September 24, 2008
~ the blacklist ~
For all of you who have been anxiously awaiting another thrilling post about bicycle riding, I am sorry to disappoint. You see, Josh and I had been planning a ride up near Idaho City on some fire roads, but then it rained. Due to the infrequency of rain and the quantity of this particular rain, we had to abort the mission. At about 8:30 on Saturday morning, I texted Josh to see if he would be interested in a Nampa experience instead. Affirmative.
Around noonish, we loaded our persons into the automotive vehicle and went to Nampa. What fun! As it was around noonish, we were both in the mood for a nutritional supplement. Somewhere along the Nampa-Caldwell Boulevard, we stopped at a joint called "Blazin' Burgers" and we each procured and subsequently consumed a 'blazin' burger'. Instead of normal fries, I opted to spend an additional $0.60 for the sweet potato fries. Yum! While we were waiting for our food, we noted a number of religious prayers, psalms, and other sayings posted around the place. From this we deduced that the owners were believers. After wolfing down our yummy nonsecular food, we went over to the Flying M Coffee Garage for some coffee and mental contemplation. I believe that we also conversed about topics of great import. We each had two entire cups of joe which caused us to feel a little jittery and over-caffinated. After the second cup of joe, we decided to stroll around downtown Nampa. The rain had temporarily subsided and it was quite pleasant out. We ended up spending a bit of time and money at this new clothing shop, which of course I totally forget the name of...something like the White Pine... The shop featured affordable fair trade and organic clothing, and we both found its selection quite fashionable. Because I am a seasoned shopper, I went directly to the Sale Rack and located some discounted items. During my browsing, I noticed that the shop was selling Toms. Many moons ago, I bought a pair of Toms and have really loved them. Unfortunately, they didn't sell very well and the store ceased to carry them. Which lamed me out because I have wanted another pair. It also lamed out Josh because he has been wanting a pari. So of course, we both went bananas over the Toms. As my previous pair were brown corduroys, I decided to go with something a little more silly. Here they are on some astroturf....
The duration of my weekend consisted of mellow social engagements and BBQs. I attended two BBQs in a single weekend and ate a month's supply of protein and yellow mustard. Also, beer. A BBQ on Friday evening at Amy's featured the cute puppy being extremely ornery, which I was relieved he had gotten out of his system by Sunday morning when Amy and I took him for a pleasant hike in the foothills. Of note on that hike is that we saw a unicycling mountain biker, which I thought was pretty impressive. I've heard about people who mountain bike on unicycles and have seen photos on the blessed internet, but never witnessed it in reality. It was very cool! The other BBQ was at Elizabeth's on Saturday night and it was very mellow. To Elizabeth's chagrin, the torrential rain had pretty much ruined her plans of being outside and the barometric pressure had caused everyone to feel particularly subdued.
The remainder of this post will focus on my latest knitting adventures.
To begin, I am compelled to go on and on about my failure at being a library user. I blame the hours of operation, as the library seems to never be open when I feel like going...like, 2:00 a.m. This is similar to my feelings about going to the gym. I don't understand why more establishments aren't open 24 hours a day, that would be a really good idea and I'm certain would not be an inefficient use of resources. Of course, several of my friends are frequent library users and they occasionally opt to tell me about their latest library borrowings. One friend in particular has borrowed a number of knitting books containing patterns I would like to get my hands on but haven't been able to justify purchasing the entire book. Now, I remember scouring the library's knitting books a few years ago and determed that the selection was total crap. And I haven't really been back. But from what I gather from aforementioned friend, apparently there has been some book acquisitions of the knitting variety in the past several years. Who would've known!!!
Over the weekend, I took some time out of my day to peruse the library's online catalog, and noted a number of titles which I am extremely interested in. My primary interest is a book which I believe is out of print (because the general asking price for used copies is around $220) but contains some intricate stranded designs, called Norsk-Strikkedesign. Contained within its pages is a pattern called 'Season of Darkness and Winter Light' (it is the design featured in the cover photo) and it is one of those designs that makes knitting seem magical. I am thrilled to tell you that I have placed a hold on the book, and am so excited about borrowing it (hopefully in a few weeks).
Speaking of stranded knitting, I am slowly making headway on my Selbu mittens.
For reasons of wanting to avoid the 'second mitten curse' and of wanting to knit matching mittens, I am knitting both mittens concurrently. So obviously, I have twice the knitting completed as featured in the above photo. I have temporarily set the mittens aside, however, so that (1) I can practice my stranded knitting, and (2) to acquire a certain gadget. After all, stranded knitting takes skill. Skill which I currently lack. In my previous stranded projects, I have employed the "drop and grope" method, which is a good method to use if you like knitting to be slow and tedious. It's also a good method if you prefer to have really bad tension. So clearly, I am in the market for improved skills.
