kmkat and her kneedles

And then we went to the North Shore.

The view from the tiny deck of our cabin. That's Lake Superior, if you cannot tell.

 

Our cabin.

 

The fire pit.
 

Why am I showing you a photo of the fire pit in the front yard of the cabin? Because it was the scene of Smokey's latest near-death experience.

One morning he took the dogs out for their beginning-of-the-day pee. Since the benches of the picnic table were damp from dew, he sat on the seat of his walker, which, in addition to a nice padded seat, is on wheels.

Can you see how the ground slopes to the left toward The Lake? Yes, the walker started to roll downhill.

 

Because he had a dog leash on each wrist, his hands were not as free as they might have been. And, although the walker has brakes, the wheels were damp from the dew and the brakes just slipped. He rolled backward, the wheels hit the cast iron edge of the fire pit, and he tipped backwards at precisely the right angle to strike the back of his head on the downhill edge.

Did he suffer a concussion? Did he fracture his skull? Did his sever his spinal column? Any of those were possible.

He did not even get a lump on his head. And he said that after the initial impact it did not even hurt.

I find it hard to imagine those last two, but I felt for a lump and there was none.

 

The hard-headed Swede detailing his walker.
 

 

Ten on Tuesday, the after-vacation edition.

Ten Good Things About Coming Home After A Vacation.

1. Sleeping in my own bed again. It may not be perfect (memory foam is not as great as it was proclaimed to be), but I love my bed. It is an adjustable one that we inherited from Smokey's parents and provides the only way I can comfortably read in bed. Given how much I like to read in bed, that is HUGE. I love my comforter, too, and my Very Own Special Down Pillows (although I now take those pillows with me on vacation).
    
2. Having my kittehs around again. This is HUGE as well. Hannibal The Fluffball of Doom is the best kitteh I have ever had, and I have had cats since before I can remember. He is awesome -- super friendly, completely pliable (how many kittehs will let you move them to where YOU want them to be, in the position YOU want them to be in, and not protest nor run away), a most excellent purr, and only sheds black hair, which is way less noticeable than orange or gray tabby fur. Even En Esch The Stoopid is preferable to no kitteh -- he is dependably snuggly and tends to scoot outside at bedtime far less than his brother and so is available for snuggling while I am reading in bed (see above).
   
   
    
3. Using my own computer again. Admittedly, the new iPad may make this less important, but there is something to be said for the computer with the perfect keyboard (yay, Mac!) and good speakers and all my music and a largish monitor and the perfect chair. And not having to make it to a library somewhere when they are open. (We tend to start the day around 3 pm. Or later.)
    

Really, those first two are the main things. I cannot come up with anything else. I used to sort of welcome getting back to a more productive routine, but ever since that 4-week vacation a couple years ago I am perfectly happy to be on vacation.. forever. 

Mouse.

We had an unexpected pet that came along with us on our camping trip to the North Shore last month. A mouse had taken up residence within the back door of the mini-mini-motorhome.

Smokey first met Mr. Mouse (or Miss or Ms. or Mrs.; we never knew) the first afternoon we were at the campground. He (Smokey) was lying on the bed in the back of the mini-mini-motorhome playing Solitaire on his netbook -- yes, we are THAT exciting -- when he saw this cute little mousie face peeking out at him from an opening in the inner panel of the back door.

Let me explain: Smokey likes mice. He sees them as cute and furry little critters that could be a fun pets, never mind hantavirus or any other nastiness they might carry. Happily, he does not care to share his bed or his kitchen with them. He may be easy, but he is not crazy.

We saw Mr. Mouse a number of times in the van. Once he even ran across Smokey's leg while he was napping. Eventually, however, Mr. Mouse appeared in the right place at the right time -- when a door was open -- and he was evicted. We wished him well, figuring that he could easily adapt to his new MN, as opposed to WI, woodsy home.

The next day I picked up Lucy The Wonder Dog's water dish from the ground by the picnic table to give her fresh water. Guess who was hiding next to it? Apparently Mr. Mouse felt the need to stay close to something that smelled, even vaguely, like home.

I saw him again a couple times in that same part of the campsite, but he never made it back into the van. I hope he enjoys his new home on the North Shore. Lots of people would give their left arm to live there, and he even got a free ride.

I'm back (again).

