sheep in the city

Have Clapotis, will travel

A few months ago I was invited to the wedding of a dear friend of mine, Brian, who happens to live in L.A. That's where the planning began. I knew that RayLynn would be going, and then my parents decided to go, so it turned into a little mini-family vacation! Fun, huh?! Absolutely! After the decision was made to go, I started joining lists and emailing knit-bloggers in California like crazy. I needed the low-down on the cool places to go, to see the stars you ask? Nope. Although I did see some. The cool places to knit of course! Thank you so much to all of you who took time out of your schedules to let me know which stores to go to! I made it to 4 of them, and boy was it fun.

On with the story though. I got it in my head that it would be great fun to all three (my dad still is the only one in my family that doesn't knit...so he got left out!) knit the same project. That's where the Clapotis came in.

I had been planning to knit it anyway, so why not make it a knitalong-party of 3. We all cast on during the flight out, note the handy pattern holder...yes, the tray locks work very nicely, although I'm sure that we looked a little bit odd. I chose to knit my Clapotis with Interlacements Texas and my mom chose the same. RayLynn bought a cotton/silk mix from Artful Yarns called Fable. The color number is 93, and it's named little red riding hood. The flight was a little bumpy at first, but then smoothed out and we were able to knit, or I should say they were able to knit and I was able to help them work the kinks out. So by the time we got to L.A. I had the tiniest little piece of knitting done, here's the picture of what I started calling the Mama, the Papa, and the baby:

My Dad navigated our way through the massive highway system they have there, to the hotel we were staying at, but by the time we got there all we wanted to do was rest. So I decided to forgo the session of Knit Therapy that I had been invited to by Mary Heather at Knit Cafe. (I'm still bummed that I didn't make it to that part of town) What did we do instead? Drove to a newly redeveloped part of Brea and had a late lunch/early dinner at a great restaurant called Taps, then headed bacl to the hotel where lo and behold...it was happy hour in the bar at the hotel...free drinks to guests...ummm, ok! So the girls knitted and had a few drinks while my dad rested.

Then it was pretty much time to call it a night...here's a shot of my parents, aren't they so cute?! They've been married 32 years this year, and I love just hanging out with them!

Day 2: Our mission was to drive to Santa Monica, visit Wildfiber, have a nice lunch on the ocean, and then get back in time for the rehearsal dinner. Sounds easy, right...we just needed to go about 36 or so miles. It ended up taking us about two hours to get there, seriously as lovely as the beach is, I couldn't handle that kindof traffic all the time. We made it to Wildfiber and horror of all horrors, I didn't take a single picture while I was there! The traffic combined with lots of great yarn...Socks that Rock, Manos, GGH, a wall of koigu, both KPPPM and Kersti to name a few, threw me off my game. I wasn't thinking about my blog or the people reading it...did I mention that I got to touch and feel the much talked about 'Socks that Rock'! If you want to see some shots of the interior, go check out Laurens. These pictures were the reason we decided to go to Santa Monica, be prepared to drool, just warning ya'! After making our purchases, we headed to the car, and look what was on each of our seats from my dad...go on, click to see! Aww, isn't he the sweetest? We each got a dozen in our favorite color! My dad is awesome! The ladies at the shop recommended that we eat at Pedals, a restaurant at the hotel Shutters On the Beach. It was a swanky place for sure, and this is where I had both my celebrity sightings. On the way out the door after we had eaten, walking in was Eugene Levy. I actually didn't see him at first because I was scouting out a place to take pictures, but then my mom says, "wasn't that someone famous?" Indeed it was. Here's RayLynn and I outside Pedals:

After lunch, we had to wait in the lobby for the valet to pull up the car, and since there was a big fireplace we waited by it. Who was sitting not even 5 feet away, talking on her cell phone? Mischa Barton. I didn't want to seem stalker-ish, so I didn't interrupt her while she was on the phone to ask for a picture, oh well! I was just glad that I got to see a couple celebrities while I was in town. (this is when I had to call Cathi because I knew that she would get excited about celebrity sightings, and she would know the name of the guy we had seen...and she did. It was Eugene Levy. Thanks Cathi, I'm always picking you for any trivia game!) We had passed one other knit shop on the way to the restaurant, so of course we made a quick stop there. It was called Yarns Unlimited. It was a small pretty cramped shop, and the walls were towering with yarn, but I managed to find a couple things (read bright pink Koigu) in the few minutes that we were there.

I hate to break it to some of you, but the poncho is alive and well in California. This was one of the shop samples that I'm modeling...it was one of many on display there. Yikes.
I don't even have the words to discribe to you the pain of the ride back home. Picture this, it's almost rush hour...on a friday...what does that equal? Let's just say that it took us a little over 3 hours to get back to the rehersal. Thank goodness for knitting, RayLynn and I sat in the back seat, happily knitting along on our Clapotis, which by now my mom has named the Crapotis because she hates the awkwardness of purling into the front and back. Silly mom, crapotis...that's funny stuff. So the plus side of L.A. traffic is you have time to knit if you're not the one who has to drive.

Probably the funniest thing that happened all day occured while we were on the freeway. At one point we were driving very slowly and noticed that something was littering the side of the highway. We kept trying to figure out what it was, was it paper, was it little bags of something...nope. It was bikini tops and bottoms. For miles. My dad kept telling us to grab one, but eww, and we weren't driving that slow!! Only in L.A. would the streets be littered with bikini's...what a city! We then headed to the rehearsal dinner, which we made it to just in time.

to be continued...stay tuned for more Clapotis action shots, and talk of L.A. knit bloggers, yes there are pictures of some of the people you and I only read about! Click here if you want to see what I picked up in Santa Monica. (note that there will be a grand finale, look at all the loot from California shot in the days to come) Thanks everyone for all the welcome home emails!