Knit Gifts

Lately I've been knitting items for gifts and here are the latest. I really tried to take good photographs of them but it's not easy even with a remote trigger. :0

Josh modeling the neck warmers that were commissioned for a guy & his dog.

Next up, we have a nice lacy button cowl with knit with bulky yarn is nice green tones. The lace will add to your fall/winter wardrobe and will look great under a coat or with a T-shirt. The cowl will provide added warmth while the lace prevents the wearer from getting overheated. :)



The button along with the lacework allows lots of possible ways to be worn.

another pic featuring glass head girl.

another way to wear this versatile cowl.

Here is another versatile item which can be a scarf or a shawl. There is a row of buttons that can be used to secure the shawl. You can tie it, button it or drape it. There are many ways to wear this lightweight yet warm knit. The yarn is a fingering weight which is the same yarn that is used to knit socks. Sock weight yarn is great for scarves/shawls especially in SoCal where it can get chilly and you need a little extra warmth.

Here I wearing it wrapped around twice & tied.

Glass head girl wears it wrapped around twice.

Unfortunately I don't seem to have knack to wear this with flair but I know there are lots of people with way more style and can totally rock this look.



Here it is all laid out to show the shape...it has a lovely drape to stay on your shoulders too. The eyelets by the cable columns double as buttonholes as needed.

Lastly, I have a nice hat and cowl set knit with a bulky weight yarn with pale green/beige colors.

Glass head girl looks fabulous!

Just as the temps are dropping, this is the perfect set to look great and beat the chill.

Thanks for looking!

Aquarium of the Pacific

Monday was a student free day so I took the kids to Long Beach where we spent the day at the Aquarium of the Pacific & surrounding area.

It was a great day to visit as it was uncrowded and cool on such a warm day. We were able to plan our schedule and see some of the programs like the otter presentation and penguin meet and greet.

This aquarium is not too huge so we could spend some time viewing the exhibits then we  walked to the Pike for lunch then head back to the aquarium to cool off.

The kids and I had so much fun and it was a nice way to spend their free day. :)


You can check out the Flickr photo set.  It looks like Flickr is updating their site and I can't seem to find out how to post photos right now but you can go and look at the set.

Sneak Peek

Here is a portion of Josh's Halloween costume.



I am trying to incorporate his Link costume from last year and maybe use parts of it to make a Viking costume. Okay, I really just wanted an excuse to knit the Viking Hat. I don't think Josh fully appreciates the EPICNESS of this hat but at least he has a new hat. :)



I still need to add another piece to this and it will take me some time so stay tuned for that!!



He will the cutest Viking ever!!

Florida Bound

Okay, only a week at home then we are off to Orlando....

This time we flew on JetBlue out of Long Beach which is a huge difference than LAX, a welcome one for sure. We had a stop in Austin and had two large groups of girls travelling with us. One group was a soccer team from SoCal and the other was a field hockey group from Austin. The flight was uneventful but when we tried to leave Austin, we were delayed for about an hour because some panel screws came loose duting the flight and had to be replaced.

So by the time we arrive in Orlando at our hotel it was around 9 pm so we were pretty tired from travelling all day. The kids & I did perk up for a bit because we got a Cube for our rental car. The kids always get a kick out of seeing one and they don't remember that we first saw a Cube in Tokyo in 2005 and it took it a couple of years before it made its way to the USA. :)




Our hotel the Caribe Royale Hotel was really nice. The pool area is great. We planned to stay for 3 nights then head over to the Parc Soleil. More on that later....






Our first day, we didn't plan on doing too much but Hector & I signed up for a timeshare presentation for the Sheraton to get a discount on Disney tickets. First off, its not referred to as a timeshare but fractional ownership (like that makes a difference).

In a nutshell, these kind of offers will give you nice perks in exchange for their 90 minute presentation so have your watch handy. They say they don't work on commission and get paid plenty just to present the information. Blah blah...

Our time went way over the 90 minutes, Hector pointed that out and she kept saying she had 15 more minutes. She went from our best friend to our mortal enemy in that span. Okay it wasn't that bad, but she definitely gave us the cold shoulder at the end. ;)

Hey, its a good thing you get paid for just presenting the info...

As a result of the almost 2 hour torture chamber, we came away with Disney tickets for 4 days plus water park and saved about $800 that we used to eat etc.

Stay tuned for the next installment...

Double Whammy

or a twofer.

August flew by in a blur mostly because we planned two separate vacations! It sound super cool and fun which it was but that was lot of travelling & planning.

