Becca's Blog

Travel Diary: The Red Center

The first part of my travel diary is here.

The in-progress album of photos from our trip is here.

Alice Springs is in the middle of Australia—in the "Red Center." It's in the middle of cattle station country and in the novel A Town Like Alice was held up as a paragon of outback civilization. Anyone remember that miniseries with Bryan Brown? No? Anyone remember the Jam song "Town Called Malice"? Same cultural reference, and you're welcome for the earworm. And that is still pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Alice Springs. We spent less than 24 hours here, and coming from Sydney, Alice Springs definitely felt like a dusty little backwater.

It had been raining heavily, so some of the roads were impassable, including the one to our hotel. Our bus from the airport had to take a detour, and the driver remarked on how rarely that happened. Everyone talked about how the Todd River usually just had a trickle of water at most. We got a quick glimpse of the backside of town from the bus, which seemed to have a lot of public housing under construction. We found that our hotel, a big, generic outpost of a chain, was about a mile away from the central business district.

At the hotel I spotted the first new birds since our arrival. They were Galahs, which look something like African gray parrots with pink heads, but they're actually in the cockatoo family.

After settling in, we started out from our hotel to explore on foot. As we left, a team of fresh-faced boy athletes were arriving. They looked like a junior varsity soccer team.

The closest thing to see was the Olive Pink Botanic Garden, so we headed there. It was muggy and buggy and rocky. The few visitors all seemed to be sitting in the cafe. The scenic trail we took was rough and wet, and not much was in bloom. I'm sure in a different season it would have been a stunning display of desert wildflowers, but as it was it just seemed like red-dirt desert. Some large, noisy honeyeater-type bird kept jumping just out of range of my binoculars. We saw a few small lizards, but frustratingly, no mammals. Tired of slapping at flies, we decided to head into town, which, based on our map-reading was quite close. We only had to follow the river to get there.

Trailing a couple of locals, we started down a path next to the river, headed for a main road into the CBD. It was only by scrambling carefully around the ruts that we avoided sinking into red mud up to our ankles. I was concerned about snakes, bugs, ankle-twisting, and being mugged. When Jane said, about four times, "We are so taking a cab home," I replied just as many times, "OK. Fine by me. No argument here." We arrived unscathed and spent some time window-shopping. Alice Springs is a center for aboriginal art, so there are lots of galleries. We looked a bit but didn't buy, mainly because tribal art doesn't really do it for either of us.  It was the first time we saw many Aboriginal people; there were groups hanging out in most of the open spaces.

Then we looked for a place to stop for a beer. We decided to go into a locals' pub, even though we were nervous about whether we'd be welcome. We found an unoccupied table on the patio and kept to ourselves.  As I headed into the bar to find some chips (er, crisps), I aimed a vague smile at the sunburned white guy in sunglasses occupying a table close to ours, hoping to project a benign, live-and-let-live demeanor. In a while it started to rain a bit, and the guy came over to our table and asked if he could sit under our umbrella. We said of course, and he struck up a conversation. It turned out he was an Australian who was traveling the country with his young family in a caravan. They had rented out their home in Perth and planned to circumnavigate the country in 18 months or so. It was quite entertaining to chat with him and hear about all the places, both in Australia and elsewhere, that he'd been. With family originally from Ireland, he'd spent time in Manhattan working in a relative's bar, but he'd never been to California. We told him we were headed for Far North Queensland next, and he said that's where he ultimately wanted to settle his family. He insisted we stop in to Bo's Saloon, a cowboy bar that we had decided to give a pass. It wasn't nearly as hostile inside as we had imagined it might be. Hokey and tacky, yes. Hostile, no.

We mentioned the team we saw at our hotel and wondered if they were rugby players. Our new friend Anthony told us they were Australian rules football players, and there was a big exhibition game in town that night. Part of the reason that so many Aboriginal people were in town was for the game. Apparently there are some really good aboriginal players of Aussie rules football.

After Anthony headed back to his caravan and family, we wandered a bit more, and it rained intermittently. I dragged Jane into a small bookstore that specialized in books about the area. As usual, I picked up books as souvenirs: a general natural history field guide for central Australia and an outback cookbook. While camp cooking isn't my thing because camping really isn't my thing, the recipes looked sophisticated and the photography was beautiful. Also, it's bound with a hybrid paper-hard plastic cover that, as a book production person, intrigued me. The cover is already warped, so it doesn't look like something to recommend for any future projects.

We headed for the cab stand to get back to our hotel, and suddenly cabs were scarce. We ended up sharing one with two lads who were headed back to their backpackers' accommodations with a lot of beer. They said they were in town for the footy game, and asked if we wanted tickets (we declined). They also said that 10,000 people were expected to attend the game. We drove past the stadium, which from the outside looked to me like a fairly ratty high school stadium in the US—but maybe I got an inaccurate view from my quick glance at the outside. I think we learned from these guys that the team in our hotel was the Adelaide Crows--considered the hometown team.

After a shower we went to dinner in the hotel bar--I had a yummy, messy lamb burger with Moroccan flavors. And it started to pour. And poured steadily for a couple of hours as the stadium lights glared on. Apparently the Crows lost to the Melbourne Demons, according to the news the next day. I tried to imagine the amount of mud they had to play in, and was extremely grateful that we'd taken a pass on the game.

The rain caused big chunks of the hotel ceiling to fall at one spot in the hallway and there were buckets standing in the hallways to catch the leaks, as well as helpless-looking staff, just standing around with mops, looking up.

