Here are a few pictures from the trip.
Hisayo, Shiho, and Janie in front of the big fallen tree in Grants Grove. It has been used as a saloon, stable, and cabin in turn.
Janie and Dad hanging on for dear life on the cable car in San Francisco.
Mom, freezing her booty off on the front of the cable car. She looks cute anyway, though.
A nice view of the city from the cable car on the way to Fisherman's Wharf. I like the view of Coit Tower especially.
Me, Shiho, Rie, Hisayo, and Dad in front of the cable car. You can even see a glimpse of our interesting driver. He was cool.
However, in the meantime since I've come back, I've been ridiculously homesick! I miss my family, I miss California, I miss the sunshine! It's gotten better the last few days, but still, I'm starting to feel like I'll be ready to move to the States anytime. Now that I've told my work that I'll be leaving in six months, they're starting to get all sad. "We'll miss you," I was told by my almost teary-eyed boss. I do appreciate the sentiments, but can't they hold off for at least a little while?!
I was supposed to go to class today from noon to 2pm, but my student (also one of our staff) called me and said there was some kind of fire (!) at the station where I transfer and the trains wouldn't resume operation until after noon, maybe around 1pm or so, so she cancelled our lesson. Then I got another call just before I left for my 1 o'clock lesson, and the trains still hadn't started, so I am off the hook for lessons today. The bright side is now I'm showered and (somewhat) dressed, so I can do stuff today, like... blog. It's raining outside, so what else can I do!
I am sooooo excited about my birthday gift from Sus. I know it's still way early, but ever since she's showed it to me, I can't wait to get it! She got some gorgeous sock yarn (that's enough for 2 socks too!) and I'm mentally planning out the lovely socks I can make. I'm still working on my fairisle beauts, and I just turned the heel and picked up stitches for the gusset (which was the most daunting part of it all), so I'm continuing on the rest of the sock. The funny thing is, I was thinking about the new sock yarn and how the current sock project I have is slow-going, difficult, and a pain in the butt. Maybe I should just give it up, I thought, but that thought alone inspired me to get back in there and fight the good fight. I picked up the poor, neglected sock, and realized (like with so many other things in life) that it really wasn't that difficult, it was mostly a mental block that was impeding my progress.
I made a facecloth out of the cotton yarn that I bought in CA and finished it this week. It looks nice, and it was so cool to make. You knit it in a circle with one edge of your knitting being the outside edge and the other the center of the circle. You knit one stitch less every other row, and leave the skipped stitches unworked until the end. Then when you knit them all, you've knit a sort of spiral or curved pie piece sort of shape. After continuously (meaning it's all connected) knitting six more wedges, you bind off and sew the cast on and bound off edges together. I decided to do a provisional cast-on and then use kitchener stitch to seamlessly join them together. It kind of worked, but since the project was in garter stitch and I wasn't very experienced with kitchener stitch, I found it made a few rows of stockinette there at the join. Oh, well. No one knows that but me.
Here it is after 3 wedges are complete. It has a little lace around the edge too, which is pretty cute.
There is so much that I want to say, but I get clammed up when it comes time to write it down. But now that I'm back on the blogging bandwagon, I'll have plenty of time to mull these ideas over before writing them down. It feels good to be back!
