Knitting Iris

Scenes from the road, or, how to survive a 10 hour road trip. Why, make it last even longer, of course.

There's something to be said for just barreling ahead and getting to your destination, which is what it seems we most often have to do, especially when we're with C and fitting our travels into his work schedule, or else when it's winter and too cold to bother making a lot of stops along the way.  When it's just the boys and I and the weather is warm enough, though, and the only time frame we have to fit ourselves into is the between pay periods and other necessary paperwork to get home to, then there's time to make as many stops along the way as we wish.  Even better, when travelling with the boys, if those places we stop have water to either get into or throw rocks into, trails to explore, bridges to cross, creeks to follow, trains to watch, rocks to climb, slugs to see, wind to be blown around by, and sticks and feathers or other treasures to gather.   

We make this trip fairly often and, it seems, that the more the boys recognize along the way, the easier it is for them to gauge the length of the trip and how much further there is to go.  It helps to have things to anticipate:  "the falls", "that town where we stayed in the freezing cold hotel room", "the place we stopped by the river to eat sandwiches once", "the spot where we threw rocks over the cliff", "the lake we swam in", " the place with the playground", "the mountain with the windmills", "the place where the wild horses are", "the place with the water towers", and on and on.  The landscape varies so much between here and the coast.  Over the course of maybe only an hour and a half you can go from cool, wet, cedar rainforests straight into hot, dry, sagebrush canyons.  There's so much to see along the way and so much more we haven't yet stopped for.

It's a road trip, after all, so why not, if you can, make being on the road part of the trip?  By getting off the road, stretching your legs, and looking around, that is.

Buttercups and Coffee

We're back home, safe and sound, despite some car issues, fortunately taken care of before the trip home but which delayed our return by a day. 

It must be about 15 years or so since I've been back in Seattle during the month of June so I couldn't really remember what it would be like.  Now I do.  The last days of school and the days growing warmer.  On nice days, in junior high, sitting out on the school lawn during lunch hour, picking those weedy but pretty little english daisies and stringing them into daisy chains.  Picking buttercups and doing that under-the-chin thing, "Let's see if you like butter.  Yep.  You like butter."  On the walks home from school, pulling bits off sweet clover blossoms and sucking out the sweet nectar.  Most of the rhododendrons bloomed off, so seemingly endless hours up on a ladder plucking those hard, sticky brownish leftovers off the bushes.  Scotch broom.

Above:  Buttercups, acorn caps, and little hemlock cones gathered and brought back home to Montana with us.  There were other wildflowers, rose petals, and sagebrush gathered along the way home as well.

Below:  The kiddie pool repurposed, emptied of mosquito larvae, sprayed cleanish, and refilled with water so the flowers could survive 10 days of no watering while we were away.  This was the clever suggestion of a good friend.

Below: An americano isn't the only coffee that left Seattle with us, 5 pounds of used coffee grounds that'll end up either in the dyepot or the garden or both.

Now:  piles of paperwork, bills to pay, a lawn to be mowed, a car to unpack, laundry to do, two shedding dogs to brush, plants to be watered, two boys to be fed and read to, a papa/husband who's been putting in 16 hour days while we've been away to spend time with.  Posts will come as time permits.   

Why there won't be any yarn buying in Seattle.

The sock yarn stash was getting a little bit low....until the last couple of weeks.  Not only is there a great selection of sock yarns locally but they're having sock knitting classes and a sale on all sock related items all through this month (the Regia yarns above are from there), making it easy to support my LYS, despite the fact that these arrived in the mail just last week:

The Trekking on the far right is from Carodan Farms.  The left three are from Little Knits, all on sale.  Yes, that is the sorely-missed-and-re-released-in-limited-quantities Trekking #126 and yes, Little Knits is in Seattle, so I guess I already bought some from there, anyways.

This past week I've been washing ALL of our woolens whether they need it or not.  Here is what was out on the line one day:    

These are most of them, just the machine washable ones, a couple of pairs which are from waaaay preblog and have never even been photographed.  The hand washable socks also went in the machine (Yes!) separately on the most delicate, cold cycle.  Hung all together like this don't they remind you of prayer flags?