Very early the next morning we boarded a bus to Ayers Rock/Uluru. It was a tour bus, and many of our fellow passengers were doing a tour.  So we got narrative as we drove through pastureland and desert—which looked a lot like deserts in the U.S. I felt like I could have been in Nevada. I slept a lot of the way. We stopped at a camel ranch/rest stop/tourist trap, notable mainly for the flies and the awful coffee. (One of the factoid tidbits that our driver regaled us with is that Australia's outback has feral camels. They were imported for use in building the railroad and then let go, and they naturalized. So, like so many other human interventions, they're now an environmental problem. Apparently there is some market for camel meat and leather, but it doesn't really control the camel population. Urgh. I think I'd feel the same way about eating camel as eating horse--or alpaca.) The flies in the outback are so persistent that they got into the bus on people's clothing after our stops. It was a relief to arrive at Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) and check into our hotel.


Once again, due to a travel agent's screwup, they had us booked in a room with twin beds. I fixed the desk clerk with a steely glare and informed him that we wanted one bed. He calmly switched the reservation, but I was pissed, since I had called the travel agent about this and she said she had fixed all the hotel reservations. Our room was actually quite nice, with modern-style furnishings and a newly remodeled bathroom, although the hotel's buildings were 60's-era cinderblock. The architecture reminded me of college dorms--efficient, not stylish. Later that evening, the smell of rain on eucalyptus throughout the resort took both of us right back to the UCSB campus. It was a weirdly strong sense memory.

Having less than 24 hours at Uluru, we wanted to make the most of our time. We got our bearings and went to find out how to head into the park. At the visitor information center, we were shown a range of tours and a single shuttle out to the rock. Most of the tours cost well over AUS$100 per person. I was ready to throw caution to the wind and sign up for the sunset dinner tour and the dawn breakfast hike the next day, but Jane's cooler head prevailed. Instead we paid just $40 each to be shuttled out to the rock for the rest of the afternoon, and signed up for a sunrise breakfast and walk around the rock. Which we needed to complete in time to check in for our afternoon flight.

We got our shuttle out to the rock and thoroughly perused the cultural center. We learned the Aboriginal stories about the area, a bit about the natural history, and perused more aboriginal art.  Then we took a short hike (um, bushwalk) on a red-dirt trail through conifers and scrub and nearly missed our shuttle back to the village. We flagged down the driver just as he was about to leave.


It rained intermittently all night, which we were told repeatedly that only 2 percent of visitors get to witness. That didn't make us feel very lucky. The good thing about the intermittent rain, though, is that it mostly kept down the flies. In the outback the flies are extremely persistent, and you find yourself waving them away from your face constantly, although it doesn't deter them at all. All over the Uluru resort village, insect nets were for sale. These are worn over your head or a hat, and they put a mesh screen between you and the flies. I didn't care how it looked—I made Jane buy a couple within hours of arriving at the resort. And it was less annoying to wear them than to battle the flies. I can only imagine how buggy it would be at the height of summer heat. Every time Jane and I were in the hotel lobby we saw a trio of older Italian ladies who were wearing their insect nets and looking for their tour bus. They didn't seem to be having a very good time, and I felt a bit sorry for them.

We had to be ready for our morning hike around the rock at 5 a.m., so we turned in early and watched TV. The winter Olympics was still on, and Australian Lydia Lassila won a gold medal in aerial skiing. The media coverage of her win was delirious.


Our tour guide for the dawn patrol was a wiry old character named Barry. He took very seriously all the rules and regulations, such as carrying our permits anytime we were on park land. He also told us at great length many of the things we had already read or heard, such as why it's really discouraged for visitors to climb Uluru. (For one thing, it's steep and dangerous and lots of people die. But we got chapter and verse about why the Aboriginal residents don't want visitors to climb.)


When we started out it was pitch dark. Barry took off his shoes to hike barefoot, since some of the trail could be muddy or have puddles (in his words, the trail could be "squashy"), and he said he'd rather not get wet shoes and socks. Then he took off at a blistering pace. Jane and I don't walk slowly, and we had to hustle to keep up. I'm not sure why he took off so fast, because eventually he slowed down. However, we had let him know that we had to catch a shuttle to the airport shortly after noon, and we wanted to make sure not to miss it—he wouldn't commit to getting us back in time, but we figured the brisk pace was aimed at keeping us on schedule. The possibility of missing the shuttle and our flight lent a little edge of tension to the whole outing.


Eventually it began to get light, but we seemed to be on the wrong side of the rock to see the sunrise, or it was too overcast for a blazing display, or something. At any rate, the sky gradually lightened and we were walking next to an enormous monolith of a red rock, but it didn't turn gold or purple or anything. It's imposing to view at a distance, but in a way there's more to see when you get close up. There are waterfalls and fissures and caves. Although it looks smooth in the photos, the sandstone is really soft and rough. One of the first things I noticed was holes in the rock with whitewash below them. Lots of animals use holes in cliffs as burrows or nests, but the white streaks below the holes made me think birds, and probably falcons. So I was looking forward to asking Barry about them.


Ol' Barry told us about the mountain's geology, about the plants and the recent human history, and ALL the Aboriginal stories related to various sites around the rock, but he really was not big on wildlife. I suppose most people who visit Uluru are most interested in the history and mythology, but I would rather see a few good birds. Although large areas are not off-limits, there are lots of spots around the rock where it's prohibited to take photos. The guides stop you promptly if they catch you pointing your camera in the direction of these sacred sites.