Before I really get going, I'd like to mention that I've found a lot of really helpful information about stranded knitting on this blog. If you scroll down, on the right sidebar there is a section where she has compiled her posts about techniques. For anyone else who is a novice strander, I would highly recommend them.
To acquire better stranded skills, I have taken up a new project with easy colorwork (see below). I had been practicing the two handed method, but have frustratingly concluded that I am the opposite of ambidexterous. As a result, I am practicing a number of single-handed methods, some of which are working out for me better than others. In my reading about technique, I have stumbled upon a yarn guide gadget. While it is normally used by continental knitters, I have learned that some throwers (like myself) have had great success with it. And so, I have set down my Selbu mittens until the arrival of my yarn guide in the mail.
The project that I am currently working on is my Tweedy Waistjacket. The yarn is the Jo Sharp I bought in Seattle, which I have tried working for a number of projects but have not found anything very suitable until now. The pattern is in the Fall '08 issue of Interweave Knits, and I am delighted at how perfect it is for this yarn. It shows off the tweediness of the yarn quite well. Also, this is one of the faster projects I've worked on in some time.
I'm sorry to leave you all hanging with such an incredibly brief and short post. I know that you were hoping I'd write at length about all of these rather insignificant topics, but I clearly just don't have it in me. I wish that I could just go on an on, until most of you cease skimming this post and just close your browser, but obviously I am in the mood for sticking to the point and not rambling on about whatever comes to mind. Until next time...
September 17, 2008
~ somewhere out there ~
As someone who has no sense of direction, I frequently find myself wondering where in the world I am located. Normally, however, I am in the presence of someone who is aware of our location, and so I find little cause for concern. This weekend was a different situation.
Josh and I have been on an Owyhees kick, as evidenced by the fact that all of my recent posts contain a reference of an Owyhees adventure. This past Saturday, we treked out to somewhere in the Owyhees for a bike ride. The first little misadventure occured while we were trying to get to where we would begin the ride and we found ourselves on a scary person's private property. The signage in the Owyhees needs a great deal of improvement, to put it mildly. Also to put it mildly, I was concerned that the luncatic hermit living in an isolated part of the Owyhees was going to shoot us dead and prop our decapitated heads onto poles as a warning to other trespassers. You may infer from my writing of this post that we came out of that encounter only a little ruffled, thank the little baby jesus. Following the encounter with crazy-man, I found myself driving my car over terrain poorly suited to my vehicle's schematics. Yet again, I was more than a little ruffled. But we managed to get our persons safe and sound to a spot at which to commence our ride.
As I said, signage in the Owyhees could use a bit of improvement. Josh and I are both decently observant people, yet both of us failed to notice this sign at the start of our ride. Though, if we had noticed it, we might not have been quite as awe-struck when we came upon this...
A herd of wild horses. In my Public Land Policy class, we've briefly discussed wild horse management policy, so I am somewhat familiar with it, but to my knowledge, I've never before seen wild horses. And on this ride, we came upon a few herds and it was quite remarkable. For the duration of the ride, I was singing to myself the U2 song about wild horses.
When we encountered them, we weren't sure the best response. One, we had no idea how they would react to us - - we've got experience running into stock animals like sheep and cattle, but no wild horses. So we kept our distance and allowed them to retreat, then slowly rode past until there was a good distance between us.
There were a lot of interesting relics and geological features along the ride. Above, some kind of headstone. There was also a particularly nifty volcanic rock section (no photo, unfortunately). It was sometime after we rode away from this headstone that we grew increasingly uncertain about our location. We stopped several times for Josh to consult the map.
We rode and rode. Eventually, we did two sets of steep descents and hike-a-bike ascents. And at the bottom of the second descent, Josh and I had paused to discuss something of great import, when we were silenced by the rather startling sound of all the air in one of Josh's tires suddently whooshing out.
That was disconcerting and sad-making.
We then hiked the bikes up a really steep hill and I got comfortable while Josh worked on fixing the tire. This took some time. Josh also took the opportunity to consult the map for the umpteenth time. From our vantage point, we were able to see two canyons and were wondering which canyons they were, as that information could have helped Josh to ascertain our location. After a while, a dude on an ATV sputtered by and was able to tell us that one of the canyons was Jump Creek. We asked the dude for advice on which way we should go, as we were at an intersection in which one road went down and another went up. We both felt uncertain about his advice, and decided to backtrack back to the car. Josh later consulted additional maps, including Google Earth, and realized that the dude had given us very bad directions and that if we had taken his advice, we would have been poorly off.
