Postcards from the Road (My Birthday Trip Part 3)

Getting the cabin for our last night in Yellowstone might have been the smartest decision we made during the entire trip. We were warm and rested on Tuesday, which meant we could properly enjoy Old Faithful.



Another rare treat, about ten minutes before Old Faithful went off, was the Beehive geyser. Old Faithful, I learned, is rare by being so predictable. Most of the geysers in the park go off quite randomly. The information for the Beehive geyser said that it goes off every 8-24 hours (for comparison, Old Faithful can be timed within 10 minutes). We walked right past it, and would have missed the eruption entirely if we'd picked a different vantage point for Old Faithful.

After touring the geysers and other thermal features around Old Faithful, we started to head south. The feeling of leaving the park was a little odd, since we'd packed up the campsite the night before.



After going through the south park entrance, we drove along the John. D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway and into the Grand Tetons National Park. Even though some clouds obscured the very tops of the peaks, these are some crazy impressive mountains. I could not get over the fact that the mountains were still covered in snow.



The husbeast may have gone a little crazy with the camera.


I'm not going to say it wasn't worth it!


We even decided where we'd camp, if we ever came back to stay overnight (this is a habit/quirk that I picked up from my parents). If you're ever driving through the park and only have a few hours like we did, I cannot recommend the visitor center at the Grand Tetons highly enough. It looks like it was all renovated yesterday. There are slick displays about the park's ecology, mountaineering, and history of that entire area (including why the road connecting Yellowstone to the Grand Tetons is named after JDR Jr.). The building itself is beautiful, too.



The drive from the Grand Tetons took us through Jackson, WY and along an equally beautiful stretch of scenery. We popped out above the lovely Swan Valley right around sunset. We paused for one more photo before re-entering civilization.



We decided to spend the night in Idaho Falls so we could get more bread in the morning. Our drive home took another day and a half, taking us through Utah past Salt Lake City and the Bonneville Salt Flats. We spent our last night on the road in Reno, and returned home feeling simultaneously exhausted and rejuvenated.

In preparation for this trip, I read a little John Muir:

"Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?"



"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."



Yellowstone was amazing, and I feel so grateful to have the resources to see this part of the country at this point in my life. We knew where our limits were, and by braving some less-than-ideal weather we got to see the park at a really unique time of year. Wildflowers were in bloom, and we saw grizzly cubs and bison calves.



But I think next spring we should try Joshua Tree National Park.

Postcards from the Road (My Birthday Trip Part 2)

When we last left our intrepid heroine and hero, they were sleeping in a little motel in West Yellowstone. Stuffed with tasty barbecue and beer from a local restaurant, neither one slept incredibly well because it was snowing outside. Only little flurries, but still. It was snowing and they knew they were going to be spending the next few nights in a tent.

(I can hear everyone saying in their heads "Okay, enough with the dramatic foreshadowing!" I'll stop. Sorry about that.)

We were also nervous because we were heading into the park without a reserved spot in any specific campground. There were several good reasons for this, but the main one was that we wanted to camp in a smaller, quieter campground i.e., one where they don't allow the really big RVs. Nothing against RVs, but they are loud. All the smaller campgrounds were first-come-first-served, no reservations. So our plan was to get up fairly early to drive straight into the park, so we'd get our pick of campsites. Then we'd set up camp, and go get groceries and start exploring.



When you enter Yellowstone from the west, you drive through the Targhee National Forest. I'm still dying to know if the name is in any way related to the Targhee breed of sheep.

Our fears about the campground filling up were unfounded. We set up camp in the Norris campground, in one of the walk-in sites. A walk-in site might sound like a lot of work, but it really just meant that we carried our gear about 200 feet away from the campground road and got a little closer to the undeveloped part of the campground.



A beautiful little river winds back and forth through a little valley along one edge of Norris. The picture above is what it looked like on the day we arrived. By the end of our trip, the river was swollen with snowmelt and much of this muddy marshy ground would look smooth and glassy with the extra water.



Camping in Yellowstone was significantly different from most of my other camping experiences in a few ways. One was the wildlife, which Yellowstone has in abundance. We saw lots of bison (they were everywhere, and thrice we waited in a traffic jam for a herd to finish crossing the road:



We also saw a few yellow-bellied marmots, including this one who politely posed for us:


We saw elk:


and bears (!):


I'm pretty sure the bears were grizzlies, which is cool because I've never seen them in the wild before. It's hard to tell in the picture, but there's a mama bear and two cubs. We saw them on the warmest day of our trip, and they were pretty much just finding a sunny spot in the meadow for their mid-day nap.