When we stopped for breakfast (which was pretty spartan), Jane asked Barry about the glossy black birds we'd been seeing. He ID'd them as fairy martins with no further elaboration. I said I guessed the holes with whitewash were probably raptor nest holes, and he said, "Nope, all our raptors nest in platform stick nests." OK, so what *does* live in those holes, Marlin Perkins? I actually was too shy to pursue the topic, and he didn't volunteer any information. One bird that we asked for an ID on actually prompted a story. Barry said this flycatcher-like bird was a Willy Wagtail, and told us that the Aboriginal people consider them to be gossips who will eavesdrop on your conversations and then spread stories about you. He said he has seen native kids clam up and turn their backs when a Willy Wagtail comes near. When we saw them later in Cairns, they certainly had an air of being busybodies, racing around and flicking their tails.

With the sun fully up and shining on the rock, there was lots of bird activity. I thought I spotted more than one species of swallow, including one bird with iridescent blue feathers and a bright blue gape. My best guess is that this was a tree martin, maybe an immature.

I had to lag behind the group quite a few times after the halfway point so I could look at birds, and then had to trot to catch up with our group.  That let me get a good look at a rainbow bee-eater, a really amazingly colored bird. Jane missed this one, although I commanded her to get her binoculars out and look for it.

Finally, as Barry was droning on with yet another myth related to some rock formation, I finally saw a raptor, so I rudely put my binoculars up and tuned Barry out. It was a falcon, with a moustache like a kestrel but not as small. It turned out to be a brown falcon.

We saw petroglyphs

and watering holes and waterfalls and caves, and Barry told us lots and lots of stories. We circumnavigated the rock, and Barry delivered us back to our hotel with time to spare before our shuttle to the airport. It was on to Cairns, which, Barry warned us, was in the middle of monsoon season.

Travel Diary: Temporary Sydneysiders

Arriving in Sydney Monday morning, we shared a shuttle with two local women. We were the last stop, so we got a scenic tour of the swanky northern suburbs (gorgeous, with a tropical, colonial vibe--I kept picturing verandahs in those lushly landscaped yards) as the driver navigated rush hour traffic. In our exhausted, disoriented state, we agreed on the spot that there would be no driving on the wrong side of the road for us.

After many tantalizing glimpses of the ocean, and apparently driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge without recognizing it, we arrived in the beach village of Manly.

We spent our first day getting acquainted with our surroundings. We sat on the beach for awhile, watching people and the ubiquitous silver gulls until the blazing sun made us retreat. As we walked away we heard the lifeguards bellowing for people to stay between the flags or get out, and saying that box jellyfish had been sighted in the area. Lifeguards like to exercise their power the same way the world over--by instilling fear.We wandered the pedestrian mall called the Corso, which is totally geared to low-budget tourists like backpackers and students. The cheap clothing stores and restaurants are recognizable from any resort town.

That afternoon we followed the scenic walkway leading to Sydney Harbour National Park on the point just north of Manly. On the heavily used path past Fairy Bower and Shelly Beach, we realized we were walking on the wrong side--and then saw the signs instructing us to keep left.

We caught tantalizing glimpses of a bird that looked a lot like a starling or a mynah, which turned out to be the aptly named (and native) noisy miners. We also saw the first of many ENORMOUS spiders. I was pleased to hear frogs croaking. 

The hike we took is described as being about 5 kilometers, and in our guidebooks it's a clear loop. On the ground, it's not clearly marked at all.

We could see town and the coast at all times, but we often really didn't know whether we were going the right way.

We were dripping sweat and walked partway on roads, not being sure we were walking on the correct shoulder. And Australians are assertive drivers, to say the least. They must gauge their margin of error to the split second because they don't appear to slow for pedestrians in the least.

After a short while as pedestrians in Australia we became convinced that the biggest risk to our health was cars. I  started saying "death comes from that way" as a reminder to look the right, then left for oncoming traffic (that's exactly the opposite of what we've done all our lives--you try acclimating quickly to that).

We went to get a local cell number, and the girl at the Vodafone shop asked me about three times whether my phone was unlocked. I assured her that I knew it was (what do I look like, a techno naif?). Then I humiliated myself by being unable to work my phone. Later, in the quiet of our hotel room I activated the phone so it was usable for calls. No dice on Web-browsing or e-mail, though. Shoot--that was going to be my main link to the outside world.

I ask at the hotel whether there's Wi-Fi I can use, and they say "Sure, for 55 cents a minute." I sniff. This is absurd, because even obnoxious hotels in the states don't charge more than $12 per day, and free Wi-Fi is my birthright. 

All the restaurants reminded me of beachfront places in southern California. I had a delicious lamb-arugula salad with feta and garbanzo beans for dinner, which turned out to be one of the best meals of the whole trip. When we sat down at the beachfront place we picked at random, we asked what the racket from the trees was, and we were assured that they'd quiet down as soon as the the sun set. We weren't bothered (even though it was loud); we just wanted to know what exciting exotic bird it was. We couldn't see them, but we were told they were lorikeets, which turn out to be common as house sparrows throughout the country. We'd see them fly in and make their settling-in ruckus everywhere, almost every night. We managed to stay up until about 8 our first night and considered it a success.

Tuesday morning I was awoken by the same screeching, so about 6:30 I went out with my binoculars. It was already getting warm, and people were exercising all along the boardwalk--it was really  busy for that early in the morning, but it was probably the best time to exercise given the heat.  I heard but couldn't spot the screeching birds. I wandered the boardwalk and side streets looking for a place to buy coffee.  During my walk I heard a distinctively raucous call, looked up, and spotted my first pair of laughing kookaburras--Australia's iconic bird. I also saw squawking streaks of white that were too fast to get my binoculars on, and wondered if they were wild cockatoos. I hoped so and felt the thrill of really, truly not being at home.

