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July, August & Beyond

Posted in family & friends, Methow Valley, travel, weaving on September 17, 2017| 1 Comment »

A friend rather pointedly told me that Twisp of Fate seems to have gone dark. I am so far behind that it seemed pointless to try to catch up, in a way. But to summarize….

Most of July was spent on a road trip to Oregon in our 1973 Airstream with the 2 cats, Juno & Stormy. We visited family and friends in Medford & Ashland.

Rick’s birthday at La Pine State Park

Rick with daughter and newest great-grandchild

then headed east to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and Steens Mountain, where we were too late for much bird life at the refuge, but at a perfect time for a drive up Steens Mtn to see wildflowers, views and a couple of herds of wild horses.

near the top of Steens Mountain

wild horses

then farther east to the Owyhee country where we did a lot of driving but did visit an interesting “ghost town”, Silver City Idaho, and saw some fantastic geologic features.

then worked our way north via Baker City to the Wallowa Mountains and towns of Joseph and Enterprise (which we first visited last year) – where among other things we took the tram ride to the top of Mt Howard above Wallowa Lake, continued to eat well in camp, and did some light hiking.

The cats did well despite some long days in the truck, and the heat!

Our last night was at Potholes State Park in southeast Washington, a beautiful park at the Columbia Basin wildlife refuge, to which we will return.

“Airial” at Potholes SP

Early August brought a gathering of my side of the family from California, Colorado and Maryland to visit our dad and the rest of us. We took the Airstream over to Anacortes for 5 days to join in.

four generations

Along the way, I’ve woven some new rugs:

R316

R317

R318

R319

R320

R321

R322

R323

R324

R325

R326

entered 4 handwoven items and 3 skeins of handspun yarn into the Okanogan County Fair

Been to the wonderful new Barnyard Cinema in Winthrop a couple of times… a brand new building with a beautiful space meant for screening movies and other events, and only 2 miles from our house!

Fall is in the air and it finally got cool enough at night to warrant an extra blanket on the bed, which is this fabulous quilt my sister made and gave to us back in August:

High Country quilt

That’s it for now! I will try to be a better blogger going in to the fall.

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Happy Ending

Posted in family & friends on September 4, 2016| 3 Comments »

About 3 weeks ago, we were coming home late from a Friday evening of listening to live music in Winthrop. It was about 11:30 pm. We started to turn onto the Wolf Creek Rd and saw a little animal out in the middle of the road – it was a small black & white terrier type dog! We stopped and I opened my door and talked to him, and he came over and put his head in the door and looked up at us. He looked to be in kind of bad shape and forlorn; no collar or tags. So we picked him up and put him at my feet and brought him home.

So then it was midnight and we had a dog (we are cat owners). He had canned chicken cat food to eat and was clearly starving, not to mention very dirty and smelly. I put a notice on the Methownet electronic bulletin board before we went to bed, and also an SOS email to our neighbors who are dog people. He had to spend the night in our cargo trailer (with water and a blanket) because he kept scratching on the door of the mud room and we couldn’t have him inside with the cats, or loose in the shop.

The next morning our neighbors more or less took over, bless their hearts. They lost their own dog last year and are planning to get a new puppy this coming spring. But they were dog-sitting a friend’s 2 dogs that weekend. They got the lost dog to come into their garage and eat some actual dog food, and they had a collar and leash and a dog bed for him. Then they contacted the two boarding kennels and Sherry at Aspen Kennels offered to take him in and shelter him. She bathed and trimmed him and clipped his nails, and started to feed him up. She said he must have been out there for a while, as his ribs were really showing, nails were long, etc. The following Monday she took him to the vet to see if he was microchipped (not). Then she made up flyers and took them around to vet offices, post office, etc. I guess he was all over the local Facebook pages too. But after several weeks of trying, no-one came forward to claim him. Sherry said he was really a sweet little dog, very calm and just followed her around all day.

