A whale of a time

G'day all!

Last Saturday I took DH, a friend and me up to Everett.  LOL, we had an adventure getting there....  A massive navigation fail.  I thought it was odd that we were leaving I5 before we got to Everett but eh, what do I know about driving around the place compared to phone navigation?  We had a nice tour of a very exclusive part of umm Mukilteo I think it was.  Also the google maps voice kept saying muke-ill-teo, like mucus, but it seems to be said muckle-teo locally.  All because the W (for west) and one digit of the address were wrong.

But we made it to the boat in plenty of time.

The fog that had been drifting around lifted and the sun started shining and DH was in a snot about something he couldn't change, and both Q and me worked at him until he decided being snotty wasn't helping and started enjoying the day.  Seeing whales helped, but it still was jolly cold out on the water so he watched mostly from the warmth of the cabin.

We departed on a three hour tour.
A three hour tour...

Thank heavens the weather didn't start getting rough.  And we weren't on the Minnow.

And we had a whale of a day!  We saw four different whales.  I shall bore you with pics :-)

That whale was puffing hard!

 

Lifting up in front of Mt Baker

And diving in front of Mt Baker

Two whales side by side.  BTW, their blow reeks.

A table top?

No, a grey whale tail.

I also have pics of various sail boats and other things that I could bore you with, but I shall forebear.  Actually, some of the pics of the ?sealions? were pretty amusing - they like to sleep on the 44 gallon type drum floats at the entrance to the navy shipyard.  Most of the beasts look like deflated toys that had melted in the sun but a few were a bit animated cos there can only be one on each of the floats.

DH was away for most of that week - he went to Chattanooga and came back raving about the food.  I admit the last thing I expected was that he would rave about the food.  He was also a bit freaked after being driven from Atlanta when their plane was diverted to North Carolina.  Apparently driving at high speed is fairly normal there.  And it snowed.  He had been told he should expect lovely spring weather.  Well he got lovely winter weather instead.  Just as well he was inside for most of the day....

So I was home by myself and bored.  I made a quilt.  A very simple quilt that I have taken very bad phone pics of under artificial light whilst stretching up trying to get as much quilt in as possible.  Apologies for the bad quality... but you get the idea!

Most of the quilt, missing the blue end.

The back of the quilt, well part of it.

Blue quilting!  Fuzzy!

Green quilting, sharp!

Red quilting, in focus!

I kept plugging away at some knitting projects too but they seem to be never ending.  I thought they would take a little less time, being a smoke ring and a pair of socks.

I think you need some images of Spring.  The Quad at UW was absolutely spectacular last weekend.  The cherries were in full bloom, the skies were blue and it was amazing.  See how I managed not to get very few people in these pics?  It took a lot of effort.  There were even people climbing the trees.

This little pic shows the truth.  I think there must've been about 2,000 people there, all taking pics of the trees, climbing in them, taking pics of family and friends....

The Quad was crowded.

We also wandered around a bit - we had a friend visiting and showed her some of the sights.

Lake Union and Seattle from Gas Works Park.

 

A random pic from a very low tide at Golden Gardens.

Time is flitting past.  About five months ago, I heard about Cat Bordhi's knitting retreat up on San Juan Island.

It seemed like ages away.  I was so excited that I managed to get into one.

It starts tomorrow.  Well really on Monday morning but I have to leave for it tomorrow afternoon.  I have to drive up to Anacortes and then catch a car ferry to Friday Harbor and thence my accommodation.  I have to find some dinner too.

The ferry trip apparently takes about 80 minutes.  This could be an issue. 

Y'see I love being on ferries.  You should see how tired I get in a half hour ferry ride, pretty much running from one end of the boat to the other and taking millions of not very good and often very wonky photos.  The only good thing might be that the weather forecast is pretty woeful and it is likely to be persisting down.  If I can't see anything apart from grey, I probably won't scuttle from one end of the boat to the other and might even manage to sit down for more than ten seconds before bouncing up again like a five year old hepped up on red lollies and cordial.

We shall see!

After a couple of weeks of beautiful weather, the clouds have come over and dumped a lot of rain on us.  The cherry blooms are destroyed, but we have pictures and memories.

DH and I - pretty as a picture.  Maybe.

Or autumn, depending...

 anon!