Summer inside out

You wouldn't believe it was a warm August weekend with lots of play outside, parks, garden, friends and family if you saw what Clara was up to in the little time she spent inside the house!



a "puzzle museum" with all her puzzles spread out on the floor
(please don't remove!)



and a doll and cuddly toy party!

Fresh & Organic 23

Today just a picture from a different angle:

Santa Fe

Let's go back again to the holidays (rain again around here...), where it was hot & dry and actually not the perfect knitting weather but great for traveling and discovering.

Santa Fe in New Mexico was the first city we went to after the Summer Solstice Kundalini yoga festival.



It is known for its adobe architecture and a bustling art scene. They also have a great Georgia O'Keefe Museum who used to live and work in New Mexico later in her life.


(that's not the museum though...)



Of course it is easy to rely on www.knitmap.com, but I preferred using my inner knitting radar. And was successful. This was the first knitting shop I found on our trip.



TUTTO (website here)



I was pleasantly surprised to find two men working there, eagerly discussing a mistake in a knitting pattern. But they only work there on Saturdays, they said. Interestingly they have been to Germany two years ago for the knitting fair in Cologne. They loved it, they said.



The shop had also some German wool on offer, Opal sock yarn and Schoppel Zauberball. A lot of Danish yarn like Isager, too.
Good choice overall.



My little choice - some pink needle protectors.

Still hungry and not fed up with yoga food we went to a great vegetarian restaurant - Annapurna's.



Authentic ayurvedic Indian cuisine - delicious and healthy.



Hippie-style interior design.



Annapurna is the visible deity in the form of food. She rules the five elements of nature - earth, water, fire, air and sky.



I just love this kind of worshiping and praying!

Fresh & Organic 22

Fruit: apples (Jamba and Cripps Pink), pears, bananas, grapes

Vegetables: potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, cucumber, fresh onions, mushrooms, batavia lettuce, beetroot, red bell pepper, kohlrabi, parsley root

child: Clara
She really wanted to be in the picture.
And then she also wanted to take one:

First Day back on the Mat

When I came to teach my first prenatal class after the holidays, this little crochet graffiti at the entrance of the birthing home really cheered me up!



Thank you!

Fresh & Organic 21

The fruit & vegetable box is back! And it also marks the end of the holidays for me. Two amazing months of sunshine, travel, family & friends, yoga and great food. What will fuel the next week for us?



A whole cornucopia of fresh goodness, that doesn't even fit in the picture.

fruit: blueberries, nectarines, summer apples, watermelon

vegetables: carrots, potatoes, zucchini, fennel, onions, leek, (cherry) tomatoes, cucumber, corn, lettuce, red radishes, parsley

Some Summer Sewing II

A birthday bag I actually already made in May (here). For my mama. From the vintage fabric she gave me... The pattern comes from the German book Designbuch Nähen.

Lots of space in it for her stuff and I even sewed in some inner pockets for her purse and cell phone (why did she mention she could put stones in it?) and it seems to fit into her garden. What you don't see in picture - the Baltic Sea is just a couple of miles away. That is where my mama likes to collect stones. To put or hang in her house and garden (in the picture).

Sedona

Sedona is a town in Arizona surrounded by beautiful red sandstone tower rock formations.



It also became a New Age center due to the energy vortexes around, places where the earth's energy is believed to be highly concentrated and can be picked up by human beings to achieve greater clarity, healing and awareness as a result.

My vortex in Sedona I strongly felt here:



The Sedona Knit Wits (website here)

Again with a knitting graffiti at the entrance on the right side.



A collaboration on WWKIPD (we also had a great one in Oldenburg, didn't we?).



Inside the spacious and very well stocked shop a surprise awaited us - another little home from home, in a way. Because as it turned out, the owner of the shop, Petra, was originally from Bremen, a city half an hour away from where we live.



She came to the US in the early eighties and opened her knitting store last year. The store has an amazing lessons schedule, with classes nearly every day and a knit night.

This was the first knitting shop where I actually bought some wool, three weeks into our trip. Some souvenir wool from that shelf, some silky wool of the colour "baby rose". For baby.