Once the tire was fixed, we had to re-hike-a-bike back up the steep hills we had just traversed and set off back from whence we had came.
For me, it was a spectacular ride. I was feeling really good and had a blast. I had also put my cyclecomputer on the bike, so I can say for certain that we rode 31 miles, our average speed was 8.6 mph, and our max speed was 27 mph. Not too shabby. It was about 3.5 hours of riding, but we had lots of stops, so we were out for at least an additional hour. For the drive back, we decided to take a different road so as to avoid driving by crazy-private-property man, and we discovered a much better route to access that part of the Owyhees.
Photos for this entry are at my Somwhere in the Owyhees photoset.
September 9, 2008
~ bruised apple ~
I finished my first pair of mittens this weekend. They are the "Yellow Harvest" mittens from the Fall 2008 Vogue Knitting. The yarn is Noro Silk Garden (the same yarn from a scarf I knat a few months ago, which I ended up not liking very much...so I harvested the yarn to knit up my "Noro Harvest" mittens). As far as a pattern for first-mittens goes, this is a good one - - well written with several nice details that are fun to work. Morning temperatures have recently dipped into the chilly zone for my walk to work, and so I have had the opportunity to wear these mittens both yesterday and today and have found them lovely.
In mountain biking news, I have been getting in a lot of riding now that the weather is cooling off. Last Friday, Josh and I rode a most awesome foothills 'loop' - - up Bogus Basin, up Corralls, up Scott's , down Scott's, down Trail 4, and down Crestline/Kestrel. The ride was somewhat monumental for me, signifying that I am overcoming my fears about steep drop-offs. I don't believe I wrote about this, but last year when I had the bike with the grabby breaks that exacerbated many of my fears about steepness, heights, and drop-offs, Josh and I went on a ride on Scott's Trail and I experienced something of a total panic attack about the drop-off along a steeper part of the trail. As this year is a different year, with a different bike, and a different attitude, I have been feeling very accomplished at overcoming my fears and anxieties - - which is particularly significant because so much of mountain biking is about mental attitude. I've been riding trails which I had become rather wimpy about, and challenging myself on much more technical terrain, discovering that most of the time, things just LOOK hard, and that when I relax and pedal/roll over something, I find that it is much easier than expected. So anyway, Scott's trail was the final test to myself that I am totally OVER the crashes and negative mental attitudes that got me down last year. To clarify, there's nothing about Scott's that is really hard (it's a nice intermediate trail) but a few sections of trail had qualities that would freak me out. Anyway, so on Friday when we were doing our awesome loop, I was mentally preparing myself to ride down Scott's. I kept giving myself all kinds of encouragement, reminding myself that I've ridden much more difficult trails, and that this was nothing, NOTHING to get a panic attack about. And as I was descending, I told myself to focus on the trail, relax, breath...and I kept thinking that the scary sections of the trail must be around the next turn, so I stayed relaxed, breathed, and focused on the trail in front of me. I was still expecting the scary section of the trail to be around the next turn when I realized that I had made it to the bottom. HUH? The trail on which I had experienced a panic attack, I had now ridden without a single hesitation. I am serious when I argue that mountain biking is primarily about mental attitude, and secondarily about fitness. After descending Scott's, there was still a LOT of downhill left, and I had a blast bonzaiing down the mountains.
On Saturday, we returned to the Owyhees and tried to ride from 'our parking space' to Succor Creek. The previous weekend when we went out there, we encountered a couple on an ATV picking up litter, and had a conversation about how some of the roads we were riding would take a person out to Succor Creek. And so this weekend, we tried to do just that. Of course, I had gotten all complacent in the cooler temperatures and convinced Josh that it would be okay if we left in the afternoon, rather than bright and early in the morning. BAD MOVE. Aside from being a bit on the hot side, I found the roads a tad sandier than I prefer. It was still very ridable, just took a bit more effort to plow through. Before I would feel comfortable giving it an official review, however, I think I need to ride it again. I realize that my being kinda too hot was detrimental to my fully appreciating the ride - - also, I now realize that I did not consume many calories during the lengthy ride, and so I possibly lacked energy that I might have had if I had been more responsible with my caloric intake.
