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Archive for the ‘home life’ Category

Snow time

Posted in home life, Methow Valley on November 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

We have a new project underway here at home – a carport!  Our builder said it could be done this winter if we got the concrete work done as quickly as possible.  So Rick put together some plans, we got our building and land use permits, and it was off and running by mid-November.

Nov 16 - pouring the foundations

It snowed for the first time, and was really really cold that week – but the excavator managed to get the back-filling done just in time to protect the concrete foundations after they had set for a few days:

Nov 20 - piers in the snow

They started the framing just before Thanksgiving – brrr!

Nov 23 - begin framing

And yesterday, with more snow on the way, they had a boom truck come and place the beams, plus one of the upper walls that they framed up on the ground.  They would have liked to have the other wall up too, but the boom truck came a little early.

Nov 29 - a wall is up!

It has been snowing here all day and they are taking a break.

We spent 4 nights on the Coast for Thanksgiving with family and some nice visits with various friends.  It was cold and a little dreary in Seattle, so no pictures.  But on our way home from Anacortes on Sunday we were able to take the North Cascades Hwy for probably the last time this winter.  It was an easy drive and quite beautiful, especially in the Washington Pass area around 3:30 pm.  I leave you with some scenes of early winter….

Just west of Washington Pass

Looking east from Washington Pass

Looking back at Liberty Bell

A ridge southeast of the pass

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Farewell to Benson Creek

Posted in home life on November 1, 2010| 2 Comments »

With closing only 2 days away, I guess it is safe to say we have sold our first home in the Methow, down at Benson Creek.  We know and like the buyers, and it will be good to move on and not have the responsibility of maintaining the other property, especially over the winter.  It’s a little bittersweet, though.  We were quite happy there, but it was just too cramped a living space (although the shop space was great for Rick) and we were losing our enthusiasm for building a separate house on the property, which was the original plan when we bought it in 2003.

So onward!  We love our new home on Wolf Creek, it is just as if it was built for us.  And all we have to do is finish some things up, not go through the whole building process.  Rick finally has the new shop all set up and he thinks it will have a better work flow and be plenty big enough.  Of course, you all know how much I love my studio – I still can’t get over the fact that I actually have a work space of my own!

I dropped my camera before leaving for Seattle, and when I tried to use it over the weekend, discovered everything is working except the shutter button.  Won’t take a picture – no how, no way.  A blogger without a camera is like:

  1. a fish without a bicycle?
  2. a weaver without a loom?
  3. a cat without a clue?

Anyway, my new camera is on the way but won’t be here until next week.  I am off to knitting retreat on Wednesday, so I guess I won’t be chronicling the event this year, at least not in pictures.

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Alfred, Lord Venison

Posted in home life, pets on August 8, 2010| 3 Comments »

Just a quick post with a picture of Rick’s “pet” deer, Alfred.  He gets a name only because we can easily tell him apart from the other guys – he has 2 prongs on one antler, and 3 prongs on the other.  He was hanging out in the shade by our house the other day, so I took his picture.

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Family Photos

Posted in family & friends, home life on July 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

Here’s a family:

These three went through a lot together earlier this year, when Clara fell and broke her arm.  It’s great to have everything back to normal!  This was taken at a birthday dinner a couple of weeks ago (Rick & Kathy).

Clara – 91, Rick – 62, Kathy – “59” (same as Jack Benny)

And here’s another family that wandered by off our back deck a couple of mornings ago:

So cute!

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Boyz n the Woods

Posted in home life on July 7, 2010| 4 Comments »

There has been a group of bucks hanging around together lately.  This time of year, I guess it’s what they do, while the does are busy with their newborn fawns.

Two days ago, I started out the back door to get in the car and go do some shopping,  and found 6 of them just lying about in the covered walkways between the house and the shop:

They got up and moved off when I came outside, but didn’t seem particularly alarmed.  Most have two points but there is one 3-point buck:

So I went off, did my shopping and came back home.  A little later I started out to the studio and there they were again!  I guess this is their new favorite place to snooze during the day.

This time, Teasel started down the stairs and caught a glimpse of them out the window on the landing:

What the…?? WHAT’S THAT??!

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Lewisia in bloom

Posted in home life, Methow Valley on June 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The weather has been mixed and not in synch with my plans.  Last Saturday was warm and sunny, not that I am complaining, but on Sunday when I participated in my first Winthrop Artisans Market of the season, it was cold and drizzling.  I even had to wear a knit hat and gloves, and put one of my wool rag rugs over my lap, at one point!  Sheesh.  There were very few shoppers and even fewer buyers.  However, I will persevere…

artisans market in the rain

Then on Monday it was beautiful and sunny again, but I had too much going on to get out and enjoy the day.  In the morning I drove down to Chelan Falls to teach a knitting class at Warehouse Woolery (I have seven people signed up for the top-down raglan sweater class).  Then I drove back home and worked at the Institute office from 2-6.  I also spent the whole day there yesterday starting at 8:30, but I did run back home at lunchtime and that is when I noticed the carpet of Lewisia flowers out in our yard.

