~ Watchman Trail ~
Unfortunately, I don't have an Owyhees adventure to recount to you this week. At about 10:00 pm on Friday night, my car was the victim of a drunk driver. It was parked outside of Josh's place while we watched a movie and I discovered it all crushed and totaled when I left to drive myself home. As I approached the car, I had a sense of foreboding because I could see from a distance that there was a note on the windshield - - and notes on windshields, under such circumstances, are rarely good news.
The note was left by an observant person who was able to identify the make and color of vehicle as well as the license plate. I had Josh come outside to see the carnage and we walked around the block to try to find the vehicle... as Josh lives in the sort of location where it is reasonable to assume that someone driving around there at night would live in the area. Sure enough, about a block away, around a corner was the vehicle, same license plate, same dark green paint (which had transfered to my car), and corresponding damage. Seriously, only a brilliant individual with unsurpassed intellectual faculties would have crashed into my car, sped away from the accident, and then parked their damaged vehicle around the corner where they would never be found. Genius.
Obviously, I called the police. Josh and I spent over an hour in a law enforcement adventure. After showing the police what we alleged was the perpetrating vehicle, 'code one' backup was called, and they banged on the door of the driver's apartment. Apparently, they weren't able to bust through the apartment with their guns ready, like in the movies, and the person never answered the door, so the backup was sent away to do something useful. The remaining officer seemed to take the crime very seriously, as he said to me that his intention was to bang on the person's door every day until he catches the person. Wow. Later, while he was writing out his police report, a car drove out from the area where the alleged vehicle was, and the police wondered if it could be the perpetrator, and he sped after the vehicle until he realized that it was not the perpetrator, at which point, he executed a u-turn and returned to complete his paperwork.
Meanwhile, Josh and I played crime scene investigators. This was particularly entertaining with Josh having procured a flashlight with which he would use to shine light onto dark spaces. Everyone knows that crime scene investigators use flashlights. He was also wearing flipflops and we ran up and down the block, to and from the alleged vehicle, with him running sillyly in his flops with his flashlight, many times. At one point, he removed a flop and threatened an imaginary criminal. It was nice to be able to be silly and laugh during what was an otherwise not-laughing-matter situation. And in all seriousness, I am so glad that the person hit my car rather than a living creature.
Anyhoo, the conclusion to this thrilling tale, aside from me spending my Saturday morning on the phone with insurance companies, is that the perpetrator confessed the next day. There was speculation that this person wanted to avoid a DUI and so waited to come forward until fully sobered. As a result of all this, I am inconvenienced.
More importantly, however, Josh and I were not able to go to the Owyhees today. We discussed renting a car, but (1) I did not get home until after 1:00 am due to the law enforcement adventure and so I was feeling tired, and (2) we didn't want to spend the money. So instead, we rode the Watchman Trail in the foothills.
![](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3584/3454076391_76e3c2a4d8.jpg?v=0")
Josh rode this trail a few days ago and had a blast. He was able to warn me that because the trail traverses the hills, it has consistent sideways dropoffs, which are my worst fear. Shudder. I still can't explain why I get panicky over sideways dropoffs, but it has proven to be a good opportunity for me to work towards overcoming a phobia. And I have to say, I was very pleased that I was able to keep the panic in check today and ride through 99% of the scary parts.
The ride was an incredible amount of fun. We rode up to Shane's, connected with Rocky Canyon, up Five Mile Creek to Watchman, looping all the way to Three Bears and back down Central Ridge. It was a little over 17 miles. More photos on flickr.
~ Lassobelle ~
Project: Lassobelle
Yarn: Sublime Cashmere Merino DK (10 skeins)
Needles: US3
Pattern: improvised, top-down, seamless raglan with cables
I am excited to finally be able to show this project off! It has been on my needles since February, going through various revisions. I began by working saddle shoulders, then decided that saddle shoulders don't flatter my person and reworked it as a raglan. I may one day decide to type out my pattern notes into some comprehensible directions, but odds are that I won't.