We spent nine days on the North Shore (of Lake Superior) in the mini-mini-motorhome, returning on the day before Labor Day, and it was glorious. I have some photos but am currently too lazy to upload them. Be assured, though, that I knit my little fingers to the bone -- finished three projects (photos to come), started two more (ditto) -- and had a great time doing it.

Before we left home, however, I bought myself a little prezzie.

It all started when I read a Gizmodo post abuot how the Motorola TouchPad was such a great deal for $100* (originally $400+). I was in WI when I read it and Smokey was in Minneapoils, so I emailed and sent him on a quest to buy me one. It turned out, however, that Motorola had recalled all the unsold ones from Best Buy the week before. There were none to be had. ::sob::

After much thoughtful consideration I decided that an ebook reader that was compatible with my library's ebooks would do the trick, and a trip to Wal-Mart and $139 plus tax later I had one of the El Cheapo Nooks in my hot little hands. 

[digression] I tried to find a photo online of the aforementioned El Cheapo model, but nobody puts a picture of THAT poor thing online. All I could find were color Nooks and Nooks whose screen didn't quite look like mine. So you will have to settle for the image above; inadequate, but accurate. [/digression]

I immediately bought the tenth anniversary edition of American Gods by Neil Gaiman from Barnes & Noble, my choice for my book club's November read, and downloaded two ebooks from our library consortium. It turns out  that there is a very limited selection of ebooks from the library, but I did manage to find a couple that appealed as vacation reading. (Cathedral by Nelson DeMille and My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster, for those of you who are counting.) 

If you know of any other sites for  free, Nook-compatible books, please sing out in the comments. Thank you in advance.

* I have since read that Motorola was surprised to discover what a great demand there was for a $100 (or $150, if the buyer wanted 32G instead of 16G of memory) tablet computer. They rethought their previous decision and subsequently decided to offer a few more TouchPads at the clearance price. In October. We shall see. In the meantime, I've got my Nook to keep me warm read.

 

Home again!

We got home at about 6 am today. (Smokey loves to drive at night.) Our reservation in the Black Hills campground had one more night left, but it was so hot we decided to leave for home -- the cool woods and lakes of northern Wisconsin were calling to us.

Imagine our dismay to arrive home to the worst heat wave in recent memory... and no power at the house. No air conditioning, no fans. There had been severe thunderstorms on Sunday night, and apparently a power line had gone down somewhere.

We crawled into the beds in the basement where it was reasonably cool and slept most of the day.

Electricity was restored later in the morning, so our bedroom is now cool and the ceiling fan in my [non-air-conditioned] office is whirling the air.

Full report(s) later, but rest assured that the lace shawl is still progressing nicely :-)

Amusements.

To me, vacations are a time to knit and read. How can I stand the excitement, you ask? Don’t try this at home, folks – I’m a professional.

Reading.

 

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Feed by M.T. Andrewson
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend
Vanished by Joseph Finder
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman*
CO₂ Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge by Tyler Volk
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy by Alfred W. Crosby 
Earth, The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn
Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pipeline to the Pump by Lisa Margonelli

Heh. Can you guess what I was obsessed with when I chose my vacation books?

So far I have read Vanished (suspense novel, supremely mediocre) and Night of the Grizzlies (nonfiction account of two 1967 fatal grizzly attacks in Glacier National Park; recommended by soxanne; glad I didn’t read it before we went to Glacier last year) (headline in Thursday's local paper: Man Killed in Grizzly Attack in Yellowstone National Park. Eeep.). The top three paperbacks are all sci-fi, the other is probably horror; all excellent, non-demanding amusement. I started The Compassionate Carnivore – by the same author as Hit by a Farm – before we left home. It is a nice blend of humor, introspection, and ethics; I might be able to handle it. The others, mostly nonfiction, may be too much for my vacationing brain.

On the audiobook front, so far I have listened to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larssen. I had read or listened to all of them before but wanted to do it again in one continuous string; #2 and #3 are really one story. Then I listened to A Study in Emerald read by the author, Neil Gaiman. That was a short one, less than one hour.

I just finished Grave Peril, #3 in the Harry Dresden series. I heartily recommend listening to the audios of this series. The read has the sexiest voice on the planet, plus he reads them as though he were telling the story over a beer the day after it happened. Much more enjoyable (again, imho) than reading them.

* Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I grabbed a book from my stash -- in the dark -- and a headlamp to read until I got sleepy. This was the one. Friedman is such a wretched writer and egoist that I made it to page 32, skimming large parts, before my eyelids drooped. Success!

