miscellaneous yaddayaddayadda

made it thru another xmas season and it all went quite well and i did not have a need to set foot in one mall or big store full of shoppers! bravo!!  shopping done online from as many small businesses as possible, tho did have to resort to some biggies to get those geeky/nerdy/digitally items for those who like them.  Jim wanted a thing called something like "track back" that will help him get back to where he started so he won't get lost on those long walks he takes in and around Vamos... now he just has to remember to take it with him.

i'm now bilaterally seeing my world bright and clear and am amazed at the difference!  have had 2 lens implants in the last 3 weeks, with vacuuming out of the cloudy old cataracty lenses.  i really wish i could have seen what was going on from the doctor's view of it... from my view it was just bright moving lights, which wasn't bad... the colors were awesome!  his description of the procedure sounded fascinating!

xmas day Dinah and Jonica came down from seattle, we brought Pop out here and had dinner together. on sunday was the big family feast here at dome central, with most of the family plus several friends and neighbors - last time i counted it was 23 people, i think....  it was fun and chaos for a few hours.  i'm still exhausted!  ready to hunker in now and ignore the snow or ice or everwhat happens outside.  hhmmm, wondering what "hunker" really means and where that word came from......

a very good day

and it was a good day... in fact a very good day!  we went to Portland to see a play at Portland Center Stage, The Santaland Diaries, written by David Sedaris... which i'd listened to on my iPod and laughed out loud thru it!!  was a really good one-man production.  the story of an out-of-work man who took a job as an elf at Macy's xmas Santaland and all the insanity that evolved from that.  very very funny!  then we had an hour and a half to fill before Eleni's Restaurant opened, so went to "Life of Riley" for a hot toddy... it was a cold day and we needed warming.....  we made that toddy stretch out for an hour, then found a fine gift shop to browse.  finally!! dinner!!  the owner  Eleni Touhouliotis has 2 restaurants in portland, highly regarded and well-reviewed, with a menu of Greek/Cretan dishes.  She is from Hania, Crete which is the nearest city to the village we go to in Crete... so our high expectations were well met.  we both really enjoyed our meals.  and i had retsina before and ouzo after... so greek!!  and Jim indulged with baklava, which had abundance of honey!


after we'd gotten home and soothed the disgruntled dogs (we'd been gone ALL DAY) with cookies of their favorite dog variety, i decided to spin awhile and indulged myself with the ever so special solstice gift i'd received from Lynne.... cashmere!  the ultimate in luxury and soft soft soft!  oh, my... mmmmmm..

and now... happy festivus.....

baking

 the nieces and niece-lets came out today for cookie baking and here's Team Cookie doing their magic.  decided to make Rugelach after seeing a photo of the finished product and i gotta say.... these came out looking very much like the photo!  i think they had fun, i know i did.  and the cookies were very very good.  we also made some Italian Toast (biscotti) which i love!

i'd forgotten that it could be fun to bake, having pretty much left it behind with my pioneer woman days.

 

Winter Solstice!

ah!... winter solstice.  the longest night of the year, and tomorrow the days start getting longer by tiny little increments, but it's the getting longer that matters.  today i brought in the solstice greens which take the place of a xmas tree these days.  and the greens are surrounded by the stockings hung with care and some gifts.  when i talked with my grandgirl on the phone last night, she told me she was really looking forward to coming to our house the day after xmas and i smiled to myself and felt all warm and glowy, and she then said that she thot there might be some presents here for her.  had to laugh!  that girl always says exactly what is on her mind!  yes, sweetie, there will be some gifts here for you... and lots of hugs, and love.

Winter Solstice... the return of the light, the beginning of a new year, the start of winter and preparation for spring.  long nights for awhile and short days, slowing gaining more light... and it gives me lots of time to stay in out of the rain, read, think, work on projects which have been sitting around aging for too long, think some more and plan.  in the meantime, i'm wishing for everyone everywhere warmth, someone to love, less worries and more of what they need...and light.

Woolgatherings Fibers

check out Ennea Collective

it's an online fiber arts magazine... the sweater on the front page was knit with yarn spun from Kate's 

beautiful fibers.  and check out their link to indie reviews... there's an interview with Kate there!  how sweet it is!!  i love what she's doing with Woolgatherings!

salad?...

i've been advised by Judy to remember the lessons from "The Little Shop of Horrors".   if i hear even any whispers from this cute little green growing potential plant.... i'll quickly dispatch it to the compost!