The best wildlife experience we had was on Saturday morning. We woke up a bit late, and were finishing up our morning coffee when two little girls came up the path, squealing "Look, look!" and pointing out towards the river. We both turned just in time to see a fat, sleek river otter jump out of the river, run past the bend, and hop back in where it turned straight. There was no time for either of us to grab a camera. The girls' mom apologized to us for disturbing us, but I told her we wouldn't have seen the otter otherwise. I've never been camping and felt so surrounded by wildlife.

On the first two nights we heard wolves howling to each other.



Another difference was swimming: I can't remember a single childhood camping trip that did not involve swimming in rivers, lakes, or the Pacific Ocean. At Yellowstone in early June the rivers were all too cold (believe me, I checked), and the hot springs are off-limits (you can get burned by extremely hot water). And speaking of hot springs, another aspect of the park that I wasn't used to was the boardwalk-style trails around the thermal features. It made sense after reading the first warning sign about how the ground can be thin and fragile around a boiling hot spring (see aforementioned burn warnings), but this California native has always associated "real hiking" with unpaved trails through dense forest. The boardwalk trails felt a bit like cheating. Yellowstone, I later realized, is an old, and very well-developed and well-maintained park. We saw more than one wheelchair-bound person who was able to enjoy being immersed in nature because of those boardwalk trails.

So we spent the next four days exploring. Friday night was cold, but Saturday morning dawned clear and sunny. We saw the Yellowstone River, hiked along the huge canyon that cuts through the middle of the park, learned how to spot thermal features with our eyes and noses, and marveled at how much difference 1,000 feet of elevation makes. At the lower-elevation points in the park, it really felt like late spring, but one trail we tried to hike was too covered in snowdrifts for us to attempt it (the fact that it's called "Ice Lake" should probably have tipped us off). Originally, I'd thought that we would see if we could rent a canoe and row out on Lake Yellowstone, but that was also not in the cards:



Sunday was definitely the hottest day, but "hottest" just meant that I didn't have to layer leggings under my jeans until the sun went down. Monday was my actual birthday, so we planned for a long (for us) hike and a nice dinner at one of the lodges. The weather looked nice again, although the forecast for Tuesday was not promising. We packed trail mix, hard-boiled eggs, apples, and lots of water, and did a very strenuous (again, for us) climb up to this lovely lake:



After the hike we relaxed with the thought that we wouldn't have to wash dinner dishes in the dark, but we could also smell damp in the air. The weather forecast was a 70% chance of rain. And the lodge was at lower elevation than our campsite, so if it rained there we might get snowed on overnight. Every night so far, I'd worn the following to sleep in: long johns, flannel pj pants, knee-high wool socks, a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wool sweater. All this inside a sleeping bag rated for 10ºF. The thought of it getting even colder that night... but we're campers! Husbeast is an eagle scout! We've both been camping for as long as we can remember, surely we're not THAT spoiled by California weather, right?

I'll cut to the chase. We woke up to this view from the cabin on Tuesday morning:



We may be spoiled, but damn it felt good to take a hot shower and sleep really soundly that night. Stay tuned for Part 3, the journey home!

Postcards from the Road (My Birthday Trip Part 1)

(Note: Originally, this was going to be one post but it got too long. Today, you get the first two days of our trip. Stay tuned for wildlife, knitting, and camping adventures!)

For my birthday this year, the husbeast and I decided we were going to hit up a few national parks and go camping. The plan was to drive east, turning up through Idaho for a while, and ending up in Yellowstone National Park. We'd camp for four or five days, enough to thoroughly explore the park. For the return trip, we'd drive south through the Grand Tetons and then back through Utah and Nevada. On the first day of the trip, we pretty much just drove across California and Nevada, only stopping for meals and gas. I don't have any pictures of Nevada because, let's face it, the landscape is probably the most boring we encountered during the entire trip. What I got instead of scenery was lots of time to knit while the husbeast drove.

The weather reports were calling for overnight lows in the 30s, and the possibility of rain and even snow while we were at Yellowstone (where the elevation varies from 6500-8000 feet). So while driving through the Nevada desert, I made sure we'd be prepared for Yellowstone:



For the husbeast, a hat and some fingerless mitts (good for keeping the hands warm while allowing finger movement for taking photos). The yarn is Hello Yarn Polwarth wool in the "Cauldron" colorway.



