Not n Montana anymore

The post that I posted the other day with all of the yarn was kind of jumping ahead of the stuff that happened on the way to the truck stop where I was able to wind all of the yarn. We left Bozeman after shopping at the LYS and then having a yummy dinner at Carino's Italian Grill...we were there during happy hour and they have loverly Bellini's.
I know that the news has been covering all of the fires that are going on in the west, some lightning started and some man started. We were heading west on I-90, and the air started to have a tinge of smoke smell on it. It was in the early evening, not time for the sun to go down, but this is the way that the light was:

You could look directly at the sun and not be blinded because the smoke was so thick. It didn't help that we were going through a river canyon and it was funneling all of the smoke. As we drove farther, the smoke got thicker:
It really looks like it is sunset, but it was actually about 4 p.m. mountain time. It was kind of an eerie kind of light, and you could really smell the smoke. It smelled like you were camping and had a really big campfire going with some really green wood that was smoking a lot.






If you look at the center right of this picture, you can see the plume of smoke coming off of the hillside. There was a pretty good fire burning or it had been burning right next to the road for a couple of miles. As we were driving, there were signs telling you to watch out for the smoke and that visibility would be poor and that you should drive with your headlights on. All of a sudden, we started hearing the chop of a helicopter. We looked out the windshield of the truck and saw this helicopter with a load of water in its bucket. It went
directly over our truck and went to the hillside that was to our right. I was able to snap this picture of what he was treating just before he
He opened the bottom of the bucket and the water fell on one of the hot spots that were scattered throughout the hillside. I didn't try to take a picture of that, because I actually wanted to see it and I knew that if I was trying to photograph it, I wouldn't have really gotten to see it. It was so cool to watch. He lined up right over one of the flaming spots and let loose from several hundred feet in the air and it sprayed out and hit the ground where it was needed, or at least some of it did.

Some of the unsung hero's in fighting the fires that we hear about on the news are the wild land fire crews. Every time there is a report of a fire, a crew member checks it out either from the air or on foot or in a truck. If it is a fire that needs to be fought, a crew is assembled and a camp is set up. We saw where some of the crew for the fire on the hillside was deploying from (sorry for the bad pic). This was a couple of miles down the road from the fire, and the crews were doing what they could to help the ranchers and land owners wet down their houses and barns in case the wind shifted and brought the fire back their way. Each of the large structures in this group had an irrigation sprinkler running on it to keep the wooden parts of the building wet enough that they wouldn't catch on fire. All of the men in yellow shirts are part of the wild land fire crew that was working this fire. There were 30-40 of them all up and down this frontage road.

One of the things that was amazing to me was that within a couple of miles of passing the flaming hillside, the air cleared up and you could actually see the sun in all of it's glory.


I posted that I was getting ready to rip and restart Soleil from the Summer 2007 Knitty. I ripped out the cotton ease yarn incarnation, and then I cast on with the Butterfly mercerized cotton. I really like the Butterfly yarn. It's smooth and shows good stitch definition and knits up nicely. At least that was my first impression of it. I got the first repeat done on the lace bottom and realized that I had forgotten a YO a couple of rows back and had to rip it out again. I cast on the 160 stitches again and got three rows into it and it was looking so good. The pattern was showing up and it was smooth and then I realized that somehow on the second or third row I had twisted the stupid thing and so to the frog pond it went for the third time in one day and I decided that I would put it in time out for the rest of today and I started a DW dishcloth in Summer Splash. That's going along swimmingly and I can hardly wait for the pattern to come out for the next Six Sox installment.

It is unseasonably hot here in the north west. Boise, ID was at 98 today when we stopped for lunch and grocery shopping. Boise isn't supposed to be at 98 degrees...we are in the northern climes of our country...it's supposed to be cooler here than the rest of the country. Even Bozeman, which is usually 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the state was in the low nineties the other day when we were there. That is just so wrong. I want to come to the northwest and be cooler. I don't want to swelter up here. We do enough of that in Texas or Alabama or Tennessee.

I guess that I don't have anything else that is exciting or fun or anything to blog about, so I'll catch up with you later in the week.