So, it takes about an hour to drive out to 'our parking spot' in the Owyhees. Since joining the modern era with the acquisition of my iPod, I have placed all of my compact discs into a compact disc book-holder-deal, which I have placed in my car (for, you know, road trips). Despite the plethora of music available during this particular road trip, Josh and I opted to listen to the Flight of the Conchords cd THREE TIMES IN A ROW. Needless to say, we have since had the catchy tunes stuck in our heads. In fact, I am pretty much in a constant state of mentally huming the tunes to myself, both awake and asleep, and it is kind of annoying.
September 2, 2008
~ burning the midnight oil ~
This past weekend proved to be a most excellent three-day weekend. Clearly, three day weekends are far superior to two day weekends.
I'll begin by highlighting Saturday evening's fun, a BBQ chez Amy. In spite of the good company (Amy, Elizabeth, Leah, David, Josh, and Eric), the good atmosphere (the backyard lawn), the good food (chorizos, potato salad, fruit salad, roasted veggies), and the beverages (beer), no one had a very good time. In fact, it was so terrible, that we have decided never to have a BBQ ever again. What made the experience pretty much unbearable was this puppy-dog who was running around trying to swindle everyone's beer. Note, that below photo was a shot from the gods - - it appears as though David was giving the puppy beer, when in fact the puppy was the perpetrator, having suddenly lunged at the beer bottle. Through the course of the evening, so much beer was spilled as a result of puppy (and subsequently licked up by puppy) that we surmised he had become rather tipsy. Photos of the horrendous evening are available here.
Saturday was also the day when Josh and I had yet another adventure in the Owyhees. Unfortunately, it's been a while since we were down there - - but we decided to do a refined version of the Sage Creek Loop that we did in June. We've been out there enough that we're really getting to know our way around. This was the first time in the Sage Creek zone when we didn't have to spend time figuring out where we were going and back-tracking because we went the wrong way. We did a perfect loop that I approximate was 2.5 hours. Ultimately, I bet Josh and I could make some money by developing a mountain biking Owyhees book - - Josh was even talking about opening a bike shop in Marsing (maybe not the best idea in today's economy). Anyway, the loop took us over lots of ups and downs, some unridable ups that we had to hike-a-bike, and some pretty challengingly technical downhills that I felt very accomplished after riding successfully. I've developed a lot more confidence on the more technical downhills - - the Owyhees are great for that. The Boise foothills, all groomed and smooth, are wonderful but can hold a person back from developing confidence on not-groomed and not-smooth trails. I love the Owyhees - - so much potential adventure. Photos from this ride may be viewed here.
I've been getting a good amount of riding in, which adds to my feeling good on the bike. On Sunday, Josh and I rode Sidewinder, which is a nice fun quickie ride. Funny story about that ride... I had been having a bit of trouble with the shifting on my bike. On the ride in the Owyhees, the front gears were very malaligned - - Josh did a complete gear adjustment on the trail, but they wouldn't function properly. I took the bike into the shop to have the mechanics fix it. Got the bike back on Sunday and Josh and I rode Sidewinder. The front gears were working, but the back gears were not. Josh spent more time trail-side trying to adjust them, to no avail. We rode anyway. As I was grunting up one of the climbs, the chain broke. Josh was the mechanical hero, as he was able to fix the chain with his semi-broken chain tool and we were able to finish the ride. That night, we hung out at the bike shop drinking beers, Josh fixing my bike for good, and me knitting.
And finally, I know how you have all being eagerly awaiting my knitting report.
I've finished Inishfern. TAHDAH!!! My improvised top-down asymmetrical seamless raglan. The cables both diminish and transform into different cables. It is fitted with a flair at the waist. And the button band - - an opportunity for improvisation! After trying a number of options, I found that I liked the expanding garter panel with a set of cables - - the buttons are set by the cables, as opposed to traditional button holes. Tradition, smadition! Below you may see more clearly the cabled button band - - also, note my vintage buttons.
In other knews, I know I've been going bananas obsessing about mittens. This explains why I randomly cast on for Ice Queen over the weekend. I have to roll my eyes at myself - - not only do I have several projects currently in progress, not only do I have my sights set on several patterns, but Ice Queen is a very random and spontaneous cast on. I suppose that it happened after I was reading about how cowls are the new scarves, and I realized that the pattern might be a good use for that lace yarn I procured for a failed project a few months ago. And so...Ice Queen. I've taken the Cascade Elite Silky Alpaca lace yarn, doubled it, and also included a strand of the green angora from a thrift store sweater I recycled. Very very soft and very very warm. As evidenced by the below status-photo, I am knitting it much tighter than the pattern, so as to make for a more warm cowl.
