A View from Sierra County

A Busy Weekend

Filling the bobbin ....

Spinderella's thrums in Peaches and Berries, though once spun up is more a mulberry color.  Although it could also describe biting into the inside of a Red Haven peach, now that I consider it.  I have spun up about 120 yards so far and am winding the skeins off and letting them "rest" for awhile before deciding how to ply, as the gobs and goops of thrum material led to a scant bit of overspinning, but a wonderfully fun time watching the glitz go by.

On the needles ....

Susan's Spring Things shawl, which is knitting up quickly in the lovely Salt Marsh colorway of Anne's Wooly Wonka  Cormo/angora blend.  I don't think the photos do it justice, though the color is pretty close to accurate and the detail is good (go ahead, click and size it up for a moment).  I have been stretching it out to get an idea of how it will look when blocked; the stitch definition looks good and the fabric's hand is divine.

Baby Horcrux ...

One sock finished and the second started; thanks for the commiseration about my goof.  This sock is easy-peasy in worsted, so I will be making myself a pair out of the lovely spring-green Cascade 220 Becca gave me last month, and I really don't mind making a pair for one of the charities that prefer wool-only items.  Stephanie and I discussed trying to find a local source for our charity items and are open to suggestions, though these socks may well end up far, far from home.  In case you're wondering, that is the seat of my rattan chair out on the porch... spring is really passing quickly and knitting outdoors is fast becoming the preferred choice.

Wound and waiting...

This small basket holds three different hand-spun yarns: blue Romney, pink Lincoln (dyed by me!), and piny green Merino, one of my first respectable spindle-spun yarns.  There is also a bobbin with pal grey Coopworth from my friend Anna's sheep buried in there... I am amassing my various samplings of fiber types in order to make the Larger Than Life Bag in the latest Interweave Crochet. 

I can hear you gasping ("what?! did she say she was going to CROCHET?"), but I want to be able to put these early spinning efforts into a project I will use, and I can't think of a better one than a large tote made from multi-colored squares that can hold my spinning gear.  I have some medium brown Coopworth yarn, also from Anna and some nearly identical Shetland from Elemental Affects that I can use to help tie together the various handspun yarns and lend color continuity, as well as a sampler of rovings from the Dizzy Ewe in pinks and grey/mauve that go with the piny merino, so should have enough for the squares (if not, I can buy more roving, ha, ha).  The truth is that I taught myself to crochet from pictures in a book when I was a freshman in high school and made a raft of hats, a few skirts and sweaters, and even doilies; it might take awhile to get all the yarns spun, but I am sticking to Elizabeth Dailey's sage advice to spin with a project in mind.  As a special side note, there is an excellent article about the Shetland sheep at Hilger Ranch in Montana in the latest issue of Wild Fibers, which has become my favorite magazine... sort of the Travel Channel of the fiber world.

It will still be mainly knitting for me, though, and so I also cast on Anne's Shingle Creek Trail Socks over the weekend, the first of her Sock of the Month Kits (they are at the Wooly Wonka website; I can't give you a direct link, as it is done in frames).  I chose the Cedar and Sage colorway, because as you all know, I am ALL about the greens.  I am in love with the May kit, Boudica, as well and waiting for it to arrive.  The sock is designed by Miriam and named for one of my favorite female role models, so you know it has to be special.  Knitting with tiny needles is still very hard on my hands and therefore these socks will probably proceed slowly, but be worth the wait.  If only I didn't have to work the rest of the days of the week... think of what I could accomplish in my fibery world!

Spring Sky

 

This wide view of the Sierras was taken in Auburn, where part of the town is perched on a ridge looking east towards mountains that probably have far less snow than it appears....

This was a Saturday of pet care (visit from the farrier, baths for the dogs), garden care (watering seedlings and planting), and even fiber care.... I leave you with a beautiful flower and a wish for happy and warm spring days filled with fragrance.