So a week or so ago my friend Sara and her husband Don adopted him and named him Ted. We didn’t know about it beforehand because they arranged it with Sherry at the kennel. But we are so happy for this turn of events, because now we will get to see him with his new family!

Speaking of family, we just had a nice visit with daughter Gretchen and son-in-law Duane. They were here two consecutive weekends at each end of a camping week up in British Columbia and Alberta. Just left this morning to drive home to Medford in their new (our old) Honda CR-V.

Last night we all went to the opening of the new show at Confluence Gallery in Twisp, titled “Hearth”. Rick has two tables in the show (shown in previous post) and I have rugs, scarves and shawls. Afterwards we went to dinner at Tappi with Gretchen and Duane, and it was a fine ending to the visit.

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See Der Falls

Posted in family & friends, home life on August 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

This is the time for the annual Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival. We usually get season tickets, and attend with my brother and sister-in-law from Camano Island (and up until recently, my Dad as well). This year we only got tickets for the first 2 concerts, because of other obligations for all of us. But it was still good, and I got to go to the third concert a few nights ago with a friend who had an extra ticket.

Thursday, July 28:Tuesday. August 2 – after another day of thunderstorms, heavy rain, wind, cold. Maybe that’s mist not a crummy photo:

Last Friday my brother and I hiked up to Cedar Creek Falls – only 1.7 miles, but it was in the 90’s and thankfully, mostly in the shade.

We found the geocache, one of the first ones from the 1980’s I have been told:

We are in the final stages of getting ready for the 15th annual Methow Valley Home Tour. It is this Saturday, August 6, and the theme this year is “Firewise Homes: Fire-adapted Building and Landscaping”. The website says it will “look at valley homes from a more practical, rather than purely aesthetic, standpoint. How can smart design, layout and construction choices make our homes more resilient in fire country?”

Ours will be one of 8 homes on the tour – all had good ratings from the Okanogan County Firewise program last fall, and 3 of them are on our loop road. Of those 8, only 5 will also have their homes open (the usual model for the tour). This is one reason Rick has been pushing to finish up projects in the house! and we have also done more work in the yard. I will take pictures on Saturday and post on the blog.

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4 Generations

Posted in family & friends, weaving on May 25, 2016| 3 Comments »

We have been gone a lot the last couple of weeks, mostly for family visits. After Mother’s Day weekend in Seattle, we flew down to Medford to visit Rick’s daughter and her husband, her “kids” our grandchildren (all adults now!) and the great-grandchildren. We had not yet met the new baby girl born last September, so that was pretty great.

Four generations!

Last week my sister and her husband were visiting from Colorado and staying with my Dad, so we headed back over the mountains for a visit. For some reason I took no pictures! But it was great to see them.

Had a birthday last week. I loved this card a friend sent me, along with a sweet little pouch she embroidered with a blue sheep! You have to realize that there was a period when I was a little girl when I insisted on being called “Cowboy Aberson Carr”. Not sure how I came up with that in the first place, but I had chaps and still have a picture of me on my trike wearing them.

I am in the final week of getting ready for the show at the Winthrop Gallery that goes up next week. Here is a picture of four of the plaited twill scarves, all finished and ready to go. I still have to twist the fringes on three more of them, but this is definitely a start…

This week I am weaving more placemats – liking these black & white ones quite a bit. These are all plain weave, but “thick & thin”, alternating picks of cotton fabric cut in 1/2″ strips and folded to 1/4″, with a rayon/cotton slub yarn as the alternate pick. I like the way this keeps the fabric strips always in the same shed, creating vertical lines in the warp threads that run the length of the mat.

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March 2016 visit to the coast

Posted in family & friends, travel on April 13, 2016| 1 Comment »

Last month we took a week away to visit friends on the Olympic Peninsula and celebrate our 43rd anniversary in Port Townsend. Our friends own a cabin resort on the north shore of Lake Quinault – Lochaerie Resort – which dates back to the mid-1920’s. They live out there now that they are retired. We haven’t been there for 2 years so it was high time!