Anyhoot, this is a top-down seamless raglan. A honeycomb stitch provides detail for the upper portion while some cabling runs down the side. The ribbing is my new favorite, twisted stitch ribbing. There are short rows along the back, though I think one too many. And I worked a slight poof to the bottom of the sleeve.
I finished it a few days ago and have had the opportunity to wear it around a bit, and I am very pleased. It is flattering and comfortable. The yarn is super soft and provides excellent stitch detail. After blocking, the yarn grew a very small amount, which I had anticipated (because I actually washed and blocked my gauge swatch), but has been otherwise predictable. This sweater was intended to be simple and well-fitting.
Here's a closeup of the cables. Lord, cables are sexy!
Now that this project is done, I'm knitting up something that has occupied my imagination for several months. It will be a swingy cardigan with a stranded yoke and cropped poofy sleeves. It will also provide me an opportunity to learn a new skill, one which has taken me a long time to try... steeks! Like everyone who tries steeks for the first time says, I'm nervous of taking scissors to my knitting. I did knit up a sample stranded swatch with steek stitches, cut the steek, and the swatch is holding up perfectly, so I hypothesize that all will be well. I'm almost done with the yoke, so perhaps I'll blog about the cutting of the steek over the weekend -- stay tuned for that thrilling post!
~ Wilson / Salmon Creek ~
Much to my dismay, yesterday was the Barking Spider Race. Why I thought it was at the end of the month, I have no idea. But, because of my failure to accurately consult the calendar, I have no race report to share. Instead, I give you an epic bike ride.
On Saturday, Josh and I went out to the Wilson Creek area for a day of adventure. We parked at the main BLM parking lot and pedaled up Wilson Creek Road. Rather than taking the turnoff to the Wilson Creek 'trail', we continued along the road to summit Horse Race Ridge and then descended towards Salmon Creek. It was nine miles from the parking lot to Salmon Creek. Except for a couple brief descents, most of it was a moderate middle-gear climb. I don't know what sort of altitude we covered, but the drastic change in air temperature at the top of Horse Race Ridge suggested that we had climbed pretty high. Also, that we were not too far away from snow reinforced this hypothesis.
At the top of the Ridge, we took a moment to put on a jacket for the descent towards Salmon Creek. And wow, it was FREEZING! The temperature for the Valley was supposed to be around 61 degrees, but the Owyhees were significantly colder than that. Even while I was expending all kinds of energy to ride to the top of the Ridge, I felt a constant chill.
When we arrived at Salmon Creek, we were alarmed by the quantity of ice-cold mountain snow water. The plan was to cross Salmon Creek and ride along this sort of ORV road, but the water made us hesitate. If it had been warmer, there would have been no hesitation, but the chill in the air gave us second thoughts about the possibility of making contact with the frigid waters. Nevertheless, persevereres though we are, we managed to get ourselves across the creek without getting too wet. We did this by crossing at a more narrow spot which had a dense assortment of thorny bushes. As such, we both scratched our legs up quite a bit.
From there, we set out on Salmon Creek road. At first, the road was decently dry but it gradually got muddier and muddier. After a time, I began noticing that I was having difficulty getting my wheels to turn over. I dismounted and found that I had an incredible amount of mud between my wheels and the fork and that the mud was sticky enough that my wheel was essentially immobilized. I spent some time trying to get rid of the mud, but it had become clear to me that it was time to turn around. I had about ten pounds of mud clinging to my bike and the rear wheel wouldn't move. Josh even went to help me dislodge my wheel, and became noticeably frustrated. He said that he would try to ride my bike to get the wheel unstuck, and I said "Ok, I'll ride your bike down!"