Abloom in Socks

Seems like finished socks are blooming all over Blogland this week! Ruinwin, is showing off a mixed pair for a sock class she will be teaching, Colette showed off a glitzy pair, Margene revealed her Bigass sock (as well as pieces for a lovely sweater she will be sewing together this weekend), Anne finished up some spring-green socks and is working up a new design for her Wooly Wonka Sock of the Month Club, and Carole made these for her Bloomin Feet pal.

This time, I won't be left out!  I finally finished my Mock Croc socks Monday and was able to get a lovely acceptable photo of them Wednesday.  I tried to get a post together for all of you early yesterday morning, but my internet service simply wouldn't cooperate... it stalled and refused to pick up my photo or allow me to save what I had started, and then it was time to go to work.  So, finally, here's my bee-yuuu-ti-fulll pair in STR's Highway 30 colorway, just in time for sandal weather (the temps are expected to hit the low 90s in the Sacramento Valley this weekend and the mid-80s here at the Camp)

 

I am so delighted with this pair of socks!  Margene gave me the yarn way back last fall for my birthday, it took me two months to get them done, they don't entirely *match* (in case you hadn't noticed, that is not a high priority with me) and they are just such wonderful colors.  I know I will wear them a lot, in fact probably the next time I fly somewhere... as I was going through airport security in Reno a few weeks ago to head back to SLC, I put my box of shoes, etc., up on the conveyer, turned and faced the inspector only to have him look me up and down and say "Nice socks!" in response to a colorful handknitted pair I was wearing that day.  Kinda humanizes the whole experience.

This was a hectic week for me, with three long days that ran from early morning till nine at night, included lots of driving, and two training days... but that also means more knitting!  I re-started my worsted version of Susan's Horcrux socks (notice a theme here?  she's one of my favorite designers) on two circs (me and tiny DPs - we have agreed to disagree and move on) and got this photo at lunch break from training Wednesday

While I was chugging away on the gusset, the woman seated next to me (in an elbow-to-elbow crowded room, with tables at right angles to the speaker and his inevitable PowerPoint presentation) asked what I was making, then if the socks were for a serviceman, THEN if they were for a child... I didn't catch on.  Not until I went outside at lunch and tried to try this on, did I really accept that they were too tight for me.  Hmm.... the first time in over a decade that I have knitted TIGHTER than a pattern.  They are going to be gifted to a charity for children.  I was already half-way through the foot, with a nice, dense gauge, and NOT turning back.  I AM using size three needles, but that is the size I had traditionally used to make worsted socks for DH.  I don't know how (maybe rushing around too much), I had left home without a tape measure, so stopped knitting midway through the afternoon, guessing I was close to the length needed for a size 5 foot (now about a 9 or 10 year old, but I only wear a size 7).

Last night my neighbor, Stephanie, (well- she's only two miles from me; that counts around these parts) got me to attend her local knitting night group.  They meet weekly or semi-weekly for potluck and knitting and we all had a blast.  I finished the first Horcrux sock last night and got through the ribbing on the second.

Of course, there needs to be a next sock... I will have to reveal that after the weekend, because I can't make up my mind which direction to turn next, so many sock yarns, so little time!  Right now, my head is full of the wonderful Cormo/Angora blend yarn that arrived from Wooly Wonka in yesterday's mail, set to become this.  I will be starting over the weekend... what are you going to do?

April UFO Resurrection

I can't make up my mind about this... is it an act of compassion to rescue a friend's UFO, or merely an extreme form of procrastination about my own?

I began work on my UFO for April over the weekend, taking an unfinished purse that Laurie sent me home with and deciding how to properly finish it...

In the way of automatic cameras everywhere, mine has captured some of the nice stitch detail in this piece that Laurie knitted, a textured pattern made up in heavy cotton from Takhi, while blurring the printed fabric.

Laurie just hated the thought of finishwork... for me, I have decided that there are still interesting design elements in how to finish a piece, especially when there's no pattern to turn to.

