KNITTING WITHOUT DOG HAIR IS NOT AN OPTION

...SO LITTLE TIME...

I woke up really early this morning, couldn't go back to sleep at 4:45am and figured this would be a great time to catch you up on my vacation.

But first, something interesting... In the past I have read my horoscope every once in a while, just to see if it matches at all with what happened at the time and mostly it didn't, you know how it is. This morning when I logged onto Yahoo, instead of taking me to my email account, it somehow took me to "My Yahoo" and the first thing that popped into my eyes was my horoscope of the day:

"Turn 'I wish' into 'I will' and 'I can't' into 'I can.' Don't you think it's about time you started taking yourself seriously? So stop telling yourself that your plans, hopes and desires are silly. Don't dismiss what your soul is trying to tell you. Listen to your secret wishes and see where they lead you. The stars are telling you that now is the time. Who knows? You might be about to start one heck of an incredible journey."

I thought that was pretty interesting because I have a serious "I wish" right now. We'll see how it works out. I'll let you know.

So, what happened since I last blogged?

Hmmm... I went to visit Barbara Walker on Monday. It was great. She so does not care that she is so famous. I drove over to pick her up and visit a friend of hers, Linda, and both ladies took me to lunch to a great seafood place in Venice (yeah, we jumped on a private jet and ate some shrimp in Italy, not...). Before we left Barbara's house, she showed me the remainder of her barbie doll collection and some of her fabulous afghans and other knitting projects. I also looked through a couple of binders with old Vogue clippings (when she had patterns published there) and pictures when she and her family modeled her knitted garments. That was really cool. Irwin would have probably spent all his time in the other room and admired her jigsaw puzzle collection. Barbara also showed me her mineral collection (Steve, you would have loved looking at all those gems) and the tarot cards she designed.

After lunch we went back to Barbara's friend's house for a little bit of knitting. A very nice visit. I feel special to have spent some time with famous BGW (even tho' she not knitting anymore) before the Sock Summit frenzy starts.

Oh, and I told Barbara about the Sock Summit 2009 Dye for Glory contest on Ravelry and that she was mentioned in the rules:

"You can call your colourway anything that suits you, but you may not use the words “Official," "Sock Summit”, "Ravelry," or the full name of a teacher or organizer without their permission (That means that calling a yarn “Barbara Walkers best favourite yarn” is right out, unless by some miracle, Barbara Walker says that is her best favourite, and gives you her express permission to write that on the label. We would advise you against hunting Barbara in the wild to get that endorsement. She’s a tough cookie.)"

Barbara thought that was interesting and asked me why they think that she is a tough cookie to find. ;-) So, no pictures. But I am sure there will be photo opportunities at the Sock Summit.

But I took a gazillion pictures at Seaworld on Tuesday. That was also an awesome day. We watched a great pirate show.

A pirate pantomime.

Sea lions as sailors.

A pirate otter who stole the treasure map.

And a big old walrus.

But the really breathtaking show was the one with the killer whales. Very, very cool. I took a bunch of videos which I still have to upload. But here are some pictures in the meantime.

You can look at all the Seaworld pix here.

Time to get dressed and get ready for my morning walk at the beach. This week I have walked every day for an hour before breakfast. Love it. It feels good to be out and exercise.