Happy New Year's Eve

Hello! Happy New Year's Eve!

I still have my cold, but it is a little bit better. I think it is mostly due to:

1. my special fresh lemon, gingeroot and honey tea (take two slices of lemon throw into your mug and crush them with your spoon, then take about an inch of ginger and throw it in your garlic press and press it... juice and pulp that comes through goes into the mug, you can add the pressed stuff too if you're feeling extra spicy and then a bunch of honey, it is one of the few things you can sort of kind of taste when you can't taste anything else)

2. I tried to bake some bread today with mixed results - I have some lumps of bread but they don't look all that pretty. I took a picture of the better looking one. And I had problems mixing the dough in the Cuisinart. Perhaps I did something wrong - it took forever, and when I added raisins it really started to chop them to bits, and it looks like i only have raisins in half the loaf. whoops.
It tastes good though.

3. Harland couldn't sleep last night so he was up and noticed the rain gear he wanted was on sale and we still had some money in our hiking fund (which we call the "tent fund" even though we bought a tent months ago) and so we traveled back to REI again (for the third day in a row, we went Friday night to try on packs and yesterday we bought some gear *see post below* and today we were back for rain gear.)

So I didn't get any knitting or cleaning done today but that is alright. I still have one last day of vacation. I do miss winter breaks from when I was a college instructor.

hiking gifts!!

Well, today Harland (with Christmas money and gift cards burning holes in our pockets) went to REI on a mission. We actually went yesterday and looked some packs over and tried them out with weights in the back and we decided on some packs today. Harland had to order his online because they didn't have the pack he wanted at the store. But today we got mine and a pair of boots for each of us.
Thanks Uncle Buddy, Grandpa and Aunt Theresa!! Yay. Unfortunately, I have this terrible head cold so I don't think we'll be camping this weekend, which is a shame since it is like 55 out right now!
I think I may be well enough to go walk a little to break in the new boots this afternoon. One should start off small anyway when breaking in boots, no one wants blisters!!

Cheers!!

Holidays!

I had a very nice Christmas visiting my relatives in Connecticut and my parents in Pennsylvania. It was good to see everyone but really way too short. And now I have some kind of head cold from hell.
For some reason I always get sick between Christmas and New Years. I don't know why. It's good I have off work.

I got a Cuisinart for Christmas from my parents which is very exciting. I have visions of freshly baked bread and onions not making me cry and all sorts of chopped up veggies dancing in my head.

Harland and I also got assorted hiking gifts from family members which also is fantastic since it is our joint hobby, and I also got a few knitting books (thanks Teresa and Mom and Dad!)

I made a bunch of knitted gifts for people this Christmas: hats for my cousins Bob and Rick, Scarves for my Uncles and Aunt Patty, mittens for my Aunt Joanne, etc. All in all I made 8 things which was pretty tough to do in October to Christmas. Next year I guess I'll either knit only a few presents or try to do one per month. I dunno it is so hard to tell whether people will actually use their presents or if they are just ambivalent about them. I spend so much time on them that I don't want to just spend all this time on things only to have people not use them. It was hard to judge whether or not people were excited or not since I was in charge of handing out the mountain of presents and that is a tough job to do and pay attention.

But on the other hand I really like making things for people because the weeks I am working on their project I think of them while I am knitting their gift. So... well I guess that is the problem with handmade gifts. At least everyone seemed appreciative.

Well that is all for now. I need a nap.

My Holiday Wish from you...

Hi Everyone...
To me life is always interesting in the interconnectedness of things. It amazes me when somehow things just seem to converge and really join to show you something striking. Most of you know that I have volunteered for the American Red Cross and I am happy to say I have taken steps to join the here again in the DC area, and as of last week am an official volunteer again!**

And so I'm asking all my friends and family to do something for me for this Holiday Season. I don't care if you send me a card or buy me a gift. Instead I hope you'll do me a favor. Please take a few minutes and become prepared. If anything the recent tragic story of James Kim and his family has highlighted this for me.

