Knitting Iris

Did Fair

I dropped my entries into the County Fair on Thursday, went out of town for the weekend, and picked it all back up on Sunday afternoon, and so didn't get much chance to see the competition other enties. 

My own entries were a couple of different flowers (some of the pink Snaps above and an orange Cosmos), a few knitted items, a sewn skirt and tote bag, a couple of canned goods, and photos in 19 different categories.  All together, I came home with 5 blue ribbons, 5 red, 4 white, and 2 honorable mentions.  Pretty fair, huh?  There couldn't have been much competition in the knitting category, as my Trekking socks recieved the Best Hand-knitted Article award, despite several mistakes. 

On Monday morning, at the bank, a woman at the next teller over from me asked, "Didn't I see some of your photos at the fair this weekend?"  This was the first year I've entered any photos and I guess I didn't realize, living in a small town, how revealing they could end up being.  Knitting is fairly innocuous, but putting photos out there for anyone to see gives others a certain insight into my own way of seeing the world.  I'm sure some of the photos I chose to enter might seem strange to some.  Actually, there was some stiff competition in the photography category, so I feel like I did fairly well, given that it was my first year.  I received a blue ribbon in the "Photo, Collection" category which, if you've been reading here for awhile, seems to come easier for me than single shots.

Entering items in the local county fair is, to me, almost like a civic duty.  The more entries, the more fun for everyone.  It's also a chance, like blogging, for people to share with others the things that they do and make at home throughout the year.

For me, more important than the ribbons, some of the judges leave notes on the back of the entry cards, praising, criticizing, and/or giving hints as to what could have been done better or differently.  It helps to improve upon this years entries for next year.

Got to go!  Time to unplug the computer as the sky is getting dark and thunder is rolling in.  Thank goodness we had perfect blue skies and 80 degree F temperatures for our wedding day 9 years ago today! 

Boys 'n' Berries

If we didn't go camping Monday night,  just the boys and I, then we wouldn't get a chance again this summer.  I couldn't bear the thought of not waking up in this favorite of places, even if only one morning out of the year.  I'd be kicking myself in the deep of winter for not just packing it up and going, even if C couldn't come along.  I used to camp alone before I met C, so why not now?   

The ulterior motive, of course, was picking huckleberries.  The bonuses: getting out of the 96 F degree heat in the valley and up into 50-60 F degrees in the mountains, mac-and-cheese for dinner, s'mores, reading our favorite berry-picking books by the campfire, reading my own book in the tent after the boys fell asleep,  sleeping cozily between two little boys under a down blanket while the dogs stood guard just outside all night, huckleberry pancakes for breakfast, coffee in the woods, forgetting all that there is to do back at home...

The downfalls:  Getting home, exhausted, and just in time to remember that we were expected at dinner with friends in half an hour, unpacking everything, new laundry, facing all the piles still sitting where we left them behind... 

The boys are both finally at an age where they can pick with me for several hours, even in fairly tough terrain.  I started when they were babies, carrying them in a backpack, then finding fairly flat places where they could toddle around by themselves easily with me.  Some of my first ever breaks away from them when they were breastfeeding was a few hours away to myself in the woods picking berries.  That was such a precious treat!  Now, they pick for awhile, putting a few berries in a bucket or cup, filling their tummies, and them finding other distractions:  pretending to be bears or little Sal from Blueberries for Sal, drawing on rocks and logs with the berries, shaking bear bells (although we're certainly louder ourselves than the bells), looking for minnows and water skeeters in the creeks, taking snack breaks back at the car, playing fire look-out tower on big rocks, stumps, and logs.  This time, finding out that our younger dog, Hattie, is a berry-eating dog bided me an extra half an hour of picking time as they giggled like crazy watching her eat them off the bushes and out of their hands.  (I've heard of berry-eating dogs, but didn't know we had our own!  We'll have to watch our buckets carefully from here on out.)  Then, when meltdown was nearly inevitable, I schemed "finding" a bar of chocolate growing on one of the bushes, although they were pretty skeptical of that one.  Changing locations frequently helps them last longer, too.

