Logo

I don’t know if you’ve noticed my attraction to blue lately: Capistrano, Hesperia, Denim Lace Tunic, Isola, and Basket Whip are five of the last six designs and they’re all blue. Maybe it has something to do with my mood. In my own defense, these projects weren’t all knit at the same time, quite a few months separate a lot of them, plus I didn’t choose the color for all those yarns. Maybe I’m not feeling all that blue after all. Anyway, whatever the cause, the blue has spilled over. My new logo is blue. In case you missed it at the top of the page, here it is again, but with the words stacked, as they will be wherever there is room for it:

I love the logo. One of the hardest parts of getting it done was finding an logo artist: someone to draw something real out of the mish-mashed confusion of ideas that poured out of Dave and me. I think David did a great job. Three cheers for David!

Aquarium

Dave and I spent most of Sunday at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. It was Divers’ Day, and we got in free by showing our (ancient but still valid) PADI advanced open water cards. In addition to all the normal stuff, a number of dive shops and other related businesses had tables set up, and talked about diving, dive trips, dive equipment. We talked to one shop owner (I think his shop is in San Diego, but hold me to it) who specializes in teaching handicapped people to dive. He’s instructed paraplegics, quadriplegics, people missing limbs, and the blind how to dive. He has astounding stories.

I’ve always, always loved going to aquariums. As long as I can remember I’ve loved seeing the incredible diversity of life that lives below the surface of the world’s seas. Aquarium of the Pacific is by no means the largest aquarium I’ve been to, but it was very nice. It has a lot of petting tanks, were people can touch the sharks and rays as they swim by, and other slower moving creatures in smaller tanks. We were in time to see the sharks being fed in the main shark petting tank. While they were feeding was definitely not a good time to put hands in the water. I love sharks. They’re so sleek, powerful, fast.

Quite a few displays are actually outside at this aquarium. Be sure to wear your sunblock, if you go. One of the outdoor exhibits is the lorikeet forest—more than 3,000 square feet of space for 100 brightly colored lorikeets. If you hadn’t realized it before going through this exhibit, you would be fully aware part way through that it is definitely spring here in the south land. Lorikeets were, um, pairing up everywhere we looked.

Back inside we not only saw a lot of fishes and things from this side of the Pacific, but from other parts of the ocean as well. There were brightly colored and plain anemones, with and without their clown fish friends, young giant clams, jellyfish, sea dragons, rock fish, sea lions, and shrimp of all sizes to name a few.

I have a lot more pictures available for viewing in my gallery.

Shawl

I’ve been knitting away on the heptagonal shawl. I took this picture a couple days ago, and it’s already quite a bit bigger than this. I’m knitting as fast as I can, as yarn should be arriving before too long for a secret project that will need to be knit up, pattern finalized, and shipped off before May 5. So I’m knitting fast. And the heptagon is growing. And growing. It’s not big enough to start the next phase yet. I’m hoping it will be within the next two or three days. Keep your fingers crossed.