Yarn Along: December

I was going to post this yesterday and link in with Ginny at Small Things for this month's edition of the Yarn Along, but she hasn't put up the December post yet.  I've decided, today, that I'm  going to go ahead and post anyway, and link later, if she does a December Yarn Along.

With exception of blocking the sweater for Rascal, and sewing the buttons on all of them, my three little sweaters for the grandkids are finished!

Rascal's didn't take long, being a size 6-12 months, and is the Harvest Cardigan which is a free pattern from Tin Can Knits.  The pattern is well written and extremely easy to follow.

I had set aside the socks I'm making for DD2, using the tree chart from the Christmas Eve socks pattern, so that I could work monogamously on Rascal's sweater. Then I took a break from knitting for about a week while I concentrated on cutting 6" squares from old blue jeans for another Christmas gift project.  Originally I had planned to have the socks finished in early December, so that I could ship them to Alaska in time for her to receive them by Christmas.  But in mid-November, plans changed.  A plot twist in the story of life, I guess you could say, and there isn't such an urgency now.

I think I will still have them done by our family Christmas get together, which isn't until the 29th this year.  The first sock is nearly done, just about 10 rows on the toe left to do, then it's on to the second sock!

There hasn't been a whole lot of reading going on lately.  Between deer hunting and Christmas crafting, and hosting Thanksgiving, I didn't open a book very often.  Two shortish books are all I managed to finish in the past month:
The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

The new issue of Taproot magazine has arrived, and I've been thumbing through that at lunchtimes.

Deer Hunting Success

I will warn you right now, there are photos in this post that some might consider graphic.  If you are one of those, read no further.

Last deer season was a bust. A total bust.  I got sick a few days into firearm deer season, and then proceeded to spend weeks upon weeks coughing and weak. Which meant I sat in the woods maybe five times and shot zero deer.  DH hunted heavily, but kept waiting for that big buck to come into his sights. It never did. Then in late doe season, he saw no does.  So, he shot zero deer.  It's been a long year without venison in the freezer.

This deer season, however, is a vast improvement (and it's not over yet!).  Opening day of firearm season, we were both up early and in the trees.

dawn's early light: blue woods

We'd had quite a bit of snow earlier in the week, and even though temperatures were rising, the snow was still about five inches deep on the ground.  Perfect for spotting deer in the woods.

Other than the neighbor to our south, no one got a shot off on opening morning.  Lucky neighbor, he took a nice buck.

Our afternoon hunt was much more successful than our morning had been.  And I do have to say, I love snow for tracking.  Makes things so much easier, especially in the near dark.

such bright red in the gloom

blood on side of snow, on top of fallen tree that buck jumped over

Landing point, on other side of tree

I can't even begin to express how happy I was.  My very first set of horns (seven points!!), and fresh venison!

tenderloins for breakfast

nice 7pt buck

We were back at it the next day (although I do have to confess that I slept in, since I had a deer hanging).  DH always checks his trail cam on Saturday mornings, so he brought the SD card from it in with him after the morning hunt.  On it, we were surprised to see a picture of my buck, only about a half hour before it made the fatal mistake of walking my way.

The afternoon was sunny, beautiful for sitting in a tree in the last hours of the day.  I only saw deer from a distance, and birds close up.

Red bellied wood pecker

 

blue jay

Apparently I looked enough like a tree that the birds were comfortable getting up close and personal.  I had a tufted titmouse nearly land on my head!  No pictures of that, obviously.

Do I look like a tree?

Golden hour; 

when the woods light up as the sun approaches the horizon at the end of the day.

DH, however, was the successful hunter that afternoon.  He got a nice six point buck that was kind enough to just curl up and die practically right underneath his stand.  No tracking necessary.

Two days into firearm season, and we've got meat to last for months!  Of course, there were many hours that went into processing that meat and getting it into the freezer as the outdoor temperatures rose and melted off all the snow. I meant to keep track of how many pounds of what cuts we harvested, but I lost count.  I do know that my deer yielded 65 pounds of meat, because I insisted DH weigh it after it was deboned and before tossing it in with the meat from his deer for the final processing.

Venison burger to last for months!

Estimate of 40 pounds from the two deer.