I sat down at the end of the Corso and painfully pecked out my first message on the standard phone number pad--I am not a practiced texter, but I want to be. Dammit! I ordered this thing specifically because I wanted a QWERTY keyboard, but I can't find it in any menu, no matter what I try. I don't have the phone number I need--it's programmed into my old phone--so I decide to send the message as e-mail. That requires entering endless configuration data, all using the numeric keypad. And it doesn't work. Technology fail #2. I have my eyes peeled for "free Wi-Fi" signs. I see plenty of "Wi-Fi," but virtually no "free."

I find an open coffee shop, squint at the unfamiliar list of drinks, and order two long blacks, which I figure must be Americanos. The counter girl asks if I want large ones. I say yes. She asks if I want sugar, and I say no, but I do want cream. She looks at me a bit blankly as I wonder which will be more annoying: using a debit card or a $20 to pay for two coffees. My coffees are pulled and I look for some milk to add. I ask the counter girl and the barista, and they both give me the baffled look again, but I do get my milk. I learn later that you just order a coffee drink with milk in it. We will spend the rest of the trip trying to figure out if there really is any difference between a cappucino and a flat white. I grab a couple of super-greasy pastries from another shop and wander through the side streets before heading back to the hotel.

We head to the beach, and Jane stops to rent a surfboard from a sweet, adorable surf shop guy who tells her where the best breaks are.

After maybe an hour Jane gets out of the water. She says the surf was really rough and scary, and she was working hard. The waves break really quickly, so they do seem like they'd be hard to ride. We head for the ferry to spend the afternoon in Sydney proper.

Sydney's harbor is vast, and beautiful throughout. Everywhere green tumbles all the way down to the water. There must be industrial sections, and we see military ships and heavy equipment, but the natural beauty dominates. Parts of the ferry ride are rough, as the boat heads past open ocean. All the manmade wonders in Sydney Harbour seem to crowd right around the central business district: Circular Quay itself projects the grandeur of an old train station, but this place is still the nerve center of the city. And the Opera House, the bridge, and the botanical gardens are all right here, practically just an arm's length away from each other.The old-fashioned amusement park Luna Park is also right on the water, and provides a slightly eerie focal point to the night skyline.

Our first afternoon in Sydney's central business district we look at the Opera House, argue about whether to go into the botanical gardens, and wander through the Rocks, the original point of settlement. We see the usual quaint, touristy shops in shure 'nuff old buildings. Since Sydney was first settled in 1788, "old" is a relative term. We have lunch at a bakery in the Rocks and get our first good look at rainbow lorikeets, a pair of which are shamelessly begging from cafe patrons. We see a sacred ibis, which is acting disconcertingly tame. Then we decide to take the train to the Newtown neighborhood, which our guidebook tells us is where the girls are. We have to transfer trains to get there, and we're quite proud of our independent navigation skills.

At the Newtown station, we get out and start to walk. It's a pretty funky neighborhood, but we're happy to be away from the tourist district and where actual people live. As we wander we notice cheap Asian restaurants and clothing stores geared to college students: vintage and Indian. This place has a lot in common with San Francisco's Mission District; King Street looks sort of like Valencia Street, just really stretched out. We see a few members of our tribe, but we don't run across any lesbian bars, or even any comfortable cafes to stop in. We check a couple of used bookstores (they can still support independent bookstores? How quaint!) for a field guide to Australian birds. I don't find one, but I do find a newsstand that has free Wi-Fi, so I quickly check e-mail. We consider heading for the Glebe precinct, but it's too far away to reach on foot, it's getting late, and we're getting rather far away from the train station. And we don't feel comfortable just hopping on a bus. I don't want to miss the last ferry back to our hotel in Manly....

Our return train to Circular Quay is much less posh than the one out. We stop for a beer in a pub downtown (in the CBD, as Australians say) and watch some rugby on TV. We laugh at how impossible rugby is to understand. I allow as how these rugby players are kinda hot in a complete beefball sort of way. And I laugh (too loudly, Jane hints) at the fact that they seem to be grabbing at each others' shorts in the scrum. I text an acquaintance and see if he wants to try to meet up the next day.

Safely settled on the ferry and waiting to leave at dusk, I start scanning the sky for birds, and I spot a wide-winged, heavy-bodied, flapping profile. I watch it for about 30 seconds and then gabble at Jane, "Bat bat bat bat bat!" We love bats. We don't see them hardly ever. We've just spotted our first grey-headed flying fox.

Wednesday we meet Jane's family friend, Jessica, for a visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo. Jessica is an American who moved to Sydney for a job recently, and we're the first visitors she's had from home. We're glad to hang out with her and get her perspective. I think it's kind of funny when she says she lives in the Glebe neighborhood, which was our "bridge too far" of last night. She says it's just a 15-minute bus ride from Circular Quay, which she shortens to "Circular."  The zoo is cool, but we think the San Diego Zoo is better.  I think I've snapped photos of every bird in the exotic bird aviary. We see reptiles, and a kajillion species of rat-size desert-dwelling marsupials. There are so many that they sort of run together. Echidnas are pretty cool--they're like porcupine-anteaters. We see tawny frogmouths, birds with giant mouths and huge eyes in owl-like faces. Lots of wallabies and kangaroos are in an open-air enclosure; they all look sleepy and/or depressed, which is rather depressing. All the koalas are behind a fence: You have to pay extra to get close to them and have your picture taken (you can't hold them, though). So there are a dozen koalas in individual cubicles--what a natural living environment... We missed seeing wombats and platypuses entirely, and the penguins and cetaceans were nothing to write home about, to be honest. The elephant show was benign but felt dated and quaint. We were done with the zoo in under 2 hours, I think. We took a ferry to and from the zoo to Circular Quay.

