It's a little late but here's my 2010 Photo Review!

In 2010 I...



crawled through Portland in search of delicious fiber and scrumptious eats.



became a Ravelympian



walked under the Sakura blossoms



spent a VERY cold weekend camping at Beverly Beach



said goodbye to my WONDERFUL Mamaw.



Relayed for life with my team.



Hung out with pretty much the ENTIRE Gardner clan, and welcomed my brother back from his deployment in Afghanistan.



was one of the last people to tour Berry Botanic Gardens before it closed.



Spent a day in the rain in Astoria with good friends.



and made the best haul ever of Woobu at the BMFA Stash Sale.

It was a year full of adventure and fun with friends and family, tempered by great loss.  Mamaw was a person who remained vital and had a great zest for life, she loved to travel, always had a new art or craft project in the works, and was an avid reader.  I fulling intend to take after her.

Kaput!

Well I've been trying to deny it, have switched 2 times, and have done everything I could to avoid it, but I am now forced to,go to the computer repair shop.  There just aren't any other options unless I want to by a computer.

Awhile back my brother let me have his laptop when he upgraded and I come to use it more than my desktop, so when the desktop went kaput it was really easy to put off having it fixed for months and months because I didn't really need it.  I was even less inclined to get it fixed my little bro upgraded again and I got and even newer laptop :D.

Unfortunately a few weeks ago my brilliant strategy of not repairing things started to develop a fatal flaw, the new old laptop starts up fine but will only display gibberish, my brother thinks it's because it got killed by a virus.  Since I was still fully engaged in the whole moving on instead of fixing computing strategy I went back to using the old old laptop.  The strategy was working perfectly until about two weeks ago when all of a sudden for no reason that I can understand the computer decided that there was a program that was too big for it to startup, so now I just get the blue screen of death and it wont even startup in safe mode so I can trouble shoot the issue.

So now I'm having to borrow time on computers just to keep up w/Facebook & Ravelry and I'll be dragging all 3 computers in to the repair place at once which I'm imagining will garner me a few odd looks and possibly a scolding, but oh well.

It's sad when a good strategy falls apart.

Ghettogria!

So one of my friends and her husband just bought their first home, and were having their house warming that was BYOB.  One of my favorite things to take is sangria, but it's so expensive to buy all the fruit for it, so I had this idea to use a fruit smoothie like Odwalla or Naked instead of fresh fruit.

Unfortunately when I looked at the ingredient label I discovered that they use emulsifiers in them and I didn't want that in the gria so I ended up hitting the organic juice section to get what I wanted.  I also picted up a pint of fresh mixed berries so there'd still be a bit of fruit floating about, and a decent bottle of locally produced red wine.


Now for the mixing!  When I got home I put all the ingredients together and this is what I had.



From the Left: Santa Cruz Berry Nectar, Cayalla 2005, from the Edgefield Distillery Brandy, Pear Brandy, and Longshot Brandy, and down in front a pint of mixed berries.

I used 2 c. of the juice, all the wine, a 1/2 c. of all three brandies mixed together in fairly close to equal parts, and the whole container of berries sliced up.  Mix it all up taste it to see if it needs more juice or brandy, let it sit in the fridge overnight to mellow out, and Voila you have nice strong sangria that only cost you about $6 in fruit & juice instead of closer to $30 (yes I have spent that much before and it was some darn fine gria).

Leap into Insanity

Well it's been quite awhile since I last posted anything, I just wasn't in a real creative mood; but now one of my favorite seasons is in full swing and so likewise I too should get back into the swing of things.

So I'm kicking it off by digging out the baby blanket I was supposed to have done in September, I'm calling it the Quilt of Insanity because it's slowly eating away at mine.  The fault lies with me though the pattern New Traditions Baby Blanket is clearly written, it's just very repetitious and I have attention issues.  This is where I am right now.



I decided to knit all the squares for each design at the same time, which while more efficient because I only have o carry one or two balls of yarn with me, and after the first square or so I no longer have to think about what I'm doing.  It also means that I'm doing the exact same thing 4 or 8 times per square times 6 all at once, this has the rather off effect of making it seem like you're not making much progress even though you've been knitting quite diligently.

But I've had a nice break from it now and as the mother of the intended recipient will be back at work in a couple more months it's time to pick it back up and finish, hopefully.

Ahh, Camping in Spring

Last weekend a couple friends and I headed down to the Newport area and stayed at the Beverly Beach campground, unfortunately it's still rain season here so it was pretty wet and cold.  We spent most of the time huddled around the fire, which was very high maintenance because the wood was green & wet.  I did get some decent pictures though.



I really liked the lines of this stump.




Not sure why but I've always loved barnacle encrusted things.



The trees at the beach always look so beat up, and these in particular look like they are trying to lean as far away as they can.



That is exactly as I found it, I thought it was kind of remarkable that not only had it settled right side up but it's completely intact.



This log looked like a lizard sunning or an otter, or salamander to me.



So pretty.



One of the greatest things about Beverly Beach is the rocks, the beach is littered with them, and you can see the distinct strata in them.  This particular layer looks to be wearing in the nearly geometric pattern.

Today, is a Good Day to Dye

A few years ago at the very first Blue Moon Fiber Arts Barn Sale I acquired this cone of mystery yarn.



Fully intending at the time to use it to experiment with dye, I did hit a bit of a block though when in researching dyeing methods I found out that what type of fiber the yarn was really makes a difference on what you can get away with using as a dye agent.  I know there are tests you can do to help determine what it is but I just thought it was better to plunk some of the yarn into a bath with Koolaid and nuke it until it was hot.  If memory serves it worked pretty well though there was a pretty heavy dye to yarn ratio.  Anyway due to my inexperience and unlearned state I dropped the project, until a few days ago when I was talking to my friend JL and she was interested in using vegetables and plants to dye fabric & rust dyeing.


Having been inspired to pick up the project again I dug the old cone out from the depths of my stash, picked up some Wilton's gel dye, and some inexpensive measuring implements that I wont be sad if they get all stained and they can be used in the future if I get into more chemically dyes.  When it was all said and done I had a pretty decent dye kit put together, for a first timer.



Since I don't have a knitty knotty I used my yarn swift to make hanks, it worked pretty well other than it was a bit hard to gauge how much yarn was there, the process was further complicated by my little helper, I kept having to stop take it away from her.



Since I really like them I figured I'd try making a variegated solid so I pinned the yarn up on the edges of the bin in a few places, added in the hot water, and then used boiling water to hydrate the gel before adding it to the main bath.



After 10 minutes I removed two of the pins and once it was all dunked I just pinned the two side together in the bath.



After another 10 minutes I took out the last pin and let it go for another 10 minutes.  Then it was time for a good rinsing and lay out to dry, the result was, ok.



I used two different colors Rose & Violet and while the Rose for the most part worked as expected, but when I added the vinegar to the violet it separated and only the pink in the dye stuck to the yarn.  I mean it's not a bad color per se but it's not what I was going for.



There are a few spots that are almost violet but for the most part it's more of a fuchsia or magenta.  I did manage to dye my fingers hot pink, really should have remembered the gloves.

It's Sprung!

Yesterday in honor of the first official day of spring I went downtown and took a walk along the water front, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Here are some pictures from the day.

In the park next to the MAX station there is this huge pink magnolia tree that is just starting to bloom.  The light wasn't right for it to really show off the color of the flower, but I think it's still pretty striking.

There are two parallel rows of trees that create this gorgeous canopied lawn for people to sit under or nap as the case may be.

Or you could practice your tightrope skills, under the cotton candy canopy.