In this case the red lining will add a lot of character, as well as stability.  It will also look better in person than in this crummy photo.  It is a hand marbled fabric which I will sew in place by hand, after attaching a button and button loop on the outside.  I will also knit up a long piece of I cord to provide a finished edging as I stitch the bag together, as well as a small, clutch-type handle.  I may even try threading plastic tubing through the handle portion, for added strength and durability.

I am trying to make up my mind about which button, though I have to do that soon, since sewing it in place and concealing that sewing with the lining are steps best done in order.  The bronze one would probably show up better against so much black... though I like the facets on the black plastic one.  Laurie, what do you think?  I am planning to ship this back to you when it's done!

Artisanal Spinning

That's what Glenn called my "artful" combination of this rosy roving

when put together with some Kid Merino I received awhile back from Becca... I hadn't any lace project in mind for that yarn but couldn't help noticing how closely it matched this Lincoln roving I had dyed at the guild's Dye Day last month.... couldn't there be something I could do with it?

Having been bitten so badly with the wheel-spinning bug, I decided to see what spinning this would be like, even though Sharon and Amy warned me it wouldn't be enjoyable... the roving apparently wasn't processed that well as there were slubs and bits throughout that kept me from drafting evenly, and yet... that lovely color!

So, after spinning the first bobbin-ful, I wound some of the Kid Merino onto another of my bobbins and plied the two together, figuring that the mohair would add a nice halo while the 5% nylon in the commercial yarn would help hold together some of the looser areas with the slubs... DH kept exclaiming about how wonderful it looks and how you couldn't get yarn like that anywhere else ("but would you want to?", I kept thinking).  As the first skein dried, I decided to try another, maybe even spin up the whole lot (I think I bought three ounces, but I can't find the bag label any longer).

There's yarn hanging to dry, and more of it rolled into a ball... these will be added to the Larger Than Life bag... now, in true "old hippie" fashion, I will be looking around for some sturdy hemp fabric for a lining!

There seems to be a color difference between these two photos, which is based on the fact that one photo was taken earlier this week, when the sun was shining in the bathroom window, while the other was taken today, a rainy and cold late spring day.  The coral tone is the more accurate one...

The other exciting news around here is that I received Wooly Wonka's Boudica Sock kit in today's mail (look under "New Products" on the lefthand sidebar of their web page)... this sock was designed by Miriam Felton especially for Wooly Wonka's Sock of the Month Club and features a cool celtic braid down the sock.  The yarn is a hand-dyed superwash BFL, and I chose the lovely River colorway shown in the photos simply because I already have the other colors available (I wonder if Anne would consider starting a Yarn Addict Frequent Buyer discount program). 

This kit will probably have to wait a few months before I can get started on it, as there are a few irons in the fire around the Camp... the Spring Things shawl is coming along very nicely and I absolutely love the Cormo/angora, even thought about getting a bunny while knitting.  One of my EHS parents is looking for one, and beat me to it when a second parent offered her's up to a new home....

The upcoming weekend promises to be busy and also warm and sunny again, so gardening will take up some of my time.  Before the rains, DH got lots of seeds in the ground, but there are two local plant sales this coming weekend, which means more to put into the ground.

Also, as a public service announcement, I would like to ask anyone interested in helping support my Headstart program with the Mother's Day raffle we are holding to contact me about buying tickets.  There are many great prizes for food and lodgings in our area as well as an overnight at a B&B, but mainly you would be helping us fund an end-of-year recognition for the preschoolers and the infant/toddlers, as well as field trips for the tiny ones, whose program continues through the summer.  Tickets are $1.00 each or 6 tickets for $5.00, so email me and I can arrange for you to buy them through PayPal.  Thanks in advance, and have a great weekend.

Happy Earth Day

I try to live Earth Day every single day.  Not always to the best of my abilities, and not always pleased with the results, but the concern for the quality of our lives and our planet stays with me daily.  I try to learn and try new things each year or return to old practices that have lapsed. 

I did start some seeds for my Dye Garden: indigo, weld and Dyers' Coreopsis.  The weather isn't particularly conducive to seed germination, but it is supposed to warm up next week... right now, they are parked by a window and being misted regularly by moi, with hopes and good words of encouragement.

