Latest Knitting

Using up some GGH Samoa, that my mom gave me, I made a headband.
It is so cozy on these chilly winter days.

Oh the Joys of Leftovers!

After baking for days on end
(pumpkin pie, biscotti, butter cookies, coffee cake, French apple tart)
it is time to relax and enjoy the leftovers!

WHAT IS THAT?!!!!

Mr. came in out of the cold with great excitement.
"You have to see this!" he exclaimed.
Dragged away from my baking in my pajamas and apron
I donned my snow boots and went outside armed with a ruler.
I was to do some investigative work.
I marched back inside in a hurry to find my tracks of Northwest animals field guide.
The tracks left in the snow were none like we had ever seen before around here. They were huge. There was what seemed like a tail drag line in the snow ahead of each print. The prints sank deep in the snow under the weight of a very large animal. There were claw marks in the print (not a puma as we first suspected). The prints were 4" wide by 4 1/2" long. The only animal that seemed close was a Timber Wolf. That or a very large dog. But a dog would not normally travel through the thickets in our garden and would just go on the easiest route of open pathways, so there is suspicion that it is not a dog print. I wish I had an expert to look at the tracks because it would be great to find out what animal left them. We have lots of coyotes around here but the prints are too large for a coyote.

Here's my Christmas dessert.
A French Apple Tart
from Ina Garten's Back to Basics new cookbook.
I am a great fan of all of her cookbooks.
This one was fabulous. Yum.

Merry Christmas!

My cookie press isn't working properly,
but that wasn't going to stop cookie making!
I used a new recipe that's yummy.
Ho Ho Ho and enjoy the season!

Noel

cross-stitched + lavender filled (made a few years ago)

A quick last minute wreath
The tree was felled this morning with the notion that it would become our Christmas tree this year, but on closer examination there was too much dead material amongst the interior, rendering it unsafe to add Christmas lights. Instead, the end branches became this year's wreath along with our healthy supply of variegated holly.

Monster

There is supposed to be a monster storm
heading our way today bringing up to 24" of new snow.
Wow!
In the meanwhile I'm keeping the birds well fed.

Lovely Morning!

Snow glorious snow!
I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere today!
Cinnamon swirl biscuits just came out of the oven.
They're the perfect accompaniment,
with some chocolate stoked coffee,
to the view outside of continuous snowfall.
It looks like the bunnies are going to
remain in residence in the garage for quite a while
with the cold temperatures forecast for the next week.
The birdies were practically knocking on the door
for me to put out seed for them, which I did.
I love the snow, it's just heavenly!

Winter Joy

I know it's not technically winter yet, but looking outside at the 2" of snow you would certainly be fooled. I love all the reflected light off the snow that makes the house glow inside, especially at this low point of the sun's arc in the sky. Snow always buoys my soul if I don't have to drive anywhere. The crunch under foot sends me back to my month in Vermont long ago. That texture transports me to a world away from responsibility and to a place of limitless imagination. It was a window on unimpeded life that I could not have enjoyed if not for the support of my wonderful family.
Yesterday I enjoyed a morning with my family as we all, except the U student, ran in the Solstice Run 1 mile race, in the mid thirties temperature with a strong wind, brrrr. Through the race I looked just ahead and convinced myself to pass people that I thought could possibly be in my age group with success. Later my daughter was awarded first place in her age group, and I, the most unlikely recipient, won for my age group (and I might add at the upper most reaches of that age group of ten long years)! This little victory was so joyous for a person that had always been in the last to be chosen category for school sports teams. I truly was hoping for third place, so I was shocked to have won, plus I received a week membership at the gym. I don't know how to use any gym equipment. It will be mighty embarrassing to use that prize. Snow + a blue ribbon, life is good near the lowest apex of the sun.

Ho Ho Ho

I should call this my ferry scarf.
I've been working on it for years as
a light weight knitting project
to toss in my tote to work on
while crossing the sound.
At last it is finally finished.
There have been many rows that have been ripped
on this one, after realizing that
one misplaced stitch
throws off the whole pattern,
but isn't recognizable until after two rows or more are worked.
It is quite a relief to have this project off my list to finish!

Crochet Wrap

Rowan Bark Pattern, modified
It was supposed to be a quarter circle but I wanted a wider wrap.
I like how it has a bit of a shawl collar.
Suri baby alpaca + mohair.
This is one cozy wrap for lounging around the house in the long dark days of winter.

Blooming December

Searching for beauty wherever it may be hiding.