Since day 3 of season, it's been hit and miss with getting to the woods.  The weather has been spotty, I've been back to work, and DH didn't hunt as much as he had wanted during his final week of 'vacation' (in which he had to attend to some business affairs via internet and conference calls at our dining room table).  The times we have been out, we've seen deer, but not been able to get a shot off.  Either too far away, too much brush between us, or in my case, one came directly under me.  Literally, I had to look through my feet and the grating on the stand in order to see it.  It was a button buck, so I just took pictures and let it keep walking.

Hello, little boy

Over my shoulder, behind my tree.

Sunset

We're hoping to get one more deer.  That would be nice; it would mean lean red meat to last most of a year for us.

From Stretch Limo to Sports Car

That's the analogy a friend of mine used when, in late August, I bought a horse.  This was a few weeks after the California Horse (all 18 hands of him) shipped out to Oregon, where his owner's parents retired him to their farm.  I went from riding that tall, huge bodied horse to riding my new horse: a 15.2 hand Arabian.  Shorter, more compact, and yes, the new horse does steer and handle a whole lot zippier.  Kind of like a sports car with a tight suspension.

I was going to post here about him a whole lot sooner, but, honestly, life threw me a curve right about that time. Literally the same afternoon as I handed over a wad of cash for this new horse, DD2 got her job offer in Alaska.  So, while I was excited to be a horse owner again, that kind of took a back seat to moving DD2.

But, I'm writing about it now!

He's a cute little guy.  A nice bay, with no markings other than two hind socks. 

I say "little guy" because I've been riding larger horses (primarily Holsteiners) for most of the last 20 years.  In actuality, at 15.2hh, he's a "big" Arabian.  Which is lucky for him, because with his height and well sprung barrel, he takes up my leg really well.  I had thought--for decades--that I was too tall for Arabs and wouldn't be able to go back to owning and riding them.  The first horse I ever owned was an Arabian, and they hold a special place in my heart.

At 10 years old, he's had the last four or five years fairly easy, not being ridden much.  Prior to that, he had a pretty great show career in the Arabian Hunter Pleasure division.  But, for the most part, he's a 10 year old with low miles, and no health problems.  He also has great bloodlines, being Bay El Bey++ on top and *Bask++ on bottom, with a couples lines back to Raffles in there too. Which I think is neat, because my half-Arab gelding, The Old Man, that lived to be 34 was also a Raffles descendant.

This horse was in partial training (2 rides a week) with a friend of mine this summer, a tune up really, as his owner thinking of selling him because he was 'too reactive' for her, when I came to hear about him.  At that time, I didn't think I was in the market to purchase, and I inquired about a lease.  The owner wasn't open to that, so I put the horse out of my mind.  For two months. Until the day the California Horse shipped out, and I happened to respond to a Facebook post my friend had about something different.  She called me later that day, to discuss what I'd messaged her about on FB, and happened to mention that she still had this horse and really thought he had dressage potential and that I wouldn't find him 'too reactive' at all.

Curious, I set up a day and time to go look at him, not really thinking a) he'd be big enough for me, or b) he'd really have dressage suitable movement. The majority of Arab trots are notoriously not dressage-like.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for me, I saw a lot of potential in his movement as my friend rode him for me to watch, and, when I climbed into the saddle, I did not feel like I was on a tiny horse with my feet dragging the ground. Nor did I feel like he was dangerously reactive, more like deliciously responsive to the slightest aids.

I didn't think I could swing the needed finances for a purchase right then, so I didn't make an offer.  But, I also couldn't stop thinking about the horse.  A week later, I asked if I might be able to take another test ride on him, and what she thought the owner's bottom line (price-wise) might be.

After the second ride, I was hooked.  I still had to figure out financing, but I had a couple of ideas. 

Well, it came to pass that less than another week later, I was handing over money for a 10 year old Arabian gelding and his custom fit dressage saddle his owner had bought because she felt more secure in it than she did in an all purpose saddle.   Win-win for me, as I hadn't been sure if my old County Competitor I'd used on the Mare (my 16.1 1/2 Holsteiner mare) would fit this new, smaller, horse.  His saddle not only fit him perfectly, but it was the exact size I normally ride in.

