Crochet?

I made the Boteh scarf last week. It's been a while since I crocheted, so I had to constantly remind myself that when I put the project down I could take the hook out of the scarf without having the project unravel or shave the neighbour's dog or something.



Pattern: Boteh Scarf by Kathryn Merrick
Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock. I think the colourway is #149.
My ability to photograph a neutral-toned scarf on a creamy carpet: Sucky.
Feedback: Someone said, "That's not going to keep you very warm," before remembering we're in Seattle.

Update on the new cat

A name still hasn't really jumped out at us. M suggested Melon because it looks like the cat swallowed one whole. Later he thought William might also work. I lobbied for Wally for a while, then tried to persuade M to go with William Wally Melonbally, but didn't have any luck. I think we might settle on William of Melon.

Trip photos
Before I forget, here are a few shots from our RI trip a couple of weeks ago.

Cows in the pasture behind Gray's Ice Cream at Tiverton Four Corners.


My in-laws' dog. I think this is the only shot in which he is still. A true terrier, indeed.


Sunrise at Nannaquacket Pond in Tiverton.


A swan and two cygnets. The other swan in the group was way ahead of them.

Back in Seattle

I took this photo at Magnuson Park yesterday. The sculpture is titled "Fin Art: From Swords to Plowshares" and consists of diving fins from US Navy attack submarines. There's more info about the sculpture here and here.

Another road trip

We went back to the Olympic Peninsula for a few days last week. I posted some photos on Flickr. We stayed at Miller Tree Inn in Forks and had a quasi-brush with fame there, as it turns out Forks was used as the setting for the Twilight series, and one (or some?) of the characters live at the Inn (or something like that). There were a couple of signs at the front entrance for Twilight fans, and we saw several people drive up so that fans could photograph the B&B.

We also went down to Rialto Beach (which looked considerably less frightening than when we were there in late September/early October), managed to hike 10 miles in the Hoh Rainforest without being chased off by elk, visited Second Beach near La Push, and stopped at a lavender farm on the way home.

Moth (but not in my yarn)

Warning: if you don't like close-up photos of invertebrates, stop reading after the part about the rabbit. If you do like them, you're in luck. I'll even throw in a banana slug photo at the end.

I sat near the top/back of the stadium at the Mariners Stitch 'n' Pitch on Thursday. The ball players were kind of far away, but the view was generally all right and the sunset was pretty. I finished a handle on my Team Rabobank (and it is Rabobank, not whatever college colours people have been asking me about lately) market bag.




On Friday we went to a farmers' market and I saw my first Flemish Giant rabbit. That's my hand in the photo for scale. The owner said this one is only 1 year old and still growing, and will be about 80 lbs at maturity. The rabbit is already 40 lbs, which makes him almost as big as our cat (kidding--our cat is only 18 lbs).

Edit: After checking out some webpages about Flemish Giants, I suspect I might have heard wrong and that the rabbit only (?) weighed 14 lbs. Does anyone else have more info on this breed? Either way, the critter was huge.



The owner said his rabbits are very affectionate, get along well with the dogs and would play with the chickens if the chickens were into that sort of thing. I had a brief wild thought of acquiring a Flemish Giant as a companion for the cat, but reconsidered after hearing how much they eat in a week. I can't remember exactly what the owner said, but I think there was something about a bale of hay and an enormous quantity of feed (20 lbs? I don't know...), and as things currently stand we barely have enough room for the cat's needs.

This is the part where invertebrate-close-up-disliking readers should stop.

Speaking of big animals, we noticed a moth on one of our screens this afternoon.



It was huge. I tried to find my swatch ruler, but I forgot where I'd left it so I settled for the next best thing.



Chester pawed a bit at the other side of the screen but didn't seem too interested in the moth, perhaps because it remained motionless for several hours.




The cat did, however, seem interested in the (crazy! tasty!) Spam.


And now that you've sat through all of that, here's the promised banana slug photo. It's from our most recent trip to the Olympic Peninsula.