First up we have a Kauai trip that the kids & I took along with my mom. It didn't start off very smooth (travel day) but soon we all found out how to work together and really had a nice relaxing time.

Waiting for our rental car.  For the record, it was a brown VW.

Actually I did find out what kind of car we had and it was this sporty sedan. It looks nice enough but the head clearance getting into the darn thing was low. I'm 5'5" and had to tweak my head/neck every time getting in. Both Tyler and I ended up whacking our heads. Plus the car had some big blind spots but it served us well in Kauai so I can't complain too much. It was stylish and we could spot it among all the other rental cars.



We had a nice, fairly spacious room overlooking the pool and ocean. The grounds are very pretty with lots of birds & chickens running around.


I loved sitting on the balcony watching the ocean and seeing the sunrise every morning.




Lots of pools to choose from...





Kauai is very lush and tropical. Not much has changed since I visited over 15+ years ago and I definitely appreciate it more now when I needed to relax/recharge desperately.



My mom seemed to enjoy herself too.



The resort was not very crowded which was a very nice problem to have. :)

We didn't do a lot of sightseeing but we did manage to see a couple of things.

Wailua Falls

Spouting Horn

Plus a beautiful beach to walk on at low tide.

Stay tuned for our August 2nd vacation.....

August

I took a little bit of a break for multiple reasons and all is well. I have a close cousin who is getting married next month so my mom and I went to the shower. We had a short impromptu photo session in my car before we left and I thought we would take more at the shower but no, these are the ones of my and my mom.



We both look good and clean up pretty well. Too bad that the sunlight was really strong next to my mom but I like them.



It's the last month of summer before school and our big plans are finally here so I will have fresh new photos and blogginess to share next month...

San Diego Comic-Con 2013

You may remember we had a very limited experience with Comic-Con last year when we went to the Legend of Zelda symphony. It was overwhelming and traffic was a PITA bad but the kids really liked looking around and getting streetpasses on their Nintendo 3DSs.

During the time after that, I was trying to plan to get tickets which is not easy at all. The online system was awful and to sum up, I couldn't get tickets. Apparently a lot of other people had issues with system freezes etc and just a bad time. I did get an email for future one day sales which was fine but my priority is to find lodging. Hotels in the downtown area skyrocket and we searched for a place not too far or expensive. Hector found a reasonably priced Quality Inn off Miramar/I-15. We figured if we couldn't get SDCC tickets we can always cancel the hotel if we decided not to go.

Single day tickets sales came and went and I had my own online issues with that too but it worked out okay in the end. To cut down on transportation headaches, we drove to Qualcomm stadium and caught the trolley to the convention center. It took about 45 minutes but it was really easy.

We drove down to San Diego Thursday morning and I chose the I-15 which was nice and traffic free. We tried to drop off our luggage at the hotel but no little extra room to store it and no clean rooms yet. I understood the clean room situation but no storage space?

For Thursday, I was only able to get a badge for myself but Josh could tag along with a paid adult. I think Tyler felt a little left out when we went to check out the exhibit floor but we left him in an extremely entertaining area at the Marriott called the Nintendo Lounge. Nice big area with a couple of areas with beanbags and 3DS chargers along with lots of demos, picture areas and lots of fellow gamers. I don't think he missed us at all. When we came back, he was loaded down with all sorts of goodies...meanwhile, Josh & I wandered only a small area of the exhibit floor that I thought was crowded but I was wrong. When we went back inside on Sunday, that was CROWDED. There was staff trying to direct the flow and keep it moving.
I ended up holding Josh's hand practically the entire time so he wouldn't get swept away...

The area outside the convention center was probably more entertaining for us because the crowds were not so tight and wait times were not too bad. The con has grown larger than life and there is no possible way to see/experience everything but the things/events that we managed to see, we were really happy with them so to sum up, Comic-con is what you make of it.

Photoset from Comic-Con 2013

We stayed an extra night after the whole Comic-con was over to hopefully beat the traffic ( still had traffic) but we made a side trip to La Jolla before heading home.

The water and weather were gorgeous. Over the weekend we had some overcast, cooler temperatures which was nice when dealing with masses of people but we got to have the pretty, stereotypical California weather too. :)








My silly boys.



With views like this, who can be sad???



Seriously, everything was postcard perfect.



The water really was this blue...

