Catching Up

I am way behind with the blog. I'm blaming Eugene Electric for that. Our bookkeeper quit right after our Hawaii trip and since business has been so slow we've decided not to replace her for now. I've been training our parts runner (who kind of reminds me of Mr. Cunningham from Happy Days) to work in the office. Jack told him he had to start wearing skirts.

I took a rug weaving class with Jason Collingwood at Fiber in the Forest and learned how to do this:

This isn't my work, I took this photo to demonstrate how a temple is used (the brown thing holding the edges even). I haven't photographed mine yet. I'm planning to weave the rest of the warp off after the Blacksheep Gathering next weekend; I'll turn it into a loom bench cushion.

Fiber in the Forest is so much fun. It is heald at Camp Myrtlewood in Myrtle Point, OR. The camp is beautiful, and people are nice, and the workshops are a blast. This is what the shibori/indigo class did:

And the carding class:

I forgot to get a photo of the felting class; their stuff was pretty amazing too.

This must have been after Fiber in the Forest because it was next in my camera. This little fawn was playing with our cat, Blue. This has happened several times this spring. All the fawns around here this year have that hair loss disease so we're concerned they may not make it through the winter.

Last weekend I went to the Northwest Regional Spinning Assoc. Conference at Willamette University in Salem. It was a lot of fun, but so exhausting. I took a drop spindling class. In the evenings the gym stays open until 11:00 and people sit around spinning. That is where I met these two cuties. This one is a new wheel called a Pocket Wheel. They are hand made by a man in Bellingham, WA. I fell in love with it and already placed my order.

And this is an antique. I didn't get a chance to talk to the owner so I don't know anything about it, I just thought it was interesting with the two wheels.

You can see from the above photo that this was in a spinning circle. The gym was full of these; I wish I would have thought to get a photo when everybody was at their wheels.

On Saturday night they had a fashion show. People paraded around the gym showing off their handspun garments. It is always fun to see what people create.

Now I get one weekend at home which I will spend trying to get more fiber ready for the Blacksheep Gathering (my favorite event of the year since I get to sleep in my own bed).

Aloha!

We've had a busy couple of weeks, with our quick trip to Maui in the middle of it. We flew out of Portland on Wednesday morning so we drove up to spend the night with Tami on Tuesday night. It just happened to be Earth Day, and it just so happened that the Yarn Harlot was speaking in Portland that evening. Of course Rocky had no desire to go to that, but Tami was game and so we drug Rocky along so we could eat dinner right afterwards. We get there and there is a room full of about 400 knitters; if it hadn't been cold and rainy I think Rocky would have waited in the car. We were lucky enough to get three seats together in the last row. Blue Moon hosted the event and they started off with a raffle. They called about five tickets and mine just happened to be one of them; this is what I won (its Socks that Rock yarn):
Wednesday at the airport went pretty smooth once we found a parking spot, but things got a little crazy in Honolulu where we had to change flights. Hawaiian Air ended up cancelling two of their flights and combined them with a third. They got most of us on a 747 for the 20 minute flight to Maui. It was a bit chaotic but I think everybody eventually made it there.

Thursday we got up early since we were still on Pacific time and went for a walk on the sidewalk that runs along the beach in front of the hotels for about two miles. We rode the shuttle to the Cannery Mall where there is a Long's Drug Store because Rocky wanted to wear crew socks with shorts, but I wouldn't let him. Fortunately they had ankles socks.

Friday we went Ziplining. It was fun. The fun began with the van ride to the first line. They got us all geared up and we had to wear our helmets in the van. We all decided that that was the only place we really needed them.











There was one guy in the group who was more scared than Rocky, but he was good natured about it, especially after watching the little 12 year old girl zip. She had no fear. There was one line where the guide made her wear a weighted backpack because she wasn't heavy enough to make it clear across. Turned out that she still wasn't heavy enough. She almost made it and then she slid back toward the middle of the line. She just hung there while the guide on the other end got hooked up and shimmied out to pull her in. She said it was fun.






This is a bush outside our hotel room:

Saturday I decided that the sore throat from the day before wasn't just the Vog, I was sick. Rocky did a little snorkeling while I lazed around the resort.

Here is a sunset from our balcony:

Saturday we went to dinner and had our picture taken. The leis were from the day we arrived. I had put them in the refrigerator. I just plucked off the wilted flowers and they still looked fresh.

Sunday Rocky snorkeled some more, while I made a quick trip to town. I didn't feel like shopping, but I couldn't stand the thought of napping our last day in Maui away. We flew out at 8:00 that evening and arrived in Portland at 7:30 the next morning. We got home at about 11:00 am and went straight to bed.

Tuesday we worked in the barn between naps to prepare for shearing on Wednesday morning. Now it is Sunday, I'm almost caught up with laundry; I'm still sick, but I feel like I'm on the mend; Rocky's sick now; and I'm going to see Mamma Mia with Sandy and Aliya tonight.

Sunny Day

It got up to 82 degrees today! It was wonderful. Even though I had another sleepless night last night I spent most of today in the barn with no coat.

We're shearing on the 30th and in between here and there we are fortunate enough to spend a few short days in Hawaii for our anniversary. That means I begin cleaning the barn and getting prepared for the harvest now.

I begged, pleaded, gave an ultimatum and got Rocky to agree to taking a dance class with me. We're taking East Coast Swing. We've only had two classes so far and I'm having so much fun. Rocky pouted during the entire first class. He refused to admit that he enjoyed the second one, but he wasn't pouting and actually smiled a few times. I don't think you'll see either of us on Dancing With the Stars, but I think we'll have more fun when we're out where there is dancing.

