Moving Right Along....

Well, at a snail's pace perhaps. I haven't found much time for blogging lately. But I have been paddling and knitting! And I think I left off with our summer vacation while we were still in Idaho.

So let's wrap up the vacation. After a fabulous river trip, hosted by Canyons of McCall, Idaho (beautiful scenery and whitewater, great guides, fabulous food, 6 days of fun on the Middle Fork of the Salmon),

David and I had planned some tourist stops taking a long way home. First up was Great Falls, Montana. Where the falls were pretty dry, but we enjoyed the Louis and Clark Interpretative Center. And Don and Karol picked up their new Subaru Outback, outfitted it with racks, and removed their boats and gear from our truck. We parted company here and made our separate ways home.

Further sightseeing for us included the Little Bighorn National Battlefield in Montana and Devil's Tower National Monument (no close encounters to report) in Wyoming.

In South Dakota we stopped to see Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drug, and Badlands National Park.

After which we were ready to head home and pretty much made a bee line from there. (By the way, my little photo friend is Loopy from The Loopy Ewe, who got to go on vacation with me and get his picture on Sheri's blog.)

Soooo, knitting is up next. But not this entry!

A Quickie!

As in knit:

This hat harkens back to my freshman year in college. My dorm mom, Mama Mac, taught a bunch of us to knit using broom handles (literally - sanded smooth and shaped to have tips). A few stitches with giant yarn doubled, knit garter stitch back and forth until it fits around your head, cast off, sew cast off edge to cast on edge, gather one open end, sew on tassle or pom-pom - viola instant hat !). I had some fancy, super chunky multiple yarn lovely colors stuff and couldn't think what to do with it. I did the scarf and hat pretty much in an evening. Not my favorite type of knitting (size 15 mm - US 19 for the hat; 20 mm for the scarf), but it was a fun diversion from the green Shetland, which I was glad to get back to.

And also as in blog entry. I'll catch back up with the Idaho vacation and other stuff next week. Right now I've got to get ready to spend one of the last long weekends at the Ocoee. After Labor Day, the releases will be weekends only. We're going to take advantage of the non-crowded Thursdays and Fridays while they last!

Oh, and here's the latest on the green Shetland vest.

More Summer Fun

OK, the accident wasn't fun. But traveling with Karol and Don was. Once we had their new boats, we headed north from Denver to Ft. Collins, where we traveled into Wyoming via the Cache la Poudre River Canyon.














And Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. This is Paul from Chattanooga (who met us in Idaho) demonstrating that it was windy.

We saw lots of wildlife on the road trip, including Pronghorn and Elk.

We went to Shoshone Falls, near Twin Fall, ID (here are David and Karol).

I didn't take pictures on the actual river trip, where we saw Bighorn Sheep, Bear, Otter, and countless birds. But this is Stanley, Idaho, our last town before heading to the Middle Fork.

I have about a gazillion projects in my head or on the needles right now. Unfortunately, my little camera isn't working right now (hmmmm, what's up with that?), so no current photos. One of the projects, though, is this vest from Folk Vests:














And I got this lovely new knitting bag from Maggie Porter just before the annual 127 Yard Sale.

Is it Over Yet?

Almost two months since I've posted. Wow, the summer would seem to be flying by! But right now, with the current heat wave and dry, dry, dry.... I'm desparately hoping for an early fall!

It'll help both with knitting and the computer. We don't keep the AC set really low - just low enough for the house to be live-in-able. And the room where my computer lives is the warmest in the house. Ever since we got back from Idaho (more on that in a bit), I've been keeping the computer turned off a lot. I think I'm going to get a notebook soon. But I have new computer phobia, so I haven't made the plunge yet.

So, we went to Idaho with small adventures to and from (which, for my yarnie friends, included driving up Montana's Bitteroot Valley, home of Mountain Colors, which I didn't visit but I will in 2009 when we go back). Yeah, we had such a great river trip we're doing it again in 2009.

The adventures "to" weren't really ours; our friends Karol and Don had an accident (caused by a semi with a DUI driver). They were, and are, fine. They pretty much walked away from it. Their car and kayaks did not. But not being willing to forgo the river trip just because their vehicle and boats were totaled, and being willing to ride in the back seat of our truck with all of our gear crammed in the back for about 3,000 miles, the four of us proceeded to Denver. Where Karol and Don got new boats at Confluence Kayaks.
















Here's our truck. In addition to our boats and all our gear, we have boats and paddling gear for Eric and Woody, who were flying to Idaho. This is also Karol and Don's gear - everything that was in their Subaru, all of which was totally intact after 2.5 rolls.














Here is David loading the new boats; we now have 5 up and one inside the back.



Idaho trip adventures to be continued.











I did not knit everything I took with me - as I mentioned to Holly May, it was boredom insurance. I finished two socks.

When I got home, I finished the "I should have known better" top and find it very comfortable. The puckers around the neck line are hardly noticeable.