Back at Circular Quay, a permanent feature is the aboriginal street performers playing digeridoos, posing for photos and selling music discs. I really don't care for digeridoo, and I feel queasy about people exploiting their ancient and ostensibly sacred (and personal) culture to make a buck from tourists. (Although I suppose my feelings about it are irrelevant.) I make a crack about one of my enduring memories of Sydney being awful digeridoo music coupled with secondhand smoke--because both seem inescapable at Circular Quay. Jessica says, "Yeah, this techno-digeridoo bastardization is pretty awful, but you'd be surprised how beautiful authentic digeridoo music is." I'm not convinced. 

Jessica has lunch with us at a pub in the Rocks, and I find my bird guide in a chain bookstore. I think Jessica surely must want to ditch us and get back to her real life already but she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to leave. We figure out our respective bus routes and wait together. Jane and I head for Darlinghurst because it's almost Mardi Gras and I'm still trying to connect with my friend. Jessica has given us the name of a bar that she thinks is fun, the Colombian. We wander for blocks, finally settling in a stuffy coffee shop for awhile and then having a beer at the Colombian before catching the bus back. We never connect with my friend. On Thursday, our last full day in Sydney, we start by going to Shelly Beach, a little bitty calm cove. It's like a swimming pool, and I go in for a wade. Jane swims some laps. Then we return a final time to Circular Quay.

We head straight for the Royal Botanic Gardens. It's not large, but it's stunning, and we get a great dose of birdwatching: masked lapwings, tons of sacred ibis, a dusky moorhen with chicks, magpies. And more wild cockatoos than you can shake a stick at. Amazingly, Jane spots a tawny frogmouth resting in a tree. She is a champion spotter. I'm just the ID'er. Then we encounter the park's resident flying foxes. Thousands of them, in their daytime roosts. They're resting, but lots of them are fussing and squeaking, scratching, squabbling, fanning their wings to keep cool. Some of them are have babies nestled in their armpits. We learn that the park does not love the bats, because their sheer numbers make them destructive to the plant life. But they sure are cute.

We decide we can fit in a trip to Bondi, so we take the bus along Oxford Street again.

 At Bondi Beach, Jane marvels at the beach's sheer size, and the size and energy of the waves. She insists that she doesn't want to find some gear and surf. I think there might be a thousand people on the beach. I'm amused by the workout area/playground, just like at Venice Beach in LA. The water is turquoise and the lifeguards are in charge.

We wander past the usual tourist shops and into a feminist bookstore/cafe that gives me a twinge of nostalgia. We find a cafe for dinner. In my seafood risotto I find a long, wormy-looking string that turns out to be a ring from a biggish squid. I cut that up and eat it, but I can't handle the huge green-lipped mussels. The squishy bits and parts are just too big for me to bite into.

We head the wrong way out of the restaurant and spend a long, tense hour wandering through residential Bondi before we return to the main drag and catch our bus back. We have to pack and catch a flight to Alice Springs the next morning.

On the road.

This weekend I'll be in Seattle; next weekend I'll be in San Diego. Is it possible to get weather jet lag (weather whiplash?)?

I'm headed to Seattle to research another "Knitter's Guide" like the "Knitter's Guide to Santa Fe and Taos" that Knotions published in late September. (Unfortunately, the link to that last story is broken; I assume it's part of the magazine's current web-hosting woes.) So yeah, you should pity me: I have to spend the weekend investigating Seattle's yarn stores. Actually, there's a lot of ground to cover, and I'm going to have to plan my time wisely and hustle.

Next weekend I'll be support staff again as Jane does her second (and final) Breast Cancer 3-Day. This time she's walking with both of her sisters, and I think they'll have a fabulous time. Jane did a great job of fundraising and surpassed her goal, because she's organized and diligent. It also helps that Shirley, her mother, had tons of friends who love and miss her.

We'll do something like a substitute Thanksgiving with Jane's family before we return (including her Alaska-based sister), and then we get to spend Thanksgiving at home together! You have no idea how wonderful that is unless you too are compelled to travel to relatives for every single bloody holiday.  It's important to spend time with family, and I value it, but I hate the schlep. And leaving our aging, infirm beasties at home presents its own logistical challenges. My mother has agreed to let us bring the dogs with us to Reno for Christmas, but I suspect she has no idea how high-maintenance (that is, messy) Josie is these days.

Color class with Vivan Høxbro

For the second day of the Nordic Knitting Conference in Seattle, I took an all-day class on color in knitting. I was drawn to the topic of colorwork more than the teacher. Although her color combinations are bold and masterful, Vivian Høxbro 's garment designs are rather too dramatic for me. And to be honest, at the beginning of the day, I wasn't optimistic about the class--I even considered cutting out at lunchtime to do a little Seattle sightseeing on my own. We received a handout with instructions for knitting a color wheel. Terrific, I thought. If this is the extent of the class, a boring talk about the color wheel and knitting an ugly thing, I'm out of here.

But we didn't have to knit a color wheel in class, to my relief. Vivian had us wind off mini-hanks of yarn in all the colors of the color wheel.  This took a significant amount of time, but it broke the ice among the students because we had to keep trading yarn hanks around.

Vivian gave a presentation showing some examples of color combinations in fashion -- and many of them I didn't care for at all. Missoni may have color down cold, but its designs leave me cold. Plus, I think the projected presentation's color was off--Vivian commented a few times that we couldn't see what she saw on her screen. Not inspiring at all.

