Eye Candy Friday, sort of...

...it was too foggy this morning to get decent pictures of anything outside.

I did find the Husband's mini-greenhouse. The tomato seedlings are popping up:

I'm looking forward to lots of yummy tomatoes in the spring and summer.

I realized that I hadn't posted a picture of the January installment of the Proverbial Club from A Verb for Keeping Warm. Here is the Merino-Cashmere fiber in Old Growth:

It's an indigo-dyed fiber and has some subtle color changes that are not evident in the picture. I'm looking forward to spinning this one to see how the color changes translate in the finished yarn.

Up this weekend: I need to finish the baby blanket because the baby shower is tomorrow afternoon(!). I finished the weaving portion and washed it this morning. It should be dry when I get home tonight so I can cut the fabric and assemble it. I'm going to use white satin blanket binding to finish it off. I love the way the fabric turned out, but I don't love the way I set such a tight deadline for it. Poor planning on my part!

After that's finished, I think I'll swap over to spinning. I have Lake Michigan to ply and the second bobbin of Sedona to spin. I'd like to at least finish one of the yarns. We'll see how far I get!
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Happy Anniversary to us!

...it's a little anti-climatic after our weekend away, but I couldn't let the day escape without mentioning it.  LOL!  We agreed that we didn't need to go out to dinner again tonight, but we might just toast the day. :)

WIP-wise, I am madly weaving on the baby shawl I started last week.  I took it to Craft Night last night and wove about 15 inches.  No pictures yet.

Over the weekend, I did a little knitting on the Nefertem shawl while the Husband was out running errands. Here's the current state of the shawl:

I have 8 rows left before I start the lace edging.

That's it for now!

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Missing the ocean already...

...Sunday already seems so long ago.

The Husband and I had a great weekend despite the pouring rain on Friday and Sunday. We stayed at the Half Moon Bay Inn in downtown. It's a 15-room inn above a bustling Italian restaurant. The restaurant was a little noisy at times, but their live guitar music was an unexpected bonus.

The inn was 2 doors down from Fengari., the yarn store I wanted to visit. I had seen Fengari at a couple of shows (at least one Stitches West) and hadn't ever been to the store. Since we couldn't do much on Friday because of the rain, I took to opportunity to cruise the store. They have a lot of specialty yarns (ribbon yarns, eyelash yarns, etc.) as well as merino, alpaca, etc. Yes, I bought souvenir yarn:

This is Chunky Mochi in Neptune Rainbow. I loved the hat I knit for Jane so much that I bought this yarn to make my own.

Friday night, we ate at the restaurant below the inn, It's Italia. What a treat to just walk down the stairs and go one door over to get to the restaurant. The food was really good, but the dessert was spectacular--a deconstructed lemon meringue tart: two crispy cookies on one end of a rectangular plate, a swath of lemon and a swath of caramel leading to light, fluffy meringue at the other end. I wish that I had taken a picture of it! The only picture I took that night was of my Blood Orange Bellini:

Saturday was gorgeous and we spent quite a while at the ocean. We walked up and down Montara Beach:

and then walked the bluff trail at Fitzgerald State Reserve.

There are more pictures in this Flickr set.

We had dinner at La Costanera, which serves contemporary Peruvian food. It was fabulous! In addition to entree-size portions, they offer small plates, so you can do the tapas thing if you want. We ordered 5 small plates plus dessert and they were all yummy. My favorite was shrimp in a tamarind sauce served with a sweet potato puree. The dessert was Flan de Quinoa served with a fresh strawberry and caramel sauce. The quinoa was mostly in a sauce that reminded me of a thin tapioca. Incredibly good!

It was raining again when we woke up on Sunday, so we gathered up our things and headed home. It was a very relaxing weekend and we both needed it so much. All in all, a great way to celebrate our anniversary!
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And the winner is...

...Julie!

Congratulations! Your yarn will be wending its way to you within the next week.  Thanks to everyone who commented!

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On to Eye Candy Friday...
Here is an entry in the subcategory "Eye Candy is in the eye of the beholder."

My new camera arrived!  Specs: 14.1 mega pixel, 12x optical zoom, macro down to 0.4 inches (!!), and a bunch of other features I have yet to explore. It arrived yesterday at work, so I haven't spent much time with it.  This weekend, though...

Up this weekend: We are taking a long weekend and going to Half Moon Bay to celebrate our anniversary a few days early. It's supposed to rain, but we don't really care!. I haven't been to the ocean in a year and sorely need it. I hope there will be some photo opportunities so I can put the new camera through its paces.

Can't wait...
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