Knitting.

I brought along enough knitting projects to sink a battleship.

The Lace Shawl of Doom  Delight for BGFE.

 

This is coming along swimmingly. I have finished the first chart and am ready to start on the border. That simple statement belies what lies ahead, though; the pattern warns that most of the knitting is in the border, plus chart 2 is altogether different and appears far more complicated than chart 1. Stay tuned.

Fast Forward, for the Red Scarf Project.

 

This is currently about two-thirds done but was put on hold when I took up the Lace Shawl of Doom again. Nice pattern, nice yarn – I’m using Louet superwash merino worsted left over from my kimono sweater.

Palindrome, also for the RSP.

 

Notice how well-defined the cables are? Not. The yarn is Drops Alpaca Sport, luscious stuff but not at all suitable for good stitch definition. I have since frogged that effort and am instead doing a mistake rib pattern that works much better with the yarn. It is also nice mindless knitting :-)

 

Actual color is somewhere between the two photos, orangey-red like the second but darker like the first.

Sock for me.

 

This was to be my fall-back project, the one I would carry into restaurants, etc. Instead the mistake rib scarf has become the take-along. That’s okay; I’m not dying to have the socks done. Yarn is some OnLine Supersocke 100 Circle Color that was on sale at Webs last year.

These last two projects got packed to come along when I was apparently on drugs and in a fantasy daze, thinking how awful it would be if I ran out of knitting projects. The chances of either of them even getting cast on during this tripe is roughly... zero.

Yarn for a narrow Montego Bay scarf for me.

 

Worsted weight silk from Alchemy.

Yarn for Braided Glory for me.

 

I was thrilled to match this yarn with a pattern. The yarn is 1600+ yards of Brooks Farm Acero, a sport/DK blend of superwash wool, viscose, and silk. It is not enough to make a sweater for me and has been yearning for a pattern for several years. I think it will be perfect for this shawl, although the pattern will use only about half of it. I am not wild about wearing shawls, but this one seems like it will stay in place without fussing.

As I typed that, the vision of a short- or three-quarter-length sleeved lace cardigan came into mind. Lace takes less yarn than stockinette, right? And I am now lace-qualified, right? I may need to investigate that. I have some other, not-enough-for-a-sweater yarn in my stash that would work for the Braided Glory, actually better than the Acero. Stay tuned.

Wyoming bullets.

Yes, we are in Wyoming on vacation. Bullet post seems appropriate.

• We got a late start. Mechanic didn't deliver mini-mini-motorhome (Rebuild transmission! Make a/c work!) until the day we were supposed to leave.
  .
• A number of things remained for Smokey to do to the m-m-mh. He worked on them. Days passed.
• Eventually we left. Can I get a huzzah!
  .
• Thank you.
  .
• Bed in back of m-m-mh is extremely comfortable, made more so by addition of 4" memory foam mattress on top of existing cushions.
  .
• Comfortable sleeping is essential to a good vacation.
  .
• The green chili at Tom's Diner in Buffalo is so good I could eat it every day.
  .
• Tragically, it was only on the specials board for one day.
  .
• The french fries at the Bozeman Trail Steak House are still the best in world.
  .
• Parts of Wyoming are very empty.
   
  .
• Unlike parts of New York City.
  
  . 
• Although Grand Central Station is not exactly teeming with people at 10:30 on a Monday night.
   
  .
• Yes, I took a short side trip to NYC. More on that later.
  .
• It can be very hot in Wyoming in July.
  .
• It can also be comfortably chilly.
   .
• The correct wardrobe is essential: shorts, jeans, lightweight sweats, heavy sweats, a fleece jacket, short-sleeved t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, a denim shirt, lightweight wool socks, heavy wool socks. That about covers it.
  .
• Except for the dressy black pants, white tank top, short-sleeve sweater, and silk scarf I wore in NYC. More on that later.
  .
• No moose sightings so far. Several deer, many cattle and horses, no antelope. Where are the moose? We came to see the moose, and we shall find them. They can run but they cannot hide.
  .
• Actually, they CAN hide, and remarkably well at that.
  .
• The stream next to the campsite has been running high, apparently due to melting of the 300%-of-normal snowpack in the mountains last winter.
  .
• Businesses next to Clear Creek, which flows through the center of downtown Buffalo, had sandbags lying around.
  .
• No flooding right now.
  .
• This is a good thing. Occasionally I remember the flash flood in the Black Hills in 1972 that killed 238 people, including 11 campers in creekside sites.
  .
• Our campground is in a canyon.
  .
• I remember, and then I force myself to forget.
  .
• Moving on...
  .
• Much knitting and napping and reading and audiobook consumption have been accomplished.
• Life is good, much better here than at home. More on that later, too.
  .
• That's the report from Wyoming. Knitting report to follow.