Apparently I don't really need any more handknit socks myself any time soon, although I wear them every day all but a month or two out of the year.  The boys are due for a pair or two and so is C.  Looks like everyone is getting socks for their birthdays until I've worn through a lot of these.  The bottom Regia colorway is already a WIP with a possible recipient in mind.

NOTE TO SELF:  Must choose what pattern and colorway to knit for Sockapalooooza 4 Pal! 

Anything fun, cheap (free would be even better) happening in Seattle this coming week?  We're driving there today and will be back sometime mid-next-week.

"Mother's laziness leads to teachable moments"

So, the other day I finally got around to mowing the 8 inch tall grass and, in doing so, stumbled across the kiddie pool that's been left sitting abandoned for probably a couple of weeks now full of water, sand, pieces of tree bark, and plastic toy animals.  For some reason, rather than immediately dump the contents out, I peeked in and saw many, many, MANY little critters wiggling all over in there and think to myself, "Hmm.  I wonder if those are mosquito larvae."  Two minutes and a quick Google image search later my suspicions are confirmed.  I call the boys to the computer, we read up a bit on the life cycle of a mosquito, and then we head outside to see it in person:

Next thing I know R is asking to bring out his microscope and I'm weighing whether or not we have time enough to get that involved and, rather than say "No." this time, I dropped all hopes for other plans for the day and said "O.K."  Supplies are gathered.  An old table is dragged out of the shed.  We dive in (not literally, of course).  Specimens of larvae and eggs are scooped out of the pool for observation and dropped onto microscope slides.

At some point or another, running in and out of the house for more books or who-knows-what we came across a big toad on our front steps.  Frightened, it hopped out of the hot sunshine and into the shade of the mudroom which, by the way, doesn't have a  door and is floored with cool slate flagstones.  The boys check him out for a minute, name him Trevor, and then I have to redirect them back to the mosquito larvae before we lose momentum there.  Awhile later, we go back looking for him but can't find him at first because he's found a comfortable spot hidden inside the end of the rolled up tent which I haven't put away from last weekend when a friend borrowed it:

   

 

Which gives us the idea of making a toad houses out of a terra cotta pot, so out come aprons, newspapers, paint, paintbrushes:

While we're waiting for the paint to dry, out come books on toads and mosquitos and of course discussions about the connection between the two, which one eats which, maybe the answer as to why the toad was there in the first place.  Drawings of the mosquito life cycle by R and mosquito larvae by E:

We found egg rafts, larvae, and later that afternoon I squashed a blood-filled adult mosquito, but we haven't come across the pupa stage.  For the sake of science, I let the water sit a couple more days to see if any would develop into pupa before then but the boys and I are headed out of town tomorrow for my parents' house so it will be emptied before we leave.  You couldn't call me ruthless for not letting these get to the adult stage, could you?

Later in the evening, a shady spot in the garden was found for the toad home, a nightlight was plugged into an extension cord nearby to attract bugs, and Trevor was relocated but not without making lots of vocal toad sounds in protest while the boys were relocating it.  He/she didn't stick around in there long but I saw it later that night after dark hopping around nearby in the grass.

Tent left out = happy toad = toad house.  Kiddie pool left out = mosquito eggs and larvae to study.  Get it?  Mother's laziness leads to teachable moments.  ;)   What will be next?  Putting dust bunnies under the microscope?  Studying the mold growing on the heels of a loaf of bread?

Sometimes life feels strikingly similar to those  "If You Give A Pig A Pancake" books, particularly the trail of messes left behind at the end of the day.

