Summer Wrap Up . . .. . and Gone.

The last month has been busy.  I finished two pairs of booties for my niece and I will be bringing them to her in less than a week, which I am incredibly excited for.  I also finished one of my Christmas present knit projects, but I can’t share it here so that the recipient doesn’t see it early.  It is up on ravelry (tatortut is my handle) so if you have an account you can see it there.  It turned out marginally well.  Now I just have three Christmas knit projects left.  Two of them are small and one is maybe medium sized so I am hopeful on completing all three.  Also, maybe I will finally get around to finishing at least one piece of the minimalist cardigan I’ve been working on for ages.  I always get about three inches done and then set it down for so long that I forget where I am in the pattern repeat.  The yarn I picked is uneven so I can’t really read the pattern back to find my place.  I need a really good, steady method for reminding myself where I am so that I don’t have to continually frog the piece.  I think I have gotten to three inches about seven times now.  It’s incredibly annoying.

I also picked seascape back up.  It’s incredibly easier this time.  I still have to use lifelines and have frogged a few times, but all in all it is a much smoother lace effort this time around.  I’ve actually gotten off of the first chart and am slowly but surely making my way through the first repeat of the second chart.  I think the projects I’ve completed since starting seascape the first time have really given me the confidence I needed to be able to do lace comfortably.  I’m almost ready to call myself an intermediate knitter.  Woohoo!  Now I just need to get up the courage to go to an Aloha Knits meeting.

A and I have spent the last month fitting as many things into our weekends as possible.  We’ve gone to the beach numerous times, so many times that A was really sick of it in the end.  We have decided, however, that the beach in Kailua is the best beach on Oahu.  Some will argue for Waimea, which is a nice beach, but you have to get there at 8am to find a parking spot.  We’ve only successfully gone there once, and that was probably a fluke.  Kailua is better though.  The sand is that perfect powdered sugar sand, doesn’t get too hot.  The beach is also not far from the parking lot so you don’t have to walk endlessly with all of your beach things.  The water is shallow for a further distance too and the waves have never been too much to deal with.   Beyond that, Kailua has the best plate lunch we’ve had on the island.  You have to go inside Time Market to get it, but that steak is sooo good.  If we had it to do over again, we would probably live there instead of Mililani.  We also stayed for a few days around my birthday at the Hale Koa hotel.  It is a military recreation area at the end of Waikiki.  It is a decent hotel, the rooms aren’t anything fancy, but do you really go to Hawaii to stay in your room the whole time?  The beach there is one of the better Waikiki beaches because its a bit less crowded.  They also have stands where you can rent anything from surfboards, to kayaks, to a very strange water tricycle which is oddly popular.  We tried stand-up paddle boarding while we were there.  Its basically a longboard that you stand on and you paddle yourself around.  It’s oddly satisfying and I was actually pretty good at it.  I only fell once.  A fell a bit more than that.  I liked it so much that I was ready to go out and buy my own board so I could do it whenever I want, but A talked me down from it.  You have to be careful here or you will get too many hobbies.  For my birthday A bought me the most gorgeous bike in the whole world.  I’m not a huge biker and don’t know a lot about them, but it cost a pretty penny and the bike shop guy was talking it up.  It’s a vita sport from specialized and I love it.  It’s white and the seat is all fancy so that the blood flow in my butt is not all messed up and I don’t get all numb.  I don’t know how it works, but it does.  It’s a bit hard to find good places to bike here, though.  We tried biking through Waikiki to our new favorite hot dog place, Hank’s Haute Dogs, but I got freaked out when my bike wobbled and I almost fell into traffic.  We had to stick to the sidewalk after that.  I think with a helmet and some practice I’ll get used to the whole riding in traffic thing.  I was always annoyed with it in Ann Arbor and I think that’s preventing me from getting into it now.  I was a lot better when we biked on the north shore.  I just need to find a good route that isn’t super crowded with cars.  Maybe it will get better when all the tourists are gone too.  We also discovered a nice little hike on the east side of the island near Hananama Bay.  It’s called Makapu’u Point and its part of the Ka iwi shoreline.  Our hiking book says its a three mile loop and only part of it is paved.  We walked the paved part and never saw the other part so A doubts its existence.  However, I’ve found our hiking book to be quite reliable so I think we just didn’t look hard enough.  Anyway, its a pretty quick climb and takes you to the top of the easternmost part of the island and it has a great view.  Its apparently a good place to whale watch in the winter and we could even see Molokai, although barely.   We went snorkeling again at shark’s cove but still didn’t see a turtle.  However, there is a beach on the north shore very close to Haleiwa that almost always has several sea turtles very close to the shore.  There are rocks covered in seaweed or algae or something that the turtles eat so there are there a lot. We call it turtle beach and it often causes a backup in traffic along the north shore because it is so full of people and because of gawking.  We went there a few times and managed to get some close up pictures with our underwater camera.

Here are some pictures from the last month, including some of the booties

Two turtles passing each other at Turtle Beach

Hanging out at Turtle Beach

Snorkeling at Shark’s Cove

View from my paddle board

Check me out! Paddleboarding at Hale Koa

Mmmm… delicious shave ice

He’s not falling right now….

Kayaking on the north shore

Random Beach Scene

Wind surfers galore

Heading for the top

Taking a short breather

Looking towards Kailua from the easternmost point of the island

Whew! We made it to the top

Makapu’u Lighthouse

Check out the awesome picture I took

Me and my hot bike, love at first sight

North shore sunset

Typical Hawaii picture, palms at the beach during a sunset

Other than those highlights, we spent as much time together as possible because this weekend was when A was leaving for his deployment, although we didn’t know the exact day until a few days before he left.  After spending a painful three hours in a hangar surrounded by families whose children should not have been up at 3am, after hugging him and crying too many times, and after the fruits and vegetables beagle had checked all the bags, I had to hug my husband for the last time for at least seven months, maybe for a year and watch him walk to a bus and drive away to the air force base where a huge plane whisked him away to who knows where en route to Kuwait.  It was exactly as anything the army organizes can be expected to be, much longer than necessary with as much confusion as possible.  You’d think they’d have this stuff down by now, but no.  I was glad that there was at least someone there that I knew.  A wife of one of the soldiers in A’s troop, who was supposed to already have left last week (she’s in the army as well) but got left behind until this week was there, and having someone else to cry with really helped.  It’s been over twenty-four hours since they left and I still haven’t heard from him.  The phone rang earlier and I freaked out thinking it was him.  I hate not knowing when he will call, I can’t put the phone down.  I slept with it in my hand all night.  I’ve eaten too many cupcakes to admit to and haven’t slept for more than four hours at a time, although that’s as much to do with the cats as to the empty spot in our bed.  I’m just glad that I’m going to the mainland on Sunday, its giving me something to look forward to and I really need a hug from my mother.

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