Vacation, part 6: fails.

Note: I wrote this last summer after we got back from vacation in an effort to gove complete and unbiased reportage. I wouldn't want you to think our life is all unicorns and pixie dust ;-)  Somehow I never managed to publish the post, but I want to get it out there before we leave again so here you go. I gave you a paraphrased version of part of it last week -- feel free to skip over that bit if you want.

In every adventure, there are bits that... fail.

Here is their story.

At 6,000 feet, the weather in June in northern Wyoming can be problematic for camping.

 

Later that same afternoon...

 

That is not snow on the picnic table. That is hail.

 

When it rained, we discovered that the seals around the roof windows had shrunk a bit in 22 years. The leaks could be fixed easily with a tube of silicone rubber... which we didn't happen to have with us.

This worked just fine, however.

 

The scenery in Glacier NP is spectacular.

 

 

The *guard rails* along the edge of the road? Rather less so.

 

That rock wall is perhaps 16" high, just tall enough to ensure that your vehicle flips as it goes over the side of the precipice.

This is actually not a particularly unnerving view out my window. Although I was always edgy when our lane was on the outside of the road rather than next to the cliff wall, it was less frightening if I could see something -- anything! -- between the so-called guard rail and the bottom of the canyon. In this case, the trees and brush on the side of the mountain were just visible over the guard rail Vehicle Tripping Device. When there was nothing but air showing? I found I could not even look out the windows. At all. I had to turn 90˚ in my seat, away from the edge, and knit.

 

EZ's famous quote ("Knit on, with confidence & hope, through all crises") had never meant as much to me as it did on that road.

Happily, Smokey kept our vehicle on the road where it belonged. On another day when we were exploring a deserted back road that had a similar drop-off next to it, he drove in the middle just so I wouldn't be so nervous. Yes, he is a sweetie.

This is what happens when one's US#5 Addi Turbo gets caught under the van seat and one is too impatient to free it carefully, instead yanking it loose with careless abandon.

 

The good news is that the needle still works just fine. I don't know if it affected my gauge, but I'm pretending that it didn't. Note: I am still using that needle, no problem, mon.

In other broken news, we brought along a back scratcher because we both find it inutterably satisfying to scratch that out-of-reach spot in the middle of the back.

 

Some white glue and this one was good to go again.

And then there was the day that a chipmunk in the woods was taunting Lucy, who was inside the screen house with me. The dog, of course, attempted to launch herself through the screen.

I managed to fix that one.

 

One day Smokey was working on the van and had to open a blister pack of something when the scissors slipped. I will spare you any pictures of the gouge he took out of his little finger. You will have to be satisfied with this.

 

That night he woke up to discover that the bandaid had slipped off and he was bleeding. In order not to bleed all over the bedding he improvised with a paper towel and some packing tape.

The finger has since healed fine, probably due to the fact that he had to wash dishes a few times during the trip. Nothing cleans out a wound better than soaking it in dishwater for ten minutes or so.

Vacation!

We are gearing up to leave in a couple weeks for another month in the mini-mini-motorhome this summer, three weeks in the Big Horns of Wyoming and a week in the Black Hills. #2 Son and GF will be joining us for a few days in the Hills. They asked if they could vacation with us -- is that awesome or what?

I did not post much about last year's vacation, so I thought I would show you something memorable. Something that very nearly gave me a heart attack in Glacier National Park.

The Going To The Sun Highway in Glacier has spectacular views. There is mountain on one side of the road... and a precipice on the other side. I was fine as long as we were on the mountain side of the road, but when the precipice was next to my window I FREAKED! It surprised Smokey as much as it surprised me; I have never had any particular fear of heights.

I found that it was easier to breathe if I didn't look out the windows. It was even easier if I turned sideways in my seat and looked at the floor. Remembering Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous aphorism, Knit on with courage through all obstacles, I pulled out my knitting and got busy/distracted.

My view was this:

instead of this:

   

because if I looked at that, I would also see this:

 

Yikes.

More photos.

