Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Grand Targhee, WY!

In the ditch in front of our house

Blizzard warnings:

Good day to take the fish house to the lake, don't you think?  Particularly if you need to take a country gravel road.  (The nearest lake is still eight miles distant.)


"Aww honey, I'll be OK.  I've got four-wheel drive and the plow."


At least he's got the fish house as a winter survival kit!




Sometimes, stupid should hurt.

I guess I didn't really need to be concerned about the windows.

Happy blizzard to all my fellow Minnesotans!
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I don't do windows

I don't do windows.
  


I prefer to move.              


                               Seriously.


This is only a slight exaggeration.  
In 12 years, I have washed the windows in this house upon a handful of occasions. 

On this bright and beautiful morning I see I should have done a wash in November, back when it was still 70 degrees outside.






Now you know the real truth about me.  

Snowy Weekend

Friday night we had 11 inches of light powdery snow.  


 
Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  


It made a great day to go skiing at Welch Village!


(No pictures there, I'm afraid I didn't carry the camera.)













Sunday we lazed about the house.  


After a big brunch, we roused ourselves enough to go out for the first snowshoeing of the season.

The dogs went crazy in the deep snow.

Paul had his first chance to use the Dale of Norway mittens I knitted him at the end of last winter.

They're the perfect weight and breathability for snowshoeing.

Kinetic Cowl

Yesterday's mystery turns out to be a Kinetic Cowl from the most recent Interweave Knits.  Pattern by Amy Polcyn.




I crocheted it together this evening and gave it a try-on.




For a quick mindless knit, I'd highly recommend it.  The pattern calls for a skein of worsted weight yarn.  I used approximately 2 and 1/4 ounces of my worsted weight handspun.  

Now I'm ready to ski tomorrow!

120 inches of what?

One and one-quarter inch wide.


120 inches long.


How do you even block something 10 feet long?








Is anyone else knitting this thing?

GotH cooks!

We recently picked up 20 frozen chickens from Finca Mirasol, a branch of the Hillside Farmers Cooperative.  

Once a week, Girl of the House cooks a meal.   This week, it was to be chicken!  She chose a recipe a few days in advance and assured me we had all of the necessary ingredients.

She began with some of our home-grown purple potatos.

 

She added some of our yukon gold potatoes.   

Mmmmm, mashers!

While they warmed in the oven, she began her surprise:  Fried Chicken.

I'm sure I haven't made fried chicken in 20 years.  I wasn't much assistance to her.

Note the recipe book computer open on the counter.

I'd say she was pretty successful.

It was delicious!

 She's the chief piemaker for Thanksgiving.

Here she tried out a new recipe:  Pear Frangipane from Relish magazine (Relish is one of those freebie little magazines that comes in our Northfield paper)

This is amazingly delicious!  And it looks elegant too.  It will definitely be going to my brother's house for Thanksgiving.

I've been working on a new sweater.

Muted Musician Gansey (Ravelry Link) from Beth Brown-Reinsel's Knitting Ganseys.

Knitted from Cascade 220 in a lovely periwinkle color at four stitches per inch.  Anyway, that's the gauge called for, but I'm not sure I like it.  It seems a bit loose and 'sleazy'.  I keep knitting though.

Well, we'll see...

Knitting in the dark

 What do you do, sitting in the dark, while attending a two hour high school concert?

Are you able to sit quietly and attentively throughout?

Or do you bring a project you can do in the dark?

Simple fingerless mitts of my own handspun.

Two hours of two by two ribbing in the round, with simple buttonholes for the thumb openings.

It was a lovely concert and a productive evening!

Big pointy teeth!

We went walking in the Carleton arboretum this past sunny November Sunday,

We found fresh evidence of snacking beavers.

I like the artistic teeth work on this tree trunk.

The beavers chewed off this tree, then went to gnawing off the branches.

 

 

And dragging them toward the river.

 

 It was a good day for sitting on the deck and giving that newly dyed alpaca a spin.  

64° - warmer than Atlanta!

(I wanted to call this post "BEAVERS", but I was afraid of what the search engines would bring...)

A forgotten scarf

My future daughter-in-law, Bekky, sent along a picture of another summer project I'd forgotten to photograph.

And now it's cool enough to wear it!

A simple Kauni garter stitch scarf.  I love the way each color morphs into the next...

Warm feet

 Girl of the House has outgrown her slippers.  Small dog of the house managed to pull my

slippers into his kennel and snack upon them.  The temperature is dropping - we've finally turned the furnace on.

It's time for new slippers!

Here they are before felting.  

