Crafty Pancakes

Don't faint

It's really me. I wish I had a good excuse as to why I have been M.I.A. Would you believe I was abducted by aliens? Or maybe I spent the past month or so trying to rescue a certain white carriage pulling horse from it's hideous life of human amusement. Or maybe, just maybe.. I was too busy knitting to blog. Wow, now that was a good one. I crack myself up. So ya wanna know what I've been doing? I've been spending most of my time in the back yard next to the pool working on my wrinkles and skin cancer. Yep, I've been absolutely positively lazy.. and I've loved every second of it.

I do have some exciting news though.. especially for you SoCal-ers out there. Drum roll please.......

Hazel Knits is coming to The OC this weekend! Not only is she coming to The OC.. she's staying a night at Casa Pancakes! Yeah, uh huh, the knitters are going to have some fun! Go check out all the info on Wendee's site...  and then make plans to come to the big event on Saturday from 10-1 at Strands and Stitches in Laguna Beach! Seriously, any of you who can make it.. PLEASE COME! It's going to be great!

Alrighty, blogging duties are done. Whew. No more pressure... for a few days at least.  Now go mark your calendar for Saturday! Chop chop!

Back from the "dead"

Well I was tagged for this meme by Karen and Jill but being the totally lame blogger lately.. I never got around to it. Apparently when my girl Wendee tagged me the third time was a charm.

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.


1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

SAHM of a 4yo living in Salem, OR.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

Work out, shop at Trader Joe's, update stash on Ravelry, buy my dad a Father's Day gift, clean the cat litter box.. yeah, exciting life.

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Ak-Mak cracks with Trader Joe's spicy hummus, Carmel Nut Blast Balance Bars, bananas, red licorice.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

First of all I would try not to let anyone know I was one.. I would definitely travel, make a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (my mom passed away from CF when I was 7), pile up a bunch of money and roll around in it.. just kidding.. sort of.

5. Places I have lived:

Salem, OR    Carlsbad, CA    Laguna Niguel, CA


6. Jobs I've had:

Umm... None. I have been a stay at home mom since pretty much right after high school.

7. Peeps I want to know more about:

At this point it seems like everyone has already done this meme so I'll tag...

My PDX bff, Denise ... this might force her to blog!

The oh so sweet and amazing dyer, Stacy.

A fellow CA blogger who I will get to meet at the Santa Monica Fiber Fest this August (Yay!), Dawn.

Amy, who I was lucky enough to meet at The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling and hope to see again at the next one.

Last but not least my buddy, Cayli. I've known her for quite a while now but don't know the meme answers for her.. interesting.

Well there.. I finally blogged. What a weight off my sunburned shoulders.

Loopy love

I cannot put into words how much fun it was at The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling! It was amazing to meet Sheri, Wendy, Cookie A., Claudia and everyone else who went! Sheri really put together a top notch event. We even got to meet her family and the Loopy Elves. Since there are so many posts out in blogland about the Fling I'll keep this short and sweet.

*disclaimer* I really didn't wear the same shirt all weekend...I only took pictures on one day. I am NOT 7ft tall. I just had on my new bad ass Michael Kors sandals that make me look that way.. I'm actually a 5'4" shortykins. Apparently I turn into Crafty ShinyFace after 10pm. Last but not least.. whoever said that the camera adds 10 20 lbs was right ;)

Here's my stroll down short term memory lane.

Sheri is gorgeous!...

Cookie A. is brilliant on a level that I can't comprehend and I'll leave the socks designing to her...

Wendy was able to convince me that toe-up socks aren't evil and Stacy made me want to go live in Oklahoma...

I met fabulous people from all over and made some great friends...

 

I even helped sing a song.. and there were no bleeding ears!

It was a fantastic weekend of fun, friends and fiber. I wish it would have lasted many more days.. and that I could have taken Claudia home with me.. that is one fantastic chick!

The icing on the weekend cake was Monday. As if I didn't have a terrific four days already.. I got to top it off with meeting Miss Hazel Knits herself, Wendee. She was down in SoCal for yarny business and was nice enough to come hang out with me for a few hours. We had fun hanging out in Laguna Beach and went to a couple of art galleries and then had lunch. I had a great time and now need to order more of her yarn!

Speaking of yarn.. I might have bought a couple of skeins during my field trip to The Loopy Ewe.. and a couple of people might have gotten a picture of it.. and it might be a miracle that I found room to get it all home.

Now I'm off to read blogs with much better accounts of the Fling and check out the Flickr group.

A Flingin' I go

Wow, 4am is way too early to get up. But there are super cool knitters to meet in St. Louis! I'm off to The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling! Check back here for daily (hopefully) reports.