I also did a bit of creative recycling...

these photographs came my way a few years back, unfortunately separated from any information about their origins.  They appear to have been taken between approximately 1920 and 1930 and mostly in the Pacific Northwest.  There is no chance that they are my own family, but it seems a shame to waste the happiness, love, hopes and pride that are evident in the faces.  I hope to repurpose them as gift tags, decorations on bulletin boards, even bookmarks, and will display them at our crafts co-op in an appropriately recycled cigar box.

I got a few good ideas yesterday, while attending the local Home and Garden Show with DD and a few friends. 

The local Master Gardeners were in attendance and they reminded me that I could be re-establishing worm composting as part of both the home and school garden programs.  I will be picking up some replacement worms this week, and cleaning out the old worm bin, a large Rubbermaid tub that youngest son spent an afternoon drilling drainage holes in for me several years back.

We might have learned even more if it weren't for the fact that it was cold and rainy.  We headed someplace warm in search of hot cocoa.  We also celebrated with Earth Day cookies from the local bakery...

My gift to all of you for Earth Day is to share some information about a neat web-based organization I have been involved with for the past few months... BookCrossing.

I truly hope that many people contact me and say "oh, THAT!  I've been particpating for eons", but I haven't seen much about their gentle philosophy of "read and release" amongst the blogs and websites I visit. 

I read about this organization, which has been in existence for five years, in Hobby Farms magazine around Christmas time, but didn't begin processing my books to release into the wild until after the holidays.  I decided that most of my de-cluttered books would enter the stream of the traveling book world rather than the waste stream, or at least that is what I hope has been happening.  So far, I have released 13 books into the wild, leaving them in all kinds of places such as in front of the grocery store, in a bathroom at one of the county courthouses in the two counties where I work regularly, or at local coffeehouses. 

I try to match the book I am leaving off with the possible clientele, but I also enjoy the randomness of the whole process.  I do look out to make sure that I will not be arrested as a litterer or terrorist... I have received emails from Book Crossing (which acts as a clearinghouse between members) regarding three books picked up and read by others.  One person decided to have her girl scout troop become involved in recycling books to others this way after finding a book I had released.  Those of you living in urban areas have a much greater opportunity to find a book in the wild than I do; I check the listings periodically to see if any books have been released somewhere I might have a chance of gathering them up, but no such luck.  Let me know if you decide to give Book Crossing a try, or about what new resolutions you have made this Earth Day.

Fiber, Finally

I have been home from vacation for over a week and still haven't shown you "what I got", but that is because my few purchases mostly weren't fiber-related.

I did find this useful tool holder at Three Wishes, Margene's favorite spinning-weaving-knitting-crochet store at the south end of town:

The Duluth Trading Company, famous for developing the Longtail T to save us all from Plumber's Butt, also makes all kinds of nifty tool bags, including this model that fits over a large mug and has pockets to hold things such as the crochet hook I am currently using for an orifice hook (since the one that came with my spinning wheel is ancient history) and my disassembled niddy noddy.

I also picked up a copy of Deb Menz' book, Colorworks: The Crafter's Guide to Color, which is a wonderful explanation of color theory as it relates to a variety of craft media.  I haven't gotten far past the pictures, but would learn tons from them even if I couldn't read.  I highly recommend this book.

The main reason why I was unmotivated to buy yarn, and why I also managed to visit two huge yarn shops this week that held me in awe with their displays, but failed to buy anything, is that I came home so enamored with making my own yarn.

Here is the tiny skein of yarn that I made on Margene's Emmylou during a half hour of coaching from her; Margene did the chained plying for me, and I have yet to get the hang of that method...  I stuck the penny in there for scale, but was so delighted with the color and the results that I had to show you.

