We’ve been really starting to settle in now. We drove out to Santa Cruz on Saturday and spent some time watching the surfing, and looking around the surfing museum.

Obligatory Wayfarers on pose by the Ocean:

But of course I couldn’t visit Santa Cruz without a visit to Hart Fabrics, so picked up a few little bits, one of which was some sewing inspired printed cotton. I cut off a small piece and used some embroidery thread to pick up a few details:

But the hoop, well it was a bit cheap and boring, so I modified it with some cotton yarn (inspired by this post) to make it a bit more exciting and cover up the roughness of the wood:

Yep, I am clearly going to cover the walls of the new crafting room with all kinds of lady tat!

After my trip to Hart Fabrics, I was really missing my beloved Bernie, so I caved and bought myself a little portable machine:

…and portable is right! It’s a Janome 124, also known as a Sew Mini. It is pretty much entirely constructed out of plastic, including the little sew through plastic bobbin cover, plastic all over the mechanism, except for a little reinforcement with metal. It weighs only 5lbs, about the same as a bag of flour, and of course with that vast array of stitches……. Haha! When I bought it, the woman in the shop was like “you realise that this is a really lightweight machine right?”

I joined a Meetup.com sewing group, is was good to have something I could just cart about no problem, especially as we are going to have to also have a transformer with it too to convert the power supply, so of course in this case, that’s what I wanted. Just a little portable machine to supplement my Bernie, as otherwise she might have been put out!

I also joined a hiking meetup group, and managed to have the car today, so made it to my first meetup!

We went on a moderate (apparently!) 6 1/2 mile hike at Ed. R. Levin County Park. The sun was shining, and it wasn’t baking hot. Lovely!

It’s been a busy few days! I also did my Genetics Coursera class on Monday, and have the first step towards our California Driving Licenses tomorrow!