Two weekends ago, my husband and I had the great pleasure of getting away for three nights to The Sea Ranch, a small coastal community in Sonoma County, just south of the Mendocino County border. Over the years, we’ve been fortunate enough to go there more times than I can count, and this time we were celebrating my birthday earlier this month. And this time we took the dogs!

Taffy, left, and Rocky, right

For three days, we did nothing but eat, sleep, drink good wine and romp on the beach with the dogs . . . .

Something interesting!

And knit. Did I mention knit? I came with TWO bags full of knitting – as if I could finish every project I have on the needles! – and over the course of the weekend, I dug in. I brought new things I was working on (like my plain old sock for my sock class) and things that have been on the needles WAY too long (like that damn &$c#ing whale hat from “New England Knits“ that Sheri and I started in 2010!)

The weather was iffy – good on Fri, great on Sat, dreadful on Sun (think of the weather while the 49ers got beat by the Giants) and good on Monday. Mostly, we hunkered down in front of the fire, Terry on the sofa, me in a rocking chair, the dogs sacked out on top of each other, and watched the surf and the sky.

My downstairs perch

So what did I work on?

First was the aforementioned whale hat. I have nothing against whales, I have nothing against hats, but man, I am not a fair isle knitter. Color work just is not my thing. Working with two strands of yarns is just a little too fiddly and too slow for me. Nevertheless, well greased with pinot noir, I persevered. I did half of what you see here during the weekend.

Spouting whales will dance across my head

When I absolutely could not stand this one minute more, I moved on to my Aeolian Shawl, made with Lisa Souza silk lace, that I have written many blog posts about. But the cool thing to know here is this house has a loft. You climb up a ladder – no doggies can follow – and you sit in the window and watch the waves roll in and the stitches roll out.

View from "The Knitting Loft"

But wait, there’s more! I also spent some time with a sweater I started months ago, a simple pattern called Eva from C2Knits that is all stockinette and top down. Everything is done but ONE SLEEVE and yet I cannot get moving on it. I tried . . .

C2Knits

I am making this with Madeline Tosh Lace and it is lovely. But never-ending. I must pick it up again this week.

What else did I knit? I made two of the necklaces I wrote about yesterday. I brought but did not touch a sweater I have FINISHED but need to sew together – would rather die, seems like work. And my sock for class . . .

Just the cuff

And the rest of the time we did this . . .

Taffy, always on the watch

and some of this . . .

A snoooooooooooze

Thank you, Sea Ranch!

Our Beach