So far, I have not had any regrets in buying this new guy (who really needs a nickname for this blog).  He's been fun to work with, is catching on pretty quickly to the dressage stuff I'm trying to teach him--number one of which is contact with the bit! Our first rides were kind of comical as I'm riding with these reins that feel so long and floppy to me, yet he's thinking I'm touching his mouth way too much and he's doing a great camel impersonation--head straight up, mouth open--any time I get anywhere close to using the bit.  Now that we've had a couple of months together, and are settling into a regular riding schedule, he's less of a camel, our reins are slowly getting shorter, and he's brave enough to actually touch the bit (a giant, fat, snaffle that couldn't harm a fly) instead of shrink away from anything resembling contact.  I'm excited to see where we are come Spring; I'm entertaining thoughts of hitting the show ring at Training Level with him in 2020.

Yarn Along: November

Another month has flown by, and it's time to join Ginny over at Small Things for the monthly Yarn Along post.

I have finished (except for sewing on the buttons) Toad's Little Shore Cardigan that he'll be getting for Christmas.  In the photo below, it's missing the neck band and button bands, but that's because the instructions have you block the body and sleeves before picking up stitches for those three parts.  I assure you, it's a complete sweater now.

You can also see K3's sweater and my pickle shawl being blocked at the same time. And yes, I do use foam alphabet blocks as my blocking board.  One price, two uses: plaything for the grandkids and blocking board for me.  Gotta love frugality.  (I even bought them on clearance several years ago).

In the past month I also cast on a pair of socks for DD2, to keep her feet warm up there in Alaska.  They will go in her Christmas box to be mailed up in about a month. Using the tree chart from the Christmas Eve socks pattern, I'm adapting this pair to be shifting rows of snow-laden trees on an endless night background of deep blue.  The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Glimmer in Peacock and Frost.  I chose it for these socks because the sparkle in the yarn gives the glittery crystalline ambiance I am going for in these custom for Alaska winter socks.

Meanwhile, once I bound off Toad's sweater, I cast on the garter rib neckband of a 6-12 month size Harvest sweater for Rascal.  So far, I'm about half done with that neckband.  Being such a tiny sweater, I plan to have it finished before the next yarn along. For that, I am using some Encore  from my stash in worsted weight light blue.

This past month I've read just two books: Gone Missing by Linda Castillo (thoroughly hooked on this mystery/suspense author!) and What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman.

Road Trip: Are We There Yet?

Day 7 on the road began, like most of the others, with the alarm clock going off at 6:00 a.m.  Not only was it dark, it was, yep, you guessed it, raining.  We were so tired of traveling at this point.  Nobody wanted to get out of bed, let alone get up in the rainy dark and get in the car yet again.

BUT, this was supposed to be our last day on the road. Day 7 was slotted to be the day we actually arrived in Alaska!  We were so nearly there, the little town we'd slept in was just a bit over 200 miles from the Alcan border.  This was it!  This was the day we would end our crazy driving marathon journey.

So we got up with only a little grumbling, and hit the road.  Almost immediately, we spotted wildlife, a coyote right in town.  About an hour later, a very large bear ambled across the road in front of us.  Not sure if it was a grizzly or a brown bear but it was very tall. Looks black in the picture, but in real life you could tell it wasn't a black bear, the body shape was different.

That was exciting.  We kept our eyes out, but this was the last bear we would see on our trip.  Further down the road, we did spot something we'd never seen before.

 A very recent wildfire.  In fact, the air smelled like charred wood, and as we drove between Snag Junction and Beaver Creek, the air got smokier.  Then we spotted flames moving lazily along the ground.  This was the Snag Junction wildfire that had begun back in July and was apparently still burning.  Being an unpopulated area, the fire was being allowed to die out naturally (I'm sure the wet weather was helpful).

I confess, it was rather creepy driving along a road where you could see fire on the ground on both sides of you.  This definitely doesn't happen in Michigan!  I also confess I later did some research on wildfires in northern Canada and Alaska, and was amazed at how prevalent they can be. Also amazed that they can continue to burn underground for months.  Learn something new every day.

Just before crossing the border between the Yukon Territory and Alaska, we spotted these, which (with  her binoculars) DD2 identified as tundra swans.

Finally, finally, we had made it to Alaska!!

THE END


Nope, not really.  For, as the guard at the border crossing informed us, handing back our passports and wishing us a good day, we still had 90 miles to go before we would regain cell service (which we would lose, and gain, and lose repeatedly), and 400 miles to go to reach Anchorage.

So. We. Drove. On.

And on.

