How The West Was Spun

Eight Random Things Meme

Thanks to the tag from Robin, y'all get to find out more than you probably wanted to know.

1.  I am an extremely picky/fussy eater.  I have become a bit more adventurous as I've gotten older, but it's still not a pretty sight.  I don't like foods to touch.  (For instance, I have to have a different plate with cranberry sauce on it for Thanksgiving so it doesn't contaminate the rest of the food.) I don't like "surprise" foods (like crunchy celery in an otherwise uniform casserole just creeps me out.)  I don't like much that's spicy, very little in the way of seafood and in general, prefer sauce-less to sauce-covered.  It's sort of like playing Fanny Dooley with food.

2.  I have trouble learning things unless presented visually.  If I see something, I can usually figure it out without any other help.  Written descriptions of things don't help very much.  And verbal - pffft - forget it.

3.  I have an absolutely craptastic sense of direction.  I'm not sure if this is because I just am paying attention to other things or what, but I really generally have no clue where I am, even looking at a map.

4.  For years as a kid, I only called one set of grandparents "Grandma" and "Grandpa".  No shades of gray for me, apparently.  Only ONE person had the name "Grandma", so the other grandmother (my Gram) I called by her given first name until I was in high school.  I eventually figured this one out.

5. I have never taken a typing class, but it's what I do for a living.

6.  When I took proficiency tests in high school, the 2 careers I was most suited for were: Mortician or Oral Surgeon.  Both of which require a high degree of spatial relations and neither of which were EVER on my radar as something I could do for the rest of my life.

7.  I wrote a seemingly brilliant essay on Sylvia Path's The Bell Jar for an advanced placement exam.  So brilliant, in fact, I placed out of an entire year's worth of English classes AND got credit for them.  Ironically, I wrote the essay with a 103-degree fever and don't remember anything of what I wrote.  Equally ironically, I have never READ The Bell Jar.

8. I talk to myself a lot.  And then I tell myself (out loud) that I shouldn't be talking to myself, because that is just downright weird, isn't it?

I think this has made its way around blogland, so I'm not going to tag anyone specifically, if you want to play along, feel free to snag the concept and post away!

All for now....

Bison or Bust

I know I've mentioned Antelope Island before in previous trail-riding posts.  It is a large island with rugged terrain that juts up out of the Great Salt Lake, and has herds of antelope and a large bison herd who live on it.  Every year in the fall, the bison herd is rounded up from the island and driven into pens at the south end/ranch end of the island so the babies can be checked on, and various vet-based things like shots and general checkups can be had.  My endurance-riding buddy, MJ, and her husband put on an endurance ride on the island every April, and she had mentioned the roundup was a fun way to spend the day on your horse.  The island is closed for this week except for those folks who have registered for the round-up.  It sounded like great fun, so I signed Diggs up as my riding partner and we went out on Friday.

We left the house at early o'clock under the light of a gorgeous hunter's moon.

I drove up with MJ, since each of us was only taking 1 horse, and we met her husband, Dean, and the Farrells (Pam, John, Dan - and PS - Dan took a lot of these photos including the one above).  This was a really good test for Digger.  He has done trail rides with smaller groups, but he's never had to get out of the trailer in a strange place filled with trailers and horse panels, and so many horses.

There's MJ on the left with her boy, Beau, and Dean with his gray mare on the right.  You can see how stressed out Diggs is - he was totally content at this point to just stand and eat his breakfast.  After we got tacked up, we had a meeting with the ranch manager.  And the bad news was.....they already had all the bison moved by the end of the previous day of the roundup.  Due to some controlled burns on the island to help regenerate the grasslands, most of the bison were already en route to the southern end of the island, where the pens are, before the roundup started, so it didn't take a lot of work to move them the rest of the way.  Bummer.

BUT! That meant we got to take a leisurely ride on the island.  I can't think of a nicer way to spend a warm, sunny fall day.  There was a large group headed out with MJ and Dean, but there were a few....*ahem*.... badly trained and somewhat wild horses in that group, so our little group of 4 (Me, Pam, John and Dan) opted to ride out the trail to the southern beach and see the water.

The fall colors were absolutely gorgeous and the sky was a bright, bright blue.

We rode along the base of the mountains that run along the spine of the island. The footing here is great.  Nice, packed sandy soil with only a few rocks, here and there, and the trail is wide enough you can ride next to someone and have time to chat.  To our right-hand side, as we rode south, are the hills pictured above, and to our left, facing east, we had a beautiful view of the beach and the Great Salt Lake.

We rode until we reached the southern-most tip of the island and then we turned west and headed uphill until we peaked at the top of the mountains, and could look down over the other side, towards the western half of the Lake.