Where: The Lounge, Glacier Park Lodge.
When: Late June, 2010.
What: Lunch; a bacon cheeseburger, salad, and a Fat Tire beer. 

In spite of just having eaten dinner, I have succeeded in making myself hungry again.

Ten on Tuesday, the vacation edition.

Ten Dream Vacations.

1. Tahiti or pretty much any other South Sea island.
2. Camping in the Florida Keys in February.
3. Cruise from Seattle to Alaska.
4. Europe, with a concentration on the Louvre and the Uffizi and Rome and Florence and perhaps the Prado; I have a degree in art history but have never been to any of them. (This vacation would have to involve a personal attendent to wait on me and push my wheel chair :) b/c it would be too exhausting otherwise.)
5. Washington DC (can you believe it? I have never been there).
6. Provence or Tuscany for the food and wine.

Sorry, I couldn't come up with a full ten. I could name other places that could be fun if I had to, but, really, any trip that involves a lot of downtime in a nice climate is my dream vacation.

Dogs on vacation.

Dogs don't talk much, so this post is mostly pictures. And smells.

"That is one funny-lookin' dog, guys."

There were dogs everywhere in Buffalo, Wyoming, mostly in the backs of pickup trucks. We spotted these two in the parking lot of the diner where we had breakfast one day.

They spotted us, too.

And then they spotted our dogs in our van.

"Hey, you two dogs in the van there? This is our parking lot!
You can stay, though... for a price."

* * * * *

We met a couple of sweetheart dogs at the private campground where we stayed near Glacier. They belonged to the campground owner, who was a sweetheart of the human kind.

The dogs; meet Pork Chop (white) and Mattie (brown).

I think one was a bull mastiff (perhaps; this is all very hazy in my memory b/c it was (omg!) three months ago). The other was a breed I don't remember. Both of them were big softies, the following photos notwithstanding.

If you ever want to camp near Glacier NP, I cannot recommend this campground highly enough. Unlike nearly every other private campground on the planet, it has sufficient wooded space between and among the sites to afford a bit of privacy and nature. The owner seems to have created that impossibly tiny sweet spot between chaos and a place so highly regulated one feels as though it is 1984. There was an almost complete absence of signs telling the guests what they Could.Not.Do, yet when we complained about the people across the road from us who left their dog inside their RV ALL DAY WHILE THEY WERE GONE and it yapped for 12 HOURS STRAIGHT, the situation was remedied forthwith. If you follow the link to the website you can see the photo that convinced Smokey this was the place where he would be totally comfortable. (Yes, I mean the  photo of the dogs on the couch.)

* * * * *

Now, some more portraits of our dogs on vacation.

"You aren't going to eat all that yourself, are you?"

"I am sure there is a critter out there somewhere..."

All quiet on the Lucy front.

It's a dog's life.

"Look, my job is to worry about you. Don't bother me right now, I'm busy."

(at the rodeo) "Why do those big dogs have men on their back? What are they chasing?
Are those dogs gonna be okay? Can I help? Pleeeeaaassse?"

"You go ahead and nap, Dad. I'll keep watch..."

"...for a little while."

Here we are again.

Andrew requested that we go camping somewhere while  he is home for his four-week break, so here we are again on the North Shore. Yeah, it's a tough life.

Before we left I decided to be A Good Mom and bake some cookies to bring along. For the record, I hardly ever bake cookies; brownies, lemon bars, the occasional birthday cake, yes, but cookies are too putzy. This time I decided to go all out -- oatmeal chocolate chip (oatmeal = healthy, right?), and while I was at it, a double batch.

A double batch made a lot of dough.

Really a lot of dough.

In an unusual turn of events, this vacation did NOT start the day after Smokey had finished up a string of night shifts. This meant we could get up on Monday morning, pack the mini-mini-motorhome, and actually leave during daylight. What a concept!

On the road, Smokey driving, me riding shotgun and knitting, and Andrew riding in the back of the van and doing what he does best.

The weather forecast for this week on the North Shore was, in a word, chilly -- highest high was predicted to be 57°. Happily, that was way conservative. Tuesday was warm enough to sit reading and knitting in the sun in jeans and sweater. One of us was even foolhardy enough to venture into Lake Superior, although he did admit he came out pretty darned quickly. Wednesday had a 30% chance of showers but was also the day I needed to teleconference to the county finance committee meeting. So we spent the afternoon in Grand Marais.