Gallivanting

If one shifts from actual blogging to hypothetical blogging, is that a cause for concern?

I've been in that mood lately...we'll see something or do something, and I'll tell M that hey, I really should blog about that, and for a moment I get really excited about the prospect, but by the time I actually sit down at the computer the mood has passed. Somehow I managed to catch myself off guard this time, so here we are.

My in-laws visited from Rhode Island and stayed for about 2 weeks. We took the opportunity to play tourist ourselves, though to different degrees--I, for one, did NOT go camping at Mt. Rainier on Columbus Day weekend when there was snow on the ground. We hiked in Olallie State Park and visited the salmon hatchery in Issaquah.


Waterfall in Olallie State Park (photo by M)


Salmon leaping in holding pen at Issaquah hatchery (photo by my FIL)

We went to the Ballard Locks and watched boats come in from Puget Sound. We also saw some salmon jump around in the lake. I wish I'd gotten a photo of that! Apparently they do this when they move from salt to fresh water to clean the salt off of their scales before swimming upstream to spawn and (probably yes) die. I think these salmon were stragglers--most of them have already entered the smaller rivers by now.

We stayed overnight on the Olympic Peninsula and stopped at Dungeness Spit, the Hoh Rainforest, and Rialto Beach. The spit is several miles long, so the only way I could get a picture of the lighthouse at the tip without walking out there was by jamming my camera right up against one of those binocular contraptions set up on a viewing platform.


The spit. Trust me, there is a lighthouse out there.


Lighthouse at Dungeness Spit. It's at the right side behind the tree branch.


Forest near Dungeness Spit.

My in-laws hung out at the B&B (the Miller Tree Inn--I highly recommend it) while M and I hiked a bit in the Hoh Rain Forest. The moss there was incredible! It grew everywhere, even on phone booths.

We felt like we were in Tolkien's Fangorn Forest.

(photo by M)

This sign was posted near the start of the trail:


I didn't pay too much attention to it at the time. Halfway through the trail, though, M suddenly said, "Wait! There's an elk." Sure enough, a lone female was standing about 15 feet away and chewing on the greenery. As M took photos, I spotted a second elk a bit farther away. We were totally psyched and feeling at one with nature, so when I thought I saw a third elk I attributed it initially to overexcitement. Then I took another look and realized it really was a third elk. A few seconds later two more elk appeared. By now we were recalling all of the signs we had seen in Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks warning people to stay away from the animals and not taunt the bison, etc. (fine, I'm paraphrasing), so we decided to move on and bid the elk farewell. We wondered a bit if they would get aggressive, but M said we should be fine as long as there were no youngsters or males around. This was when the scene became really cliched; as soon as he said that, we noticed that two of the elk looked suspiciously small, we spotted a male, and one of the females stepped onto the trail and started walking towards us.

M and I haven't agreed yet on her intentions. I'd like to think that maybe she was just curious, but M, who was standing between me and the rapidly approaching elk and thus in a better position to know, insists she was glaring at us. Regardless, we decided to retreat since our path forward was blocked; thus ended our brush with nature for the day.




Rialto Beach was beautiful too, even though it was a bit misty/cloudy that day.

Volcano please, and hold the air

I keep forgetting to post this! It's one last blurb about Maui.

(Warning: this post is photo-heavy)

A couple of days after our sunrise excursion, we returned to Haleakala for a hike. Although Haleakala is technically a volcano, the main "crater" that we see now was created by erosion. However, it contains several cinder cones, the closest of which is accessible by foot.

We drove up in daylight this time and thus got to enjoy the sight of clouds hanging out on the fields like cows at pasture.

We also glimpsed one of my favorite signs on the trip:


We parked at the summit, walked down the Sliding Sands trail for a bit and took the branch that led to the rim of a cinder cone.


I'm not sure what I was expecting to see...maybe a fiery pit? It turned out to be more like a steep-sided bowl, but the rim was so narrow I had images of falling in and not being able to haul myself back up. We settled for peeping cautiously over the edge.
(Edit: The mist was from a cloud that rolled in as we were hiking. From what I read, Haleakala hasn't erupted since around 1790.)


