Long weekend

We spent Memorial Day Weekend out-of-town, soaking up some serious nature and leisure time. There were ants, bats, and birds galore! With a complete lack of TV and only sporadic cell coverage, the main activity was to do whatever you wanted, even if that was nothing at all.  I worked on the Frankensocks while sitting on the deck by the river. Can’t get much more relaxing than that!

(note the nifty gusset there at the heel)

In fact, I finished them. There are a few dozen ends to weave in, thanks to all those scraps, but they are fully knit. I will take a picture of them in their completeness later.

Not to be caught empty needled, I was prepared with a lovely skein of self-striping sock yarn that I wound and then cast on some new socks with.

I also spent a fair amount of time outside, playing with my new camera. I don’t understand how to use it yet, but I took a lot of photos. Most turned out alright, a few were pretty good, and several were downright awful… Clearly, I need more practice. Regardless, it was gorgeous and we did a bit of tromping through the woods to break up all that relaxing.

(my view from the deck, a prime knitting spot)

On ice

Just a quick post today, because our power is out at home and the internet has been sketchy all week, so my online time is limited to breaks at work and I really want to get home now…

It’s been a long four days of snow and ice, with the  Seattle area virtually shutting down. I live on top of a hill and we always get more snow than the surrounding lowlands, but this time pretty much everyone got hit to some degree. I take public transportation to and from work so I can usually get to work even if the freeways are mucked up, but yesterday things iced over so completely that even our light rail system was shut down and I was not able to make it to work.The unexpected snow day would have been more enjoyable if I wasn’t so frozen from my morning failed attempts to get to work, but I did end up going outside to play in the snow for a little while.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how much snow we got, because it would snow then rain then ice then snow some more, so everything compacted down. At least 8″ though, for sure. I’ll leave you with a few photos of our snow and ice – it was beautiful, but it’s too bad it resulted in massive power outages and downed trees.

Frozen raspberry canes

 

Encased in ice, no way in.

 

Crunching through the ice layer, feeling like Godzilla! Rawr!

 

Ice Lantern

Sixteen hours

Yesterday afternoon at 2:30 pm:

And this morning at 8:30 am:

Peaceful morning

I know I posted a picture of my view just the other day, but really – in Seattle, any time it’s not overcast and rainy one just doesn’t pass up the opportunity to document it. This morning is one of those days, and I wish I had a better camera to capture it with.

(Seattle waterfront, 8:45 am on 12/21/11)

Don’t blink

or you might miss summer. It can go by pretty fast here in Seattle – it arrived on Saturday. It was so pretty, I spent the day tootling around the house / yard, hanging laundry out to dry, watering the garden, picking raspberries and sugar snap peas, doing a bit of spinning.

Sunday was equally gorgeous and we headed out to soak up some sun (after putting on sunscreen, of course):

(Strolling at Gasworks Park)

And my this morning (Monday) it was gone again, with a bit of thunder and lightning and torrential rain, followed by dark and gloomy clouds:

(Cold and wet)

 

More green than lavender

Our cold spring/summer was depressingly apparent at this year’s Lavender Festival in Sequim, WA, where the plants were still far more green than purple. Normally stripped bare by u-cutters gathering fragrant blooms by the armful, only the tops of the plants were in bloom when we toured the farms last Sunday. They should be solid hillocks of purple in about two weeks.

Tree envy

I was not born in the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve spent almost my entire life here and as such am very familiar with the flora and fauna that surrounds us. One of my favorite things about traveling is that I get to see new things. I avoided taking a million photos of palm trees and cacti, but I did snap these three trees while we were in California over the weekend.

I have no idea what this is, but there were a bunch planted along a street in San Luis Obispo. The bark is soft and slightly spongy, like a mushroom, and the trees seemed to be doing just fine despite flashing the world their inner bark:

Another street had these dramatic specimens. The contrast between the white bark and incredibly dense foliage was quite striking (though it was raining while we were there and some of the bark was water-darkened, you can still see how cool it is):

And who wouldn’t love fresh oranges growing right in the back yard??? We meandered through a residential section and saw several houses boasting their own orange trees, and a lime tree as well. I know, I know – we have apples and plums and pears, but I’d really like an orange tree.