Swan Song

Just another case of one thing leads to the next and everything just falling right into place starting with the reading of the current issue of Your Big Backyard to the boys over breakfast yesterday morning, which included a story from another boy somewhere in Montana about tagged and released Trumpeter Swans:

Which lead to an "A ha!" moment and my suggestion, "Why don't we hop in the car and drive down to where we've been seeing that big white bird on that lake along the highway lately and try to see if it's a swan."  Which we did and, from inside the car at a pullout on the highway, watched it glide from across the lake, kicking a bunch of ducks off this tiny little "island":

That's when we thought we could see a tag around it's neck just like the ones we saw in the article.  As the swan came closer, I got out and snuck in for a closer look.  I couldn't quite make out the number but with the camera could zoom in close enough. 

Just about now, I heard a clattering of wings and branches in the pine tree above me.  Looking up expecting to see a raven, instead I saw black AND white and realized it wasn't a raven at all but a bald eagle taking off and then flying away across the lake.  It all happened too quickly to get a picture of it.  I turned to the boys in the car, pointed crazily up at the eagle and then signalled back to them to quietly come down to where I was, which they did...sort of, not really all that quietly.  The swan continued to come closer.  A couple of pair of red-winged blackbirds were flying about in the cattails between the lake and us and when the swan approached them one of the males "had words" with the swan, telling it in no uncertain terms to back off.  I'm assuming there was a nest somewhere?

The swan (he? she?) then wandered off and went about its business:

All of this lead to these by E and R:

And this:

Encylopedias, guide books, The Ugly Duckling in a book of stories I had when I was little.  About a year ago my mom gave us a copy of E.B White's The Trumpet of the Swan.  We tried reading it at the time but it didn't really catch our attention then so back onto the shelf it went.  Well.  It certainly is captivating us now.  We're only a handful of chapters in but, already, reading this book has lead us to sites like this and this and today we reported our tagged bird siting here.  Gratuitous Trumpter Swan pic:

On the way back home from observing the swan yesterday, we also saw this:

Count 'em.  I think there are TWENTY ONE goslings there and only 5 adult geese in sight.  All right already.  Enough of the waterfowl for today but looky here.  The bluebirds are back.

Spring PS 2.0 Wrap Up: done and undone.

Sweet Baby Cap in Apple Valley Road STR midweight, Age 1 size, I think.  Decrease modification: slip 2 at the same time knitwise, knit 1, pass slipped stitches over.  The pooling didn't do much for me. I almost ripped but changed my mind.  There's enough leftover yarn for at least ankle socks.

Patching, and re-patching well loved corduroy and velveteen jeans.  Kind of a losing battle.  Harkens back to the years of patching worn to threads Levi's 501's borrowed from brothers and boyfriends.  Will I ever grow up?  Loving the fact that so many jeans don't have labels now.

My weakness.  One of them, anyways.  Only two or three times a year, a case or two at a time.  No fruit juice in there whatsoever.  Super cheap.  Nice, new label.

Fabric thrifted several years ago.  I'm vowing to scan more of these into a Flickr set.  This I used to line a small bag, one just big enough to carry a wallet and a few things, one that has seen a couple of summers of use.  The outside of the bag is plain, natural linen.

Unfinished Not-Red Herring socks.  One down, one to go.  The other one will be opposite colors, by the way, green with pink heels.  Could be awhile before I'm up for this.

Garden bed by the front door with hops, lady's mantle, creeping jenny "Aurea", white bleeding hearts, lily of the valley, and yellow cousin to the ranunculus, trollius.  It's just perfect right now and for a few more weeks before it starts fading in the middle of the summer heat.

Only one more.  One more square knit from leftover Trekking 107.  I'm going to try and make one for each pair of socks that I knit, casting on as soon as the ends of the socks are woven in.  That way the leftover sock yarns won't keep piling up.

Thank you so much for the amazing response to yesterday's post.  Yes, I'll try to get some pictures at the wedding of all six together and yes, they'll all be green.  I'm not sure if you can see it in the pictures or not but the shoulder straps are just pinned on in the back so that they can be fitted to the person that will be wearing it.  Also, I think they're thinking of making i-cord straps instead, since the ones called for in the pattern are pretty flimsy with alot of stretch.