Still crossing Montana

We are still in Montana today, did a whopping 381 miles today. (that was all posted yesterday, before I finished the post. Now we are in Washington) That's because I got to go here. I am a member of the Six Sox Knitalong, and the sock that is going to start in August is recommended to be knit out of solid color yarn. I have quite a bit of sock yarn on the truck, as you can tell by what is in my Ravelry Stash, but nothing in a solid or semi solid colorway. This, at least in my mind, necessitated a trip to a yarn store. The yarn shop in Bozeman, which is mostly right on our way to Seattle, only means that we have to drive about 15-20 miles out of our way to drop the trailer and then go in to Bozeman and then back out to Belgrade, MT where the truck stop is that we drop our trailer out. Usually we also get to eat at a good restaurant rather than a truck stop. Today was no different. We went to the yarn shop where I procured much yarney goodness. First there was the sock yarn...Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Purple Mountains: OH MY!!!
This is just the most incredible mixture of purple and royal blue. It changes colors almost imperceptibly, but the mixture is amazing. Not only that, it is incredibly soft and squooshy. I'm liking it a lot. I then picked up a skein of Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Brown Bark. Again the colors are incredible and change from one to the next very nicely.



My darling husband, ever the enabler, got stopped at the book shelf in the shop and came up with this gem for me. I picked up a couple of spindles at Estes Wool Festival and have been having a real time with spinning on them. Ever the thoughtful man, he found this and encouraged me to buy it. Not only will it help me to learn how to spindle, but it has all kinds of other information about spindling and the history etc. It's a book put out by the editor of Spin Off Magazine and is called A Handspindle Treasury.


I have been working on a tank for my sister out of this pattern. The biggest problem was that I bought the yarn before we had decided on the pattern and tried to make the yarn we bought work. IT DID NOT! It was yukky :-p So, when we were in the yarn shop yesterday, I found some Butterfly Super10 Mercerized cotton that was a much more appropriate yarn for the top. I like knitting it better. The stitch definition is way better and I think that she will like the color better. It's less yellow than the first batch of yarn. We had the boy with us in the yarn shop and he is ever on the lookout for yarn that he likes for socks. Now, I have been working on a pair of socks for him forever. They keep getting shoved aside for something more exciting, something with a deadline(self imposed or otherwise) and the poor thing would really like me to knit him a pair of socks. Anyway, he picked out this: It's Trekking...at least the boy has good taste. I then picked up this skein for a pair of socks for the Husband:








The final bit a yarn that I picked up was something else that DH decided was "me". He said, and I quote: "I can see you wearing socks made out of this". So I had to buy it, don't you agree? It's all purple and blue with some brown and green. It's 85% merino wool and 15% silk. It's gawgeous! Oh, you want to see a picture of it? Really? It's so nice and soft and I really like it a lot. I want to pet it.....Oh, the picture? Here it is: I'm thinking something in an anklet or something because there is not a lot of yardage on the skein. Either that or a soft and squooshy scarf.

Now, I've posted pictures of all of this wonderful yarn, and as observant as I know you are, you've noticed that all of the yarn is caked and ready to go. It didn't come like that, oh no! Most of it came in hanks and had to be wound into center pull balls. The next couple of pictures will show exactly how that was accomplished.

We set up a yarn winding station on the trailer. I pulled out my ball winder and the wonderful swift that my dh and my dad made me and wound up all of that yarn. Not only that, I was able to take the skeins of Barefoot and divide them in half with my handy dandy scale that we bought at a kitchen store.





These are the tools of the wool winding trade:

And finally, one last picture to show that I actually do finish projects. I present you a picture of my FINISHED Victorian Lace Socks in Koigu PPM, Light blue colorway, semi solid in a ladies size 8:
I really like these socks. I've been wearing them all day and they are comfy and pretty and look great with Birks...so there. I squeaked by under the deadline and they are finished. Yay for me.

I have a 'nother whole post to do about the excitement we saw yesterday and we were coming across Montana, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day. It will be another picture heavy post (aren't all of mine) with some cool and not so cool things.

Ciao

Drive by

I wanted to post a drive by because I will probably be out of contact for the next couple of days. We are on our way to Seattle, and that necessitates going through South Dakota and Montana. I usually don't have service for the internet in these two states, unless something has drastically changed since we were up here last time.

