Not much knitting

I have been knitting, but I've only been working on 2 surprise Christmas presents and I'm so paranoid about not finishing them in time that I haven't let myself start anything else, despite the fact that I would really really really like to start knitting some of the many new fancy sock yarns I've aquired. I think it's really nice to knit people gifts, I like giving people unique gifts and obviously something I've made myself is about as unique as it can get (since my attention span is too short to ever make the same thing twice). But at the same time I wish I was a faster knitter, since there are things I'd like to start for myself but feel like I can't until January. Boo.

Anyway, to keep you entertained in the mean time, I'll tell you about some non-knitting things. J. and I have been living the young single no kids high life the last few weekends, which for us means weekend trips.
Last weekend (the 4th) I surprised J. with a trip to the Russian River area (our favorite area for wine tasting, straight north of SF).
We stayed overnight in the beautiful Bodega Bay area:


And then we hit the wineries. This is California's version of fall foliage:


Look! A persimmon tree! I'd never seen one of those before. I thought they were oranges when we saw them from the car, but J. insisted they were persimmons and I thought he was crazy. But he was right.


Then, this most recent weekend since J. had Friday off we drove down to Santa Barbara to visit his sister. On the way we stopped in Monterey for a few hours and went to the aquarium, where we saw (among many other things) some hauntingly beautiful jellyfish.



Can you believe these things are real live animals and not just some crazy made up cartoon or something?

In Santa Barbara we went for a walk overlooking the ocean, where we saw some dolphins and many adorable sea birds, like pelicans and snowy plovers.


And we went to the Elwood Butterfly Preserve, where jillions of Monarch butterflies hang out in the winter. It was amazing. I have never seen so many butterflies in one place before, and it was really warm so they were all flying around like crazy. It turns out that flying butterflies are very hard to photograph. Here's one that kept still for a few seconds:



And I guess, since you've been so good and looked at all my vacation pictures, I'll show you a bit of my WIPs.
This one is an orange surprise:


And here's a pink surprise:


I hope the intended recipients like them!