I went out for a quick walk this morning, and saw a very odd fungus along the side of the footpath I was taking. When I returned to our room, I googled “orange white toadstools oregon -golf -fish -pumpkin” and found it! The fungus I found is called Amanita muscaria. It likes to be around trees, is poisonous, and has certain psychedelic properties. It sounds like most of the poisonings are accidental, when small children eat them. Personally, I can’t imagine wanting to put that thing in my mouth! The second photo is of a nearly adult version of the same thing that I found when I wandered back into the trees a little bit. It’s not quite as strange looking when it’s closer to full size. At least, I don’t think so.

I turned around after taking the pictures of the fungus, and saw a gorgeous rainbow over the water. I just love being here. Not ten minutes before it was raining enough to chase me indoors.

On Saturday I had a grand time meeting with the ladies at the Ravelry meet-up at The Wool Company here in Bandon. They graciously allowed me to join them. I actually remembered to get a picture of my Garden Party pattern in the shop. Geri, one of the shop owners, disappeared when she saw me take out my camera. What she probably doesn’t realize is that I caught her anyway. That’s her in the back of the photo at the other side of the shop.

One other thing happened recently that I haven’t blogged about yet. For the first time ever, one of my patterns is in a magazine! Get yourselves off to your LYS, newsstand, or bookstore, and get a copy of the winter 2009/holiday edition of Love of Knitting, and knit up my Aventine scarf. It’s a quick little lacy knit that I designed with Malabrigo Sock. Yum!

Edited to add: I finally got a copy (well, 3 of them) of this issue of Love of Knitting. I love the photo they took. Plus, it’s so fun to see my name and my pattern in a magazine! The editor even mentioned my design in From the Editor. Sweet. There’s a bit of a problem, though. Somehow a bit was dropped somewhere, and the same symbol was used on the chart for a purl stitch and for a k2tog. I put errata in my pattern shop.