1. Please take a minute to check the batteries in your smoke detector, your flashlight, and your radio if you have one.

2. Check the tire pressure in your spare tire of your car. (and your car tires too if you haven't done that recently!!)

3. Create a disaster kit for your home, and a small version for your car.
When going on long road trips, take your kit with you!
Have 3 days of food and water on hand for each person in your household. Keep some extra warm clothes in your car!

It's a little dorky, and kinda a pain to assemble... but please take the time to do so.
If you need some help getting started, here is a nice little list.Kit Suggestions

So please - I know you're all busy with the upcoming holidays - but take a few minutes for yourself too. 'Cause you know I love you.

**[As back story, if you didn't know, I first volunteered for the Red Cross in Auburn during Hurricane Katrina, and then I spent a lot of my time in Korea volunteering as well. I know the Red Cross isn't a perfect organization - but it is amazing to me how many lives they touch -> from blood services, to disasters, to house fires, to helping Sr. Citizens get groceries and go to the doctor, to helping American Soldiers... if you are looking for an organization to donate to, check out your local Red Cross Chapter and help your neighbors!]

Call me if you need a bus moved

(an alternate title I was thinking of was "I'm the new Puff Jessi")

Anyway so the trip to Rebecca's is a fond memory, except my face apparently didn't like being in her house. I'm not sure if it is the cats, or detergent or what - but when I woke up Sunday my eye was very very puffy. I took some benedryl and thought that would be that...
but it wasn't...

then yesterday evening I developed a rash on my face. So I thought maybe some more benedryl would knock that out. Unfortunately I was wrong. I thought for sure I would be back to normal this morning but the rash actually spread to the other side of my face. So I am puffy and itchy!!
I went to the doctor and got some steroid tablets and she assured me by tomorrow the swelling will have gone down and maybe the rash too. Ugh.

But now I'll have super human strength, right? So for the next 10 days feel free to ask me to come lift heavy things for you. (just kidding!!)

cheers...

When punched in appropriate blocks, honor.

Hello, I went to Philly this weekend with my dear hubby to visit my friend Rebecca and her husband Jason and their two sweet kitties Mia and Molly.

The title of this entry comes from the back of my transit ticket for when we went into the city. I don't know why this amuses me so, but it does.

Anyway we saw the sites:

Liberty Bell


Independence Hall




We saw some carriages waiting for patrons

And we ate Lunch in Chinatown.



All in all a great weekend save all kinda of miserable traffic both to and from there. :)

Thanksgiving!

I totally forgot to bring my camera... but don't worry, Harland's mom always makes sure someone is taking pictures.

Here is a picture of the people who sat at the kids table. I think the youngest is Teresa (23) and the oldest might be me (29). Anyway you look at it - it's a pretty old average for a kids table.

In the back row (left to right) is Eric, Hubby, Eric, Kyle, Jed(?) in the front (left to right) Teresa, Me, Serena, Eugenia, and CoGene.

So that is that. They're all good people.

Well gotta run to eat dinner.

I have been knitting, I swear

Okay so I have not posted in forever, but it isn't because I haven't been knitting.
Here are some of my recently finished objects!! They are all Holiday presents and it is taking me all my energy not to tell you who each one belongs to, but I am trying to actually keep a surprise or two this season.

Here is a hat, It is really navy blue but you know how it is when there is a flash.
It kinda looks like the ribbing is messed up at the top, but that was just me not lying it flat before shooting the photo.

Here is a picture of a scarf. I folded it, in case you are wondering. It's knit in bias, so it looks pretty cool and diagionally when unfolded.

Here are my pride and joy - mittens. They took a long time and the thumbs were intimidating but I finally finished them yesterday. The top one is folded back (it is not really pointy). They do not entirely match up (stupid self striping yarn not being the same length each time) but they are pretty close. I can hardly wait for Christmas to be over to make myself a pair.


And I finished a quilt wall hanging that I started in Auburn when I took quilting lessons.

Honey, did this shrink?

So one little fact you may or may not already know about Harland and I - is that Harland does most of the laundry. I don't know where my hatred of doing laundry began, but it is pretty present in my heart. So Harland throws the laundry in the washer and the dryer and then I come out of the woodwork to fold. Every once and a while I wish I was the one who did the laundry.

