Filoli, Mystery Object, Indiski Shawl

Hello,

Last weekend we visited the Filoli House and its gardens. I had never heard of it before - one of my husband's co-workers recommended it. It was built in 1915 for the mine owner Bourn, who also owned the Spring Valley Water Company. Then it was sold to the Roth family (owner of Matson Navigation Company - you've probably seen the big "Matson" shipping containers on the road). In 1975 the house and garden was donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The place is worth seeing, but a little too dark and dank for my taste. The gardens reminded me more of a plant nursery, rather than a true garden. But it makes for a nice outing. Here are some pictures of the Filoli "back yard":

Rose Garden

One of the roses in bloom - love the color!

Yellow lilies

I believe these are called "Flaming Torch"

A view from the so-called "Wedding area"

Also in the "Wedding area" - almost black pansies (they are a very dark purple)

A bench where you can sit in the herb garden

In the kitchen we saw this object:

Mystery Object

I maintain it's a primitive toaster, my husband says no. Do you know what this is?

When we left the place, there was this halo around the sun. Until now I've only seen halos around the moon, never the sun:

Sun Halo

And lastly, I've made some slow progress on the Indiski Shawl:

Indiski Shawl - 6 repeats of the first outside border done

Because the rows are so short for this border, I really have to force myself to mark each one as done on my chart. So far I had to rip back two times, because I had knitted a row twice. This represents a little more than half of the first outside border.

Oh, and we saw a sneak preview of Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - I recommend seeing it, it's better than the second one.

Till next time.

Hello,

I finally had enough of swatching for the Indiski Shawl. Using the 2/28 cashmere, I just couldn't get the pattern to look right - the stitches kept looking sloppy, despite trying out every needle size from 3.0 mm down to 1.5 mm. After a while I realized I need to use a thicker yarn - did a few swatches there, and finally decided on a lovely green light fingering weight alpaca yarn from my stash. This is what it looks like after the 1st outside border repeat, using 2.75 mm needles. I like it.

Indiski Shawl - 1st outside border repeat, 2.75 mm needles