California travels: the unexpected

The thing about travel is, you just never know. The dry, sunny city can be chilly and rainy. <cough, LA> The little inexpensive motel a friend arranged near work can be charming beyond belief. A cheerful home away from home.

 

 Especially if, like me, you want to pretend your home is in Brazil.  Lunch with a client can be a delicious adventure and rev up a new project. (Thanks Craig!). A quick work errand can land you at an inspiring exhibit at the Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM)

where artist Maximo Gonzalez  uses devalued currency-- money or materials like aluminum-  to make playful art that provokes. That tree on the upper right is a small detail in an amazing full wall collage from tiny cuts of devalued paper bills. The gift shop ? Need to return is all I am saying. There's a yarnbombing group meeting there monthly. (go! join!) They did a fabulous front window  installation that I failed to get a good image of (see rainy and chilly, above).

The El Segundo Slipt Stitchers Knitting Guild were as numerous, fun and opinionated as I was told in advance, but I didn't expect my carefully programmed pizzazzy talk to have technical issues 

while all 80+ of them waited.  Stress!  Not that they looked too concerned, right? It worked shortly after these photos by Ellen Bloom. (and yes, of course it ran flawlessly at 1 am for the test) . What an impressive group they are.

 

 I sat next to uber talented Ana Petrova for a while.  Her knitting, dyeing, spinning and freestyle designing combined with her sense of color wow me. See the knitted and beaded cuff jewelry, for instance. BTW check out her link for classes. It'll give you a creative kick in the butt. No doubt.

The smaller hands-on workshop with the Slipt Stitchers the next day was lively, heading straight into rowdy at times.  In fact, all three of the California workshops were awesome--but, that is very expected, so I'm saving it for my next post.

Lastly, unexpected and defeating: the needle cable that detached from the join (not the changeable tip but the join), releasing well over 300 stitches on my almost finished lovely Flying Home shawl. Glued back in, spent well over an hour of catching all the stitches and YO's--and then the other end join did the same. On a plane. Still to be restored.

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As of today there are 2 seats left ion the Katonah Yarn class this  Saturday 3/31  in Katonah NY, 12-3. And, other upcoming events, on my workshops page:  in Little Rock AR, Southaven MS , Minnnesota & New England.