As the air chills and the clouds lock tight to exclude light
there are those that resist the season and continue to bloom.
Roses, ceanothus, hydrangea, feverfew, camellia, fuschia, cyclamen, erigeron,
viburnum, lithodora, arbutus lift my near winter weariness with their varied petals.
Thank you flowers. I love you.

Isolation

Death means permanent isolation from those that you care about.
Sudden unprepared death is shocking,
a temblor to one's core.
It's been hard to breathe.
Someone so central to our lives over the last three years,
someone that we would see every day is gone
forever.
We never said goodbye,
until after he was gone.
He knew how much we appreciated him however.
We knew how he felt about us.
Crying hasn't been this profuse since
my world was shattered in 1984
when my father died
suddenly as well.
I know that only time will
begin to heal the hurt.
Why do good people always go long before they should?

Off the Needles, On the Hook

Here's a closeup of a scarf that took one day to knit.
I modified a pattern from Twinkles Weekend Knits
and used up a Rowan Big Wool Print yarn that has
languished in my stash for a long while.

This one is still in progress.
It's a Rowan pattern called Bark that I have wanted to make for years.
It is crocheted in a quarter circle to make a shawl.
Eventually it will have a picot edge of Rowan Big Wool Tuft.
I have started this pattern at least six times with different yarn combinations in the last few weeks, ripping countless stitches and rewinding ball after ball. Now I think I have found a combination that I am happy with. The pattern is supposed to be made with very thick yarn and when I worked it up in that yarn it was too stiff for my liking. This may be a great pattern to start using up the expansive stash pile, or I may use up the stash to make a stripey knit blanket.

Note: I have ripped the whole shawl. I didn't like it after all.

Make Us Proud

Bring light into darkness.

Make the important things count like quality education for all, safe bridges, access to medical care, safe food, renewable resources for energy, clean air and water, upholding real human rights, and an unquestionable democracy. Banish greed, access to power only through special interest, war. Embrace diplomacy, freedom of ideas, personal choice, peace, prosperity for all. We need you more now than ever before to lift this country out of its hollow to become a haven for truth and rational thought.

Best wishes to this land of ours.

Happy Halloween

Here's a little project that I made up from two skeins of sale Rowan Big Wool. I call it my core warmer. It makes me nice and cozy as the weather turns chilly, even though I look like a pumpkin. Big Wool is so satisfying to knit since a project can be completed so quickly. I wish I had bought one more skein so I could have made it a bit longer and had enough to make straps. Oh well, I found some nice braid to make straps. Right now I'm working on a Big Wool wrap that should be done soon.

Done!

There was only one skein of this yarn at Churchmouse's 40% off sale so I asked if it would be enough to make a scarf. I was told that I should make a lace pattern. After experimenting with several different patterns I settled on this one and am so happy with how it turned out. It's made of silk and cashmere and oh so deliciously soft.

Crataegus phaenopyrum

This gorgeous tree, Washington Hawthorne, started out as a 6" seedling from the Arbor Day Foundation and has grown into a glorious mature tree that the deer love to browse. Watch out while clipping for wreath-making since the branches are covered with four inch thorns!

seed seekers

While the Stellar Jays and Red-breasted Nuthatches worked the bird feeders overhead the pheasant kept looking up as if to ask if they would kick some seed out his way.Once he discovered me he exited in a hurry.

Poppy

Here's a little sweater that I made in one week as a gift for a new baby. I wish all the sweaters I've made only took that long to construct.
It's a Debbie Bliss pattern with GGH Samoa yarn.

Crop

This has been the best pumpkin crop ever. They're huge and plentiful. It's surprising since there was very little heat this summer, yet plenty of rain. They drank up and filled out. I love the mix of varieties: cinderella, ghost and jack-be-little. Plus there were the seedlings from last year's crop, although I can't remember if they were sugars or seedlings from yet another previous year. I see them splayed out along the kitchen floor with lusting visions of pumpkin bread, soup, roasted seeds and pies, plus scary carvings for Halloween. Oh the glory of autumn!

Edibles in the Public Realm

As I drove past the elementary school this morning, and saw a woman picking rose hips, I thought that our public landscapes should have far more edible plants, that it should become public policy to help feed people, especially as the world struggles with high food costs. Rosalind Creasy (she takes gorgeous photographs of edibles) impassionedly lectured on edibles while I was in college yet her zeal for food plants has never caught on in the public realm. I've always tried to have bird habitat in my public plantings but I think it's time for a human edible movement. Not only should everyone be encouraged, ala Victory Gardens, to plant edibles at home, but to share the public lands for food production. Lawn only sucks up water and fertilizer and fuel to cut it in the public landscape. How about digging up some of that grass and planting blueberries? Even if no one picked them the birds would enjoy them.