The white shirt Eli is wearing, above, is made from the Child's Smock(?) pattern from The Children's Year.  I made it from an old white sheet for R when he was 3 as a lightweight cover-up from the sun and to replace an emboidered white shirt from Mexico that he'd grown out of.  It's covered in berry and food stains, but is still great for camping and picking, even though it wasn't very sunny, hazy from nearby forest fires, and even a little drizzly. (Autumn, anyone?)

Koots Roots 2006

Plenty of music.  A little knitting.  A lot of kid crafting.  R even made a pair of fairy wings for me from a pink file folder.  E made his mask at the Bear Aware booth.  A kid parade.  R took the top right picture at the women's info booth.

Check out that van, man!  I'm having flashbacks to camping at a lake in Eastern Washington one time when we were kids.  There was a whole group travelling together in their vans, maybe 20 or more, the ones with the moon, star, or circle windows in the back, you know?  They had them all lined up in a long row, their back and side doors open, and we went from one to the next, checking out each one, inside and out.  We thought they were so cool...and they were.

We're all whooped, but we didn't even fully unpack the car.  I did a load of laundry, restocked food and ice, and headed up the road camping Monday night, just the boys and I, while C had to go back to work.  :( 

Now, there's just a few more days before C's mom arrives from St. Louis, the same day my brother, his girlfriend, and her son arrive from NYC.  Yikes!  Someday things might slow down.  That's summer in Montana for you:  lots of visitors, and then you have to fit  everything else in during the few, short, remaining months weeks of summer!

Busted!

We made a quick trip to get almonds on Friday morning to put in the Sweet Cherry Galette (MSL, July 2004. LOVE Craftlog's Marthadex!  Why didn't I know about this before?) we baked for Friday Pieday.  When we pulled back in the driveway we found this doe sneaking the leftover apple slices that the boys had left out on the picnic table.  Not sure how much you can make out through the fleet of kid vehicles.  Her rascally fawns were looking on, learning from her.  Is it any wonder that I can't have a garden without an eight foot tall fence?

The boys weren't the only ones to leave some leftovers.  I dumped those slices onto the compost heap for them to eat from there later on.  The deer, that is.  They came back a few minutes later when we were inside the house, and seeing that the apples were gone, they left.  Is it any wonder that I can hardly have a garden?

I was surprised to find the last of the local Flathead cherries still for sale and in good shape last week, the end of August!  The cherry galette turned out quite nicely.  Next time, I'd cut the quantity of nutmeg in half, although the flavor mellowed a bit by the time we ate it the following day.  We took half the pie with us on our trip to Canada and left the rest behind for C's brother and his girlfriend. 

How to prevent myself from getting a tattoo.

In the '70's my mom went through a phase of sewing appliques onto my jumpers and dresses, you know, like strawberries, and apples with grinning worms climbing out of them?  Last fall I sewed the butterfly applique on the back of the orange cami-tank.  This summer I did the brown and green ones with more butterflies and a sunflower. 

Sorry, my 6 year old stylist/photographer didn't mention that my tag was sticking up.  Now y'all know that I still shop at The Buckle, even at the age of 36.  Actually, these tanks are the only thing in the store big enough for me to fit into, and they are thick 95% cotton/5% spandex, made in Canada, and come in lots of shades other than cotton-candy pink.

This weekend, we're off to Koots Roots in Ymir, B.C. again where it's difficult to not come home with the idea that you need a tattoo on your shoulder or lower back.  Between yesterday and today's posts, hopefully I've got enough festival-wear now to prevent that.  No offense.  I think most tattoos are beautiful...on other people.

If you can't grow them, then stencil yourself a pair of wings...

...or flippers, or frogs' legs.