We were struck by the range of colors--various shades of black, tan, yellow, brown, and red from the rocks, and green and silver from the plants.


And it was so quiet! I could hear the blood rushing through my ears, especially on the way back up when I got walloped by the thin air and had to stop every 50 feet to rest.

Here's one last view of the crater and cinder cone. You can see a bit of the Sliding Sands trail zigzagging down the far slope:

More Maui

Yup, the trip is still on my mind...especially now that it's started snowing.

We snorkeled in Molokini crater on New Year's Day. It was my first attempt at snorkeling ever (because I was too busy running around thinking "la de da de da I'm in Maui" and playing tourist to practice snorkeling in shallow water first), and the sensation was really odd. Of course, that could have been because of the stomach bug that whomped me later that day.

We did manage to get some shots of waves from a fish's point of view.


We also saw several spiny black urchins, tons of fish, and coral galore.


The next day we drove part of the way to Hana. I think Hana was supposed to be our goal, but I wasn't feeling too well so we only made it to the 10-mile mark. Still, there was plenty to see, like the waves on the north coast (I think this was Hookipa beach...dude, that is one serious ocean out there):




And random foliage:


And some of the 600 or so hairpin turns on the Hana Highway:


Next up: Haleakala during the day.

Haleakala

On our second day in Maui, I took a surfing lesson. I know there are photos out there, I'm just waiting for a copy.

On our third day in Maui, a bunch of us drove up Haleakala to watch the sun rise (or, as a Peanuts science book from my childhood said, "to watch the earth turn").

Haleakala ("house of the sun") is both a 10,000-foot high dormant/extinct volcano and a National Park. To reach it from Kihei, where we were staying, you drive north for a while, then east for a while, then up, left and right for a very long while, until you can't drive any further, and then you park your car. Reaching it from Kihei in time to watch the sun rise, and guarantee good parking at the summit, requires some extra steps:

1. bringing windproof winter clothing to Maui;


2. stocking up on coffee grounds, travel cups, gas, and camera batteries the night before;


3. waking up at 2:30 am;


4. reminding yourself that this is A Reasonable Thing;


5. navigating either dozens or gazillions (depending on whom you ask) of hairpin turns in the dark, on a highway often lacking guardrails, when you can't see if the road runs beside gentle slopes or a cliff;


6. parking the car at the summit, realizing that a place famed for its sunrises probably won't have much artificial light if any, cursing because you don't have a flashlight, and using a cell phone as a flashlight instead; and


7. drinking coffee and looking at a whole bunch of dark for a while.

Genuine dark from the summit of Haleakala.

Even before the sun came up there was a fantastic view--the sky was filled with more stars than I've seen since before the 2003 blackout. The sky up there must be incredible on a moonless night.

Finally, the sunrise started.



I ran around taking about ten photos a minute (huzzah for digital cameras and extra batteries!).


The observation shelter and crowd at the summit.


It felt like we were drifting in a sea of clouds that morning.


The sun's first appearance.



I took the photo below inside the shelter but didn't notice until later that the parking lot behind me had been reflected in the window.


My husband pointed out this shadow of Haleakala that was cast over Maui.


After the sun was completely up, we walked around a bit, decided to return a few days later to hike in the crater, and returned to Kihei.

Aloha! part 2: Wherefore Maui?

It wasn't exactly a honeymoon for us, but the Maui trip was probably our first major vacation since getting married (even since wedding #1), and we have our friends M and C to thank for it. They were married near the end of December at a restaurant in Wailea (click here for a map of the island; Wailea is on the west end of the big part) that overlooked the ocean. There was a bit of rain around the time of the ceremony,

but aside from that the weather was gorgeous.


(the little splotch on the ocean is Molokini, an underwater volcano)
The reception was on a lanai lit by torches...

...and the setting sun.


Next: Haleakala, or, why I love our digital camera despite its age.
Also at some point, if I remember: our prize can of Spam.