This is one of those cases.

So I have completed ONE pair of hand knit socks. I have one sock for Susan that is lonely for a partner, I have another sock that was started and abandoned because I messed it up and do not have the heart to unravel it. So I have, or um, had one pair of orange socks.

Then I hear these words "Honey, did this shrink?" as my delightful husband was holding up an bright orange piece of wool...


Yes, Harland that shrunk. He is now the wiser that I did not knit socks out of cotton as he for whatever reason thought (even though he does indeed remember me hand washing my socks in the sink a few weeks ago). So rest in peace my dear socks.

Also, I made homemade pretzels from Rebecca's recipe that her parents used to make them for use from. YUM!!


Also - we have two great new plants. The little one's name is Silverstar and the other one's name is Salazaar. When I have time and energy I'll explain why - but it is almost bed time.

Two things...

number 1 - go out and vote tomorrow, do it!!

number 2 - Sometimes I like public transit for what you overhear, today there were kids on my commute home (why anyone would want to take kids traveling around DC at RUSH HOUR is beyond me) but when we got to Ballston station the one girl said to her Mom "Boston, you mean we're all the way in Massachusetts?"

too cute.

Much better when I was on a bus in Camp Casey when a soldier said "Yeah I like to lick my wife's eyeball (yes, he said eyeball) when I'm (beep)ing her, although you can't do it too many times or they'll try and divorce you." (I would hope so!!)

Yeah, kids are a lot cuter than drunk infantry GIs. Most of the time.

Great Falls

Hi, we went for a nice walk at Great Falls NP today. It's a nice walk, pretty flat with a few rocks to climb on. Also if you are an actual rock climber with the ropes and the shoes and such there are places to participate in that as well. It was a fairly nice day, it reached 60 today so it wasn't so bad in the woods, out of the wind.

Great Falls is a really interesting area. George Washington decided the river would make a great transportation route, and so they built a canal around the falls. There are some ruins of a town called Matildaville that you can also see. I (of course) took my camera and took lots of pictures. If you are interested in visiting Great Falls, Here is a link to the official site

Here are some pictures from the falls. They were quite impressive, especially since it rained yesterday and Friday. If you click on the first picture you can see a guy sitting on a rock on the left side of the picture to give you a better idea of scale. It doesn't look as big in these pictures.





This is a picture looking down the river away from the falls. You can still see the water churning form going over the falls. I like the way the river curves.



While walking up to the dam we saw a blue heron. Some walker-bys said they saw it catch a frog.


Here is a picture of the canal lock

tent!!

Yay, we are now proud owners of a tent!!!!
We tried it out today in our tiny living room.
Here's proof:


Anyway, I love our tent. It is rather roomy for a 2 person tent. I need to fix my side bars and make this blog more hiker friendly since it is now a hiking AND knitting blog. When I do, I will include these two websites: Big Agnes which is who makes the parkview tent and Gear for adventure who are the people we bought it from.

Anyway, we have one tiny 5 inch pole leftover and we can't figure out what it is for. Anyone know? All the other poles have these bungee cords in them so practically the tent puts itself up. The rain fly was a little harder to figure out (not pictured above) but we got it....

Harland is retying all the knots on our tent that hold the stake cables on to the tent. I guess the bowlines they had on there are not as good as the half hitch stopper knot Harland tied. I personally remember none of the knots i learned in Girl Scouts. Time to hit the library!

Happy Friday y'all.

ZOO!

Okay this doesn't have anything to do with hiking or knitting, but maybe if you stretch the definition of "hike" you could squeeze it in... We went to the Nat'l Zoo yesterday with Harland's sister, Teresa. We didn't go until 4:30pm so we could only see the outside exhibits, but here are a few of the animals we saw. It was getting dark, so some of my pictures didn't come out well.

last shenandoah pictures, for now...

This picture is from on top of Hawksbill Summit... I think hiking gives me a good excuse to wear ponytails.


Here is just part of that trail.


This is some witch hazel flowers. I don't know that I have ever seen witch hazel trees before.