(the beginnings of this are in the last post)

amusement?

some days i'm so easily amused that it borders on pathetic ... or i see art in simple forms?  i was washing lettuce for salad, and when i cut the stem end off one little head i just couldn't throw it in the compost because it was so pretty.  maybe the pathetic part was when i "posed" it on top of the washed leaves and took its little picture.  still couldn't discard it, so put it in a shallow dish of water and now 3 days later it's starting to grow little leaves from its center.  and i still think it's cute.  i think i'm trying to make up for the miserable failure to thrive flowers from the garden that i potted up and brought inside in the hope they'd keep growing and i'd have summer bloomin' all winter on the balcony under the skylight.  it's just not happening...... only one of eight shows any sign of life... the gerbera daisy... and i'd be delighted if it lives!

it's cosmic!

it seems an infrequent occurrence to me, and makes me happy that a full moon and the Winter Solstice occur on the same date this year!  hoping for a clear night for moon viewing!  how about a bonfire??!! dancing??

also, this month ... "spectacular meteor showers and a total lunar eclipse" . click  for details 
the eclipse will be december 20 and will be the best one til april 2014.  i guess it's impertinent to ask for clear night skies in december in northwest oregon 2 nights in a row.  but i'm hoping.....

i took some of my dyed yarn to Northwest Wools this week...  my latest most favorite yarn because it glitters!!  it has 2% real silver thread in it!  oooooh... sparkles!

the big event in my life this week was to have a new and clear lens implanted in my right eye to replace the one which had become very cloudy.  i'm told that if one lives long enough it's bound to be necessary.  the pre-op portion of my day was considerably longer that the actual procedure,  but i'd worked up a huge case of anxiety and it took 3 IV shots of versed to get me to the "who gives a rat's ass" attitude.  the rest of the day was quite fine.  and already, 2 days later, i can see a really big difference in vision.  everything looks brighter thru that eye.  the left eye procedure will be december 28.  i'll be glad when it's all done and now i'm wondering what difference this will make in how i see the colors of the dyes that i pour onto fiber!

Crete in the spring!! oh, yes!

the sweet reward for surviving the winter... springtime in Crete and all the Easter celebrating!

really nice taverna in Almirida, a small seaside resort town, opened by our friend
Yorgo.  Called Aeraki which means small breeze.  the other part of the taverna is
across the street and next to the water.

we made reservations last night and had enough airline reward points to get 2 round trip tickets.


 

the beach in Almirida... nicest in the off-season, so no crowds
of tourists.

w 

a

Taverna Sterna Tou Bloumosifi - the local taverna which becomes our second home when we're in Vamos.  

friends, good food, local wine and raki (Greek fire water, and if you survive the first shot then your mouth is numb and you can keep  going til you can't keep going!)  the best part is friends and you meet new friends every day wherever you go... it's the Cretan way.

bougainvilla - everywhere all the time!

Easter dinner party last spring.

ah, but first the holidays, and rain and maybe snow and grey days.  and then april will come.

more dyein'

bright BFL

 BFL/tussah silk - can't wait to spin this one!!

 not so bright ... more kind of vintage looking.  also BFL/tussah silk.

return of the dye muse

drying fiber
i was able to resurrect my dye studio from the disarray into which it had fallen during the last few months.  unbelievable the amount of dog hair, dirt, piles of miscellaneous unrelated stuff that had accumulated on the counters and floor.  the exit path for the dogs to get to their yard goes directly through my studio, so their hair, muddy feet and outdoor debris adds up to a mess.  and then there were the cups and jars of dyes that had been sitting there unused since early sept. and had become dehydrated and/or a thick, jelled glop.  amazing what some boiling water will do.  i always do a few "test pieces" to check for the fastness of dyes after reconstituting them and am delighted that they react with the fiber just as they did 3 months ago.  don't throw away those gloppy, neglected dyes, i tell ya. 

pouring color on white fiber

i needed bright color in my fiber life!  going thru my yarn stash and spinning fibers, i found not a lot of bright.  there's some in the current knitting project (the poppy sweater), but that's all dedicated.  so there's some fiber and yarn with attitude comin' up.  and i do need that to ward off the cloudy, gray winter day goblins of gloomy.  also, have on the dyeing agenda, a bunch of that sock yarn with the silver, and plan some sexy black, magenta, bright violet, turquoise for that... plus other bright combinations!  hmmm, bright seems to be the operative word here.

