Summer knitting, Entrez, and tank tops

We had a great time at the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the de Young. Of course, since we are all knitters, we were leaning perilously close to the garments to examine the construction. This was particularly true when it came to the knitted items. Yours truly was upbraided by a guard for leaning on a case----gazing at a felted neck piece! A future class at knit-one-one perhaps? But of course!

Last week I spent an amazing few hours at a great new store, Entrez-Open House in downtown Oakland. Knit-one-one instructor Tammy works there and it is owned by a former student of mine, Marie! (In my former life I was an ESL instructor at UC Extension). But back to the store. It is filled with all kinds of wonders: cute dog dishes, comfortable sofas and bean bags, fabulous table cloths and perhaps best of all from a knitter's point of view, loads and loads of different bags. And all of them are just perfect for our projects. Now the Entrez web site does not do this fabulous place justice. (Perhaps Ms Wooly Wumpus aka Ms Timbuktu Design will take on this task and gussy the web site up----I hope so!) The wonderful Tammy and Marie make you feel very welcome in the store so it is easy to forget that you are not at home. Tootle on down there-----and plan on spending a long time there.

Now with Spring in the air we have all been turning towards summer knitting---well some of us have. I realised that all of my scarves are very winterish so I applied myself to knitting up some cotton jobbies. I am on a swim team---SCAM---Strawberry Canyon Aquatic Masters---and even on those warm days it is nice to have a little something on the neck in those early a.m. hours. But for later on in the day what you need is a a little tank. The person who seems to create these tops at a mile a minute is the wonderfully creative Ms Yarn-a-go-go herself, and she is going to teach the rest of us how to do it too. Somehow a tank seems so much less intimidating than a sweater, don't you think?