Actually we first started seeing them about a week ago, but there are even more now.  This is commonly called Bitterroot and was gathered and eaten by the native peoples in the valley.  We don’t have any of this down at Benson Creek – it must be the stony soil here, or something.  They are beautiful!

Lewisia in bloom in our yard

Today I am home and catching up with household tasks, plus hopefully doing some weaving.  But it is once again cloudy and threatening to rain.  Phooey!

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6 Soggy Acres

Posted in home life on May 28, 2010| 1 Comment »

It has been raining in the Methow Valley like crazy!  Folks who have lived here longer than us say it is one of the wettest Springs they can remember.  On the other hand, it was such a dry (i.e. low snow) winter, that the aquifers must be recharging, which is a good thing.  It is very green on the hills and I hope for more wonderful wildflowers in the high country as we move into summer.  There has even been new snow up high in the North Cascades.

We are having an open house at our Benson Creek place the next 2 days.  We ran an ad in the real estate section of the Methow Valley News, since it is Memorial Day weekend.  The place looks good, all mowed and trimmed up, and we each have things to do down there in the (likely?) event not many people show up.  I will be weaving away on rugs and Rick has a cabinet job underway in the shop.

Most of our advertising has a heading of “6 Sunny Acres up Benson Creek” – today I was grumbling about it being “6 Soggy Acres” – but it looks like the weekend won’t be too bad, especially Sunday.

Have had a few people stop by to look the last week or two, and more flyers are disappearing from the front gate, so anything could happen…

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Wall of Boxes

Posted in home life, weaving on May 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

We started moving all of my stuff, and there is plenty of it, into the new studio space the past 2 weeks.  It’s starting to come together!

Today Rick enrolled the help of 2 strong men and another truck and trailer, and moved some heavy equipment up from the Benson Creek shop, as well as the leather fold-out sofa and the area rug to go up into the studio.  Also many boxes of books, magazines, tools etc.

I now have the two-sided bookcase from Benson Creek installed, plus my mom’s sewing table (which my Dad made).  So plenty of shelves and drawers to store things.  All my knitting yarn and spinning fiber is lined up in plastic storage boxes, but at least I can see it all now.  Eventually we will have side walls with sliding panels and it will be a lot neater looking.  All in good time.

The little loom is set up for a weaving workshop I am going to in Seattle next week.  The teacher is Bobbie Irwin from Colorado, and the class is titled “Shimmering Colors:  The Magic of Irridescence.”  She taught this class last summer at the weaving conference in Spokane, and I remember thinking it sounded really interesting at the time.  She will also be the keynote speaker next Thursday at the Seattle Weavers Guild monthly meeting, which I will be able to attend finally since I will be over there anyway!

We were each assigned a portion of the color wheel for our warp colors in pearl cotton – as you can see, mine is yellow-orange through red-orange.  I’ll take lots of pictures and post to the blog in a week or so!

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Bye Bye, Deere Prudence

Posted in home life on April 12, 2010| 1 Comment »

The somewhat sad fact is that we don’t need a tractor (much less a mowing deck) at the new house up Wolf Creek.  We thought we would wait to see if whoever buys our Benson Creek place would want to buy the tractor, but last week we got a call from the fellow who owns the local lumber yard.  He has a place with 10 acres and has apparently been wanting a compact tractor for a while.  So this past weekend he came and got it.

Rick made one last raid on the giant mulch pile to deliver mulch to the beds we cleared last fall, just before snow:

And then it was loaded onto a flatbed trailer:

But it’s going to a nearby home, and it sounds like we may be able to borrow it back some this spring, if needed.

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Progress Report

Posted in home life, weaving on April 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Back from a weekend at the coast, I am holding down the fort while Rick is in Seattle with his mom and sister.  It’s been a busy week.  I went to work on our “for sale by owner” advertising efforts and we hope to get Benson Creek on the market officially by next week.

Things are also progressing on the shop updates.  The crew arrived to work on enclosing the RV parking area to make it part of the woodshop.  In fact, I was on the phone with my mom this morning when the cement truck showed up.  Had to get some pictures for the record (sorry Mom!  didn’t mean to hang up on you quite so fast!)

These cement pours always seem so frenetic.  It’s a race against truck and time, I guess.

I stayed up way too late last night, finishing the handout for my guild challenge project.  We will be presenting our results at the meeting tomorrow.  I used my WeaveIt software to do the threading, tie-up and treadling plans but I only want to use one piece of paper (double sided) so needed to do a lot of manual cutting and pasting to get it to fit.

Then I went into the guild room today and wove some more on the curtain, so I could get pictures of the other two patterns.  The weaving is now more than half done, so I should be able to get it off the loom by next week.

Motif 2 is a checkerboard, but I treadled it 2 times, 4 times, then 6 times in the middle, to experiment with the effects:

Bronson Lace Motif 2

Motif 3 is the result of just doodling using an Excel spreadsheet where I made the cells square.  This is the one where it finally sunk in that I can only design something that is symmetrical around the center block, given the threading:

Bronson Lace Motif 3

I’ll take some pictures of everyone’ s projects at the meeting tomorrow – should be interesting!

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