Now, because Josh rides on skinnier tires than I, he was having none of these mud issues. By the time that I was mounting his bike, I had so much mud stuck to my shoes, that I was only barely able to clip into one of the pedals, balancing on the uneven mud of the other shoe. Adding to the ridiculousness of the situation was that Josh's bike is WAAAAY too big for me. I could barely reach the bottom of the pedal stroke without banging my coochie on the top tube, and as I was coasting down with the pedals in the parallel position, I could barely get my butt on the saddle. This is to say nothing about how my torso was completely stretched out reaching the handlebars, all the while balancing precariously with my muddy cleats. And it was actually fun!
When we got back to the creek, I decided it was not worth the effort to try and avoid getting wet, so I just walked across. ...Getting my feet completely wet. Josh merely rode across.
We rode back up to Horse Race Ridge and decided to try to make it up to the top of Wilson Peak. I had a few doubts about this plan because my shoes were full of ice cold water and my toes were going numb (and remember, there was a significant chill in the air). But we did it anyway. The whole time going up, my feet went through various stages of painful coldness. Finally, I decided that I would go no further. Josh continued to the top, where he captured some stunning photos of the landscape, while I sat on the ground and tried to get some feeling and warmth back in my feet. I took off my shoes and socks, which were both sopping with cold water, and put my gloves on my feet. I sat for a long time in a semi-lotus position, trying to warm my feet with my thigh fat, but this was not entirely effective because of how cold my entire body was. Eventually, I laid down, shut my eyes, and listened to the sound of the wind. When I heard Josh riding down on his bike, I lifted my leg and waved with the glove on my foot.
From there, it was about 12 miles of super fast downhill back to the car. I finally put some batteries in my cyclecomputer, so I was able to track our speed and distance. The first several miles, the road was pretty rugged in a way that reminded me of Rocky Canyon Road. Because my hands were so cold, the vibrations against the handlebars hurt them so much that I decided to grip my handlbars as hard as I could and ride like there's no tomorrow. Hey, beats the hell outta achy hands! During these miles down, I was concentrating on the road in front of me, but a few times I glanced at my computer and noted speeds nearing 30 miles an hour. Okay, pretty fast. That the road was so rugged, there was naturally more friction against the tires and so it wasn't really THAT fast. After a few miles, the road smoothened out and the reduced friction meant that I could ride a lot faster with a lot more comfort. I checked my speed a few times, but pretty much let it go. Josh sped past me at some point and I decided that, except for the fact that he weighs 50 pounds more than I (thereby having gravity on his side), there was no reason why I couldn't go just as fast. At this point, our top speed was 36.8 which I found to be very thrilling.
Total mileage was 23.22 for the trip, and we rode for just under 3 hours.
This is part of my Wilson Creek Photoset
~ re-Vivianed ~
I stayed up last night making some revisions to my Vivian which I finished earlier this year. If you recall, I left the front open both for ventilation (as the llama wool is incredibly warm) and because I ran out of yarn. All in all, I wear my Vivian frequently and I have been mostly satisfied and have mostly loved it... except the open front. The open front has, quite honestly, been annoying me for various reasons. I've been thinking about fixing it for several months now, but laziness got the better of me. Then last night, while I was wearing my Vivian and hanging around the apartment, I began to imagine a world in which I absolutely loved my Vivian and realized that I possessed the power to control that aspect of my life. Gee! And so, four months to the day of finishing it, I finally got around to fixing it.
I unravelled several rows of the floppy collar and used that yarn to seam up the front before re-binding off the collar. As I anticipated, unravelling this yarn proved to be a HUGE pain. But well worth it. I debated for a time about whether to just add more buttons, to seam up the whole front, or just to seam up to the snazzy button - - and I feel good about having decided on the latter option. Having closed it up this way, I feel that the cables pop more and that one may better appreciate how well it fits.
Just to add a bit of a yarn review... I have been pleasantly surprised by the Cascade Pastaza - - it's not nearly as itchy as I had feared, has softened up, and has proven to be quite durable. After four months of regular use, there is NO pilling, which I find really amazing. I also really really love the color (which obviously is not displayed correctly in the photos).
I also have to laugh at these photos, as it is clear that I took a lot of care and attention to get high quality shots of my knitting. /sarcasm.