Best Ever

This year our apples are better than they have ever been. And no sprays of any kind! That spring rain made them big and juicy. These are liberty apples. It's just dreamy to go out in the afternoon and pick a perfect apple off the tree for a fabulous snack. I love you beautiful yummy tree!

Cornus kousa

Partially hidden in the long unmown grass were these Cornus kousa fruits. Every time I go outside there is something to be discovered. An adolescent male pheasant nearing his adult plumage. A mama and her brood of pheasant babies taking a dust bath and scattering dirt in all directions. Huge Cinderella pumpkins buried beneath huge protective leaves. Colors pop in the low near autumn sun angle.

State Fair

Our annual three day trek to the State Fair has concluded. The usual tears and cheers over all the 4-H contests seem far behind as I relax at home in comfortable chairs and a real bed instead of sitting on a backless wood bench, or attempt to sleep with hundreds of other girls and their moms in the 4-H dorm on the top bunk with the loudest snorer in the world in close proximity. Our amazing little white bunny that came to visit last November, who was starving and filthy and nursed into excellent health was crowned best of breed for the state. Our other bunny was also a best of breed, thrilling my daughter with our only two bunnies on the Best in Show table finals. I was so thankful for grand weather this year, as years past have been marred by cold and rain, that added to the drawn out nature of the events. When time permitted I stole away to visit the Horticulture Building to see the shock of dahlia displays and other flower entries. Other times I would drag my daughter to see the Needle Arts and loved a few of the quilts. I keep thinking about this one in particular with crows and appliqued flowers. I'd like to find the pattern. Next year, since I have to go anyway, I may enter flowers or arrangements at the fair. I won't enter quilts since I would have to take them all the way there and pick them up another time. Flowers could come at the same time as our 4-H events and just left there. Last year I entered flowers at our county fair. It was fun to see how they rated.

Point Reyes Bird Observatory

Adiantum pedatum...Five-finger fern grotto

Mama and her fawn
I drank it all in. I let it permeate my soul.
The eucalyptus smell, the rush of the thick fog racing over the Marin headlands,
the Bolinas Lagoon, wild dill, Mt. Tam, the bridge.
My native land.
I miss it so.
And on the rare occasion that I revisit the place of my birth I feel so complete.
I feel so at home.
At ease.
Recharged.
Not so much the city itself, but getting there.
Crossing that grand structure of the Golden Gate.
The approach up the Waldo Grade.
I don't miss the pretense of Marin, just the rural landscape.
Muir Woods, although I've been there as tour guide a gazillion times in my youth, was a whole new experience with my daughter pushing me to tackle a tough trail that had a steep grade warning at its start. Way up on the mountain at a fork in the trail we paused. Hmmm. I wished I had studied the trail map more closely before we started out. And yet there were all the bars on my cell phone in that isolation. But no one would bother to answer at the ranger station to give us directions after many tries. So we waited and along came another hiking party and we asked and they confirmed the correct path to take to return down the mountain. And when we finished the loop and returned to the ranger station a couple of hours later only then did we see the cougar and coyote warning posters.
It was a day of wildlife.
River otter in the creek through Muir Woods, a Turkey Vulture perched, uncharacteristically, in a tree along with Ravens (surveying the fawn carcass), Crayfish in the creek too. Quail and many babies in Bolinas, deer and babies at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory,
and loads of sea birds at Stinson Beach.
That gut wrenching drive, on the edge of oblivion, to Muir Woods is not for the inexperienced driver. Or for those prone to car sickness as it snakes around every runnel of Mt. Tamalpais. I was glad that it was totally socked in with fog so I couldn't see the precipitous drop into the sea from that narrow road bed. But I knew it was there. I clutched that steering wheel tightly
and hoped that my rental car had good brakes.
And off in the far reaches of Point Reyes we arrived at the Bird Observatory. I had a sticker from the PRBO on my very first car many years ago and I wanted to get another on for my car at home. A badge of a serious birder. But not a soul was there at the visitor's center. It was fun to see all that was on display there, most notably the comparative bird skulls, and to see what they had caught in their mist nets that morning on the wall charts.
We hiked one of their trails and came upon a hidden grotto filled with five-finger ferns.
What a glorious haven of endemic species!
Oh to be able to afford to live in West Marin someday....
It is just heavenly.
More pictures later....