I came home late last Wednesday evening, and spent the next day cleaning, oiling and tuning my Ashford Traditional.  Now, I have had this wheel, purchased from a friend's mother when she gave up trying to spin the family collie's hair and moved into a retirement apartment, for over a decade.  The first summer, I spent some time cleaning an unknown fleece, old and from a 4-H flock, and carding and trying to spin it.  I had carded and spun successfully on a spindle wheel way back in the dark ages before I was a mother, but somehow it just never came together (now I realize it was the crummy materials I was using, not the wheel).  So, when a friend asked if she could borrow it for a homeschooling project with her kids, I said yes and let her keep it for several years.  In the moving around when she returned it to me (three, four years ago?) a piece that held the "mother of all" got broken; a fellow guild member helped me get a replacement part last summer, but still the wheel sat gathering dust upstairs in my studio.  I was happy with the quality of yarn I had learned to make with handspindles... slow, but nice.

Then Margene and Emmylou sucked me in.  

Over the weekend, my Ashford and I managed to produce three bobbins of yarn.. this is the lovely hand-dyed blue Romney roving that Sarah HB sent me a few weeks ago as a gift, maybe just a tad overspun (ya think!?).  I ended up spinning all four ounces, attempting chained plying, giving up and plying the two singles from their bobbins (did I mention that I had gotten four bobbins and a lazy kate in this killer deal a decade ago?) into a respectable yarn waiting to be washed and hung to dry.  Once plied, most of the overspinning had been corrected and I have hope of making myself a nice accessory out of it.  I will have to see what approximately 90 yards of heavy worsted weight can do...

I also spun one bobbin out of a pound of a lovely Coopworth roving I had gotten last fall from my friend Anna, who raises a flock of coated sheep over in the Sierra Valley.  Faithful readers might remember them from this post last year.

Anna's Coopworth slid "like butta" through my fingers, which is a good thing.  If I had started with the thrums from Spinderella's that I have been spinning up in the evening this past week (brought home from Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair last fall), I might have thrown in the towel early on... the thrums are made up of a variety of fibers, including globs and nubbles of silk and angelina, and are fascinating to watch pass through my fingers, but are making a rather uneven and funky yarn... will probably make a great little bag though, with lots of visual interest.

I have saved the Coopworth to spin up once I have finished fine-tuning the smooth operations of my wheel, but for now, I am very happy to have it running and to be making yarns that keep me so engrossed that the commercial ones don't interest me.  That, and having friends like Anne (Willie Wonka)and Karen (Sleeping Dragon) producing intriguing and wonderful products might just keep me busy enough.

There IS knitting to show... I have one of the two simple triangle shawls I am making for our crafts co-op shop off the needles.  There is nothing fancy about this shawl, a simple triangle with a simple but pretty edging, except the subtle color variation in the mostly-mohair blend yarn from King Cole.  I am very happy with the results, and it will be on display by this weekend, while I scurry to get the edging completed on the pale green one that is similar... two FOs for April!  My Mock Croc socks have languished this week, but only need the last toe to be completed.  Watch for a photo shoot soon!

For those of you complaining about the lack of green, please be thankful for things that haven't budded out yet; the unseasonable cold of the last few days has left frozen buds on my fifty wine grape plants and my two persimmon trees, and not much hope for fruit from them this year.  We will probably still get apples, berries and quince.  (Big sigh)

I will leave you with a lovely Sierra sky and a wish for a happy spring time weekend.

Salt Lake City Library

I promised a virtual tour of the Salt Lake City Library and though it has taken several days to get any chance to blog, I haven't forgotten my promise.

I love libraries.  By the time I was in seventh grade, I was so proud of the fact that the local library was one of the places my mother would allow me to go by myself.  The summer between seventh and eighth grades, I checked out and read over thirty books (I kept a list).  My parents never censored my reading, and I moved into adult books at an early age, first with their library, then the public one.  Those trips to the library, set in a typical California garden mall, also gave me a window into shops my mother never cared about, including the crafts section of my local Woolworths.

Later, as a young and poor mother moving to the mountains, I found that Interlibrary Loan was able to get me almost any book I wanted to read, along with lots of videos.  I just had to be patient; eventually my requests would come around to me.  I checked out and watched Elizabeth Zimmerman's first video during that time period.