The ground up here is much more rocky and there aren't true trails on it, but we turned north again and rode along just beneath the peaks of the mountains as we headed back to ridecamp.  You can see, however, where the bisons' feet have turned up the grass, so they've obviously had no trouble finding their way through this area (click for bigger).

On the way back, we spotted a lone old bull across a ravine from us.  He didn't even bother picking his head up and just wandered along, grazing slowly.  Some of the older bulls (which are massive and cranky) are too dangerous to try to bring in on horseback, so rather than even try , they will send out a helicopter on Saturday evening to look for any of the old rogues, and convince them from the air to move a bit further south so the rangers can keep an eye on them and provide food for them over the winter.  I got a couple of pictures of the old man, but frankly, from the distance with my little point-n-shoot camera, he looks like a large rock, so I won't post those for you.

When we arrived back in Ridecamp, MJ was getting dinner ready for the group.  Diggs had done SO well, until it was time to relax, and then the Dorkboy in him leapt into action.  Just after this picture was taken, he decided to try to demolish MJ's expensive living-quarters trailer.

We had a "discussion" about proper camp-out, non-Dorkboy behavior, then, he and I.

Dan's bestest girl, Abbey, obviously had a great time, and was happy to take a snooze in the sun at the trailer wearing her commemorative round-up bandana.  Yeehaw!

Next year, we'd like to go again, but I think we'll go earlier in the week (like maybe the first day, Wednesday) and actually get to see the bison.  Despite that, it was an absolutely gorgeous day to spend outside with good friends, a (relatively) good horse, and a great trail.

All for now......

Yet Another

While I actually finished sock #1 of the Flatiron Clog Socks last night (except for kitchner'ing the toe), I have started yet another small project - anyone here surprised?  Yup - I thought not.

My friend, Sharon, who I used to work with and is a card-carrying member of the Obey The Blondes club (long story and maybe ya had to be there, but suffice it to say.... we have T-shirts), wanted a pair of mitts and a scarf.  Now, she's not a pink kinda gal, but she wanted something warm and pink-ey.  Like sandstone, or stucco.  Nothing too girly-girl.  But pinkish and in lace. 

So after several attempts at something that even remotely resembles THAT verbal description, I dyed up this concoction:

Which looks kinda like this when knit up:

See?  It's got a couple of different browny-pinkish colors going on in there, plus a sort of rosey-brown thingy.  This is dyed up on the super-soft Italian-milled merino/tencel blend I've got in the shop.   

And I'm knitting it up in the Orchid Lace Mitts pattern, another lovely design from The Other Anne of Knitspot.

I'm actually a little less far along than this picture would indicate.  I got so excited, I forgot to cast on extra stitches for the thumb, so I have a lovely tube with no space for the thumb, but it's only a few rows back and I'll just undo the panel of stitches that I've already knit for the thumb, add the extra stitches, and rework those few rows without having to monkey around with the back of the hand panel. 

And then on to the scarf, which I may take with me to the Moab ride next weekend, since I no longer have to drive by myself and will be a passenger with 4 hours of commute time on my hands.

All for now.....

What I Didn't Do This Weekend

Didn't go to Rhinebeck.  Didn't really go outside the house, truth be told.  Another weekend of 2-day coverage, and considering what it looked like outside on Saturday, that was probably just fine.  D is out of town this weekend, so I holed up inside with Emma and Sydney (Rowan is on vacation with D), and transcribed and watched the sky.

Yup.  That's actual white stuff.  Maybe a bit more than a half-inch, a little less than an inch.  Where we are in the valley (south and east of the Great Salt Lake), we often will get lake effect snows when the northern valley doesn't get anything but rain.

It didn't stick around very long, although the temps were cold enough here on Sunday for it to do so. Mostly it just made the pasture out back a soggy mess for the day.

Emma, however, knew just what to do on a cold wintery day.  She found a nice warm "lap" to snuggle up in and take a little snooze.

She spent most of the day on Saturday here overseeing the work on my desk.  She's a harsh task-mistress.

All for now......

Riding On

Y'all know Digger, aka Diggs, aka Dorkboy, aka My Little Man, is my #1, right?  I absolutely adore that horse, probably more than I should sometimes, but really.... he IS a charmer.   He and I have been getting in a lot of ride/training time together this fall and we've been having a blast.  He's been working extremely hard and you should see the muscles he's put on (even under his winter coat).  The sad state of affairs for him, however, is no matter how conditioned he is, he has a Fox Trotter metabolism.  Which means, he can be in great shape, but he still runs a resting pulse rate in the low to mid 40s.  Now, most endurance rides have a parameter for pulse rates of 60 to 65 (depending on the length of the ride) before the vets will allow the horses to continue.  So, you can imagine that dropping a pulse rate is a whole lot easier when your resting pulse rate is.... say....... 32.... or 28....instead of ..... say....... 40 or 45.