So we walked on the Limberlost trail where there used to be a big swampy area where Hemlocks grew. Terribly, a beetle from Asia has all but wiped them out. 80% are already gone, and the few left are not looking so hot. They put a positive spin on it, showing you all the red spruces and the beech trees that are growing up where the hemlocks used to be... but I know they must be very sad when they hike here. If you want to know more about the hemlock insect and its impact on the hemlocks in Shenandoah read their page here


I can never get a good dusk picture, but I have to say I love how the sky looks at that time of night.

more pictures!

Hey everyone, feeling under the weather, but here are some more pictures!! I think they are mostly self-explanatory....

shenandoah

Hello Everyone, we went to Shenandoah this weekend to see the fall folliage and it was a lovely crisp weekend. On Saturday the highs were in the high 40s and the lows were in the 20s. Unfortunatly, I had a little bit of the sniffles and now it has blown up into a huge sickness.


This tree is next to the visitor center.



This field just looks picture perfect. I love the goldenrod and the milk pods.

We hiked up the hawkbill summitt and here is the view. It was awesome, although I am a bit sore because it was like straight up!
Along the Limberlost trail we saw some signs of a blackbear. I didn't see anything bigger than deer, though.
This is along the Skyline Drive.

33

So I woke up this morning and it was 33 degrees outside.
And I haven't had a decent bowl of grits since I got here.
I'm just saying is all.

OMG, two days in a row!

Wow, two days in a row I have posted! Exciting!

Well two little bits of news:
1. Sunset
Do not adjust your screen. These photos were not doctored in any way, the sky was really beautiful tonight. This was the view from our little porch, there was a rain storm coming in, but somehow the sunset lit it up from underneath. These pictures prove that a sunset is glorious to behold, even from an apartment parking lot. :)





2. Started some armwarmers because my yarn for Holiday presents has not yet arrived.
Started them in the Alpaca Rebecca sent me for my birthday and I have to admit it is the softest yarn i have ever knitted. Man alive, it is awesome.
Note that the ball was wound with my new ballwinder!! Some say anniversary presents are best when they are traditional... but I say they're best if it is something you really have wanted for a long while!!

what's new

well, sorry about the long time before posting again.
It has just been one thing after another here... as I guess happens during moves. We are still not moved in completely... the Army misplaced about half our shipment from Korea so that has just been fun to deal with.

But anyway... Monday was Harland's Birthday *and* our 2nd wedding anniversary - but the first one we spent together. Harland cooked a lovely dinner of grilled shrimp over saffron rice. I contributed some birthday cake. :)
Here is the official blowing out the candles picture:


Now for some belated birthday fun, here are some pictures of my hat for my Uncle for his birthday which was September 30th... (Um, I forgot to rotate these, so you can either rotate your monitor or just sit there and try not to let it bohter you while you read on)
The beginning... I wanted to make sure it would fit a head since I was making it up as I went along...

note: my Cheap way to keep the yarn from slipping off my needles in transit - a twistie tie.



And here it is in all its glory. Do you want to make one exactly like it? I totally made up this pattern from a generic hat pattern from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's "Knitting Rules" book...

Buy a skein of thick and quick, put 88 stiches on some 10.5 sized circular needles, knit 2k2P rib and when you get to where you want to taper off just seperate with stitch markers every 8 stitches then knit the last two together in every group, knit a plain row then keep repeating those two rows until you have 10 stitches left then loop some yarn through and knot, sew in the end and that is it!!

now this is a thick hat, it will stand up on its own if you let it. It is for people who live where it is cold! You have been warned. :)

Also I made two scarves from a pattern from a nearby knitting group that I haven't yet actually made it to yet, and probably won't this week either... why are Thursdays so hard to keep free?
This is the scarf that is not a Christmas Present. In fact, it is for me, and I love it.
Please do not think that pink is as bright in person, because it isn't that bright. And the grey is really a green. Hmm, maybe I will need to photograph this outside someday... because it looks kinda hideous on here and in real person it is SO INCREDIBLY FUN.



it looks more like this (sorry you know I love the macro)


And that, my friends is the last few weeks in my life.