The chipmunks are still populating the campground. The are still bold aand still highly annoyed at all the people in their campground.

I attempted to get a photo of the chipmunk that kept trying to climb my pants leg to get  at whatever I happened to be eating at a given moment.

But it didn't work.

Home again, home again, jig jig.

We took a mini-vacation last week, five days at Temperance River State Park on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

It is always a good thing to bring all one's knitting tools along on vacation...

...because one never knows when a delightful yarn shop -- or two! -- may appear on the horizon*.

 

Before we left I had read Erika's post about her Red Scarf. I had already decided that I was not going to participate in the Red Scarf Project this year (forgive me, Norma!) because I had declared 2010 to be The Year Of Knitting For Me.

But that post kept lurking in the back of my mind.

First, I ventured into That Little Red House, a lovely yarn shop in Grand Marais that does not have a website and of which I tragically did not take a photo. The owner was friendly and chatty and I found the perfect yarn for a red scarf.

 

The yarn is a 2-ply blend of wool, superkid mohair, and angora -- lovely cottony soft. How handy that I had brought along my nostepinne and all my needles! I immediately cast on for the scarf, using La Harlot's One-Row Scarf pattern (I knit two scarves and several afghan squares from that pattern last year, so it is pretty well embedded in my brain).

Tra la la, a day or two later we found another yarn shop! This is the one whose sign is pictured above and is in Tofte, right across Hwy. 61 (yes, that Hwy. 61) from Blue Fin Bay resort. Guess what, that shop had some very nice red yarn**, too!

 

Now I have two red scarves OTN and my conscience is a happy camper.

I finished the pair of socks that was in progress when we left and wore them. That means they are currently in the laundry pile so I'm not gonna model them for you right now. As soon as that pair was done I cast on for another pair from a skein of Trekking I bought last year.

 

See that hole in the ground beyond my foot? That is a chipmunk burrow, and the chipmunks kept me constant company while I knit by the lake. Mostly they scurried about and scolded me for being in their territory. Eventually I had the clever idea of keeping a bag of trail mix handy and tossing them the occasional raisin. That kept them quiet.

* It may have helped that I did some serious googling for yarn shops in the area before we left. I even took screen shots of the Google maps showing the location of each one and loaded them onto my iPod. Always prepared, that's my motto!

** In case you cannot read the labels, this red yarn is Lamb's Pride Nature Spun worsted, and a more delightful and affordable 100% wool worsted I have never encountered. How come none of you told me about it? Keeping it all for yourself, eh? Well, now I know about it and it will be every knitter for herself. This yarn is soft and fluffy and knits wonderfully and was $6.95 (or $7.95, don't remember) for >200 yards. The skein on the right is a true bright red, the one on the left dark red. We all know how difficult it is to photograph anything red.

The vacation, part 3: the knitting.

Did I knit while we were on vacation? Why, yes! Yes, I did. Thanks for asking.

You may remember I planned to knit a Noro striped sweater during the month we were gone.

Didn't happen. Never even took that particular knitting bag out of its cubby in the van. Starting that sweater was contingent upon finishing the multicolor striped raglan that I had been working on since February. When we left home, that (top-down) sweater had a yoke, both sleeves, and three or four inches of the body. I kept slogging plugging
knitting on it all during our trip. Here it is today, rather rumpled from having been stuffed into a traveling knitting bag for the month of June and most of July.

It's nearly done, isn't it? Maybe getting it out of its bag and seeing how close I am will inspire me...

I had started a pair of socks as my carry-along knitting before we left, but I was not enjoying them. The Knit Picks Felici sock yarn, while lovely soft and in nice colors, was also loosely plied and therefore splitty. There was progress made on the socks, but it was s-l-o-w.

They are now [finally!] finished, however.

Somehow, even though I knit them on the same number of stitches (60) and the same size needle (US#0) as always, they don't fit well. See how the end of the toes sticks out from the end of my foot? That is because it is too narrow. Such nonsense is probably the result of my not liking the yarn; disgust made me knit tighter.

So.

If I didn't knit the Noro sweater, and I didn't finish the socks, and I worked on but didn't finish the raglan, what DID I knit?

Baby hats for the PIH hospital in Rwanda! At the last minute I threw my baby hat knitting bag (it's where I keep all the yarn that is good for baby hats) into the van. Good thing I did; otherwise I might have had to finish the sweater and socks. As Dale-Harriet once said, Baby hats are like potato chips. You can't do just one.

