Scenic Nevada and some super-warm mittens

So I'm back from my first long sales trip up through NE California. It was pretty wild. Not so much the yarn, the yarn was pretty tame, but the scenery was pretty spectacular. I took a wrong turn on my first day driving from Reno to Cedarville, CA and came across Pyramid Lake. It's a pretty big suprise to find a lake this huge in the desert. And believe it or not - it's one thing we didn't steal from the native peoples of our land. It's all part of a giant reservation.

So I made it up to Cedarville Tuesday afternoon - it's amazing how right after you cross the Nevada-California border, things start looking up. I saw deer - a whole heard of them, and sheep and cows and green. Oh and snow atop the Warner Mountains. Pretty gorgeous country if you ask me. I might be able to live up there if it weren't so completely isolated. You'd have to make a lot of babies to keep busy.

Tuesday night I made it through the pass and down to Alturas. Much to my dismay there was snow along-side the road despite an outside temp of 70. Leads me to believe I'm lucky I wasn't there the week before. And despite my nasty cold I could still smell the pines - I think it would be pretty spectacular without sinus congestion.

Wednesday I visited Alturas and then headed off again towards Chico. I saw a whole lot of Mt Shasta on my drive that day. Who knew Northern California had a giant, snow-covered volcano? Well, probably lots of people, but I was impressed.

Thursday and Friday I was in Chico and Paradise (really cute town) and then I decided to call it a week and head back for Berkeley.

Whew - I guess that's my adventure in a nutshell. My mom's coming with me on my next big trip - so I'm definitely looking forward to the company. I had the pleasure of having my Aunt Marion along one day on my visits in the Tahoe area, and it was quite nice to have the company - and an assistant.

I didn't get nearly as much knitting done as I had hoped. I had all sorts of aspirations and brought a ton with me, but all I managed to finish were these mittens, but they're pretty rad so it's ok.

Pretty much the warmest mittens ever, what with their self-lining. My sister thinks she wants a pair, but I'm pretty sure it's going to take awhile for me to forget that making these is really like knitting four pairs of mittens, two of which are on size 2's. Sorry, Kathy, I think you're out of luck.

Out and About

Wow, this has been a great week. Friday I got to do the Oakland Art Murmur, Saturday I got to sit outside and listen to great music at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park and Sunday I got to take a class on color with Ms PunkRawkPurl (aka Tammy) at knit-one-one. Whew! I'm beside myself with satisfaction.

Tammy's class was rad. I always have a great time at knit-one-one but this was a different sort of class and I wasn't sure what to expect. Tammy made us think outside our favorite colors and play with new color combinations. She wanted us to pick out a color we would never knit with - this wasn't hard for me as one of my least favorite colors is currently one of Tammy's favs - ochre. (it just looks like baby poo to me) but then I started picking out things that could go with it, and I came up with this interesting combination:


I think it might actually make a pretty dashing sweater for a certain one-year-old that I know for Christmas. Elaine thinks it would make a darling "church-sweater," and luckily his parents are church-goers.

In other excitement, some of you may know that I've been working on becoming a yarn sales representative for some time and I'm finally getting out on the road. I've been toying with how I can comment on these adventuress on my blog because although I'm going to have some excellent insights on shops in Northern California and will get to see a lot of rad shops, I'm just not sure if there's a conflict of interest in me posting about the shops I sell to. Maybe if I just accentuate the positives everywhere I go?

I'd love to hear what you all think about my shop-blogging quandary!