I knew I would had to give this stencilling thing a try since I actually had some freezer paper on hand leftover from it's intended purpose:  We butchered half an elk four years ago when C received it in trade for his cabinetry work from some people who had an elk ranch.  It took several evenings to complete, C butchering armed with a sharp knife, a lot of advice from others, and a how-to book close at hand, My job was wrapping everything in two layers of  saran wrap and outer layer of freezer paper.

Enchanted by the post and picture here at Chrysanthemum, and since I have no daughter of my own, I immediately knew that I "needed" a set of wings for myself.  I was going to hold off until Old Gravy had their Perfect Fit tees with long sleeves back in stock.  I was going to wait until I had proper fabric paint.  Suddenly, I couldn't wait any longer.  I pulled out an old tee and acrylic craft paint and went for it.  The design is loosely based on an enlarged version of a clip art butterfly here.   

The butterfly cracked the first time I slipped the shirt over my head and then more when I washed it.  C thinks that's O.K. because, "It has that old-school look right away."  I bought some fabric medium to mix with the acrylic paints for a couple of the boys' shirts and theirs appear to be able to stretch more without cracking.  They requested "a seal" and "a baby frog that's hopping" which I found online also.  I cut out and applied the stencils and they applied most of the paint themselves with small pieces of a kitchen sponge.  Now, C's been online checking out graffiti fonts, trying to figure out what he'd like me to stencil for him next!

Checkers, anyone?

Tuesday, 11:04 am:

Wednesday, 1:55 am:

154 full tiles.  54 tiles cut to fit. 

Minus 4 hours for driving to get more tile adhesive, making and eating dinner, and getting kids to bed.   

The boys weren't too thrilled with me for focusing on this for the entire day.  There wasn't much they could help with since I really didn't know what I was doing myself.  (C's step brother does tile work and got me started.)  They brought toys up and played with the extra scraps I cut off the tiles.  They survived.  E was melting down by bedtime. 

I leaned inside the door, installing the last tiles as Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony, playing inside over the radio, dramatically broke into it's final bars.  All the moths that had been drawn in and then burnt themselves on the lightbulb above, falling all over the newly laid floor made for a rather macabre sight.  (Can you tell I was a bit delirious at this point?)  I had tiled my way out the door and now had to leave the light and the radio on overnight.  Oops.  Then there was a solid half an hour of scubbing tile goop off the bottoms of my feet. 

Today, I'm tired, sore, and have a million things to do and catch up on.  It certainly is satisfying, though, and I can start moving things in soon, after C makes and installs some trim boards around the edges for me.  I can't wait to get all my yarn, fabric, books, piles, etc. out of all the nooks and crannies of the house and into this new space.  The tiles look kind of busy to my eye right now.  It'll take some getting used to.

Rock paint(?)

I'm not sure how I started doing this, if somebody showed me, if I read about it somewhere, or if I just sat down by a river one time and did it, sometime in my early twenties, I'd guess.  I'm not quite sure what you'd call it.  Rock paint?  It's ancient as can be, of course.  Has anybody else ever done this?

How to:  Choose two rocks and wet them in the river or lake.  Rub one on the other, quite hard, to see if at least one of them is soft enough to produce a "paint."  Drip on more water as needed.  Dip either your fingers or a rock into the paint and decorate your body as you wish.  It doesn't show up much until it dries, and then, if you don't like it, wash it off and start again.  The subtle differences in the colors don't come across well in these pictures.  This riverbed has an incredible variety of rocks so we were able to make pink, yellow, green, white, and brown.  Much fun for kids and adults alike!