And on. We were in higher elevation, still climbing, and as we climbed the temperature dropped. It was still raining.  Until, around a curve, it wasn't.

Instead of raining, it was snowing!  That lasted for about 20 miles, until we were heading downhill again.  We learned the next day, that this snow has a special name.  Apparently the first snow of the season in  the higher altitudes is called Termination Dust, because it 'terminates' summer. 

We drove and drove, through the snow, through the rain, getting closer and closer to Anchorage.  There was more wildlife the see (a red fox, a trumpeter swan, a moose calf on the shoulder of the road!) as well as more scenery.

Finally, about the time we were all ready for dinner, we made it to Anchorage!  Hooray!  I'd love to say much rejoicing commenced, but really, we were all tired and just anxious to get out of the car and eat a hot meal.  Speaking of hot meal, if you're ever in Anchorage and have a craving for Mexican food (road trip crazies? I mean, who thinks "I'm in Alaska, let's eat Mexican tonight"?!?), I highly recommend El Dorado.  Their enchiladas mole were excellent, and thanks to their horchata, I have a new favorite drink.

After a really good night's sleep, in which we didn't set the alarm for six a.m. (YAY for sleeping in!), the next day we set out for DD2's new home, which is roughly an hour outside of Anchorage, on the Turnagain Arm. And for once, it wasn't raining, although the sky sure was gray and heavy with clouds.

It just so happened that that day was the annual beluga whale count in the Turnagain Arm, and at every turnout along the highway there were people watching the water for signs of the small whales.  DD2 was eager to get to her new place of employment (and home, since they offered her onsite housing through the winter), so we didn't stop. But we kept an eye in the Arm as we drove, and actually spotted a few beluga ourselves!  That was really an unexpected experience; when you're from Michigan you don't think about spotting whales, let alone from a car!

After DD2 checked in and signed her housing agreement, we finally opened those two doors on the car that had been taboo the entire trip.  Surprisingly, nothing except a sheet came popping out as the door opened.  With DH running things from the car to the stairs, and me running things up the staircase to DD2, and DD2 taking things from the landing to her new bedroom, emptying the car took much less time than packing it had.  Probably only 10% as much time!  Of course, it took DD2 a few days to get all her boxes unpacked and arranged in her new home, but she did that later, after DH and I had returned to Michigan by plane.

We took some pictures of the scenery DD2 now gets to enjoy every day, all day, and then headed out for a brief jaunt down to Whittier, a place we'd wanted to go back in 2017 but hadn't had time to fit into that Alaska trip.

Wouldn't you like to see this from your yard?

Glaciers and wilderness?

Or have a view like this from your kitchen window?

We managed to hit the tunnel to Whittier at the perfect time; no waiting in line.  The very long, very narrow tunnel is one lane, two miles long, through the mountain.  Each direction of travel is slotted a time, either top or bottom of the hour, in which vehicles may pass through the tunnel.  It was kind of eerie driving through the murky darkness with water dripping down onto the car.

entrance to Whittier tunnel

In the tunnel.

Will we ever get to the other side?

We did, after a while, exit the tunnel into the town of Whittier on Prince William Sound.  We watched for more whales, but didn't see any, instead spotting several sea lions playing in the water.  As the clouds burned off a bit, we parked the car and went for a brief hike.

On the way back to our hotel in Anchorage (where DD2 was going to stay with us for one last night, then take us to the airport so DH & I could fly home) we spotted some white shapes up on a cliff near the road.  DH found a place to pull over, and, to DD2's complete enjoyment, we observed about six mountain goats just hanging out doing their wild goat thing.

l

It was a good wrap up to a long trip. We had made it. DD2 was in Alaska, her new state, with all the wildlife a recently graduated Wildlife Ecologist could ever imagine.

Road Trip Pt. 3

Day 5, we awoke to more rain. Rainy mornings had become (and stayed) the theme of our trip.

Not only was it raining, we had a lot of one-lane construction to drive through in the mountains.  The road was muddy.  Soon, the car was muddy.  It seemed like the day was going to be a challenge.  Despite our 'easy' tourist day on Day 4, Day 5 found us all tired of traveling, and really tired of getting up and hitting the road before the sun rose. The heavy gray skies and intermittent fog didn't help.