Things got much more interesting when we got to play with all the colors, not just the 12 in the color wheel. We were asked to pick a handful of colors that we didn't like or wouldn't normally use, as well as a handful that we do like. Then we had to knit a swatch using two "don't like" colors and one "like" color. I chose teal, kelly green, and ochre.  The teal and green came together OK, and the green and ochre worked OK, so I was able to make some transitions so that it wasn't horrible. That was a learning experience. Everyone had to explain what they did and why, which was fun. Everyone does approach color differently.

The next exercise was to work with complementary colors from the color wheel; that is, colors that are opposite of each other. I had a hard time with this one--I believe that these combinations are usually garish and/or cliched. Blue and gold just reminds me of school colors and pep-rally rah-rah; red and green makes me instantly think of overbearing Christmas kitsch. One of the most valuable things I learned from the class is that those combinations can be more subtle--they don't have to be that bald-faced. Vivan's tip was to make one of the colors dominant and use its complement as an accent. One of her sweaters was a midnight blue with small yellow blocks. The effect was of stars in a night sky.

But I struggled with the complementary exercise. I couldn't come up with a definite set of colors that I liked and that worked together. I meandered. Plus, I was starting to notice that other people were doing fancy slip-stitch patterns with their colors rather than plain stockinette stripes, so I was feeling a little inadequate about that, too.

The final exercise was to pair up with someone and pick a color combination and knit a swatch for them. This was really challenging to do for someone you just met a few hours before, and we all felt pressure to make something really good. It made us observe, and think, and talk to the person next to us!

Vivian brought a lot of her sweater samples and used them as examples while she talked. She told us that she didn't bring any brown, or many shades of gray, because  she thinks people use them as a safe fallback. I think for the purposes of this class, she was right. The point wasn't to make tasteful color swatches.

It was interesting to work with the line of Harrisville yarns that she designs with and creates colors for. Most of them are heathered, which gives them complexity and probably helps them work together. Also, they're so thin that they don't feel good in the skein, but I can understand that a double-thickness twined or stranded material would be a more manageable weight using this type of yarn. And it probably gets softer with washing.

She concluded by encouraging everyone to try on her samples, which everyone enthusiastically did. I saw that the construction techniques were interesting and probably really fun to knit, even if the garments aren't my style. And it made me wish that there were an event during the conference where we could look at all the teachers' samples, because they all brought amazing things.(Maybe that did happen during Saturday night's happy hour, which I missed.)

The final thing I learned in class was that there is no substitute for color swatching. You can't know how two colors will interplay until you put them together.

After class I had coffee with some work friends, and then met Janine, Ryan, TMK, and Gail for dinner. Janine took a class on Bohus knitting, which sounded wonderful. I really wished I could have seen Susanna Hansson's examples.

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't got a drop of Nordic blood, so I couldn't claim that as my reason for wanting to attend this conference; I just wanted to learn about more traditional knitting techniques and traditions. Since this conference was a rousing success, I think the museum is likely to host it again--and I would strongly recommend it to any enthusiastic knitter.

Seattle Knitting Sojourn

It's now the third weekend in October, so high time to tell you all about my first weekend in October. Thursday night I flew to Seattle for the Nordic Knitting Conference at the Nordic Heritage Museum.

The museum is housed in a converted school that was built in maybe the '20s or '30s. I was charmed by the architecture because I went to elementary and junior high schools that were built in the '60s, with completely character-free architecture. Y'know, open-plan buildings that didn't have classrooms, they had "pods."

So sitting in my first session of the conference, in a very old-fashioned looking classroom being lectured to by a rather formal older woman, I had a happy little "back in school" fantasy unrelated to any life experience of mine. But I thought it was a terrific reuse of a lovely old building. Apparently the museum would like to relocate to a more central location, but I think their mission of preserving and propagating the community's Scandinavian cultural heritage is very well matched to the site they're in now.

That first day's class was Viking Cables, with Elsebeth Lavold. I didn't exactly know what I was getting into, having merely flipped through her books and ogled some of her beautiful patterns and knowing that I like cables. So I really wasn't hip to the idea that Viking cables represented any kind of design innovation; aside from knowing that the designs were based on old Viking carving and metalwork designs, I never gave it much thought. I think I vaguely sort of wanted some help not getting lost when working multiple cable panels and complex cable patterns. I didn't exactly get that from the class, but I did get a more organic feel for what cables actually do (or what I'm doing when making them). Part of that came from learning to cable without a cable needle (yikes). When I didn't use the cable needle, it became much clearer that I was moving the stitches. Sounds like a big "duh," I know, but it made something conceptually click for me. Then talking about stitches "traveling" made sense--I could determine where a stockinette band went on that reverse stockinette field rather than just blindly memorizing whether a given symbol means "cable needle in front" or "cable needle in back."

As for the cables, Elsebeth first had us work a pattern from her Viking knits book, starting a cable in the middle of an open field of stitches. Again, I really didn't realize that she innovated this technique. After we mastered that basic pattern she had us free-form knit a trapezoid, to figure out where those "ribbons" needed to go and to decide for ourselves where to put the curves in.