I promised some pictures of the wip's that I am working on, but bad blogger that I am, I haven't even gotten the camera out to take pictures. I need to do that too, cuz I will be finished with the Victorian Lace Socks that I am working on for Six Sox Knitalong probably tomorrow, and I haven't taken my in progress photo yet. This will be the first sock that I have finished on time since I joined six months ago. Yay for me.
When we went up to Platoro last week, the whole trip was along this river. My Dad is a flyfisher and I had to call him and tell him just how green he was that we were there and he wasn't. The only fly in the ointment that I could see was this:








Now, the fishing with artificial flies and lures only isn't such a big deal, but the daily bag limit of only 2 trout, 16 inches or longer might pose a bit of a problem. What if you fish all day and catch 23 fish? How do you choose which two over the 16 inch limit that you want to keep? Oh there was one other fly in the ointment...a good portion of the stream that ran through this really cool valley with excellent fishing possibilities was owned by a fishing club that meant that not just anyone could fish there. Private sections on a very public stream.
Here is some more random mountaino goodness. These are some of the mountains that you see as you are going east bound on I-70 over Vail Pass. They still had a bit of snow on them at the end of June, but I doubt that they do anymore. An interesting side note about these mountains along the road over Vail pass; during WWII the mountain divisions of the Army trained in these mountains getting ready for going to Europe to fight in the Alps and other mountains on the European continent. There is a rest area at the summit that has the story of the mountain divisions as well as some of the athletes that have trained in these mountains for Olympics and what not.

I am so jealous...I have been reading some of the blogs that I enjoy, and I heard about a trip that Jo, from Celtic Memory Yarns, got to take to Houston to visit Angeluna and take a dyeing class. I am jealous on so many levels. I want to have some friends like that, where I can just say, oh, by the way, I heard that you are doing "this" on the weekend, can I come and it would be okay. I'm jealous cuz I want to take a dyeing workshop. I'm jealous cuz they got to meet and I so would like to be friends with Jo and with Angeluna. But jealousy isn't going to do me any good and I will just have to develop friendships like that. I used to be a part of the community that ebay used to have on the antiques chat board. We did things like that. I was apart of a couple of group get togethers, and 5 or 6 of the people that were regulars on those "boards" even came to my wedding when I married DH. But, since we have been on "The Big Red Truck", I have let those friendships lapse for lack of time and attention and don't belong to any of those communities any more.

I know that things will change when we get our house built, but I get impatient. I know that all good things come in time, but I want it now. I want to be a part of a community where I have actual friends. I have made some contacts for that in the community where we will live, by attending the knitting group that meets at the LYS that just came into being this year. I think I blogged about it, but a resident that has a graphic design business decided that in addition to that, she wanted to run a craft store locally. She was able to get a stash of yarn from someone that was really great yarn and got some other things and set up shop. (kind of simplified, I know, but kinda sorta how it happened) Now we have a LYS and a place to meet that caters to the local knitting community. Anyway, I attended one of their Wednesday afternoon knitting groups and enjoyed it, although I am so way more conservative than most of the residents.

As an out take, I would like to post some more flowery pictures taken on the road...






























I don't have any idea what any of these flowers are ( I really need to get a Rocky Mountain Flower book) but I took them when I was wandering around the other week taking pictures while DH moved stuff around on our trailer.

Have a great weekend, and I will be back as soon as I can get online, and I WILL have some pictures of knitting, hopefully a finished object or two.

We Made it

up to Platoro, CO and back down. It was slooooowwww, bumpy going, but it was a beautiful trip. After I got the message from Debra in NC, I found it on the map (we have a trucker's map too) and saw the little, tiny gray road (indicates a dirt road) that we would be going up. Now, when we go to visit my parents, we have to go up a dirt road there, as well. The difference in the two is that the roads in Fremont and Custer counties are at least maintained. There is a sign at the very beginning of the road we went up that the US Forest service has a contract with the local county for the county to maintain the road at least ONCE a year. It didn't look or feel like it had been maintained since it was opened in the Spring. It was all bumps and washboards and huge mud puddles. That's okay, the scenery completely made up for the road conditions.

