travel | Laura Chau

the end of 2016

December 29, 2016

It’s been a weird year, hasn’t it? Nearly done, and me not writing here for months! I’m sure I can’t remember half the things that happened, but here’s my attempt at catching up.

After our wedding we had to move house, as the landlord of the apartment I’d lived in for 5 years kicked us out in order to renovate. It sucked, but we managed to (eventually) find a new little house that’s pretty darn awesome. Three bedrooms (so we each get an office with a door!), gas stove, dishwasher, washer/dryer, sunroom, backyard, kitchen with actual counter space and outlets – it’s great! We moved less than a month after the wedding, so that was crazy. Of course, there’s still loads to do in terms of getting settled in, but it’s always a work in progress. At least with a trip to Ikea last week we finally have all the window coverings up!

Our new place is on the other side of town from where we used to live, so I left my fabric store job after three months. It was a pretty short stint, but overall an interesting learning experience. I met some pretty awesome people and picked up just a little bit of fabric. I don’t miss the job, but it was probably a good kick in the butt to take stock of what I actually want to do with my working life.

In early December I went on a little trip to the east coast to visit our Megan in New Brunswick. It was cold, but clear, and we knit, ate, and gabbed as much as we possibly could in a weekend. We even dyed some yarn!

For Christmas, we got a tiny live tree in a pot, and I made so much candy and cookies. And a yule log! We actually spent Christmas together for the first time (we’d been going up to our parents’ separately), and had dinner at my parents’ house on Christmas Day and at the farm after Boxing Day.

On the designing front, I didn’t self-publish as much this year as I would have liked, but I did get out quite a few patterns with other publishers. (See and buy them all on my Ravelry designer page.)

SIX new patterns from Swans Island:

Four from Harrisville Designs:

Three from I Like Knitting magazine:

Plus a few more here and there, including this one newly released from Diamond Yarn in their yummy Regal Alpaca, Waving Ribs Cardigan.

It was a busy year for me! I have lots of design and editing work lined up and a nice new studio to organize, and I definitely want to get back to blogging more regularly. I would also love to do some personal crafting, knitting or otherwise.

2016 had some huge ups (getting married!) and downs, and here at the end of it I’m pretty worried about the state of the world, especially for my American friends. But I’m still excited to leave 2016 behind and see what happens in 2017. All we can do is move forward, right?

Hug your friends and loved ones, and have a strong, safe, and happy new year!

new skeins

July 27, 2016

I forgot to share my purchases from Verb in Oakland! One of the “reasons” I “had” to buy stuff was to pay Denny for her excellent sample knitting.

She got some fancy yarn…

And some fancy fabric! Khadi cotton and cotton grown by Sally Fox! I’m pretty sure Denny’s already knit and sewn up all this stuff by now ;)

I got just a yard of this wide naturally-dyed linen – I think it’ll be enough for a longish sleeveless top. And a little yarn, of course! I also picked up Sonya Phillips’ Dress No 3 pattern, since she had picked us up from the hotel to go to Verb it seemed like the right thing to do.

More new skeins, a few that I spun up in July. It’s a good thing I wasn’t reeeeally doing the Tour de Fleece because this is all I managed.

Top: Polwarth in Flintstoner from Indigodragonfly
Middle: BFL-silk in a colour way I can’t remember, also from Indigodragonfly
Bottom: Polwarth/silk in Reverberate (OOAK) from Pigeonroof Studios

For all of these, I split the top lengthwise down the middle and spun each half onto a separate bobbin, because mine don’t quite hold a full 4oz. Then once all the singles were done, I used the jumbo plying head on my Lendrum to chain-ply them, joining the two bobbins’ worth and hopefully keeping the colours nicely intact.

I’m planning to put up some handspun for sale soon so keep an eye out if you’re interested!

Achievement Unlocked: San Francisco!

June 29, 2016

We’re returned from our jaunt to San Francisco! It was awesome.

We attended my cousin’s wedding in Walnut Creek for the first few days – it was HOT but there were actually a few shops and restaurants in walking distance, even if it did take 4 pedestrian signals to cross under the highway! The hotel had a pool, so we bought bathing suits and hung out there for a bit before going to the wedding at Heather Farm.

Once back in SF proper, we toured all around. It was fairly warm, but nicely breezy. Every day we’d get up a pretty relaxed time, have breakfast, go around for awhile and have lunch, walk around some more and then pretty much pass out at the hotel at dinnertime. My feet were pretty tender from all that walking – you never know what giant hill was around each corner.

By the time dinner came around we’d pretty much be done with being out, so we mostly had dinners in the hotel suite with my mum (groceries or take-out), except for the one night we had ramen, in Japantown. I didn’t take many photos, but here are a few highlights…

Took a hop-on, hop-off bus one day – it got us to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was great, but then when we wanted to leave, the last bus had already gone! We ended up waiting an HOUR to take the cable car back downtown. The Cable Car Museum was a great (and free) little museum stop.

SF MOMA recently reopened after a long renovation – it’s beautiful. And rather large!

Union Square

Japantown was great – interesting shops and buildings, yummy ramen. We actually spent more time there than I was expecting.

Asian Art Museum.

Happy hour oysters at the Farallon with my mum! (I should probably have gotten some photos of the three of us.)

Golden Gate Park. We went to the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young museum, which had a great observation deck view.

So many pretty flowers and plants, surviving the drought.

Lands End was a highlight – definitely worth the bus trip! The views were breathtaking.

Golden Gate Bridge, of course. (We didn’t go across or even very near it, ha!)

Sutro Bath ruins.

I was there!

And of course, high on my list was visiting A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland! It was beautiful, I spent a bunch of money, and then we went out for tacos with Kristine and Julie.

I’ll share my purchases from Verb next post! Stay cool.