tgiving at Jen and Maggie's

i love that Max likes to dress up for parties

 and a lovely and filling day it was!  for anyone who knows and/or loves and/or is related to any of these folks, you will probably enjoy the photos.  anyone else, maybe not so much.

one might ask where are the women folks... short answer is in the kitchen fixing the feast, hangin' out and enjoying each others' company!  sorry none of those photos were worthy of posting.  we really missed those who were in other parts of the world and hope they also had a wonderful day.

power - or not

just when it seemed life just couldn't get any more exciting at dome central... we decided to get a generator for when the power goes out, and we KNOW it will go out because this is predicted to be one of the coldest and worst winters in a long long time and that means that our fragile electrical power source will most certainly go out and often, when it is gone, it stays gone for many days because we are far enough out and so at the end of the line when it comes to crews getting out to make repairs!  so, we got one powerful enough to run the small freezer, refrig, microwave, coffee pot, maybe a part-time space heater.... and charge the batteries for our laptops.  so, if the dire predictions do come about, and based on the percentage of accuracy in previous forecasts and "weather alerts", this past week could be the only adverse and way below freezing, power-outage possible bad weather we'll see... but however, we are prepared!!!  and after considering where this generator might be safely housed in order to prevent a human who is tending to it being overcome by carbon monoxide fumes, he decided to build it a little house.  here is the framing of the generator house.  it will have a roof and removable sides (probably tarps).  and this is the exciting news in my queendom.  seriously tho... it will be lovely to have some power for some of those conveniences that make our lives comfortable.  i'm so over that pioneer woman crap and so past the time where i want the challenge of preparing food on the top of the wood stove.

chanterelles

got a call from a neighbor last night saying he and a friend had picked 2 grocery bags full of chanterelle mushrooms and would we like to have some! i've always liked neighbors Don and Carol, and now they are even higher up on the good neighbor list!!  these are a highly prized gourmet treat, tho i can't say they look very appetizing to me.  i know that they taste yummy, so guess what's on the menu for tonight.....  The instructions are to brush them off - DO NOT wash them - i just don't know about that.

it's snowing and predicted to be very cold with more snow in the next few days.  we have snow tires on the Prius and cable chains for it but i surely do wish i had my 4WD toyota pick-up!  i loved that truck and felt very safe in it, no matter the weather.  ~~sigh~~

what i did on my winter vacation

of course i started making my fiber nest... looks pretty puny.. but it's just the first day and i hadn't unpacked it all.  stay tuned.  more to come.

now after a couple of days it's beginning to look more like "my nest".

it's reallly realllly cold here and always looks like it's going to snow... kind of grey.  i'm perfectly content to stay inside with spinning, knitting, reading, computering, grazing and wine drinkin'.  we did venture out yesterday in search of the thrift store which supports the nature center and it was packed with all sorts of stuff... from furniture to books to kitchen stuff to a crafts corner where i found a dandy little package of 1/4 yd pieces of fabric and a like-new book on making small quilts and projects.  we have cable tv here, but i'm sad we can't get MSNBC or comedy channel, so no Rachel or Daily Show... but however, we also have wireless so can watch those shows on the computer! 

this is the view from our porch.... we did get some sunny days, tho it's cold and i've been unable to keep my feet warm, even with wool handspun and knit socks!

cute bear in the main lobby at the grand lodge at Sunriver.  he feels all soft and like a plushie,  and i wanted to bring him home with me.  didn't happen!

  

hope we can get back home before there's any snow!!  we'd planned to leave on thursday, but forecasts of big dumping of snow over the passes brought out my inner weather weenie and we'll leave Wed. a.m and scoot across them mountain passes before the flurries are flying.  will be happy to be home again!!

where i am, Terry, is Sunriver, close to Bend, OR.

new again

not to sound like pollyanna, but... sometimes memory lapses/brain farts/losing my mind turns up good things! in the basement under a shelf, packed in a big box i found a lovely fleece which must have been brought to me by the wool goddess as i have no idea when or where i bought it. and it's a gorgeous bag of wool with no miscellaneous pasture debris mixed in the wool!! so... i washed some of it and it comes out brilliant white, perfect staple length. so... i dyed a small batch and it is totally wonderful and makes me very happy!

Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear

the rally will be tomorrow, saturday, october 30 in DC and i'm sad to say that i won't be able to go! very sad... so my tv machine is set to record it (9a.m. PST). and in the afternoon several like-minded neighbors will gather here at dome central to drink some wine, dine on snacky things and have our own rally as we watch the recorded rally in DC. evidently, according to Jim, there will be a carry-over group who will stay to watch some kind of game... don't know if it's fball or bball and don't care much either way as i'm sure i'll be able to find something else to do and will enjoy my ipod at sufficient volume to drown out any of that irritating game noise! i'm so wishing for more sanity and less fear in this country... and on the planet!

in the words of Jon Stewart:

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Who among us has not wanted to open their window and shout that at the top of their lungs?

Seriously, who?

Because we’re looking for those people. We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.

Are you one of those people? Excellent. Then we’d like you to join us in Washington, DC on October 30 — a date of no significance whatsoever — at the Daily Show’s “Rally to Restore Sanity.”

Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.

Think of our event as Woodstock, but with the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement; the Million Man March, only a lot smaller, and a bit less of a sausage fest; or the Gathering of the Juggalos, but instead of throwing our feces at Tila Tequila, we’ll be actively *not* throwing our feces at Tila Tequila. Join us in the shadow of the Washington Monument. And bring your indoor voice. Or don’t. If you’d rather stay home, go to work, or drive your kids to soccer practice… Actually, please come anyway. Ask the sitter if she can stay a few extra hours, just this once. We’ll make it worth your while.

pumpkin

here's the best use i've found for punkins! clean it out and stuff with a mixture of cooked rice, sauteed onion, celery, garlic, seasonings, dried fruits (craisins, apple, pear, etc) chopped nuts, apply EVOO to the outside and bake about an hour at 350 or til the punkin shell is cooked. cut into wedges and.... mmmmmm!!

The Birds

here in my queendom it's sounding like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds ... the grapes in the vineyard are ripening and the birds have come from everywhere else to feast on them. Periodically, the bird cannon up in the vineyard booms... sending all that swarm of birds into the air yelling at each other about their interrupted meal. it reminds me of my dad's story from years ago before they had the cannons. he was walking around the vineyard with a shot gun trying to scare them off and fired off one that didn't actually go just up in the air as usual, but ricocheted off a tree and hit a deer that was wandering thru in search of a grape snack. unbelievably, it killled the deer! Dad was mortified! he's not a hunter of animals, so being an upstanding citizen, he call the dept. of wildlife and asked them what to do with it.. and they gave him instructions and said they'd be out to get the deer. they arrived, gave him a ticket for killing a deer without a license or permit or tag or whatever it's called.... and told him he'd have to go to court... AND they took the deer away. he had to appear before a judge, tell his story, get a lecture and pay a fine. too bad he didn't know about the SSS creed i lived by when i had sheep and lambs in the pasture and saw a dog trying to get in with them... nah, i never did the shoot, shovel and shut up thing. i only had a bb gun, but did threaten... and there were neighbor dog-owners who seemed to believe me.

the noise is taking a toll on Tasha-the-dog-who-is-scared-of-her-shadow (really!!), so i moved her pillow to a place where the sound is muffled and she lies there with Meika on the floor beside her keeping her company.

Tillamook

Last Saturday noon we went to Tillamook. one of Linda's customers had invited her to come to a knit-in there and have a Twisted Sister book signing... and also told her to bring some yarn, patterns, fibers etc to sell. there were 4 of us to do the signing. there were probably 50 or so people sitting around tables in the Public Market

knitting and chatting. the market is in a restored old building in downtown Tillamook, and has been set up to accommodate vendors and food and drink sellers. it is a really nice venue for small business/home businesses to sell their wares and at $200 a month rent is a good way for them to see if they have a saleable product or even want to do retail.

Jan gave me some sort of idle warning about not putting a photo of her here.... but i did it. i ain't askeered. so... here's Jan, Steph and Linda.

oregon coast

last friday Linda and i went over to Rockaway Beach
for a 3 day weekend which we'd thought would be a twisted sister weekend... but we were the only ones who could go... so we did... and it was really a fun and relaxing 3 days! we'd rented a little house with a back yard which connects to the beach. it's got an upstairs sitting room/tv room/den with large window overlooking the beach and therefore great light to spin and knit by... so we did! i established my fiber nest and surrounded myself with yarn, fiber, books, drinks, snacks and settled in. Linda had a similar nest.

we had warm and sunny days and great sunsets, did a little bit of shopping at Flamingo Jim's, drawn there by his big sale signs, cruised around the Trash and Treasures shop, found an ice cream shop and made the most of our time there.

the view from the porch.....

i brought a 3 of the few garden-ripened tomatoes we got. the cut up one is Purple Cherokee and is my most favorite!