My soon-to-be-fifth-grade neighbor helped me do the photo shoot.

She was so cute.

Then I showed her my iTouch and the knitting was forgotten.

 

Let's examine those hats in detail, shall we? They are being modeled by my trusty ostrich egg sitting in its base of brass and wart hog tusks. (How fitting for hats that will travel to Africa!)

This first five were all done on a US#3 circ from one skein of Socks That Rock heavyweight, colorway Gay Pride. The striping and pooling are different because the hats are worked on different numbers of stitches, from 56 to 68. Babies come in different sizes, so I figured their heads do, too.

 

I had a few yards of the STR leftover so I combined it with some green Valley Superwash DK for the hat at the left, once again on a US#3 circ.

I decided before I started the hats that I would not put a cuff on any of the wool ones, hoping to stretch this skein of STR to seven or eight hats. Didn't work. .

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This next group were all knit from Knit Picks Shine Sport in River (blue) and Cherry (red, discontinued) on a US#3 circ.

 

The second photo shows the slanting jog that results from a new-to-me way of changing colors. (The jog looks a lot better in the socks in the link than in my hat; I don't think there is ANY way to make jogless two-row stripes.) The fourth and fifth photos are of a hat I made to experiment with the knit-one-below stitch (more on that in another post).

Next, three hats from Knit Picks Shine Worsted, knitted on a US#5.

Yup, I was using up the last of that particular yarn in the last hat. How can you tell?

The last few.

The first is more KP Shine Sport, this time in Willow and with some one-row stripes of a fuzzy novelty yarn. I got from lisa. The second is Cleckheaton 8-ply County Check superwash wool  worsted (discontinued) left over from knitting mittens a couple years ago. Third is KP Comfy in Honeydew, combined with KP Shine worsted in the fourth. That last hat is my favorite of them all.

And that is what I knit on my summer vacation.

Vacation, part 2: Bears.

First of all, we did not see bears in the campground or roaming the heights in the mountains. To make up for this shocking lack of ursine visibility, we went to this place just a couple of miles from our campground near West Glacier, MT:

Yeah, it was a roadside attraction but Damn! we wanted to see bears. So we paid our $8 each and drove in.

The bears roam throughout a couple acres of wooded land; visitors drive though -- with windows closed -- on narrow paved trails. In the distance we could see some concrete bunkers that were probably the bears winter *dens*. I cannot testify to the bears' treatment, but I saw no obvious evidence of neglect or abuse.

Except for the rain.

Bears seem to have such a thick coat that the rain did not bother them.

We stayed in the van, of course, but I did roll my window down a few times to get a better photo. This shot, taken out of my open window, gives you a pretty good idea of how far away -- alternatively, how close! -- the bear was.

Using the magic of a 6X zoom and iPhoto cropping, let me show you that bear up close and personal.

Bear looking fierce.

That was about as fierce as any of the bear looked while we were there.

That was quite fierce enough for me.

One of the employees was working in the enclosure; not sure what she was doing, but I suspect it was NOT distributing bear chow. That is a job where the distributor should be well out of reach of the distributee. No matter; it was not a job I would want. Even if the wires visible in the photo were electrified, given how dense a bear's coat is, an ordinary electric fence would not slow it down much.

 

Bear Our Senior Dog never saw any of her namesakes; she is too old to climb up onto a seat or the bed to look out the window. She may have smelled them, as her sense of smell is undiminished, but mostly she slept through the whole adventure.

Lucy The Junior Dog was pretty excited by the bear park, though. I neglected to get a photo of her dancing in her seat and whining excitedly for us to let her out so she could play with her New Best (Bear) Friend!

Suffice to say, she did not resemble this photo in any way.

The park was small, there were only a few bears, and it didn't take us long to see everything and everyone there several times over. And so we took our leave.

Bye, bye, bears! We may come back to see you again someday!

Ten on Tuesday.

This week's topic is ten things to bring on a camping trip. Having recently returned from a month-long camping trip, I feel exquisitely qualified for this one. We never camp in a tent, though, only in a camping trailer or (now) a mini-mini-motorhome, so my list may not be applicable for everyone.

1. If camping in the mountains, or anywhere during spring or autumn, bring sweats and heavy socks and hoodie for sleeping. Misery is being cold in your sleeping bag at 3 am; ask me how I know.