Bugadoodle

This is the first time I have ever painted with ink. Fun fun!!!

Doodling

I was messing around with my new stubby watercolor brush. Ohhhh, it's a nice brush!

Aim

There are plenty of tourists on the boat this time of year.
They aim their cameras in wild anticipation of place recording.
As I watch their invariable 90 degree aim
I tend to take an approach that captures
the hidden secrets of a place, oft overlooked.
Here, the patterns created by the trestle to the ferry landing
kept shifting, during my long wait for the boat, through the low slung morning light.

Dreaming

Every once in a while I love to try on fancy dresses just for the heck of it. This one was gorgeous! I'm so attracted to those krinkly fabrics. The color was more of an icy gray green than as photographed. It was a perfect color! Before that I sampled loads of different Chanel fragrances on cards before settling on my favorite, Bel Respiro, that will go on my all too over the top Christmas list (that I keep to myself, never to be requested from anyone). I was happy that the salesman sent me home with a tiny sample bottle so I could dream of myself strolling by the Italian Cypress in a balustraded villa garden on Lago Como. It's always nice to dream following having every inch examined for skin cancer. I'm good and I'm dreaming.
Today's summer tip:
Wear a hat. Keep the sun off.

Calyx

Catching a fleeting moment in the garden is exciting. As the poppy buds open with an instant pop (oh! now I know why they are called poppies!) the calyx is cast to the ground to form mulch. Yet occasionally they might catch just the right angle of an emergent petal and hang on momentarily. It's rare to see a nearly fully opened poppy with its calyx attached yet here are two right near each other in the early morning light.
I'm loving how the tomatoes, pumpkins and basil are taking off now that summer seems to have truly arrived. New tomato varieties: Julia and San Francisco Grape are among the tons of Sun Gold seedlings. I'm making a concerted effort this year to pinch out the side growth on the indeterminate tomatoes so they will, hopefully, be forced to produce fruit earlier this year, instead of waiting until the end of September for fruit to ripen. I'm hopeful for a good tomato year.

Fourth

Yipee!
I survived my first foot race...a one miler on the Fourth of July.
My daughter was my inspiration..."Little Miss Speedy" as her friends call her.
I was pretty nervous before race time.
I've only been running for the last month, I think, I can't keep track of anything anymore.
Could I make it up the hill of the first half of the race?
Could I run the whole way or would I woos out and walk like an old ninny?
I ran the whole way!
I kept pace with my friend, who has placed first in her age group year after year, but she accelerated at the top of the hill to twenty feet in front of me for the rest of the race.
I thought that I could catch her on the downhill but she was stride for stride even with my pace and I couldn't kick it into another gear like my daughter can.
My friend, who just two weeks ago, entered my same age bracket, I knew would knock me out of a possible ribbon placement. Do I have to be so competitive?
But I was the next runner in our age group behind her and came in fourth for my bracket.
I was excited and motivated to try harder next year.
The amazing thing is that I'm not sore today.
That makes me feel like I had a little mini victory of being healthy.
The best part of all
was being able to share an experience
like that with my daughter,
who came in second in her age group.

Berryliscious

(detail from Forest, exhibited in 2006)

Yesterday, in the heat of the afternoon, my girl put on my sun hat and marched out the door with a big basket for a big harvest. When she came back inside, maybe a half an hour later, her hands were stained red and the basket was full and she said, "is this enough for strawberry shortcake?", with a big grin on her face. After a hearty barbeque dinner I was too stuffed for shortcake so I suggested making strawberry sorbet instead, which was met with approval. In the dark, with all the windows open, the fans running, the ice cream maker churned away at the simple ingredients: the freshest strawberries, fresh lemon juice, sugar and water, with its droning hum. Nearly an hour later a concoction of the most intense essence of strawberry was enjoyed by all, instantly cooling us down and melting away the heat of the day. There is nothing in the world like home grown strawberries, warm from the sun, red through and through, and dripping with sweet juicy goodness. Ahhhh summer!

Bloomeriferous

I love it when a variety of plants, like ingredients of a recipe, come together perfectly for an instant. Gardens are so ephemeral, the Siberian iris seem to be gorgeous for one day a year, and if you don't bother to step outside at just the right moment you can miss their whole grand display. Today the Styrax japonica is at its peak of bloom. The fragrance is overwhelming. Peonies, Sisyrinchium, Tanacetum, Ceanothus, Alchemilla, Rosa, Digitalis, Campanula, and Physocarpus combine right now to make me swoon. Ahhh, June! Happy long days of summer!