Some more of our Hawaii Adventure...

Well in a few hours, DH and I are heading off back home after 13 days in Hawaii. I plan to write some posts about the places we've seen over those days when we get home. But in this post I thought I might share some things we saw last Saturday when we wandered around Waikiki filling in time while we waited for our hotel room to be available. We left the cruise ship at 9am in Honolulu and our cab had us at Waikiki in no time. So with the luggage being stored at the hotel, off we set. It wasn't even 10am. 

We decided to walk through this largish shopping arcade, The Royal Hawaiian. 

The philodendron climbing the tree was real but the huge plumeria/frangipani were fake...😉

The rest rooms were quite palatial...check these toilets...

When I first looked at it I thought it was one of those self flushing toilets. I had used those in Europe and sometimes they flushed when still be used...! 😳🤣

But a closer look showed that there was a bidet function...have never seen one before in a restroom. 

And the washing facilities were pretty swish too...

From the left:- the first nozzle automatically dispensed soap, the next was water and the third was a dryer. In the mirror you can just make out the cubicle/stall doors. They were opaque glass with a lovely texture and colour...definitely 'high end' quality. 

Out in the centre we wandered around looking in shops every now and then...this was a nice shop...

There was a sand sculpture on display in the centre...

Then we walked a block or so to take a look at the beach...

Our room wasn't ready until 3 but we spent the last hour sitting in the foyer of the hotel as walking around is exhausting! Lol

Pearl Harbor...

DH and I are in Hawaii and I'm even using the US spelling of 'harbour' 😉😊

Yesterday we did a half day tour to Pearl Harbor. It was a place that most of us have heard of...it certainly featured a lot in Modern History Curricula in countries such as Australia when I went to school. 

Before we went I was interested to read that Pearl Harbor is still a working naval base. And our bus driver did explain that that was why no bags or handbags could be brought in from the 'outside'. We had been warned by the tour company that the queue for bag check in could sometimes be long and they recommended just bring what you can carry in your hand or pockets...so DH and I did. 

The building in the photo below is where we saw a movie with actual footage of the bombing...very confronting even all these years later. 

Then we boarded a boat to be taken to the USS Arizona Memorial. The crew on the boat appeared to be defense personnel but I was too scared to ask! Lol. The public areas of this place are run by the US version of Parks and Wildlife but these guys on the boat wore different uniforms.  

Just a short boat ride...

Twenty one ships got bombing that early morning in December 1941. Some have markers showing where they had been moored...

And here's our destination...USS Arizona Memorial...

Inside...

It is simple but oh so magnificent! The Memorial is built over the sunken remains of the battleship. The Arizona was one of three that wasn't able to be salvaged. The bomb that fell on it, went through 3 levels of the ship and blew up the ammunition that was stored. The crew were doomed. The guide talked to us about the horrors, bravery etc of that time and in the days after...my tears ran free. 

The base for the guns 

At the back of the building is the Memorial wall...

Then it was back on the boat...and a chance to look through the museums before our bus came back.

In my Modern History classes in the late 60s I can remember writing essays on the causes of both world wars and I remember we were taught that the Japanese felt they were treated unfairly after WW1 so I read the timeline and found them interesting. 

 

Lunch choice were few; hot dog, nachos or soup...

But we had a lunchtime band playing...

And it was a glorious day! 

Aloha! 

More family tree 'stuff'...

Regular readers would know that I'm very interested in working on my family tree and to that end, a few years ago I did an Ancestry DNA test. It's the test that 'keeps on keeping on' as, when you least expect it, you find another relative you didn't know you had. 

Last December I was contacted by a cousin whom I had no idea existed. We worked out that her grandmother and my great grandmother were sisters. Shirley lives in Melbourne but has family here in Queensland whom she visits. And so it was that she was visiting them a few weeks ago. It was  arranged that DH and I would pick her up from Brisbane Airport and drive her to her niece's at Glasshouse Mountains. On the way we stopped at Redcliffe; we usually take visitors to The Bee Gees Walk in that city. 

And time for lunch before heading north...

We had a lovely time catching up. And just like the other people I've met who are DNA matches with me, we felt we had known each other for years, despite only just meeting. 

Now last year, thanks to DNA, DH discovered a whole new branch of his family. He found he had 8 half siblings. We've met one of his sisters and last month we met a niece, whose late mother was also DH's sister.

It was a wonderful meet up and both uncle and niece shared family photos. V saw family resemblances with her aunts/uncles/nieces and nephews and even her son, with DH and his children. 

V had a beautiful portrait of her mother on the wall...

And V showed us a photo of DH's biological grandmother ( on the right) on her mother's wedding day...

All too soon our visit was over; it had been wonderful. V was able to give DH quite a bit of information about the family, filling in quite a few gaps and answering some questions but raising others, lol! 