2. A jar of salycilic acid pads, aka acne pads. In the absence of showers, these can keep the camper from smelling like s/he has been camping without showers.

3. Lots of knitting and books. This is a gimme.

4. Other amusements, both solitary and communal. There is never enough time at home for these, so vacation is the perfect time to get really, really good at Scrabble.

5. A comfortable chair. I get crabby if I cannot sit comfortably, hot or cold beverage within reach, and knit/read/do crossword puzzles.

6. iPod loaded with music and audio books. This of course combines admirably with #5.

7. Screen house in which to place comfortable chair. Smokey bought one at a dollar store on the fifth day of our vacation. It was great and amazingly easy to set up and take down.

8. Generator. Preferably a small, quiet one with a 100-foot extension cord so you can put it far enough away -- assuming you get the campsite at the end of the row -- so as not to bother anyone. Having a generator makes it possible to enjoy one's iPod or laptop or electric waffle iron. Remember, I never claimed that we roughed it when we went camping.

9. Dogs. Dogs love to be outdoors, particularly if there is possibility of wildlife wandering by. They are also handy for those cold nights mentioned in #1.

10. Flashlights. Two words: flashlight fights.

Not a whistling swan, not an elk, but a...

Columbian ground squirrel. Despite the ringed tail, the resemblance (and the fact that two different commenters told me it was a CGS) is conclusive.

My guy on the left, a photo from the web on the right.

 

Thanks to Erika and that other reader who also identified my rodent as a Columbian ground squirrel. (I can't remember her name and her comment seems to have disappeared, but she is a former MT resident so knows whereof she spoke wrote)

No pictures. Let's talk books.

Still on vacation. Weather beautiful. Drove through Glacier NP yesterday; glaciers not impressive. Global warming triumphing.

The laptop that might allow me to post photos is working again (yay, Smokey!) but refuses to accept photos from my camera (boo, Microsoft!) or to go online (boo, generally!). I'm typing this two-fingered on Smokey's netbook, sitting at a table on the patio of the campground office and taking advantage of their wi-fi. If you are really, really good I'll post a photo someday of how picturesque this spot is.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the books I brought along. A couple of you asked about them; I deliver :)

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux. I was reading this before I left but was not finding it terribly interesting. It's not a bad book, and it is well-written; no idea why I was so lukewarm. Once I gave up on it, the pace of my reading picked up.
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo. Police procedural translated from the Norwegian. Coincidentally, the NYTimes book review mentioned this author in its recent article about publishers' mad scramble to find more Scandinavian mysteries to follow up on Steig Larsson's three best-sellers. This one was okay, a bit depressing, 2-1/2 stars out of 5.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. Another ho-hum murder mystery, 2-1/2 stars. I tend to agree with the Washington Post review at the linked Amazon page.
The Last Child by John Hart. Another 2-1/2 stars; I had to read the Amazon synopsis to remember it, even though I read it last week. The 13-yo protagonist was not believable to me.
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. Started it, decided I didn't want to read a novel whose narrator is such a loser. But it did seem entertaining; I may try this one again.

Those are the ones I read, or at least tried to read. Still TBR:
Just Kids by Patti Smith. Memoir.
The Innocent by Harlan Coben. Coben's books are always good.
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna.
Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn. Murder mystery set in South Africa in the 1950s.
The Odds by Kathleen George.
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman
Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint  I am just starting this author's books. (Thanks, Chris!) I like his writing  -- urban fantasy at its best.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.

A couple books to help out the vacation knitting:
Knit One Below by Elise Duvekot.
Knitting from the Top by Barbara Walker.

And finally, just for fun -- not. I am the chair of the governing committee for the county-owned nursing home, and I felt the need to learn as much as I can.
Planning for Long-Term Care by United Seniors Health Council
The Complete Legal Guide to Senior Care: A Plain English Guide to Making Sense of the Residential, Financial, and Medical Maze by Brett McWhorter Sember
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Long-Term Care Planning by Merilee Driscoll

There you have it. Now it is time to stop writing about books and go read them*. TTFN!

* For those of you at home keeping score, we have been on vacation for ~3 weeks and have 1 week left. I brought along 18 books and have read 5. What is wrong with this picture?

Drive-by posting.

We have left Wyoming and the Big Horns behind and are now camped just outside Glacier National Park in Montana. When Smokey fixes the computer that shot sparks (of course he has  all the parts he needs with him) I'll be able to catch you all up with photos. TTFN!