I'm making it sound like this came easily, but it didn't, really. I was quite resistant to giving up my cable needle, partly because I missed a critical tip from Elsebeth about using the needles to prevent having four live stitches at a time off the needles as you switch their position. Just like when I was in elementary school, my attention was a little spotty that first morning, and I probably absorbed about a third of what was said. Thankfully, most of it was written down in the handout.  I wasn't the only one with a furrowed brow, either. The afternoon was spent learning how to do a cabled mitered corner, which involves short rows. Until I make one of Elsebeth's lovely cardigan designs, that's going to just be knowledge for its own sake. Also, I attended the second Viking Cables session on Sunday, which started out with a reprise of the same material. I was a bit disappointed that there was so much overlap between the two, but I did get to review the information, really get what I missed the first time, and finish my swatches. What I wanted from the second class was some in-depth discussion of designing and charting your own knotted cables, but in the time before I had to leave for the airport, what was covered was basic sweater design, starting with calculating from a gauge swatch. Not exactly what I was after. I did break down and buy the book from the gift shop, and I'm likely to buy some more of her pattern books, which I know Article Pract stocks. (And on Sunday I ended up sitting between a woman who has apparently had knitting needles in her hands from the age of three and now teaches, and another woman who knits a LOT of cables. Their reactions to the aforementioned techniques were, respectively, "Oh, how lovely," and "Oh my god, it's so cool! This is easy! I know just what to do with this!" I would never criticize someone for their excitement about an idea--but I did wish the one classmate could have expressed her excitement silently to herself.)

Elsebeth gave a presentation during Friday night's banquet describing how she came to focus on Viking cables and showing examples of some of her inspirations. I loved that, because I've been inspired so often by patterns in other media that I'd like to interpret in knitting. Clearly, Elsebeth follows through on those moments of inspiration--I'm sure that being a designer by training and by trade helps. Her presentation also made me really wish, once again, that I could draw.

There were lots of out-of-towners at this conference, many from farther away than California (not including the speakers who traveled from Scandinavian countries). Among the Bay Area contingent were Carol and Susan, whom I met last year at the knitting retreat at the Olema Inn (which is holding its retreat again next month).

In class I met a couple of  women who turned out to both be friends of Feralknitter Janine, and it was a pleasure getting to know each other. Gail and I bonded over the mind-bending cabled mitered corner. I asked Regan how best to burn the two hours between the end of the session and dinner, and she invited me to head to the Fiber Gallery with her. About 30 conference attendees converged on the store at once. Everyone must have made a beeline as soon as class got out.  I gotta tell ya, that store has a niiiice selection of yarn and books. I bought Evelyn Clark's Knitting Lace Triangles. Then we met up with Janine at dinner, and I got to meet Marilyn van Keppel as well.

Tomorrow: Color with Vivian Høxbro.

Where my geckos at?

We returned from vacation late last night, and after kissing the beasties hello and scanning the house for damage, the next thing I did was pour a glass of wine and break an eight-day Internet fast. Not even e-mail for eight days. I mean. Really.

And although Hawaii has newspapers, they seem to be the kind with almost no national or international news, so we pretty much confined our reading to novels, guidebooks, and field guides. And we learned, for one thing, that this is a Gold dust day gecko, native to Madagascar and like so many other species, introduced to Hawaii and crowding out the natives.

I hate learning stuff like that, when if I didn't know it, I would just take uncomplicated pleasure in how beautiful a creature it is and how cool to get so close a look. I got up close and personal with another, unidentified species when it dropped onto my arm from the palm tree I was sitting under. It was mottled beige and white, including its eyes, making it perfectly camouflaged against the palm trunk and the sand. And when it scrambled off my arm onto my towel and toward my legs, I screamed like a four-year-old.

I had to stick this shot in (can you spot the gecko)? It's from a fruit stand in south Kona. We stopped there after we went to a very cool, pretty much locals-only beach far off the beaten path. The mango and pineapple we bought were fabulous.

Also, if you are enamored of geckos, you should check out this photographer's work. I found some of her prints on the evening that we went to the Kona Brewing Company for dinner. The service was rather terrible, but the pub grub is very good. Imu pork sammich. Yum. You know who has better beer than Kona Brewing, though? Maui Brewing Co.--yummy lager.

On Maui we saw another species of gecko--one that was a plainer green with a longer, pointier face. It didn't stand still long enough to be photographed.

We saw lots of other wildlife, including three native species of bird and many introduced species, but we missed the feral pigs that Jane had her heart set on. Getting to spend quality time with these guys was some compensation, though.

The feral cats back in Berkeley, by the way, are fine; we released them on the Sunday before we left, and they were showing up to be fed by the next morning. Our housesitter appears to have overfed them egregiously. I'm still trying to capture the big old patriarch, and I feel like I'm getting rather expert at the cat-trapping thing. I'll probably start loaning out traps and coaching other people on trap-neuter-release. (Yes, a slight breeze will topple me over into the crazy cat lady chasm.)

What's your favorite knitting retreat/convention?

Is there a knitting convention or retreat that you especially like?  This can be either the ones that you make a priority--you're willing to travel, and you save out of your yarn allowance to attend--or they're special because they're small and personal, and you actually know the organizers or you've helped organize it yourself.

I'm developing a list of knitting destinations, and I'd like to know in particular about the regional and home-grown confabs that don't get as much attention as the big ones.

I'm looking for as many replies as possible, so please feel free to redistribute this query as well as commenting.

Blogger's Block

I've got a bit of it. I have been working and knitting, but today I have no work, so here's a bit of catch-up.

Josie's had surgery on her toe, to remove a benign growth.  Now she's stumping around on a giant lumpy bandage and still wearing her giant collar.  We'd really like to leave the collar off, particularly since we're taking the two dogs to the mountains next weekend, but between the bandage and the hot spot on a back leg, she has to wear it. I'm thinking she needs a super, all-terrain foot bandage for the weekend. The vet says she should really only go outside to eliminate and otherwise stay quiet. Fat chance.

And our back steps must be replaced, because they are rotting out from underneath us--and so far the only contractor we have on the hook is the superthorough pest control guy who will inform us that the whole house and garage are falling down around us and we should really spend a hundred thousand dollars to tear the whole thing down and start again. Looking forward to that estimate.