My slippers are the mismatched pair (made from yarn leftovers).

 And here they are after felting.

I love this Fiber Trends felted clog pattern.  I've know I've knit more than 10 pair.

And I know know I'll knit more.

Sun setting on the old silo.

It's a very simple view, but it  makes coming up the hill after a run all the more satisfying.  I catch my breath, slow down and truly see the light.

Roaming alpaca

After a little alpaca dyeing, I had four ounces draped over a chair on the deck to dry.

Checking on the fiber later in the afternoon, it wasn't where I left it!

The outdoor cats found it irresistible and took it off to play.

At least they didn't drag it into the milkweed in the pasture.

MEA break

 We headed to Alpharetta, Georgia for the Minnesota Education Association fall break.  (Really just a long weekend - Thursday and Friday there was no school.)

Wednesday evening, we piled into the truck and headed south, dogs and all.

20 hours later, we were at our long-awaited destination.

Paul's brother Harlan and his fabulous wife Coleen, have been living in Georgia for more than a year, and we've intended to get there for a visit for a quite some time.

 

We feasted!

(Repeatedly.  YUM!)

 

Dogs ran amuck!

Their two and our two.

 

We spent one day at Stone Mountain Park, climbing the big rock.

 

People have been climbing the Stone Mountain for years and years.

(We managed to restrain ourselves from marking our passage up the mountain with our own carvings.)

We geocached on the way up.  There's a ton of geocaches on that big ol' rock.

Part way up the mountain, a gal coming down said "Be sure to check out that ancient gum tree just ahead".  We were prepared to be impressed.  

Impressive, eh?!

 

The view at the top was amazing.

 

Harlan pointed out one of the few trees at the top.

 

We found a few more geocaches at the top.

(Some times you really need to get down and look closely...)

 

There is a tram that will take you to the top of the mountain.

Or in our case, to the bottom of the mountain.

While waiting for the tram, we discovered the penny machine.  When was the last time you've seen one of these?

Of course, at the top of the tram, there was a gift shop.  At the bottom of the tram there was a gift shop.  As you ride the tram down, the tram operator makes a pitch for coming back to Stone Mountain. 

Perhaps for Snow Mountain in December?

Yes, they were making snow, getting ready for a sliding hill. A sliding hill  you can buy tickets for now, to slide for a two hour period in December.

Be sure to get your tickets now!

At the base of Stone Mountain is a carving,  a full three acres in size, featuring three confederate Civil War generals.  This was an early work of Gutzon Borglum, who later carved Mt. Rushmore.

They do laser light shows at the base of the carving.

Saturday evening, we piled back in the truck for the overnight drive home.  By Sunday evening we were home, tired and lonesome for Harlan and Coleen.

Many thanks to the Georgia branch of the family for a fabulous time!!

Mountain spindling

 This summer we had a lovely week camping in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana.  

No, not Yellowstone.  We hid out in several National Forest Service campgrounds in the Bighorns and the Absarokas.

Even though it was late July, the slopes were still full of flowers.

It was an amazing time.

Even though we were just across the mountain pass from where the bear killed a man and mauled another woman while they were asleep in tents.

We didn't hear about that til we were home.

Yeeks!  Made me happy we don't sleep in a tent!

While camping, I spindled up this four ounce bump of merino/bamboo fiber.

I kept looking at the mountains, and then the fiber, and back to the mountains.  The colors were perfect:  sky blues, high meadow grass green and the color of the mountain rock.

This may need to be woven into a scarf, full of mountain memories.

A Freeze?

The weather service says it's going to freeze tonight.  I could have told you that.  Want to know how?

 

We have two hibiscus plants on our deck.  They come in the house and suffer through the winter.  The pink hibiscus gets happy right away when it goes back outside and produces beautiful blooms all summer.

The yellow hibiscus produced its first bloom today.   Just before the frost tonight.  

 

Oh yeah, I knew it would freeze tonight...

Baby booties for a soon to be mom. Undeclared baby gender.

I'd put these on a girl baby, wouldn't you?  Blue isn't just for boys, and the variegation helps, eh?

Reassure me.

These are from one of my most favorite bootie patterns:  Christine's Baby Booties.  They're a good use for sock yarn leftovers. 

(And I've got a bin full of those.)

The turkeys are bulking up

 The wild turkeys, that is.

We've developed quite the little crowd of turkeys that come up and eat under our bird feeders.

It's almost a shame that no one here is a turkey hunter. 

Summer knitting again.

Generic socks from Trekking yarn.

I can't resist rainbow yarn.