The four of us went into Hoquiam one day to visit the Elton Bennett studio. Mr. Bennett is no longer alive, but his daughter Barbara Bennett Parsons has a showroom in Hoquiam and regularly does art shows to sell the remainder of his silkscreen artworks. The Parsons like to come out to Lochaerie to stay in the cabins, so they know our friends.

My mom and dad had a couple of Bennett prints – we used to stop at his studio in Hoquiam on our way out to the coast for winter break vacation. It was fun to see this whole collection!

In Port Townsend we had beautiful weather and were able to walk the beach at low tide out at Fort Worden State Park. We also strolled around the fort grounds and ran across the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. There were some students there and we were able to have a nice chat and see what they were working on. Rick has been involved here in some plans to create a woodworking shop down at Twispworks, perhaps as soon as next year, so he was interested to see how this shop was set up for use by multiple folks.

We had our anniversary dinner at The Fountain Cafe in Port Townsend.

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So Far Behind…

Posted in family & friends, home life, knitting, spinning on January 18, 2016| 1 Comment »

I am so far behind in blogging it is hard to know where to start. Part of it is laziness, part of it is lack of picture-taking. I don’t know! Anyway, since we last met in early December, we have been to Seattle for a week for the holidays, and then settled back in over here in early January.

I have a new spinning wheel! It is a Jensen Tina II and belonged to a friend of mine in Seattle, who bought it in 2002 but hardly used it. The finish was rather dry, so Rick put 2 coats of Profin on it and now it looks wonderful. It spins like a dream.

On January 7th, my friend Sara organized a “Roc Day” spinning day at Twispworks. About 20 people came and we had a fabulous potluck lunch, in addition to the general cameraderie. From Wikipedia:

Distaff Day, also called Roc Day, is 7 January, the day after the feast of the Epiphany. It is also known as Saint Distaff’s Day, one of the many unofficial holidays in Catholic nations. Many St. Distaff’s Day gatherings are held, large and small, throughout local fiber communities. The distaff, or rock, used in spinning was the medieval symbol of women’s work.

In many European cultural traditions, women resumed their household work after the twelve days of Christmas. Women of all classes would spend their evenings spinning on the wheel. During the day, they would carry a drop spindle with them. Spinning was the only means of turning raw wool, cotton or flax into thread, which could then be woven into cloth.

We have lots of snow this year. It is going to be the best ski season, maybe ever! The folks at Methow Trails are keeping it well-groomed as always. We have one of the top Nordic ski trail systems (120 miles or 200+ kilometers) in the country right here in our little valley. It is divided into four areas, all connected by the Methow Community Trail.

We had more fresh snow yesterday and last night, and here was the scene this morning from our back deck:

Piling up on the deck:

Curling off the roof of the shop building:

I have been knitting more Mosaic Mojo hats. Still haven’t gotten tired of these yet, as long as I have nice yarn to work with.

And I finished a sequence knitting project, another cowl:

A week or so ago I put a scarf warp on my 32″ Macomber loom, using some Missoni “Bombay” novelty yarn that I picked up at a stash reduction sale, and some rayon rik-rak on cones. I put 21 yds on the sectional beam, enough for 10 scarves about 70″ long plus fringe. Finished the last one yesterday, washed them and cut them apart, and they are hanging to dry. Pictures to follow!

This past Saturday, we had our annual community association progressive dinner, which is always held on the ML King holiday weekend. I was the organizer, and we hosted the main course at our house this year (appetizers at one house, main course at a second house, desserts at a third). There were 41 of us and it was a challenge to fit it into our dining and living room! We moved most of the living room furniture out to the shop or upstairs, set up 5 tables, and borrowed a bunch of folding chairs from the Winthrop Gallery. Lots of fun!

This seems to be a social time of year – we have had many get-togethers with friends and neighbors since returning home at the end of December.