I had a chance to visit with Rachael (and her sisters Bethany and Christy), plus some knitters I'd never met before, and Lala and Maia at the Whoreshoes show in Bolinas last weekend. Jane and I drank too much, stayed up past our bedtimes, and generally behaved in a raucous manner. Jane was shocked to hear me roaring the chorus of "Fat-Bottomed Girls" when the Whoreshoes played it as their encore. Her youth involved a little too much John Ford Coley and not enough Queen. At the show I was knitting on this: the neverending cotton stole. I still have four freaking skeins left! I took it with me to a proofing gig this past week, and while wearing black pants realized how fuzzy and linty the yarn is. Doesn't promise that it will wear well. Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern: which I think is quite elegant. I love the lattice-y symmetry. This is one of the "It's a Wrap!" free patterns on the Garter Belt site, and I'm using Shine worsted in Wisteria (a nice pale lavender). This one is Elizabeth Morrison's Take 2. But sheesh, I'd like to be finished now.

We stayed in a very Bolinas B&B on Saturday night after the show, and Jane got up early to surf. I got woken up shortly after 8 because the proprietors had made a special trip in just to make us breakfast. So I sat in a lovely glassed-in porch eating breakfast alone, wondering whether I was hung over and choking on guilt. (It couldn't be the kind of place where they just leave a bagel and some juice outside your door--nope, breakfast cooked to order, regardless if you are the sole guest in the place. I asked them to box up some toast for me to take to the beach for Jane, and she got a box of scrambled eggs, bacon, english muffin, jam, and hash browns. Which sat in the car for an hour or so after being in a warm oven for an hour or so.)  Eccentric service aside, it was a lovely overnight, and no one took it out on us by losing their, erm, composure on the living room rug during our absence.

Sunday afternoon I got to socialize with Janine and Maia again, plus Lolly and Hope, who was visiting from the East Coast. Janine was down in the Bay Area for a quick visit, and it was nice to catch up, and to see John and Ginkgo again.  I took the beginnings of a yoga mat bag that I'm kludging together for my sister's birthday at the end of this month. No pics of my current progress, but here's the yarn (plus a bit of my foot, and my back yard): The stitch I'm using is a very simple fishnet-looking four-stitch repeat, and I have about a fifth of the total needed length done. Then I need to figure out how to attach a drawstring/shoulder strap, and what to make it from. Here's a progress shot of the top-down mock turtleneck that I set aside in midJune--I'm ready to get back to that second sleeve:

At my proofing gig for a glossy magazine, on Friday I scored two tickets to see Light in the Piazza in the city. It's not a show that we'd pay to see, but free tickets to a Broadway musical is too good to pass up. The score is lovely (the singing was terrific), and it reminded me happily of our trip to Florence and Rome. The plot, however, is slighter than that of Oklahoma! On Saturday we saw the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" installment.  I'm sure the art director and set and costume designers had a rollicking good time. Us, eh.

That pretty much brings us up to this morning. Any interest in what I had for breakfast? (Flax cluster cereal and fresh blueberries.)

Idyllic little getaway.

Kayaking in Tomales Bay was totally fun. I didn't, as I feared, either flip the kayak over or flip out. I had a moment of thinking "gosh, this is actually deep water" (I swim, but not well and not willingly--I uttterly humiliated myself on our last snorkeling trip), but for the most part it was just amazing to be in such a tranquil, beautiful spot. Wildlife-wise, it wasn't a mind-blowing trip, but we saw a few birds and some seals. The surprising part was not even getting very wet. I was expecting to come back pretty much soaked, but we were in very calm water, and sealed in with those little rubber skirts.  It is definitely not a sport for people who want to look good while they work out, between wearing the skirt and a flotation vest and however many layers. I kind of hate looking like a dork (yes, emotionally I'm still 13 years old). It was worth it, though, and we'll probably do it again.

I did not, however, bring the non-waterproof camera into the kayak; I even left my binos in the car, which I regretted a bit. So no pictures from the middle of Tomales Bay, or from most of the hiking in Pt. Reyes that we did. On Sunday I snapped a few shots as we left, though:
  Below is the view from the cabin's deck.
In the mornings I sat and tried to bird-watch (it was very birdy) and knit at the same time. 

I only got a few stitches of knitting done on the Peppermint Twist Neck Scrunchie, so it's now a little over halfway long enough. Mostly I read a novel instead.  I started The Book of Salt. I like the plot (language, Lost Generation, Paris, homoeroticism, cooking--what's not to like?) but it's a bit internal, or psychological, or poetical or something. Not to mention sad.
Since the weekend was my birthday present, I forced Jane to wander around Pt. Reyes Station and window-shop with me (she's not a big shopper). I found the marketplace with Cowgirl Creamery in it to be as pretentious and unbearable as the Ferry Plaza marketplace. Food is great and enjoyable, but it's not a religion. Temples to flawless produce (which always hawk overpriced tchotchkes along with) turn me off.

I did find a bit of yarn, surprisingly, at Black Mountain Artisans. They had quite a bit of local handspun, including some labeled Bo-Rage, from Bolinas. I did a Google search but couldn't find any information about this spinner--maybe I'll have to accompany Jane to Bolinas soon to investigate further. My contribution to supporting the local economy was to buy this pretty hank of angora/wool/rayon (spinner unknown). It's now on my desk, distracting me from the projects in progress. I'm regretting that I didn't buy a couple of other hanks I saw. A reason to go back, no? I think this could make a nice kerchief-style scarf for a Christmas gift.

We definitely felt like we got away, even though we were only two hours from home.