made its way to Oregon. I hope the starfish don’t all die out. The ones I saw looked healthy.

One more sunset!

Back to my knitting, again! The pink Bling is back on the needles, round 2.

1 Comment

Posted in Knit, travel, yarn

Tagged Cannon Beach, haystack rock, Indochine yarn, starfish, starfish wasting disease, sunset

Lantern Moon Indochine yarn…and the coast

Posted on June 5, 2014 | 8 comments

I forgot that I have a little ball of Indochine, Lantern Moon’s 100% silk sport weight yarn. Cathy gave it to me when I was on my way up to Madrona in February. I meant to use it in class, but didn’t, and then it got tucked away when I got home. This is a sample color; I don’t see it on their website now.

I brought it to the coast to play with. It’s lovely and luminous; it catches the light and shines it right back at you.

My impression so far: This is a gorgeous yarn. It’s 100% silk. There are 12 individual strands, three groups of four. Even with all those strands, it’s not splitty to work with at all, and knits like a dream on a US size 5 (3.75 mm) needle. I tried it first on a 7 hoping for a loose lace, but the stitch definition is much better on a 5. So far, I love it. It comes in 50g/134 yard skeins; Lantern Moon shows it on their website for $19.50/skein. A bit spendy, but oh, so lovely! I’m trying to make a little one skein project out of it; I sure wish I’d brought my yarn scale with me. I guess if there’s not enough, I’ll just have to frog it and have the pleasure of knitting up this yarn again in another incarnation. But for now, I’m counting on the magic of blocking…

I brought four design projects to play with, and I’ve charted three, but this one is the one that has captured my attention. Doesn’t everyone take their knitting on vacation? It’s not Paris, but Cannon Beach is pretty sweet this time of year. I didn’t bring a kite; this is the next best thing.

I found these tiny sand dollars on the beach; that’s my anniversary ring next to them for scale.

I decided to chase the sunset last night, but it wasn’t an original idea.

It was worth it though. I used my Lumix GF6 for this next picture. The rest of the pictures are iPhone5, except the sand dollars, which was iPad. Different toys, um, tools, for different reasons.

And I took a panorama shot with my phone, which turned out nicely, too.

Back to my knitting!

8 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, travel, yarn

Tagged Cannon Beach, Indochine yarn, lantern moon, Oregon Coast, silk, sunset

Oregon coast weekend, symmetry, and more

Posted on May 6, 2014 | 4 comments

I went to the coast for a retreat this weekend. It rained torrentially, except for about an hour after dinner on Friday. I hadn’t been to the beach in Gearhart before, so I took a quick walk to see what there was to see…

a gorgeous sunset

Tillamook Head, to the south

Interestingly textured seaweed

And these very interesting things. They look like tubes of tapioca. I had never seen them before, so I put the picture up on Facebook and appealed to the power of the interwebs. The answer came back quickly, from the 9 year old daughter of a friend. (Concidentally, the very same kiddo who was the recipient of the Gryffindor sweater that needed a new home a few months ago.)

They’re squid egg sacs. More info here, if you’d like. I love science…

We did a little cardboard loom weaving on retreat.

My piece says a lot about me. I like symmetry. I like a plan. I’m currently designing a knit piece, and symmetry plays a lot into what I find appealing. Is this the sign of a tidy mind? It’s not a sign of a tidy house!

My friend’s piece was a lot more free-form than mine. That says a lot about her, too. The fact that there’s room for both in this group? That says a lot about the world!

There were 15 of us; the Lodge can house up to 26. If you’re looking for a group getaway spot on the Oregon Coast, I highly recommend The Lodge at Gearheart’s Little Beach. It overlooks an inlet, but beach access is a short walk down the road.

Another week of the Aloha KAL done, and it’s time to pick the next winner. This week’s prize?

These totally fun wine glass coasters. Very aloha! It’s not to late to join the KAL. I’m guessing it will run at least 2 more weeks. More info here.

How was your weekend? I frogged a design prototype, and figured out how to make it better. Symmetrically, of course…

4 Comments

Posted in KAL, Other craftiness, travel

Tagged Aloha KAL, Gearhart, Oregon Coast, squid eggs, sunset, weaving

Tempus fugit

Posted on September 19, 2013 | 7 comments

Time flies! I’m a little buried under right now, in a good way. I have two design projects in the works, but I can’t show them to you yet. And I’m prepping for classes at Stash in Corvallis this weekend and Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival next weekend. There is nothing so inspiring as a deadline. Git ‘er done!

I did take a little time out last week to celebrate a friend’s significant birthday. We were in Pacific City, home of the other Haystack Rock on the Oregon Coast. (There may be one more, but this one and the one in Cannon Beach are the most well known.)

Yes, there are surfers here! Full wetsuit required; it’s cold out there.

Our house was high on the hill (out of the tsunami zone!) overlooking the town and the beach, perfect for sunset viewing.

Click on the photo for a closer view; the sunset is echoed in the stem. Bonus!

We went down to Lincoln City to Jennifer Sears Art Glass Studio, and played with glass. I made a paperweight, and my friends blew glass floats. Very cool to learn about the process, and do our own…with lots of help.

Stretching molten glass so I can twist it in a knot. Even in glass, I wanted something yarny…

Swirled float before blowing…

And after.

My paperweight.

The bubbles are caused by a sprinkling of baking soda. There’s no place for the air to go when it’s dipped in the last layer of molten glass, so it makes bubbles. I love this. And I’m dreaming up ways to do it again. So many possibilities!

I did take a little time with graph paper and pencil to chart out my new project, and math out the underpinnings. Now I’m home, knitting it, and I think I love it. Looking forward to showing it to you, later.

What are you working on? It’s definitely fall here, so I need to get back to my cardigan…eventually. Deadlines first!

7 Comments

Posted in Other craftiness, travel

Tagged beach, deadlines, glass, haystack rock, sunset