Loot!!! (oh also, I am alive)

Well, we got back from our San Franscisco trip yesterday... I have so many pictures and stories to tell!
Here was what the plan originally was:
Drive down on Wednesday. Spend Wednesday and Thursday night in a Travelodge in Japantown and visit Imagiknit and Artfibers, do the traditional Embarcadero tourist stuff, maybe visit the aquarium, and then come back to Stockton on Friday night so I have enough time to make some kind of food for my neice's baby shower.
So with that plan in mind, we set out to Dublin. Me and Will both hate driving, so we planned on getting on the BART from Dublin and using public transportation the whole time.
The first bump in the road was when we realized that for overnight parking we were supposed to have purchased a permit online beforehand. Luckily, we found a cafe that would let us use their computer- for a $10 fee.
The train ride went well, though there was a small delay. It was my first time on BART and I was too excited to even knit anything!
We got off on Embarcadero, and travelled by foot to Artfibers.

I originally read about Artfiber Yarns in some knitting magazine where they did a San Francisco Yarn Crawl. It was described as a knitter's heaven. The article noted that patrons were allowed to grab any yarn off the shelves and try it out right there in the shop. I was expecting to LOVE this place.
Shockingly, I didn't.
I bought yarn, of course.

There was just something about the place. It was small, but OPEN. Basically it was six or seven long countertops with a sample skein and several swatch examples of each yarn; often in each colorway. The materials there were pretty pricey, and there wasn't a skein of cascade 220 to be found. In fact, there wasn't a skein to be found at all. The yarns were kept in 500 yard cones in basket drawers underneath each counter. All the yarn in the shop was hand-dyed by the shop itself. The most radical thing about the shop was that you buy the yarn by the yard. It was priced thus: '16 cents a yard' or '5 cents a yard.' And it was difficult for me to find a plain colored, plain textured wool. The yarn I ended up choosing, "Yurt," is an alpaca/wool blend with partially felted areas. This shop is definitely for a more artsy type of knitter than I am. Lots of glam, glitter, and texture. Not my cup of tea, I found.

Then we stopped and had a "posh bagel" which was DELICIOUS! I wish there was a Posh Bagel in Stockton! We even bought some of their day-olds and they were good, too.

At this point we decided to head to the hotel. We had been carrying all our bags and thought we could drop them off and then look around Japantown or something. We located a wifi spot and learned that actually our hotel was in San Bruno. We ended up taking BART all the way to the San Francisco International Airport. From there we wern't sure where to go, but it was okay because they had hotel shuttles. So we called the hotel and they claimed we weren't on the list!

After sitting in the chilly San Francisco weather (thank god I brought a wool sweater!) for maybe an hour trying to get the stupid WiFi to work, we discovered that somehow- through a mistake on the computers- we were reserved for Thursday night and Friday night, NOT Wednesday and Thursday nights.

So for a second there I almost cried because I thought we were going to have to sleep in a gutter and I was carrying around a $99 needle set and I didn't want it to get stolen from some idiot who thought I had money. But luckily, I remembered that I have an Aunt who lives in San Francisco and we called her up and found out where she lived. So we took BART back to Embarcadero (Keep in mind that round trip was $13 a person.) and waited to get picked up on Market st. Then Aunt Lucy called to tell me she was stuck in traffic and why not take a cab, and so we did and it was the first cab trip I've ever been on.

(I took a picture of a picture)

So at the very least I got to have a visit with my Aunt that I hadn't seen in more than 5 years. I found this picture of my mom, my aunts Lucy, Sally and Marina, all with my Grandma before her death in 2007.

Luckily, Lucy lives near the Presidio and (Ironically she lives almost next door to a Travelodge. And she gets 10% off for friends and family) so the next day was MUCH much better than the first.

shhhhh....this museum made me cry

we found a fallen totem pole

more presido pictures- we walked around for hours.

After visiting the Walt Disney museum (where I found a cu-hoot measuring tape in the shape of a bird) we went and had a pizza-by-the-slice. Then, I looked at the menu and saw that there was a dessert pizza! It had hazelnut cream and chocolate chips on it! So we ordered it, of course, and ate some and left the rest for Auntie Lucy when we finally took our bags and headed off again.

On the way to the BART station to get to the hotel, we stoped by Imaginknit.

bad shadow!

peeking in the window

I don't know why but I love imagiknit more than any other yarn shop I've been too. It's insulated with cozy yarns. Also, the cotton is in a separate room.

There I bought some Eucalen and some deliciously soft alpaca. I finished somthing with it the next day but it's secret so you only get a peek.

Soooooooooo soft

Speaking of secret projects I got a bit of a second one done as well.

So then we get to the hotel in San Bruno and we decide that it's so out of the way that on Friday, we'll just look around San Bruno instead of trekking all the way back to Frisco. (I was fine with this only because we had already gone to the two yarn shops I could find in San Francisco)

At this point it was decided that we would stay until Saturday morning and then get back to Stockton just in time for Alyssa's baby shower at twelve.

At around 3 pm on Friday we realized that we paid for parking back in Dublin for only Wednesday through Friday.

ARGH! Rapid packing, back on BART and back in Stockton.

Oh well.

We tried.

And at least when I got home there was a package waiting for me from KnitPicks

Gonna make a baby surprise sweater!!!(finally)

Also a package from WEBS with more Camelino :)

I'm going to dye the white various colors to make a stripey sweater

so that maybe next time I don't f*** it up so bad.

So, that's all my knitting loot.

I had so much fun in San Francisco! I wish I had a million bazillion dollars so that I could go down there and live in a hotel and yarn shops.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not dead. That gangsta guy was just trying to scare my brother, I think. You know, seeing as we're all still alive and well. I wish I lived somewhere less ghetto! My brother's talking about getting a surveilence system, so I guess that's good?

Anyways, tune in tomorrow for more Super Stitches Swatches!