Currently, my strongest association with a library is the branch in Nevada City where our fiber guild rents the meeting room twice a month, once for our monthly meeting on the fourth Tuesday night of the month and another time for our Spinning Saturday get-together on the second Saturday afternoon.  My library sure seemed small and provincial last week after returning home from SLC.

I already knew that SLC had an award-winning, almost-new library in the center of its downtown area from my trip back for Estes Park last year; I didn't have time to see it, but Margene had promised to take Carole by after they dropped me at the airport for my flight home.  Therefore, it was on my list and I was NOT disappointed.

This photo, borrowed from the library's official website gives you a sense of just how large and how unusual the design is... these people thought of everything, from underground parking, through open book stacks and lots of computer use areas (and lots of computers provided by the library), to fireplaces indoors and out. There is even a ground floor courtyard with shops and tables to sit and eat, drink coffee, read, people-watch and knit (I did all of the above), and to shop at the library's gift store (checked that off my list too).

As I was going through the photos I took, I realized that I did not get any of the inside... I hesitate to take photos of people without their permission.  I can tell you though that the place was full of people and provided ample settings to browse, read or do serious research.  The collection is vast, and I only tried to scratch the surface of the textiles section and browse through the latest fiction... I would have to camp out inside the building for at least a month to get a sense of what other treasures are housed there.

I was happy to see families getting books together, young teen girls giggling over purchases of a few dollars while carrying armloads of novels, homeless people warming at the fires while reading a newspaper or magazine, and all kinds of folks in between.

However, the photos I took were of the things that made this particular libary truly unique.

The roof top garden

The awe-inspiring view of the Wasatch Mountains on a blustery spring day... you just can't get that anywhere else

Children rolling down a hill in the park on the same city block (I know, they are pretty hard to see, but their laughter heard from the roof was delightful to me)

The amazing walkway from the roof back down to the main floor

The formal sunken sculpture garden

Salt Lake City can be extremely proud of the fact that the attraction they chose to make world-class is a public library, open to all, free of charge.

Touring Around Utah

I had a great vacation with my sweetie, touring around a few parts of Utah and visiting his brother, Dave, and my dear friend Margene, and her husband Smith.  She has already posted photos of our group Easter breakfast at their favorite Silver Fork Lodge, and our junket to Park City, but I will embellish a bit more...

We flew into SLC airport on Good Friday, and were relieved that it wasn't completely packed with holiday travelers.  The weathe was a good ten degrees warmer than average for early April and daffodils and trees in full flower abounded.  Dave treated us to a fabulous dinner at one of SLC's finest restaurants, the Log Haven, up Mill Creek Canyon, one of many side canyons into the Wasatch.  The dinner lived up to the restaurant's award-winning reputation, right down to fantastic desserts, and we got to see the place in daylight a few days later when we drove back to pick up Glenn's glasses, which had fallen out of his jacket pocket during dinner.  The rustic resort architecture and awe-inspiring setting would be enough to win lots of attention, but the food really was a notch (or three) above our usual fare.

Glenn loves history, and so do I, though maybe not always as much.  He had helped his brother move to Salt Lake City last winter and discovered the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum back then and couldn't wait to share it with me.  The first settlers began arriving in SLC in the mid 1840s, so the collections span a period of over 150 years in great detail.

This museum is vast, with each auditorium-sized room (the building is a replica of an early opera house) packed with display cases.  There are examples of so many types of textiles and early pioneer implements that we spent all morning poring over that section, then had to take a long lunch break to rescue Dave, who had unknowingly locked himself out of his house when he gave us the keys to his car that morning.

The first photo shows a large floor loom, surrounded by fiber preparation implements; the quality of the lighting in the museum was my only complaint, as many items could be better highlighted with proper lighting, but I wanted to take this photo for Sara, to demonstrate the respect given to weaving by the museum staff.