Our route took us to Grand Prairie, Alberta.  Since we'd pretty much eaten up, the day before, all the snacks and lunch food we'd brought with us from home, Grand Prairie became a restocking point.  DD2 and I hit the grocery store while DH hit the gas station to fill the tank.  You'd think that a grocery store is a grocery store, and basically, it is.  For the most part, we found Canadian grocery stores to be identical to the ones here in Michigan. The name might be different, but the offerings are the same.  A big difference we noticed is that the candy offerings (because we were looking to replace the bag of assorted bite sized candy bars we'd consumed since leaving home) are not nearly as vast as they are in the U.S.  Which is good news for Canadians (apparently they don't eat any where near the amount of candy as Americans) but was kind of frustrating for us chocoholics who were hoping to stock up on our happy pills for getting through the remainder of our journey. Even the trail mix offerings were markedly lacking in sweets. Two out of three of us don't really care for raisins, so that narrowed the choices further.

What we did manage to find though, was something definitely unseen in the US:

We didn't let the fact that we're not Canadian stop us from buying (and eating) these.

The other huge difference in the grocery stores is that they discourage the use of plastic bags, offering paper bags (for a fee) and encouraging shoppers to bring their own reusable bags.  Good for Canada!  This is something I really wish more stores in the US would do. 

Gas tank full, cooler and 'food bag' refilled, we got back on the road, heading for the Alberta/British Columbia line, and soon after that, Dawson Creek where the Alaska Highway begins.  Once we hit the Alaska Highway, we needn't worry about turns until we were actually in Alaska, more than 1700 miles away.

What we found in British Columbia was more prairie, then more mountains, trees changing colors, several steel bridges with metal grating for the deck (which were all preceded by a warning sign for motorcyclists about the bridge surface), more bears(!!) and some elk.

warning sign before bridges with metal grating;

we came to refer to these as "vibrating motorcycle" signs

As we traveled further into British Columbia (which, it seemed to DD2 and I, had an enjoyable 'spicy' scent we never could quite place--probably whatever flora was in season), towns became few and far between.  Gas stops, bathroom breaks, and even lodging had to be thought out hours in advance.  A far cry from the travels we've done in the U.S.  DD2's first choice of a stopping point for the night turned out to be booked full up when we called that morning, and we ended up having to drive nearly an hour further to get to a place with a vacancy.

Boy, was it a nice place, though.  So peaceful, and quiet.  We just might plan a future vacation in order to return there, the Northern Rockies Lodge in Muncho Lake, and spend more than just a night.  The on site restaurant had a varied and delicious breakfast buffet.

Gonna come back here someday

Day 6, on the road again. Drizzly at first, but no real rain.  It didn't take us long to see our first wildlife of the day. Coming around a curve, we saw up ahead what sort of looked like a bear, but sort of didn't.

As we slowed down and got closer, it definitely was not a bear.  It was a bison!  Just out for breakfast on the shoulder of the road.

That sighting turned into more, and more, and more.  If Saskatchewan had shown us lots of antelope, British Columbia was all about the bison!  That day we saw more than 125 of them along the highway.

DH was so excited every time we spotted some

Yes, I think someday DH and I will make a trip back to British Columbia to explore some more.

But, that day, we couldn't stay. Our goal was to cross into the Yukon before dinner time. And we did.

Even so, it was far from time to stop for the night.  We pit stopped in Whitehorse for dinner, then continued on.  The scenery got wilder.  We were definitely getting more remote.  Even the detour for construction was a bit surreal; let's just throw some gravel down through several miles of wilderness and make that a temporary road.

detour

We finally got to our stopping point as the sun was going down.  It was a small town, and the only town within hours.  Our resources said it had a handful of hotels and motels.  We found, however, that only one had vacancies.  DH paid for a room, but things were a bit, well, odd.  Starting with the note affixed to the inside of the door.

The bathroom, which was well stocked with towels, had a similar sign, complete with a list of towels and replacement prices should any of them go missing or become soiled by wiping vehicles.  I mean, it was a clean motel, just kind of old (decor reminiscent of the 70s) and just a little different from any place we'd slept thus far.  What was also odd was that the door to our room only locked from the outside.  That, and the owner didn't seem to have anything good to say about the locals.

We went to bed exhausted, but sort of wondering if we'd wake up alive in the morning!

(How's that for a cliff hanger?  Stay tuned, there's more to come. . . )