And I have picked the right colour, like Clara announced this week after the ultrasound: "Meine kleine Schwester wird ein Mädchen!" (My little sister is going to be girl!) I had a bonnet in my mind for the wool, but as the wool was for needle size 2,5 mm and Clara is restocking her doll's wardrobe at the moment, I knit this ultra-quick doll's mini dress on her request. The pattern is called rose dress (name coincidence!) from the Swedish website www.stickatillbarbie.se (huge pattern collection in different languages).



And even though they are very classic plastic dolls, they carry their children in slings.



Clara calls it baby-ma-cozy.

Ravelry notes here and here.

Cardigans in Santa Barbara

No, this is not about a Swedish pop rock band (that had actually a couple of great songs, I especially liked My Favourite Game). It is a random account of the knitting shops my inner radar found on our trip through the American Southwest and California. Actually, that Cardigan's song is a great driving song for road trips.

As I had given up blogging for the main part of our trip, I now also gave up the idea of showing the shops in any chronological content. For the next days, I am just going to intertwine them somehow in my life and blogging back home.

That said, I will now start. Because the Noro wool for the baby bonnets I have just knitted, came from that shop here:



Cardigans in Santa Barbara.



In front of the shop was some yarn graffiti hugging a palm tree.


(oh, palms how I miss you...)

The shop really made me want to stay a little longer, very good selection of yarns, cozy interior design and nice and helpful staff. If I ever won the lottery and/or retired, I would consider living in lovely Santa Barbara...



A could have my home away from home in that shop.
Knitting group included.



And for all the royal-inspired fashionstas out there, Cardigans paid their own tribute to the visit of British Knit & Wools at the beginning of July to California (Wools actually played a game of polo in St. Barbara). Inspired by the green cashmere shawl Kate wore when shopping at a grocery store (just google Kate Middleton knit shawl), depicted also in the June issue of People magazine, a knitter from St. Barbara designed her own version of the shawl.



This time in blue and in a lightweight bamboo blend (the weather in St. Barbara is a bit different from the one on an Welsh island...). And Cardigans even offered knitalong lessons for the Kate's shawl (also see their newsletter about it). You can find out more the shop and what it offers on their website.

PS: After it really rained all through Sunday without a single pause, the rain has stopped and the sun came out this morning! But maybe I should consider knitting that royal shawl, too... you can already find more patterns on Ravelry now (Kate's shawl, Catherine's shawl, Copykat shawls, Princess Kate shawl, Kate shopping shawl)...

More Rain

I made another one...

...and Knitting, of course!

That's what I forgot to mention in yesterday's post of activities back in rainy and cold Northern Germany (especially when you are jetlagged and stay awake till 4 am - and so is your kid...). So, time for an instant gratification knit, something NEW and something QUICK!



It is the bonnet from the book More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. Ever since I had seen this cute little pattern around last Christmas I have just wanted to knit it.

And as there is no baby around at the moment, Clara's doll Lilly (who is about the size of a newborn) had to do the fitting and the modeling.



Ravelry notes here. The wool is Noro Aya.
More about the wonderful shop in Santa Barbara / California, where I got it from, when the rain stops... (hopefully)

California Dreaming and the Reality of German Summer

... yesterday Hollywood / Southern California

... today rainy and cold (really, it's 15° C at the end of July!) in "Ollywood" Oldenburg / Northern Germany (better spare you the pictures)

... one good thing - good weather for unpacking, settling in, sorting photos and preparing some sunny blog posts! (at last I can show you all those nice knitting shops I discovered on our trip)

Las Vegas

Just re-married!

Wild Wild West

Four Corners

My knitting is located in four American states at the same time!

The Four Corner's Monument - the one and only place in the US, where four states meet. New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Traveling through those four states for the last three weeks, knitting was not necessarely Number One on my list - especially with 35°C /95°F outside.



But during long road trips in an air-conditioned car I would knit a row or two, if I was not totally engrossed in the landscape unfolding around us.



Monument Valley





Arches National Park



Very important in this weather, especially in the desert - stay hydrated!



And marvel at God's wonders.

18 Days Later

After spending ten days on a mountain in a desert of New Mexico/USA with my international spiritual family at Summer Solstice, we - our little family of three (and a half) - are now traveling the amazing American Southwest. More pics and yarn stories coming soon...