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!

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We drove across the North Cross Highway (North Cascades, Hwy 20) to Anacortes this week, to bring our camping trailer over for winter storage at my folks’ house, and have a nice visit with them.  It was a rainy day, but the colors were good up in the high country:

Such a pretty picture, I have taken a bit of it for my new header image – the autumn theme.

It was heartening to see the colors, because the early freeze of a few weeks ago seems to have stopped most of the trees in our valley dead in their tracks.  They are mostly turning… brown.  No other word for it.  We usually have a lot more color this time of year.

I have finished up seven shawls and have warp prepared for six more.  I am experimenting with making more of a “shoulder shawl” – a little narrower and shorter than the previous series, and meant to be worn more like a vest with perhaps a shawl pin to hold it closed.

There are three alike from a sky blue mohair boucle woven with hand-dyed multi-colored wool in the weft:

Sky blue boucle with hand-dyed wool, 3 alike

For another two I used a multi-colored mohair boucle, hand-dyed with mainly blues and greens -both have a greyish blue wool weft, but I used different colors of kid mohair/silk for the accent stripes:

And for these last two I used another hand-dyed mohair boucle, in a new colorway called “Schist” that has lovely tones of grey, gold and black.  For one I used the greyish blue wool for weft, with deep gold accent stripes.  For the other I used black alpaca for weft, with a dark bronze accent stripe.

These have been somewhat of an exercise in frustration, since it turns out the hand-dyed mohair boucle yarns I am using for the warps do not have consistent amounts of yarn in the skeins.  But after some trial and error I have concluded that getting the length right is what matters the most, and if they aren’t all the same width, then so be it.

I leave you with a picture of Teasel and Pushkin, who love to follow the sun around wherever it falls into the house during the course of the day:

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