There was a bit of snow left in the really high country, but not much. As you can see from the picture above, that's all that was left that we saw on the trip up there. One of the dumb things that I forgot to do was to take some pictures of the little community that we delivered to. It was at 10,000 feet and was only open for about 4 months of the year. They don't keep the road up there open all year, so when the snow flies, the road closes. There were a couple of lodges, a bunch of cabins and a gold mine. That was the extent of the town. They did have a decent restaurant, so we got breakfast and started back down the mountain.














If you have never been to Colorado before, you wouldn't know that it is a free range state. What that means is that if you own cows, they can range anywhere they want, within reason. For instance, they aren't allowed in downtown Denver, but when you get out of town and are in the country, they can just about go anywhere. If you don't want cows in your yard, you have to fence them out...that's your responsibility, not the cow owner's to keep them out of your yard. Any way, this is just one of the groups that we met up with on our trip to Platoro...
It was kind of funny...the little ones were afraid of the truck, but the big ones just looked at us and wandered out in front of the truck like we weren't even there. Silly things











Aswe were coming down the mountain, we looked over to our right and this is what we saw. There were two cowboys that were working a herd of cattle and moving them down the valley. We watched them and their three dogs work a small herd of cattle that had broken off from the main herd that was here...







It was kind of cool to watch the 5 of them working together to get the cows down the valley. It was also amazing to watch the dog work. I think that they were working harder than the cowboys were.

We went further down the road and stopped at a view spot. While DH rearranged the items on the deck of the trailer, I went out in the woods and took some artsy fartsy flower and nature pictures. We got a new camera a few months ago and I really haven't taken the time to use it and find out what it could do, so I decided to try it out a little bit in the woods. Here are some of those pictures.
This was a cool fallen log that I found when I was walking the trail. I thought that the log itself was cool, but the composition with the aspen tree with the carving in it just made it even neater.




















I don't have any idea what either of these flowers are, I just was playing with the focus on the camera and getting the flowers in focus while everything else was blurry behind it and liked these two. I especially like the one to the right. The colors are so saturated and I love that purply blue color alot.




Here's a picture of the truck taken through the aspen trees that were on the trail of this little view point. I just thought it was kind of a neat shot of our truck "out in the wilds".









Finally, here is a shot of ds and the dog. One of his favorite things is harassing the dog. He loves to walk her and play with her and she spends most of her time in the back of the truck with him, either laying right next to him, or when he is doing school, she will lay under the bed at his feet. I would say that they are pretty much buds, but she is still DH's dog. DH is her MOST favorite person.








We got down off of the mountain and ended up sitting in Walsenburg, CO for a couple of days. It was semi productive in that I got things like laundry done, but I also got a raging case of food poisoning. I spent a miserable 24 hours and was convinced that I would have to die to get better. If you are ever going up or down I-25 and see the Acorn Travel plaza....don't stop and eat at the A&W. It is bad news.

Since then, I have been spending more time knitting and less time on the computer, hence the lack of posts to the blog. I am just about finished with my Victorian Lace Socks for the Six Socks knitalong. I might actually be done with these before the dead line of the end of the month. Since joining the KAL, I have done two other of the patterns, or at least attempted them, and I didn't finish either of them on time. One I still haven't finished, and in fact, I had the socks for ds, loosely based on the Horcrux socks, done nearly to the heel turn, and ripped them completely out because they just were too wide.

I am still working on the tank for my sister, but I don't think that I am liking the pattern that I am using with the yarn that I am using, and I think that I am going to change to a tank from the summer edition of Interweave Knits. It is a plain tank, but both of the straps are lacy and I think that I like that one better and it will fit the yarn better.

I will take some pictures of the WIP's and post them the next time that I make a blog post. Until that time, enjoy your week.

In the last week....

I have been wanting to post for the last few days, but because of spotty internet service and just trying to catch up after being on vacation for THREE WEEKS, I have gotten some of the pictures edited and waded through the mail I hadn't and now I am ready to post. This will be a picture heavy post, you know, because that's kind of what I do, but also because where we were was just gorgeous and we couldn't keep from taking pictures.

I posted last on July 3rd, and then we had the Fourth. We were able to stay for the fireworks at the lake and we also went to town for the car show and the flea market so here are some pics of the car show.
This was DH's second favorite car...it was a pretty sweet looking ride, but wait until you see his favorite....