I think I need to change my name

to Rockin' Pancakes! You see.. Gaby and her husband Chris are wonderful friends. I have a million reasons to love them both. But on here you mainly get that Gaby is my Queen of Sock Yarn Enabling. Well Chris is an enabler in a different way. He is starting to collect certain things and it's sucking me in. Just like he was sucked into collecting them by our friend Amanda's husband, Tony. I hadn't made the leap for myself but he could tell I was getting weak. He could see how excited I was when he'd talk about it. He knew that Guitar Hero 3 was never going to be enough to satisfy my appetite for rock. I was like a fish on the line and he was just waiting to set the hook. So when him and Gaby came over the other day he gave me this...

OMG! A new pink Switch guitar, amp, cable and bag! He also included two awesome guitar straps, headset for the amp (so as not to kill my family with my awful playing), tuner and a container of picks. I am totally set.

This is seriously going to cut into my knitting time. And there will be no guitar strap cozy going on. Carry on my knitters. Rockin' Pancakes has left the building.

It just keeps coming

I'm getting a little behind on sharing the fun yarn that magically shows up on my doorstep. So take a peek and go order some too.

I'll start with sock clubs.

The Chewy Spaghetti Blue Plate Special included a fun yarn named 'Impudent', an interesting pattern and you gotta love the sock monkey bag...

Roxanne from Zen Yarn Garden always dyes up a wonderful surprise to open. Here is 'Rambling Rose'...

The Tempted club that Loops runs is very springy this month and reminded me of Easter Peeps. Here's 'Goody'...

And now we have my fave of April. Jen from Woolgirl put together the absolute best club package around. I love all of the detail and the way it all comes together around a theme. Fantastic! The theme for this was shipment was inspired Georgia O'Keefe. The colorway is loosely based on the petunia paintings. It was dyed by Mama Llama and is called 'Georgia's Inspiration'...

She included the gorgeous yarn, zippered sock club bag, pattern, inspiration notes, clubbers contest letter on how to win yarn from her, store coupon, stitch marker, notecards with pen and a flower. She knows how to spoil her clubbers.. big time. 

I've also had a few non-club skeins find there way here.

It was about time I got my hands on some Yarn Nerd purchased from The Loopy Ewe in colorway 'Emerald City'...

Another Loopy Ewe purchase was a skein of Loopy Legends in 'Michelle's Pretty Pink Cactus'...

Stacy from Tempted had a yarn in her Etsy shop I couldn't resist since it was green. She did beautiful job on 'Clover'...

My dearest Gaby bought me this gorgeous Posh Lucia in Spring Lime during one of her many online shopping benders (yep, she loves me)...

Last but not least.. here is my latest score from my all time favorite dyer, Woolly Boully. It was a special request color combo order by me and Gaby. Jenny has actually decided to make it a regular colorway of hers. Boy we sure have good taste. Here's the new and gorgeous 'bluebird'...

So I think you are caught up on the yarn happenings. Tune in Monday because I'll have big news. Not huge, but big. You'll never guess what I'm up to.  Think pink.. and NO, it's not a baby.. thank goodness. Care to take a guess?

Spring Break in a nutshell

I'm back and I still have all my toes! We had such a wonderful time. I can't wait to go back. Here are some cool pictures I wanted to share.

Our cabin was fantastic!...

The drive into Yosemite Valley had beautiful views...

If you enter the park from the South entrance you go through a tunnel and when you exit this view just takes your breath away...

The valley was incredible and the waterfalls were in full force. I don't have any great waterfall pictures to share because I didn't really get close to any. (There was a tragedy in my family involving a small child and a waterfall not too many years ago so it's still hard to be up close looking at them) But they aren't too shabby from a distance...

 

The kiddo was really excited to see the famous climbing spot (and largest granite monolith in the world), El Capitan...

And Half Dome...

I can't believe people go up that thing. Look here to see what it takes. I'm way too lazy and scared to do something like that!

Here are just a few random shots in the valley.

This frozen stream hadn't quite melted...

This deer thought it was just another tourist like the rest of us...

I must have really liked this particular area because when I transferred all the pictures to my laptop I noticed I had taken 6 of this same thing at different times...

The water here was sooo cold from the snow melt coming down over the waterfall...

But it didn't stop two French tourists from stripping down to their man panties and walking across it. The guy on shore had just gotten out...

I spared you the shot that that their friend was going to be getting any second. I like you guys way too much for that.

We had a great time and look forward to going back. And the photo opps didn't stop once we hit the road to come back home. As we were driving South through L.A we spotted a sweet van which we completely expected Uncle Rico to be driving. To make the sweet van even sweeter.. it had 'Ram Van' painted on the side. I just imagined the guy (you know it was a guy) who went to the dealership 30 years ago to buy that beauty and said.. "now make sure it has the gold ladder and luggage rack!"...