We returned to finish the musem, checking out the wagons and handcarts and other memorabilia of the westward migration until almost closing time last Saturday.  Whew, a whole day!  This photo is features the original eagle over the gates to Brigham Young's ranch, set in a room full of display cases of various farm and home implements.  The museum was featuring a small display of straw weaving, as the early pioneers had a hat-making cottage industry in the 1850s (it's hot there in the summer), and some of the tools used in that process were located in these cases.

Over the course of the week, we also took in the Temple Square Museum (the spring gardens surrounding the buildings were incredible, though it was snowing and I didn't stop to take photos) and Glenn visited the Hill AFB Aerospace Museum, while I enjoyed the Salt Lake City main library (which will be the subject of a full post later this week).

After exhausting ourselves at the Pioneer Museum, we took a leisurely drive back out to Dave's on surface streets, allowing us to discover the Bad Ass Coffee Company, an SLC legend, where we picked up some souveniers.  Burros used to be used to haul Kona coffee off the mountains to processers, and this company continues to honor their hard work.

Easter Sunday featured connecting Glenn and Dave with Margene and Marshall, along with great food and mountain scenery at Brighton and Solitude resorts, where the snow was almost gone, but the clouds were beautiful.

We later spent the afternoon driving up Emigration Canyon, finding the only open coffee shop in town in the university district and even making a pilgrimage out to the shores of the Great Salt Lake by ourselves.

We had driven from Dave's out through Magna, the company town for Kennicott Mines, and ended up in front of Salt Air, which Glenn had remembered reading about and always wanted to see...

The palace has a long history as a resort, surviving drought, flooding and other trials, to be renovated into its present incarnation as a nightclub... with the lake right outside the door (though the shores are a lot lower; the waters actually used to surround the building and people could boat up!).

We explored the shore and got some nice lake photos, but really could have spent a few days learning about and experiencing the lake... someone wrote and asked me if I tried floating in it.  It was a bit too cold yet for that.  I would like to return someday and visit Antelope Island.  I really am ALL about the natural history more than any other kind....

We were very lucky that Margene and Marshall had offered to take Monday off and tour us around... the photo at the top of this post is the two of us with the Park City bear; he was friendly and so were they.  We pretty much had Park City to ourselves, and covered as much country thereabouts as 2/3rd of a day would allow.  Margene even managed to squeeze in a stop at Three Wishes (it's a good thing they don't have an online store; it would break me) on the way home!  She had Glenn interested in portable spinning wheels for me (that is, til he checked the prices), and Marshall was intrigued to learn that I had a circular sock knitting machine (now to find the time to master it and share some socks with dear friends!).

Our time was running short and Tuesday Glenn and I had to divide up for part of the day to cover our hearts' desires before we returned home.  After spending the morning roaming the Temple Square area and lunching at the Lion Cafe in the basement of one of the oldest buildings in SLC, he headed to the aircraft and I to the library, until Margene picked me up after work and took me home to walk Moxie (I would have thought he remembered me, he was so excited, but after all he is always like that!).  She gave me a spinning lesson on Emmylou and took me to SnB, where I got to get all kinds of hugs.  This is the only good photo I managed to get, capturing Anne and Miriam in the midst of some secret collaboration that will reveal itself later this spring.

I'll give you a little hint; it involves Wooly Wonka!

I was delighted to see old friends, and though happy to be home, will look forward to returning someday soon.

Saturday Sky a la SLC

Now, I know you all love my Sierra skies, maybe as much as I do, but today I am offering up something different.  My Saturday sky is wet and grey this morning, and I have shown you that a few times already this year, so I thought I would share a cityscape sky that caught my imagination Tuesday afternoon, while I was wending my way from Temple Square (where the flowers were beautiful, but it was too cold and windy to pull out the camera and still clutch my jacket around me) to the SLC Library:

The sky was magnificent all day, going from the greyest, thick clouds, to snow squalls, to glorious sun shining on cumulus bundles of fluff... that it the City Hall clock tower in the background.

I was delighted to be a witness and am happy to share with all of you... there will be real posts, with knitting, spinning and travel content in the days to come.  I promise.