North Fork

Since the last time we camped at this spot 5(?) years ago, forest fires have come through this area and in Glacier National Park just on the other side of the river.  The trees may be charred, the landscape remarkably different than last time, but we can still sleep out under the stars and swooping bats on the rocky riverbed.  The fishing is still good.  The water is as cold and clear and the river rocks as colorful as ever.  The morning coffee still tastes better than at home.  (Why is that?)  If anything, the views across the valley and river into the park are improved and the wildflowers are more vivid against the charred trees, the understory carpeted in fireweed.  The road over the mountains from our house to here remains absurdly bumpy, dusty, and sloooow and impassable most of the year.  We ended up driving the truck instead of the minivan.

This valley will continue to burn frequently.  The money that people pour into their houses and vacation homes and land here will never change that.  The private property here is now the most expensive off-the-grid land in the country.

We spent one night, just ourselves, here on the river, and the following night camping amongst hundreds at the annual music festival, Aurora Fest, which is held as a fundraiser for the local volunteer fire department.  One year they even had to hold the festival elsewhere due to evacuations from forest fires. 

There were four good bands this year and the headliner, Clinton Fearon, was as positive as ever.  The music goes from noon until 10:00 pm when the generators are turned off so as not to disturb the neighbors.  It's a good time to connect with friends and family we don't see often enough, for the kids to play for hours at the great handmade-by-parents playground, and to wake up together in the morning and drink coffee and eat fresh baked pastries from the mercantile. 

The french press cozy is one I made in the last minute packing frenzy before a camping trip last summer.  It's just a piece of thick felt cut from a sweater that I had knit but which didn't fit well and so had been thrown into the washer to felt.  I left one of the existing buttons on, cutting a matching buttonhole through the felted fabric and tightening it up with a bit of stitching around the edge.   It works all right enough and doesn't show the spills but someday I'll make a new one.   

Station Wagon Living, Volume 2

This book was a thrift store score from last spring and I think, quite possibly, my new all-time favorite find, and at only 75 cents.  There's something so very right and wrong all at the same time about this book.  It makes me deliriously happy on the one hand and on the other, it's appalling.  So many people don't live or camp in such splendor every single day of their lives. 

Since the boys were born, we've become car campers, bringing practically one of everything in the house along with us.  Well, not a circus-style changing tent, but almost.  We don't bring craft kits, like the ones above, but goodness knows, I'd like to.  I usually do pack along some paper and markers or watercolors, maybe a flower press, and knitting, of course.   Someday, I know I'll be packing along the makings for lanyard zipper pulls and sand candles, just like summer camp.

Just 4 observations/thoughts:

1.  Since when are spinning milk cartons "the universal symbol of camping"?  I'm thinking this tradition needs to be reinstated.

2. Does anybody call S'mores "Princess Pats"?  If not, this might be another candidate for reinstatement.

3.  No one would ever use this phrase in the same way as above today:  "Explosion in our campgrounds"

4.  Our family pictures from when we were little don't look all that different from the ones above, only a good bit more rustic and with cloth diapers strung from tree to tree.  There always was a Norwegian and an American flag hanging off the front of the blue canvas tent's awning.  That tent was the very first thing that my parents ever bought on credit because they couldn't wait another summer to go camping.)  My childhood camping memories are sweet, sweet, sweet!

5.  I can't tell you how badly I'd like to make a bunting for stringing from tree to tree when we're camping.  Shouldn't every campsite look like a carnival?  I'm going to have to try making some of those milk carton spinners, too, only out of Silk soy milk cartons. 

Oops.  That's 5.

6.  I wish there was room to share more of this book here.  I found a copy online of the predecessor to this book, the first volume of Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living, and couldn't help but order it.  It just arrived the other day.  I'll scans some of it soon.

7. Here is the other thing I picked up at the thrift store that same day.  I didn't even notice the coiincidence until a friend pointed it out when I was in line to pay for it.  $1.50, total, well spent.  (I rarely indulge the boys their requests at the thrift store since most of the toys are so junky, but this one I couldn't resist.)

We're off car-camping for the weekend in the next valley over between us and Glacier Nat'l Park...not in such style, though.  We'll be in a minivan.

Happy weekend and happy trails!