I made myself a hat (but no mitts) out of Fleece Artist Aran wool. I'm calling these our "hurry-up" hats because I was so keen to finish them before we got to Yellowstone. The pattern is based on Jared Flood's Turn a Square hat, except with fewer starting stitches, enough length to turn up the ribbed brim (for extra ear warmth), and no stripes. Perfect car knitting!



In case you're wondering, they do keep one's head nicely warm, but provide no protection against buffalo.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In between bouts of hat knitting, I also worked on this a bit:



More on that later! On the second day, we made a few stops. The first one was for Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho,



where it was a little cold:



It was snowing when we arrived, so we wandered through the visitor center until it cleared up. We drove through the park, got out and walked around a bit.



The landscape is breathtaking and weird.



We both agreed that Idaho is significantly more interesting to drive through than Nevada (sorry Nevada).



After eating our lunch as quickly as possible (so it wouldn't get cold), we drove for another stretch and stopped in Idaho Falls for coffee and the only yarn shop along our route on that day. Yarn Connection is a delightful shop, and while they don't have a website, you can get an idea of what it looks like from the flickr set in the link. The shop owner Tish was very helpful (and pointed me to some interesting yarn), and the other knitters directed us to great coffee at the local Great Harvest bakery. Fortified, we finished the second day of the drive and wound up in West Yellowstone, where we spent our second night on the road before going into Yellowstone proper. I'll report on the park itself (and our adventures therein) in the next post!



P.S. By the way, you see that cowl ? Here's what it looks like up close:



It was a birthday gift from fellow knitblogger and Purl Jammer Pink Viking, and did a fantastic job keeping my neck warm throughout the trip.

Three things

First things first. I can now finally blog about this project:





Two knitting friends are both pregnant (and are due pretty close to one another), and the various knitting circles all banded together to make them collective baby blankets. We threw them a lovely BBQ lunch baby shower this past weekend, where they got to have all the fun of arranging the blanket squares and none of the stress of seaming. Two of the more motivated knitters (myself not included) made adorable matching cardigans out of the blanket leftovers.



I got put unofficially in charge of the seaming, since I wrote up the pattern we used for the squares. It's not difficult to figure out, just garter stitch mitered squares. The only difference is that most of the patterns out there are written so that you start by casting on a small number of stitches and increasing out, while the pattern we used starts with a large circular cast on and then decreases as you go in. I'll be writing up the pattern and posting it for free on Ravelry later in June.

I'd like to say that I haven't been posting because I've been working on this secret project, but it wouldn't be true. I have been working on the secret project, but that's not really why I haven't been posting. I haven't been posting because the end of this semester has been utterly brutal. Brutal hours, brutal workload, brutal anticipation over the fall schedule, brutal on my coworkers, brutal on me. Things have mostly settled down (and I still have a job come August), but I've had what feels like about 48 hours to catch my breath. I managed to have one lazy weekend morning:



and then it was finals week, and second finals week (I know. I had two finals weeks this spring. Like I said, brutal), and then Memorial Day weekend and far-flung friends in from out of town, and then we had to drop the cat off at the in-laws' place. In the meantime I somehow managed to spin some yarn (Polwarth dyed by Dicentra Designs):



and knit a pair of socks (Toe-up Jaywalkers in Sheepaints Sock'n Go in the Wunsch Brunnen colorway.



I'm very glad to use up this yarn, because it is from truly deep in the stash (circa 2008 I think?). Plus, I'll be able to wear the socks this week while we're camping in Yellowstone. It's supposed to be cold there... so I'll be knitting hats on the car trip out there.

What's Been Keeping Me?

A little of this:



A little of that:



All with the help of my lovely (and toothy) assistant:



My spring break came and went, and when it was over all I had to show for my efforts were a quilt top, a receipt for a walking foot for my friend's sewing machine, and some missing cash. Oh, and some really adorable navy blue backing fabric from another local fabric store, Peapod Fabrics. It's the one with the owls on it, fourth from the top in the second photo.

Between Peapod and Verb, I have two shop owners flashing really great fabric selections at me on both sides of the Bay. Peapod recently changed to a new space (just like Verb!) in a location that is conveniently located across the street from my favorite laudromat¹ and one of the cafes in my top-five list. I didn't know that the store had a blog, and so a few months ago when I walked past their old location and saw the windows boarded up, I was crestfallen. I didn't know they were simply moving, but I got all the giddy excitement of realizing that the shop had moved (not closed) while doing the laundry a few weeks ago. Since then, it's only been a matter of time before I found an excuse to start a fabric stash support the local business.

