Yarnivorous

G'day all! The year is really starting to wind down now.  I'm noticing that the sun is sitting a lot lower in the sky, and it is yet to sink really low.  I dunno how those who live in the arctic or antarctic circle can cope with not seeing the sun.  It's bad enough when we get to eight hour long days, if the sun comes out! Glorious sun at the farmers' market today Anyway, we've had THREE WHOLE DAYS of sun!  It has been glorious!  It's not going to last but I've been trying to soak up as many rays as I can whilst also doing important things like tidying and cleaning in preparation for the in laws. A lovely sunset. Yep, MiL and FiL are arriving on Thursday.  I can expect to be busy! What am I talking about - I already am busy! Colour in the mountains, North Cascades.  I still can't talk very well - I've gone backwards today and I think its because yesterday I got the hiccups.  They were quite bad.  I was making some...

G'day all! Today I am glad to be alive. I'm glad not to be in hospital. I'm glad to be telling you this story. Nathan and I popped off for a drive for a few days. We went up to Gloucester (NSW, not England!). We drove around and looked at stuff and went for some walks of variable length and difficulty (today's was a doozy!). Then we headed out to the coast cos I like beaches and sea and water and estuaries, etc. That was ok, pleasant enough but not much that made me want to stop. The weather had gone from being brightly sunny inland to threatening rain so we decided to start making our way home. OMG. The only time I've been stuck in such traffic jams was when we decided to take the I80 (in California) from where the 880 or 280 (can't remember which) joins it on its way to Sacramento. Admittedly the Californian traffic jams involved anything up to 8 lanes of traffic but even the modest two and three lanes of the Pacific Highway coming into Sydney (90, 80,...

G'day all! We are back from our trip and recovering from driving from U-tah! in two days via a rather circuitous route. There are some mountain ranges that I would like to have a few words with.... We drove over 2000 miles in a week. Doesn't sound like much but it sure cut into my knitting time cos I drove. All. The. Way. So, I got hardly any knitting done - half a sock and the first (ie easy) 25 rows of a top down raglan cardi were my knitting triumphs. I managed to read most of one small book. I read through a book on the southwestern states of the US. We saw gobsmacking scenery. DH and I took over 2500 digipics - that'll take a while to edit out the good ones, which will mostly appear on my travel blog . Now I am back into shopping at the farmers' market, cooking, cleaning, clearing the car out, doing the clothes washing, all that sort of boring stuff. And dying of heat exhaustion. We went from this: (Wednesday, Grand Canyon, embiggen the pics to see more ...

G'day all! We are still on our holiday. Currently we are in Arizona, almost Utah really. We've seen the Big Sur in daylight, two trains on the Tehachapi Loop, Vegas, Hoover Dam, all sorts of weird and wonderful rock formations.... Today we saw the Grand Canyon, well bits of it, in between snow flurries, showers and outright short-lived blizzards. Fantastic, if a little cold. When we left the Grand Canyon and dropped some elevation, the sky cleared and we had half an hour of sun before it set! Weather here is bizarre. Tomorrow we look at Lake Powell, mebbe Bryce Canyon, Zion and travel to Cedar City. Thence homewards via Death Valley. I have to be home by Saturday arvo for Cookie A's booklaunch! Would show off pics but the wireless at our cheap motel is a bit flakey. See you anon!

G'day all! We are back from our journey down the coast thence to places inland and Yosemite. It was a pretty amazing trip :-) I have heaps of comments to catch up with but it might take me a day or two. I have Nathan's dreaded lurgy and really need to rest rather than doing stuff. I was so underwell I hardly even knitted! I was either driving, seeing sights or had my nose buried in a tissue. Cough cough cough! Splutter! And my ears and sinuses! Going over passes was NOT a good idea. But we had fun! We have to go do Big Sur again cos it was late afternoon by the time we got there and I drove "the hard part" (read interesting part) in the dark. Talk to you soon, anon!

G'day all! We hired a car. It is very strange driving. Very quick to get to WF and back but I feel so divorced from the road. We are going for a LOOONG drive, ok not that long, only up to Tahoe in the Sierra Nevadas. It turns out to be a long weekend here in the USA for Memorial Day . So we will drive to SF and pick up a work friend of Nathan's and choof off into the wild blue yonder. So far I have packed food, some clothes (suitable for a place that is good 2km+ above sea level - that will knock us around!), a book to read, a little knitting (of course - new socks, just finished a pair in a WEEK after the horrid PS sock of doom and despair that took two weeks of knitting for one anklet!), toiletries better come too eh? Don't want to be stinky! Ah, the spare electric kettle cos we like tea and my breakfast has to be soaked in very hot water. Umm, hope I have what we need! We don't have accommodation booked but I looked online yesterday and there was a lot avail...

G'day all! If any locals see a blonde woman gripping the steering wheel too hard in a new burgundy Sentra and randomly using the blinkers and the wipers, that will be me. I'm probably be trying to remember which is right and left, hence the random use of the wiper-washers as I'll be flummoxed and in Australia the indicators are on the other side of the steering wheel. The apparently random use of indicators demonstrates that I don't know where I am going and still can't tell left from right, so there are likely to be shouts of "NO! The OTHER left!" echoing from the car. I drove around for an hour and a half yesterday trying to find my way around town without a map. A map is a Really Good Idea. I still don't have one but we did find the enormous Wholefoods out in Cupertino without a map. And when I got lost, I did eventually find my way home - I had thought that the main roads are mostly a grid system, but I found some "main" roads that di...

G'day all! (Argh, not posted for a whole day cos apparently I didn't close a link in my html, not that blogger kindly tells me where I didn't close the link) Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday dear me-ee, Happy birthday to me! (I have to sing it to myself cos I haven't got anyone to sing it to me - DH doesn't do that sort of thing plus he hasn't organised a cake or made one or anything - if he has, he's been very sneaky cos none of my cake mixes are missing.) Thank you to those who have sent birthday wishes, and bigger thanks to those who have sent cards and even presents! I must say the post is very slow at the moment, well I hope it is very slow - Nathan has received more parcels than me this week! Humph! Yesterday, after I picked up our hire car, I drove up to Wyoming, took a right and ended up in Nebraska (mrspao, I have to do a little piece on western Nebraska for you). After a left and a loooong wait in some roadworks, I ende...

G'day all! Just driven to Taos and back. It was a bit of a drive but we enjoyed it! Thank heavens the wool festival is "small" and well populated by alpaca (which I can't handle due to weird allergy stuff). Otherwise I would've blown the budget for the rest of the week, not just the weekend budget! I really like eating so just as well I didn't buy more! Can't show you pics of the new stash, well not yet as I have not taken any. I didn't buy one skein of yarn - I figure I have plenty of yarn and prefer to make my own if I can. I did buy fleece. Mmmmm, lovely pretty fleece.... roll around in fleece.... I now have enough fleece to keep me quite busy for the next while. Oops :-) Back when I am not feeling cross-eyed and wobbly legged from driving on and off (mostly on) since 10am. anon!