Knitting at The Beach

Steve is away this week on business, so Mr Puffy and I headed down to sleepy surf city San Clemente, California to enjoy the late summer beach weather. Besides surfing, San Clemente has some great shops and this week I found the cutest shoes for Fall! More specifically, they will be prefect with the skirt that I'm knitting. See how well they go other already!

I'm knitting the Bell Curve skirt which is a free pattern I found on Knitty (Ravelry link). I've been thinking about knitting a skirt for some time, but was leery of knitting one with wool as I recall having a wool dress that was a little too clingy for comfort. Now that I think about it, I think there must have been some acrylic in that dress because it had just awful static electricity. In any event, I think this skirt should be okay as the "yarn" I'm using has a firm almost metallic feel and it is knitting into an interesting fabric with a nice drape. The yarn is Zoe (25% viscose and 75% nylon) manufactured by Artfibers in San Francisco and is worsted weight. My only complaint with the pattern so far is that the "star" design is a little uncomfortable to knit as you have to K5Tog. But I'm knitting very loosely when this stitch looms on the horizon and that helps considerably.

As I mentioned at the start, San Clemente is known as a surf city and so I've seen my share of surfing. But, I had never seen this before. What is happening is the surfer is hanging on to ropes while being pulled behind a jet ski and and when the surfer is set up on the wave he lets go and really zips along the wave. I can not tell you how much coordination this maneuver requires. I've seen a lot of surfing ~ whisper ~ most of my neighbors aren't very good ~ but this fellow was quite good and fun to watch. The best surfing is actually at Trestles Surf (technically just south of San Clemente) and if you would like to see some decent surfing, here's a link to a surfing video shot at Trestles.





Not being terribly well coordinated (balance wise) I enjoy body surfing where you just let the water carry you along. The waves continuously roll in one after another and makes for marvelous body surfing. I don't even mind all the sand that accumulates in my swimsuit from this activity.



But, as everyone knows, you shouldn't go swimming by yourself and Mr Puffy was having none of it. I kept saying, doesn't it look like fun in the water? He didn't move a muscle. I would hate to think he was faking being sleep when he knew how much I wanted to go in.



Speaking of shoes, did anyone hear about the earthquake in SoCal last week? It was minor, but I felt the earth move. When this happens it always re energizes me on disaster preparedness. And, since I'm in my car a lot, I carry in the trunk an old pair of tennis shoes and a light tote in which I have a few incidentals should I suddenly need to walk to shelter. For myself, even in a nuclear attack, I would need to moisturize having very dry skin. My tote therefore has moisturizer, water, a few nutrition bars, and some toiletries. I'm also thinking about tossing in a skein of sock yarn for good measure.

Cuz, these shoes aren't taking me too far in a disaster.