Just like when I started knitting, I've been approaching this whole quilting thing by assuming that it's not very hard to do, and that any mistakes I make won't be too hard to fix along the way. I think one gets more enjoyment out of tackling a big project early on when one is not turning oneself into a nervous wreck worrying about screwing it up. So when I forgot to wash all my fat quarters before cutting? I decided it wasn't a big deal, and washed the pieced top with the backing and border fabric before cutting or adding the borders. The edges of the quilt top frayed, and I trimmed them. No sweat there, although the husbeast practically had a heart attack at the matted mess of frayed strings I blithely cut off the seams.

A bigger mistake was that I didn't read through all those library books I checked out before making the backing, so I cut and sewed the backing to be exactly the same size as the quilt top. Whoopsie! Of course it makes sense to me now that you'd want to have an extra few inches around the edges in case things shift around during the quilting process. My solution is to trim an inch or two off the six-inch outer border before quilting. Seems like my mistakes are mostly going to result in my quilt being slightly smaller than the finished dimensions of the pattern.



Another change I think I'm going to make to the quilt is to skip the applique part. I actually love the way the quilt looks without appliqued flowers on it, so it's going to be left as-is. There are two really great things about this quilt: First, I'll probably have a finished quilt (or at least a quilted-but-still-needs-binding quilt) before the summer. Second, I'm getting very inspired to start seaming the mitered square blocks into strips.

Speaking of blankets, did everyone see Mason-Dixon Knitting's Mitered Crosses Blanket pattern? Yeah, I'm already plotting another one. I've got four skeins of Noro Kureyon in some insanely vivid rainbow colors waiting for their destiny, and I'm thinking ivory Cascade Ecological Wool for the borders. I'm blanket-obsessed over here.

¹Trust me, when you live in a large city you acquire things like a favorite laundromat.

Forward Momentum

So I spent about a month putting off the next step in finishing the never-ending blanket project (shocking, I know). I told myself I was just waiting for a convenient time. A time when I wouldn't feel so bad about keeping the cat locked in or out of the bedroom. A time when I wasn't exhausted from work. A time when I felt like it.

Really, I think I was just waiting to finish something. In addition to neglecting the blanket, I've also suspected myself of neglecting the spinning wheel. After nearly giving myself a heart attack about renewing my subscription to the Hello Yarn fiber club, I immediately threw December's color, Minerals on Shetland wool, on the wheel.



It took a little time to get comfortable spinning this fiber. I've not spun a great deal of Shetland, and at first I was underspinning the singles and getting lots of breaks. I was much happier with my yarn once I saw it plied together.



Once that was off the wheel, I still didn't feel like looking at the blanket. So I thought then that maybe I needed to have another project on the go. I can't think of a logical reason why this would be so; it might have simply been a case of startitis. But I did start something:



The yarn is A Verb for Keeping Warm Toasted (their new worsted base, debuted at Stitches) in Nugget and Thai Iced Tea. The pattern is Flocked Mittens from Hello Yarn. Just like all her lined mitten patterns, these are going to wear like iron. I'm knitting worsted-weight yarn on US size 2 needles!

Last night, I finally got a little bored with petting the spinning fiber stash and knitting the mittens. So I got out the mitered squares, and started arranging.



I apologize for the truly awful photograph. It was dark and raining last night, but I couldn't waste the impulse by not taking a picture. I spent about two hours swapping squares, trying to balance out lights and darks, areas of high contrast with areas of low contrast, green bits with purple bits, and trying to find a good place to put that darned orange square. I'm not 100% satisfied with this layout, but it's pretty close. I like the four center squares, they're some of my favorites. I like having the four corners of the blanket anchored with dark bits. I spent a lot of time getting the squares oriented correctly to eliminate strong vertical or horizontal lines in the blanket. The blanket probably only needs a few changes, and one last check in daylight, before I can start the second stage of seaming. After I seam it, I can start weaving in ends.

Oh.

Ends.

I think I need to lie down.

Smith! (Or, my continuing obsession with Ysolda)

Okay, so I entered Ysolda's Hedgehog contest. This morning I opened my email to find that I got the right number of hedgehogs!!!

And then I realized (belatedly) that I already own a copy of the adorable Smith pattern, since it's part of the Whimsical Little Knits 2 collection. So I've decided to pass the good karma along, and give away my own copy of the Smith pattern. Share the love, right? Here's the contest:

What pattern did I use to knit my wedding shawl (the white shawl in Ysolda's hedgehog contest blog post)? Leave a comment with your answer!

Multiple correct answers will be decided by random number generator, and I'll close the contest at 9:30AM tomorrow (PST).