I commented on the patchwork table topper on V's table and enquired whether she had made it. She had, but not only that, she used to own a Quilt Shop and Gift Shop at nearby Dayboro.  

The UFO Challenge update...

This year each of the Sunday Stitchers has a list of projects that we will work on each month. The UFOs are numbered 1-12 and each month a number is drawn and we each work on that numbered project on our list. And then we bring that item along to the monthly meeting for Show and Tell; it may be finished or there has been progress but still some to go.
February ( which was #12) was my Hexagon Liberty cot quilt which I made progress with. I even brought it along to the March meeting as I had continued to add rows...

And after the March meeting I worked for a week or so more and added 2 orangey/yellow rows, but they aren't fully Stitched in place yet.

March UFO number had been #10 which was to start using the long hexagons that I'd cut out of Christmas fabric quite a while ago. I had thoughts of a table runner, wall hanging or tape topper but no real plan. For Show and Tell in March, I had this much done...

During that stitching day I worked on another row...

The squares in the middle might end up being little Christmas embroideries or maybe just cut out of gold/silver/white fabrics...that decision can be made at a later stage. But in the month, my pile of cut out hexagons started to become 'something'!
April's UFO number was 9...experiment with making different styles of granny squares from a lovely book I received for Christmas one year...


But I had already started working on a knitted blanket for our newest granddaughter, Abigail. Realistically  I could have crocheted squares from the book and made Abi a blankie that way and put the knitting aside. But the knitted one had become such a challenge that I was determined to keep doggedly onward with it. But I didn't have time for both...so...

I tampered with the list! 😉( Aussie readers might get the nuances there!)
This blanket is taking me a lot longer to knit than I normally take on such a project. Making mistake after mistake...especially with the lace part...so much frogging!  I really had to 'take myself in hand' to make progress with this project. Each row in the lace pattern repeat was different.  All those old strategies and memory aids came into play; I made checklists of the 12 row pattern and marked off each row. This was after I inadvertently knitted the same lace row twice...duh!
I started counting the stitches after I completed every row...with some form of 'Knitters' Dementia', I was forgetting the occasional 'yarn over' stitches in rows...lethal!  And of course the missing y o would be near the beginning of the row, not at the end! I sat in a room by myself with no DH, iPad or TV. On the fiddly rows I said the instructions out loud as I knitted...bad eh? 🙄
The only strategy I didn't use was the 'life line for lace knitting' as I figured I had the 4 rows of white garter stitch in every pattern repeat that I could always frog back to, and where it was easy to pick up the stitches again...no wretched y o stitches to manage! So it wasn't one of those all over lace patterns...
Photo taken from the internet showing how the life line works where you can unpull the knitting to that row and the stitches will be 'live' on the piece of yarn.

So here is a front view of the progress on Abigail's blankie; the Bounce Blanket by Tin Can Knits. This is a Canadian company and I'm grateful to You Tube videos for explaining some terms/abbreviations that I wasn't familiar with...

This project will be put aside for a fortnight as DH and I are heading off on holidays from Thursday night and believe me, this isn't a holiday project. I will take some easy crocheting instead. 

Wool on Sundays

Yes it's that time again; the first Sunday of the month means joining in with Janine over at The Rainbow Hare's blog to write a yarn related post. Janine's post is a tribute to Easter and features a lovely visual story of two knitted bunnies and a beautiful knitted daffodil. Here
I managed to get a fair bit of knitting done during March. I finished the rainbow colours baby blanket that I had just started in the last Wool on Sundays post. It was the same pattern as the other 2 baby blankets that I'd made earlier in 2018. The mum may have been born in the 1980s but she is so much a 60s girl, so a 'rainbow blanket' was called for.
When we took the parcel over to my neighbour's place, we each enjoyed a cuddle with baby Willow...

The new mum loved the rainbow colours...

( the shelf behind has lots of yarns as H uses yarn to make Dreamcatchers which she sells at the Markets)

And what goes with a rainbow blankie? Why, a unicorn of course! Lol

Also this month I have been knitting yet another baby blankie using a pattern I purchased from Tin Can Knits. It is only half way through but deserves its own blog post. Let's just say that a lot of 'frogging' or reverse knitting has gone on in the last few weeks...maybe even 'some hair torn out' type situations too 😉😉. So just a little peep at the back...once again I've used Patons Cottonblend. Sharmayne from the Country Fragrance blog told me of some other brands of cotton that she recommends. And one day I will buy some Bendigo cotton; it was the 200gram balls that put me off a bit originally; especially as I wanted to use lots of colours.
The back of the latest project...
The pattern is The Bounce Blanket by the Canadian company, Tin Can Knits.