Twisp of Fate

Last Sunday we took a long rambling walk up along the north side of Patterson Mountain, which is what we see across the hay fields from the new house.   On the other side of the mountain is found Patterson Lake, which you pass on the way up to Sun Mountain Lodge.  We drove around to “Tiny Town”, a local name for a collection of buildings on Twin Lakes Rd, next to a parking spot for the Methow Trail.  We walked up the trail (which we have skiied down in winter many times) until we came to a spot where we could see our house from up above.

That’s the Methow River out beyond the house – on the other side of Wolf Creek Road.  Wolf Creek flows into the Methow about a mile up the road from where we are.

When we got up to the top, instead of taking the trail back down (or onward to Patterson Lake), we followed an old road that headed back across the side of north Patterson Mt.  There were trees and branches down at the beginning, and it was signed for “no bicycles”, but it didn’t say “keep out” either, so what the heck.  There were the remains of an old aqueduct along this road (twisted metal pipe, plus some of the older wooden pipe that was held together with metal rings).  Not sure how old, or what it’s original purpose was… kind of intriguing!  We finally found ourselves up above a road we recognized that leads down to Twin Lakes Rd, so worked out way down through an old abandoned orchard, down the road, and then back along Twin Lakes Rd to Tiny Town.  It was a nice long 2-hour ramble and fun to explore a little in our new neck of the woods.

On the home front, I am working on my big loom down at Benson Creek, putting on 50 yards of rug warp to get ready for another round of rag rugs.  The new tensioner I bought last year from Macomber Looms is a big improvement.  It has a comb mounted on the front that really guides the threads onto each 2″ section of the sectional warp beam – especially if you follow the directions and thread it so some of the threads are doubled up in the comb, with on overall width less than 2″ in the comb.  That way I had a lot less trouble with the edge threads jumping over the pegs into the adjoining section.

I leave you with a picture from “Tuesday is for Hiking”.  We did a short loop around Risely Lake, out the Gunn Ranch Road in the Rendezvous area.  We saw lots of bluebells and the arrowleaf balsamroot (known locally as “the sunflowers”) are beginning to bloom.  The serviceberry bushes are just coming into bloom in the valley now, too – beautiful!