Now to me, the coupe isn't all that much different than the station wagon, but I think that the yellow one reminded him of his childhood. He had one similar to this that was handed down to him from his father, who bought it brand new. He was reminiscing about drag racing it and fixing it and all of that while we stood and looked at the cars. The man who owned this one had done an excellent job of restoring it. The interior was immaculate and the exterior....well, you can see the exterior.


My favorite of the show, was this....

What can I say, I'm just a truck kind of girl. I would so much rather drive a pickup than most any other kind of car out there. Not only are they eminently practical, you sit up off of the ground high enough that you can see what is coming toward you and you can haul stuff. When you live in the country you have to be able to haul stuff....feed, hay, lumber, kids, kids stuff, trailers, etc. You just can't do that with a car.

We made a rather disappointing run through the town flea market...the only thing I bought was some fresh kettle corn (YUM!!!) and some lavender scented lotion made from honey. It is really nice lotion and was produced by someone local. We did go visit some friends that do metal working so that I could show DH what I want for the railings of the front porch of our house. This couple designs and does metal work and other types of crafty things. One of the things that they have done recently is to design these metal panels with scenes in them for use as either wall art or porch railings. They can do anything that you can think of and they do really fine work. One of the things that turned us onto them was a Christmas gift we got from my parents... personal steak brands. They're cool!!

After we left the flea market, we went to the campground for Lake DeWeese, a local reservoir that has boating, fishing and of course, camping. My dad and the DH had taken my folk's camper down and set it up on Tuesday night so that we would have a place to watch the fireworks from. The local community puts on their fireworks over the lake. We had grilled food, eaten in the camper because of the rain, then we toasted s'mores, my aunt and uncle came down to watch with us and a good time was had by all, as evidenced by the following pictures....





Check out the hat...he'd been begging for a cowboy hat for a while and a shop had some inexpensive kid's hats and wha-la....he is a cowboy.

It started to rain, and not ones to allow our good time to be ruined by the rain, we dug in the back of the pickup truck and found the wonderful, huge golf umbrella. Mom and I shared it in front of the fire. It contained the heat and kept the front of us warm and blocked the cold wind from the back.
This is what the mountains looked like before we got the rain and it was a cold, windy storm. The skies got black, the mountains disappeared and the rain started. It was a fast moving storm, and shortly after it started, the clouds moved on and this is what the mountains looked like:

Can you say "SNOW" on the fourth of July? That's right, the mountains got snow on July 4th!!! Now granted, they are over 14,000 feet high, and what would be a cold rain at 8,000 feet should be snow at 14,000, but c'mon....it was the FOURTH of JULY....there's not supposed to be snow.

After the lightning, did I forget to mention the lightning? that made us think that maybe the town would cancel the fireworks, and when the skies cleared somewhat, we watched the natural fireworks that the sunset put forth. It was like nature was celebrating with us the founding of our country and reminding us that we live in the greatest country on earth. It showed us a spectacular light show put on by God himself...want proof....then look and behold:




You can still kind of see the clouds that were left over after the storm in these shots.








Can you believe the colors in the shot above? Hey Ray, if you read this, wouldn't those colors make a loverly yarn?




I see pictures of sunsets like this where the sun is coming from behind the mountains or through the clouds and the first thing that comes to mind is the Hallelujah Chorus.....Hallelujah, hallelujah. I swear this was better than the fireworks, although we did Oooohhhh, and Aaaahhhh at the fireworks. My shots of them are nothing spectacular. I finally gave up trying to take a picture of them and watched them...here is a
couple of the shots that almost turned out:














The fireworks were great, the company good, the food fun and so all in all, a fine time was had by all.

I mentioned that we had been on vacation for three weeks. It really wasn't a vacation for all of us. DH still worked the first two weeks and then the last week was spent running errands, going to Colorado Springs, and then "doing the Fourth". We were all ready to leave on the 5th, but the company had other plans...we didn't actually get a load until the 10th. Then we went from Westcliffe to Fountain, CO and then to Denver to pick up the load, then to Kansas City, MO and back to Kansas City, KS to deliver that load. The next day, the 12th, we picked up in Olathe, KS and went to Houston, TX where it was nothing if not HOT and HUMID. Not only that, but the air conditioning in our truck is intermittent at best, so we start out the trip with air and then after 50-60 miles it goes off. It is soooo hot and sticky, yuck. We left Houston on Friday and drove up to Dallas. We spent the night in Dallas and had 2 fans running, four windows and a side door open just to keep it cool enough to sleep. Fortunately we were parked where there weren't any other trucks running, so we didn't have the heat from that. Sometime this morning it started raining, and we had to shut the door above our head 'cuz our pillows were getting wet.