And as we pulled into our driveway I was happy to have a weeks worth of fabulous memories and pictures.. and I was especially happy that I don't drive a car that makes someone feel the need to take a picture of it for their blog.

My day in pictures

We started here...

Then we enjoyed the drive back into town...

And ended up here...

Which lead to this...

Then it was off to here...

 

Where there is a lake that is drained by the electric company in the winter so it looked like this...

And I did it all, again, in these...

Tomorrow the flip flops will head to Yosemite for the rest of the week.

Crafty Pancakes hits the road

Right now the fam and I are in a place referred to as The Mother Lode or Gold Rush Country. It's a beautiful area located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The hubs grew up in the tiny old gold mining town of Columbia. We made a trek here so I could see what happened in his childhood to make him crazy where he grew up. He doesn't seem like a guy who grew up in an area that has more cows than people. He even worked as an "outlaw" for most of his teen years during the summer. Not many people can say that. What's so funny is that if you knew the hubs you'd never think he would work as a stagecoach robber. I mean NEVER. It's just not in his personality. Seriously.. just imagining him on a horse and playing the role of an outlaw to a bunch of tourists when he was a teenager is a stretch like you can't imagine. We spent a couple of hours at Columbia Historic State Park where the ex-robber committed his crimes. It's more of a town than a park. It's so charming and you can even run into the saloon and get a local made sarsaparilla. A few movies and TV shows were filmed there. Being a big fan of Little House On The Prairie about a bazillion years ago.. that was some exciting news. Here's a couple of pictures for your viewing pleasure.

The mighty stagecoach (thankfully the hubs didn't ask to hop on a horse and rob it for old times sake!)...

And the historic street with original buildings...

We also took a quick trip to Railtown. Again, quite a few movies and TV shows were filmed there. We took a ride on a steam locomotive and checked out the grounds.

You'd think I'd get a picture of a train but I sure didn't. I blame that on being totally and completely thrown off my game by some of the local fashions there. If I had only known sooner that shorty shorts and cougar t-shirts were in style...

The other place of interest we went to was the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Talk about beautiful. It was still pretty cold there and a lot of snow still hadn't melted yet. That was completely cool for me because I hadn't seen snow in about 6 years. Since I haven't flashed the hubs on here yet I'll let you get a rare sighting of me and my outlaw enjoying the white stuff...

We had a great time taking in all of the beauty and enjoying the crisp cold air. But there was one problem. In true Orange County resident fashion I was tromping along like an idiot in these...

It was one of those times when I was really feeling stupid. In my defense, we weren't planning on going there.. we just ended up there on a drive. Anyway, as I'm trudging my way through the snow while my kid laughed at me.. the feeling of overwhelming stupidity was really starting to weigh on me. Then a group of people walked by me and said.. "aren't your feet freezing?"  No, they are warm and toasty! Walking in the snow in freaking flip flops is what I had always wanted to do! At that moment I realized I wasn't the dumbest person there and breathed a sigh of relief.

Let's see where my flip flops take me tomorrow.

As promised

More STR to Ziploc up and toss in a bin. Yarn sitting in bins isn't all that exciting and I never did figure out how to sprout those extra arms. Here's a look before they get banished to the stash black hole...

Chapman Springs...

Jewel Of The Nile...

Lovers Leap... (it's had to see but it's a super deep hot pink)

Mr. Green Jeans...

 

Pixie Park...

Mossay...

 

Seastone...

Turquoise... (some bad Photshopping going on here to get the yarn color right on my monitor.. the back ground suffered)

I'm almost embarrassed to have ordered this next one. I really don't remember doing it. It's certainly not a colorway I would be drawn to. Hmm.

Dutch Canyon...

 

Maybe a lucky skein will make it on the fun family spring break vaca.  Yes, Crafty Pancakes is heading to a town near you. If you live in the vicinity of Yosemite that is. We'll hit the road first thing Saturday morning and come back the following Saturday. Anyone feel like hitching a ride in the Queen Family Truckster Gerty to partake in the road trip fun? By fun I mean me complaining about Jeff following other cars too closely and all the other annoying things bad passengers say. I could just do the driving but that would be so much worse. Put me in the driver's seat and instead of me complaining it would turn into a full on swear fest. I have no patience for idiot drivers and tend to make gestures (no bird flipping!) to let them know I am not the president of their fan club. So if J gets us to our destination in one piece it's going to be a great time! Any suggestions about what to make sure and check out while we are there?

Oh how I wish there was a cousin Eddie to throw into the vacation mix!

Another thing.. I'm getting my blogroll going in the sidebar finally (thanks to Flutter). I'll be updating it more when I get back from our trip. I'd love for some of you to delurk and let me know about your blogs too.