Goodness, a while between drinks

G'day all!

We pause for a moment

Mum, me and an anonymous hat, Christmas '89

21 years since Mum died.  It no longer feels like yesterday, it feels like a long time ago.  I still miss being kicked up the pants once in a while, having a shopping buddy (I inherited Mum's ability to navigate through shopping centres, though I'm not so good when I'm heavily jetlagged and the sun is on the wrong side of the sky....), having someone to go to when it all went wrong (though we were never a huggy kissy family).  I even had a dream with Mum in it last week, though her help was rather shocking (I had to dissect dead baby dolphins to find out what they died of, only one of the dolphins turned into a fluffy white cat that looked up at me with almond-shaped green eyes and started washing itself and purring, and I went screaming off to Mum and she said she would stun it for me if it would help me get my work done...  I refused as I rather expected to go to a vet instead...).  Anyway, thanks for the lessons, Mum, including the one of don't ignore it, go to the doctor before it is too late.

I've been a busy bee over the last month.  I've made squares for a siggy swap and sent them off but I'm not showing you them because they have my details on them!  Silly me.  I've been walking and riding around Ballard, looking at the pretty spring flowers and oh my gosh, there's been a lot of them!  It is settling down a bit now but it has been most enjoyable.

I went to the Ballard (NW Seattle) Relay for Life and now have a spiffy purple survivor tshirt:

Not that you can see the tshirt really

I did not do the whole relay, just the survivor lap, plus I helped with the luminarias.  I also dedicated four luminarias, for Mum, for her sister/aunt, for Jim Stynes and for Richard Cabe (Susan Tweit's blog has more on him).  I felt it was the right thing to do, a moment to reflect on those we've lost to cancer.  The luminarias used fake tea candles but they were still pretty.  And they provided a gentle light for the track overnight.  I also had a good natter with some of the other survivors.

Memorial Day weekend was busy -

Friday night we saw a quite pretty sunset from the Ballard Locks/weir and nearly got locked on the wrong side of the shipping canal.

Sunset from the fish ladder.  A seal came and looked at us.

Saturday was lovely so we went for a bike ride along the Burke-Gilman trail and ended up at Matthew's Beach on Lake Washington:

Lake Washington, Cascades are a smudge on the horizon.

My lord, I have discovered pure green!

(My undercarriage was quite comfortable due to my new bike saddle, thanks for asking!  This saddle is designed specifically for women and oh my goodness, what a difference it makes!  I never knew saddles could be so comfortable.)

But on Sunday, I was sooooo tired.  Eventually we dragged ourselves out and off to home despot and then the local nursery, Swansons.  So many pretties at the nursery.  So many things to grow, but we only have a smallish balcony and umm well I may or may not have been buying lots of plants from things like Seattle Tilth (= good) and Fred Meyer (not so good) and the nursery (fairly good).  And I may or may not have a growing collection of African Violets.  And ahem now some other gesneriads as well.

Monday, despite still being tired, I trawled off to the NW Folklife Festival

with a friend, who kindly drove me there, I kindly paid for parking and then drove us home after I exhausted her by keeping her on her feet for about 5 hours.  We watched some contradancing and I took us shopping at the various booths.  I got more tie dye!  Hooray!  I had quite some fun being a model for a clothing designer - she kept asking me to try stuff on after I showed that I am a whiz in her hats (assuming they are boofheaded size) - it gave me quite a big head!  Plus I found more clothes to buy.  I didn't expect that....

Yes, it is a yellow hat.  Me in a yellow hat!  In yellow!

I finished a lovely cardigan in April but still not sewn on the buttons - what is with that?  I have the design all worked out for the next one and I've made two starts on it but umm, just like the first one it seems it will take three (or maybe four) castings on to get the stitch count right - I did a swatch, I worked out I needed X stitches to go around my hips and now I am at X - 25 (that's more than 10cm smaller) because twice now I've found the piece was going to be somewhat too large for me, even allowing some ease.  But at least I finished a sock.  Almost.  The ends need to be darned in.

I briefly turned into a twitcher (bird watcher) but after two sightings of new to me birds in one afternoon, I have not seen any new birds.  And no hummingbird has fed at my feeder, though there was one hanging around until about two months ago, so I think I will replace the feeder with a hanging basket of begonias and busy lizzies.  Yes, I am officially Old, I have a hanging basket with tuberous (flowering) begonias in it.

This post's public service announcement is:
Whatever you do, do not go to this site, especially if you like doing jigsaw puzzles.  OMG, addictive plus.  Not that I've done heaps of them recently and wasted many hours, nosirree!

Enough blather, it is time to go do a jigsaw puzzle 0.o

anon!