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Weekend Visitors

Posted in family & friends on October 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Some long-time friends from Seattle came over to visit this past weekend (we have known them for 40+ years). They hadn’t been over to the Methow Valley since 2007 or 2008, before we moved to our current home near Winthrop. It was great!

Yesterday morning we went up to Sun Mountain Lodge and did a short hike around the upper loop above the lodge. The weather was gorgeous and we all enjoyed the views. The fall color is getting underway. Here is a shot looking down on the beaver ponds:

And a good one of the four of us:

Back in the saddle again this Monday morning. I will go down and finish warping my loom at the guild room for my workshop threading assignment, then come back home to continue weaving some placemats I started last week.

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Yet More Silk Scarves

Posted in dyeing, family & friends on May 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Last week my back-door neighbor did a “tie dye” silk scarf day with her Friday bicycle group, and I went over to help out. It was a lovely sunny day, and they were very nice women who were a little trepid about the whole thing. The main concern was if they were choosing colors and arrangements that would work – we told them you couldn’t necessarily tell what colors were going to transfer anyway, so just go for it! They all turned out well and of course I was so busy I didn’t take any pictures.

But it did inspire me to do some more myself, using the silk ties I had picked up over in the Skagit Valley when I went to visit my Dad, brother and sister-in-law a couple of weeks ago. Some of these were from “second use” tie pieces, and although the scarves came out somewhat paler in color, I think it worked.

I have these for sale at the Winthrop Gallery in Winthrop (obviously) and down in Twisp at the new D*signs Gallery (that is how she spells it). No website yet, but it is an added location for one of the partners in Methow Gallery at Twispworks, where she will do her graphic design and sign painting, in addition to running the new gallery space. It’s really well done and a great addition to the arts scene in Twisp – you locals, go check it out.

This week I am pre-dyeing some scarf blanks a variety of colors, so will have some more on a colored background (instead of white) sometime in the next week or so.

After several days of chilly, cloudy weather, we are back to sun! It is supposed to be in the low 70’s for the rest of the weekend at least. Lots of flowers out now, and we hope to get back up in the hills while the arrowleaf balsomroot are still glorious, and the lupines are coming on.

This coming weekend brings ’49er Days in Winthrop and also the annual Sunflower Marathon and Relay sponsored by Methow Trails. We will miss all that fun because we are headed over the mountains for Mother’s Day weekend and family visiting. It should be a glorious trip over the North Cascades Highway, with snow still in the high peaks.

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A Wedding Day

Posted in family & friends on June 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

One of our main reasons for this trip was to be at the wedding of our granddaughter April. It was held at a lovely little county park out beyond Jacksonville, OR on a perfect, warm day with cooling breezes. Grandson Brandon, who is executive chef at a restaurant in Ashland, catered the lunch that followed the ceremony. We got to meet even more members of the extended family, and had a great time.

We are staying on for a few days for more time with the family, and to see our longtime friends who live in Ashland. Then on to the Oregon coast!

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FO: Color Affection… and some visitors

Posted in family & friends, knitting on January 26, 2014| 1 Comment »

As promised in my last post, I finished the Color Affection scarf by Veera Valimaki last week. I am really happy with it! I used a fingering weight yarn (10% cashmere) from Marianated Yarns on a US size 6 needle.

We had visitors from “the Coast” over the weekend – an old friend and her young daughter, who will be 3 years old in March. They left “Daddo” and the family dog at home in Seattle, and came for 3 nights. Unfortunately we have almost no snow this year, and it was pretty gray all weekend, but we still had a fine visit and some outdoor time. The little one was easy to be with, talking a lot with a pretty good vocabulary, and a sunny disposition.

We got out the Norwegian kick sled that I bought at a friend’s moving sale last summer. Mom and daughter went out on our loop road (which is pretty much a skating rink at this point) and before we knew it, the wee one was doing it on her own!

Here are some pictures from this morning, before they left to drive home. We all went up to Sun Mountain Lodge to “see the animals” (the taxidermy collection) and the wee one was wearing pants that match my new scarf, so I got Rick to take a picture of us up there.