The beautiful end to our fun filled long weekend. :)

ipod help

All my music in the entire world is on my iPod. My computer crashed a few years back leaving me with just one device holding my entire CD collection and purchases. I couldn't figure out where/how/what to do so fast forward to now and I decide to google my dilemma since someone surely has figured out the answer and posted it on youtube. Well, I was right and I'm following along so far so good.

And this is what happened to my older ipod...




It was acting up lately not charging in my alarm clock/player, the click wheel was frozen so I could operate it but the function buttons on my clock could at least get it to play. But then I noticed the corner popped off and it's not working. It served me well for about 10 years which is pretty darn good. :)

Still copying all my music to a folder so stay tuned...


OMG, it worked!! My entire library that was on that ipod is now transferred successfully to my computer. So happy now....

Here is Youtube link.

Canon A1: Sunset at the beach

I shot some more film and turned it into Costco for processing. There is one film Kodak pro something or other that I had the most awful time loading. I had shot the entire roll (I thought) at Fossil Falls but it never loaded. Okay, I though I might be able to salvage the film and learned via Google how to retrieve the film leader with the good old saliva method ( it does work too). Reloaded the film and thought I shot the roll no problem.

Well, Costco told me the film was blank so either I exposed the roll somewhere or it didn't load again. I had one roll that came out and from the photos, the sunset/beach photos looked really good. But the DVD wasn't included which I paid $3 for so I called and there was a mix up where another customer got my DVD and hers was still at Costco. Took another day for that person to return my DVD but now when I look at it, I'm not sure if it is worth the money.

I thought the DVD would be a better quality than my scanner but it doesn't seem to be the case. Lots of grain when the photo is enlarged on the computer so I think I will try to do an enlargement on one of the photos and see for myself. I do want  an enlargement for my home and display purposes.


Now to decide which one to enlarge...


Photo #1




Photo #2



Photo #3



At least Costco is reasonable for photo processing although I may have to look for other options once I get more serious about my photography.

So what photo shall I reprint?? I'm thinking 5 x 7 size.

Wacky Wednesday

It' Spirit Week at school and today is Wacky Wednesday. Josh chose different socks, shoes, funky hat and wore his shorts backwards.

Tuesday Evening

Last night the kids and I headed down to the Redondo Beach pier for some diversions. I brought along 2 cameras, a film SLR & a DSLR so the kids were wondering why I was taking twice as long. :)

My kids.

I got them dinner and ice cream so that was fine for them. It's kind of funny how Tyler "discovered" calamari so now I can order it and he will eat some also. I can't get over the fact that the boys are only 3 years apart yet the height difference is astounding to me!?! I guess what's more astounding is that Tyler's best friend, G is a year younger than Tyler and the same height as Joshua. I just have to face the fact that Tyler is in the 95th percentile just like when he was a toddler. (He was projected to be about 6'2"). Go figure.


The fish were biting last night as many families come down to fish. One man tossed his fish onto the ground for this bird. I didn't have my camera ready but the bird swooped down & held it in his beak for several seconds before gulping it down.

I've consulted my bird book and narrowed it down to a heron, possibly a juvenile. I'm going to look further into this...





The weather was mild and not at all chilly like it can be around here so that made our evening pleasant.



The clouds were so pretty and the sailboats were out en masse.



Overall, we had a nice evening with the fresh air and ocean.

Photo Story Time

After Veronica introduced me to the beach access at Trump Golf course in Palos Verdes, I went again this time with Sherri to do some more exploring and impromptu hiking.

It was much warmer than the previous time with pretty views of Catalina.



It was still cloudy/hazy but really stunning too.



The coastline/shoreline is more visible this time around and yes, we hiked down to the beach.



Sherri scrambled down like a mountain goat while I carefully walked down since I was carrying my camera gear. :)



The sand looks so inviting but it really soft and your feet sink quite deep which makes walking difficult.



Then to the left of the beach are these gorgeous rocks with Catalina in the background.





and further to the left, a fisherman.




We continued to the left up another trail which led to a lookout point here..



and another higher lookout up there!



Very peaceful and serene. We walked up to the main trail that is paved and came up to another trail leading back down to the beach.





The trail is marked challenging and at the very bottom is a small tent with umbrella.



Here is the camp set up closer. That pile of branches/dried kelp is another shelter/alcove that's a rustic living area. with a rock chair. The tent was zipped up so I have no idea if there was anyone in there or not. I don't think people are supposed to camp overnight but it looks like this person has established him/herself there.





This is the rocky beach to the right of the campsite. Very isolated today and that lone fisherman is way off in the distance.

The challenging part for me was climbing back up this trail but I made it! ;)