I have to say that I’m very glad I took Dave’s advice on Saturday, and left the house nearly two hours before I was due to meet Anne, Kim (sadly blogless), and Jocelyn in Encinitas for lunch, a little knitterly companionship and fun. Encinitas is a small coastal town about 20 miles north of San Diego, about 70 miles south of my house. On a Saturday morning I didn’t think there was any way it would take two hours to get down there. I was planning on getting my car washed or (more likely) a short little walk on the beach before finding our meeting spot at noon.

No such luck.

Traffic. There was lots of traffic. Tons of it. Three separate backups conspired against me and my walk on the beach. The last one was the worst. I got caught in the line of care trying to get off the freeway to go to Legoland. Jocelyn heard on the radio that they were expecting 70,000 cars to show up at their amusement park that morning. Being one of the cars caught in the backup, I believe it. I also believe that they need to do some serious work on the roads to handle that traffic so that it doesn’t affect people who are not going to Legoland, but that’s another topic altogether…

By the time I found the knitting store, the “art park” across the street, a parking place, and made my way to the place we were to meet it was just a couple of minutes after noon. Whew. Made it.

I recognized Anne from the back at 30 paces—in spite of the fact that I’d never seen her in person before. Thank her David for all those wonderful photos he takes of her for her blog and patterns. Yes, and that beautiful woman standing next to her must be the friend she’s staying with, Kim. Anne turned as I walked up, immediately knew who I was, and gave me a big hug. It’s wonderful meeting good friends for the first time, don’t you think? A couple minutes after I got there, Jocelyn arrived. More hugs and introductions all around.

The “art park” where we met turned out to be the Encinitas Seaside Bazaar, a fun place with a wonderful variety of unique handmade goods. When I found them, Anne and Kim were looking at Dan Townsend’s Palmfish. These things are hysterical! Dan creates colorful fish, mostly to hang on the wall, from used egg cartons and dried palm fronds, and paints with with bright colors. Kim and Jocelyn both talked about buying some of the fish to decorate sons’ rooms with. Some of the fish had wicked teeth… I chortle whenever I think of these fish. They’re great!

Hunger soon won out, though, so we wandered down the street to find a place to eat. There were plenty of restaurants to choose from, a nice variety of ethnic foods. Someone spied a place from across the street, Q’ero, a Peruvian restaurant. We agreed right then and there to give it a whirl. Oh! Were we ever glad we tried it. None of had had Peruvian food before, and everything we had was fabulous: appetizers, wraps, sandwiches, soup, even the ethnic drinks. If you’re in the area, I’d definitely recommend giving them a try. Yum.

After lunch we wandered down the block to Common Threads. This is an amazing store. From the front it doesn’t really look like much, just a small room that leads to another, and that’s about all you see. These rooms, though, lead to other small rooms, before the place opens up into a larger one with a huge window and a comfy couch. We paused here to share some WIPs and finished projects. Through no real fault of my own, I actually have a couple of pictures! Unfortunately, the only one I have with Anne is a little blurry. Anne and Jocelyn, luckily, both have much clearer pictures. In the first (blurry) picture, from left to right, are me (!), Anne, and Kim. Next up we have me (again), Kim, and Jocelyn. I don’t know when I started holding my head so that it looks like I have a double chin. I don’t! I wish I’d stop doing that. Arg.

After leaving Common Threads we walked four blocks back the other way, passed the restaurant where we had lunch, and went into The Black Sheep. The two stores couldn’t have been more different. Different store layout, this one your basic rectangle, one room, with large windows all along one side, different yarns and supplies, but both wonderful.

I was so good, too! Two wonderful yarn stores, tons of fabulous yarns, and I didn’t buy a thing.

Until the way back and we stopped at Chuao, a South American chocolatier. They were giving away free samples of hot chocolate that day (yum!). But that wasn’t enough. I needed to feel some chocolate between my teeth, so I got one small truffle, a little something with loads of dark chocolate and touched with chili powder. What a combo. Did I say, Yum?

It was nearly 5 pm when we parted company. More traffic and 1½ hours later I was finally home again. It was a wonderful day. I have some knitting pictures for you, honest I do, but I think this post is probably quite long enough for one day. There’s always tomorrow.