Saturday 13 March 2010

Where do you knit?

I recently got back from a great holiday going from LA to Vegas via Death Valley and back again. Before going on holiday one of the lads at the film studio (Knit1 TV) suggested I should take some photos of 'extreme knitting' while I was away.

OK these photos aren't exactly extreme knitting but they do show me knitting in lots of different places that most people don't knit. The knitting I took along with me was a new project for Knitting Magazine as I needed to get started on it. It is a lace cardigan in Drops Kidsilk and Sirdar Flirt but I was just knitting the start of the lace pattern. You may be able to tell it has grown over the 8 days or so we were way.

We started the holiday in Santa Monica but I didn't get any photos there. Unfortunately we also didn't have time to go and visit Wild Fibres which is a yarn store in Santa Monica. (I'll have to do a trip of yarns stores next time I go to LA!!).

On the second day we drove to Lone Pine in the Sierra Nevadas. (The knitting and map picture was on the way to Lone Pine). The film industry used to make lots of B movie Westerns in and around Lone Pine and they have an interesting Film Museum there. There are no yarn shops but I happened to go into Elevations, a climbing and hiking shop and the shop owner turned out to be a keen knitter, particularly felted knitted bags.

The next day we left Lone Pine and headed off to Death Valley. This picture is looking towards Paramint Valley at Father Crowley's Point on the way to Death Valley. We are about 4000ft here.

Having crossed various mountain ranges and Paramint Valley here I am knitting at the top of one of the sand dunes in Death Valley. The picture is not at all staged!! That night we stayed at Furnace Creek in Death Valley.

Next day, having got up at 6am to see the sunrise at Zabriskie Point (famous film and song apparently) we drove on through Death Valley.


Another not at all posed photo of me in Golden Canyon on the way to Badwater as we drove through Death Valley.


Having been at over 4000ft the previous day I'm now knitting at 282ft below sea level at Badwater.

From here we drove on to Las Vegas.

We stayed at the Flamingo so this is me doing some knitting by the pool (which was closed for swimming) after breakfast out here before setting off for some sightseeing. We don't do gambling but we did spend $4 on the penny slots and no we didn't win anything.

We did go and see quite a few of the hotels as they are something else. We had a very nice lunch at a restaurant in The Venician with part of an opera being performed in the 'St Marks Square' where we where and then watched the gondolas for a bit!!!

The next day we drove to Hoover Dam stopping on the way to see out first glimpse of Lake Mead (and another opportunity to knit). We also called in at a yarn store called Woolly Wonders in East Las Vegas. (I would include a photo here except I can't get blogger to put the photo where I want) The shop had lost of interesting yarns and the member of staff there that day was very friendly and helpful, so if you are in Vegas it is worth going to visit.

We did the Hoover Dam tour and nearly got stuck 500ft underground as the lifts decided they didn't want to work for a while!! Luckily they did work again as it would have been a long climb back up to the top of the dam.

They are building a new freeway and the bridge is still being build as you can see. When it is finished the view from the freeway bridge will be quite spectacular.

We spent one more day in Las Vegas and then drove back to LA. We spent the last night of the holiday in Hollywood and flew home the next day. Again unfortunately we had very little time in LA so I didn't manage to get to any of the yarn stores in the Hollywood area as most of them didn't open until midday when we were on our way back to the airport.
I might get around to posting some of my other photos soon.