One of the things that wasn't work related that got done while we were on vacation was this:
I have been NEEDING a yarn swift. I have been looking at them on ebay and Joann's and debating what kind to buy, when I came across a conversation on one of the knitting sites that mentioned the do it yourself directions for a yarn swift. I showed it to DH and he said that he could make it, no sweat. The last week we were at my folk's house, I made my dad hold some yarn for me so that I could wind it into a center pull cake on my handy dandy ball winder. He didn't like it much, and when DH asked for some help building one, Dad jumped at it (he didn't want to have to be a swift again). They came in the house a couple of hours later with this little beauty. Not only is it good looking, but it works like a dream. If you, like me, are needing a yarn swift, contact me here and we'll see what we can do about that.

The next bit of news that I have is that I finally got my invitation to Ravelry. This site could be dangerous. It has all kinds of options for fiber artists and crafters and I could probably spend a lot of time organizing things and looking at patterns and what not. If you haven't yet, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't have, go put your name in for an invitation. They are still in Beta testing and until that is done, their computer program is inviting a certain number of users everyday until everyone that wants to be a part of the site is invited, so you might have to wait a while, but it is soooo worth it. It's fun and it helps you to keep your stash organized and keeps you from doing what I do, buying two of the same books because I know that I want it, but I forget that I already ordered it, so I buy it in a bookstore and then I end up with two of them. You can keep track of your projects, your Works In Progress (wip's) and use the site to find different kinds of yarn, and ... and ... and ... It's cool.

Look at what the DS found. He was outside playing in the dirt (isn't that what little boys are supposed to do?) and he came in to show his Nena this...a "horny toad". I didn't think that these little creatures were supposed to be as high as 8,000 feet, but I would be wrong, cuz here is proof. Can you see how red DS's hand is...the poor thing got sunburned. I am such a bad mother, I sent him off to go riding without sunblock and this is what he looked like when he came back. Bad Mom, Bad Mom...oh well, isn't the first time and probably won't be the last.

One evening, DH was out taking pictures of this really incredible sunset (pictures would follow, but none do it justice) and he decided that we needed yet another picture of "THE Big Red Truck" all lit up. Here it is.

I guess that is all the news that I have. We are on our way to Colorado again with a load. This time we are going to a little mining town called Pletoro...it's not on any map, but if you have Streets and Trips, you can find it. The directions that we got from out company say that we will have to go 17 miles on a small US highway and then 23 miles on US Forest Service roads. That's okay, but if you have been in, or lived in, the west, you know that USFS roads are usually dirt. That's kind of rough on the Big Red Truck, not to mention its occupants. We have to call when we get there and have someone lead us in. Let's hope we have cell service out in the middle of nowhereville.

I did forget to mention that while we were on vacation, we had a birthday celebration for my dad, DS and me. We went to the General Store and had lunch. The General Store is a little building up on the mountain that serves breakfast and lunch and then has a dinner show on Saturday nights. They usually have a Bluegrass show along with either a chicken or a steak dinner. It is something that has to be experienced. Anyway, we went there, had lunch, passed out presents to those with a birthday (sorry no pictures, forgot the camera) and then went home. We gave my dad some spurs for his birthday, which was a really good present for him. He's been looking for some and we had found some for him quite a while ago and finally had them and him together, so he got them. The boy got some books, a hat, a puzzle and a dvd about wolves. He really likes wolves, so we try to give him things that appeal to him. He also is into dragons, so we have a little bit of variety to look through. I got a handthrown chip and dip bowl from DH, a Celtic Woman CD from DS and then my mom and dad gave me Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting without Tears, and Knitter's Almanac. I think, after looking at the books, they are very similar, but have a couple of different things in them, so I will keep them both.

Now that is really all...I have been working at this for hours because of the slow in truck internet connection and waiting for all of the uploads and stuff. When I have more news to report, I will be back, or even if I don't have any news...just because I have to post.