I was looking at Mim’s blog this morning, and saw this: Ruth is gathering information regarding the amount of yarn used to knit a sock round. Send her your numbers, and she’ll enter you in her contest.

I ripped out that ghastly knitting experiment that I showed you the other day. I have all new ribbing done, and I’m working on a slip stitch pattern that might actually work. Wish me luck. But just in case I put a lifeline in between the ribbing and the stitch pattern. I’m getting tired of knitting the ribbing for this sock.

Dave and I are down in San Diego for the week. At least for now we have Internet connectivity. It’s a long, complicated process, but I’m accessing the Internet with my laptop through Dave’s laptop, which is getting it from his cell phone. Don’t worry if all that doesn’t make any sense. It works, and that’s all that really matters.

We’re actually a bit east of San Diego, basically in the neighborhood of the Wild Animal Park. We drove down here yesterday by way of the Karl Strauss Brewing Company to visit our friend Matt Johnson, one of the brewers there, and to get a tour of the brewery.

Matt led us through the whole facility. We got up close and personal with the fermenting tanks, the tanks that hold the yeast, the grain mill, the kegging shindig, and all. We stepped over hoses, climbed up stairs, peaked into brew kettles, and froze in the cold room.

We even got a taste of a new beer that will be in the local pubs soon, a rye IPA. Yummy. Very yummy. I’m looking forward to having a full pint of that one soon. Matt pulled our tastes of the new rye IPA straight out of the fermenting tank for us. The beer hadn’t been filtered yet, so it was cloudy with yeast. I think he said it’s to be filtered today, meaning it’ll be nice and clear when it arrives in the pubs. Kristie, I think you’ll really like this one.

Thanks for the great tour, Matt. We look forward to coming down again after all the new equipment is installed.