Here's a kitty photo for you:

This is Blue. He takes relaxing seriously.

This and That

I forgot to mention that Rocky's sister bought us all tickets to Peru Negro. It was good, but would have been better if I knew Spanish. They dance and sang telling the story of the Peruvian Negros who were enslaved just like American Negros. The performers looked like they really loved what they were doing. The music was very interesting with the odd instruments, like jawbones, they used.

Now here we are at the end of March and we've been getting snow. Thursday and Saturday we had snow on the ground when we woke up in the morning. It all melted before noon, but then we had rain, rain mixed with snow, and hail. This is not normal for us this late in the year.

Here is a recipe that I often take to potlucks and get lots of compliments on. I got it off a package of asparagus from the grocery store.

Marinated Asparagus

12 fresh asparagus spears
2 T olive oil
2 T cider vinegar
1/4 t salt
1 t honey
1 bay leaf

Steam asparagus until crisp tender, drain. Whisk together oil, vinegar, salt, and honey. Pour over asparagus and bay leaf in a shallow dish. Cover and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

I usually make a large batch and use less oil than vinegar. I add cooked shrimp, zucchini, carrots, mushrooms, onion, baby corn, or anything else that seems like would be good in it.

Cool Stuff

Yesterday I went to the weaving guild meeting and learned some interesting stuff.

The presentation was given by Jennifer Moore who is a weaver and rug designer in Santa Fe, NM. She is a wonderful teacher; if you ever have the chance to take a class she's teaching it is worth every penny. (My favorite of hers is We All Look Up at the Same Moon.)


Her presentation to the guild was about math and art and how they often come together. She talked about the Golden Ratio (which included the Golden Rectangle and Golden Spiral) and Tessellations. You can get all kinds of ideas for projects with this knowledge.


We watched a good movie that was on Hallmark the other day: Iron Will. Rocky made fun of me when I turned it on, but he enjoyed it as much as I did.

I just had to share this cloud picture I took the other day:


It was like a blanket was being pulled over the earth.

Special Weekend

This weekend the Oregon Special Olympics held their basketball tournament in Springfield and my brother Kelly, who is from The Dalles, was in it. This is Kelly, with the white t-shirt under his jersey:

There was a guy there whom I wish I would have taken his picture. He was a small, white, young man with a Mohawk hair cut and he had 20-30 Special Olympic medals hanging around his neck. I dubbed him Mr. T of the Special Olympics.

Basketball in the Special Olympics is a bit different. They play four six minute quarters with a five minute half time. Nobody gets called for traveling or double dribble. Fouls don't get called very often unless one team is about to skunk the other, then the refs try to help even the odds a little. The refs often have to redirect players if they head for the wrong basket.

There are bumps and scrapes just like any other basketball game, but these players don't get mad, they always help each other up, make sure they're okay, and smile the whole time. They really know how to have a good time, win or lose.

Kelly's team was good enough to win the gold medal. They won all three of the games they played in.

I don't know if you can tell from this photo but the teams are really mixed with young, old, men, and women. All teams were like that. I saw a couple of teams that had what looked to be twelve year olds playing right along with the fifty year olds. It was neat to see them all have such a good time together.

The team didn't know it, but I had invited them to ride the bumper cars before heading home. Since it was a surprise I said goodbye to Kelly after his last game on Sunday, but arranged for the bus driver to follow me. The guy (Artie) sitting in the other front seat asked Bob (the bus driver) where he was going; he knew it wasn't the same way they went to the freeway the day before. Bob said, "I saw a pretty girl in this car so I'm going to follow her." Every time I turned, Bob turned. After a couple of turns Artie yelled to the back of the bus, "Hey everybody, Bob's chasing some woman."

I think everybody had a fun weekend; I know I did.

Billy the Kid

We have an angora goat named Silverado (Otto for short) who is about 14 years old and near the end of his life. I've been giving him extra feed and decided to give him a shot of vitamin A & D on Thursday after dosing our crias.

Well, Otto used to be the alpha goat, but since his health has been declining Billy (one of our pygoras) has assumed that position. I can usually do almost anything to Otto from over or through the fence because he loves attention; but this time, as I was petting Otto and getting him ready for his shot Billy had to come and see what he was missing out on therefore shoving Otto away; so, in the pen I go.

It took several shoos to get Billy to leave us alone; I gave Otto a good petting, gave him his shot, and warmed up his ears. Having that done I headed for the gate when I thought I should clean the hay out around their salt lick while I was in there. Just as I crouched down to go in the shelter, BAM. Billy butted me. I didn't even see it coming. Thankfully, since I was somewhat squatted, he got me in the thigh rather than the knee. I was knocked on my butt in the mud and he was standing right by me. All I could think to do was grab him by the horns and hang on so he couldn't butt me in the head and kill or paralyze me. Somehow I managed to get to my feet while holding his horns and yelled for Rocky to come help me so I could get out of the pen safely and hobble to the house.

This is me taking a photo of my own thigh; not an easy thing to do. This is looking down at the outside of my right leg. It is kind of hard to see the bruise closest to my knee in this photo, the two bruises angle toward each other just like the horns grow out of the goat's head. That side of my thigh is hourglass shaped if you look at the profile. Rocky just came in my office and says this picture doesn't do it justice.

It's feeling much better now, but I still have a slight limp. I never realized before how much my thighs jiggle when I walk. Pain shoots across my thigh with every step.

Next time I have to go in the goat pen I'll be packing a big stick.