I had known from the beginning that Diggs would not be the best-suited horse for endurance, but that was okay - and IS okay - he needs a job and it will not hurt him one bit to be an uber conditioned hard-body either. However, I really want to ride more than 25s, and probably more than 50s, and that's gonna be hard for him to do.  So, I began a search for an Arabian, whose body physiology lends itself so well to endurance (it's what they were bred for in a lot of cases, originally), who could get me through 50s without really having to worry about getting pulsed down and meeting vet criteria.

Now, I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but there is kind of a universal mental image of the Arabian breed as being hot-headed, kind of out of control, fiery, high-spirited - that sort of thing.  So, I set off to find a horse that could handle the physical aspects of racing, but I did NOT want some whacked-out wild horse to sit on and be potentially stupid and dangerous for 50 miles either.  Not exactly the easiest blend is it?  Heart and endurance to go the distance, but a calm, gentle nature.

I totally hit the jackpot.  Totally.

Enter Bhen (Bhenkaleb is his full registered name).  He's a 10-year-old, black bay gelding.  He's really only just a bit bigger than Diggs.  His current owner, Sally, says 14.2 hands, but I think he's a little taller than that - maybe not much, but a bit. Bhen's an old pro.  He already knows how to trailer long distances, camp out overnight, eat his hay out of a big mesh bag, eat and drink on the trail and take care of himself.  He's got great big strong feet (he even goes without shoes!), and best of all, a great, big strong brain attached to his Arab pulse and respirations.

Bhen's got over 800 competition miles on him.  He's done 25s, 30s, 50s and 60s.  He has the whole hang-out-at-the-trailer thing down.  And doesn't mind other horses coming and going.  (Sally likes yellow, can ya tell?)

And Bhen's a thinker.  He thinks about where to put his feet in a sensible way.  Dogs blasting out of the sagebrush, old car parts, trail boogie-monsters don't really phase him much.  He looks at them (you can't be too careful, you know), but he just keeps his feet going on down the road.  And did I mention not much phases him?

Yeah.  That's Bhen in the front.  Sally's the one dressed as a pink flamingo.  (She hosts the Pink Flamingo Classic ride in Idaho every year).  It takes a certain calm disposition to blithely go out to ride while your human partner is dressed as a flamingo. (Maybe a certain amount of personal self-esteem too, but I'll have to ask Bhen about that. I feel sure he and this other horse in the picture spent the whole ride going "Oh geez!  What is next with these crazy gals?")

So now, not only do I have my bestest trail-horse buddy, Digger, he's also got a new friend coming to live with us at the end of the month who can show him some camping-out ropes, and help me figure out how the heck to stay on my horse for 50 miles and come into the finish like a trooper.

And Sally.....you may wish to check the comments after this entry posts.  I have a feeling you'll see a lot of nice things said about your boy, and there's no WAY my kind blog readers won't be keeping an eye on him with you, so you know he's gonna be in good hands.

All for now......

I've been holding out on you

So, during my brief, whirlwind trip to Sacramento (my semi-emergency a week-plus ago now), I actually added yet another project to my increasingly long UFO list.  I DID take along the Birdsfoot Shawl and worked on that, finishing up another 3-1/2 repeats, but I also decided I needed a sock for plane knitting (smaller and more portable, as the shawl is getting lap-covering size now).

I dove into the stash before departing and decided I'd like to try knitting up the beautiful Claudia Handpaint yarn in colorway "Purple Earth" that Margene got me for my birthday this year. The colors in this are deep and rich and... well... purple!!

There's a lot going on in this yarn with the beautiful riot of colors.  So much so that I didn't want to do anything too busy, pattern-wise, for fear that it would be completely lost in the colors.  But I wanted something with a little more "zip" than just plain ribbing or stockinette.  Enter a great little design from Kristi. 

These are the Flatiron Clog Socks, which are available for purchase and download on Kristi's blog.  It's an easy slipstitch rib pattern, but look at all the fun stuff it does with the colors.  Sort of breaks them apart and puts them back together again - kind of like a stained glass mosiac!  It's a nice, stretchy pattern with an easy 4-row repeat.  I chose not to extend the pattern down the heel, but you can do that and wear these with open-backed shoes (Birks or open-backed clogs would be perfect - although my clogs happen to have a closed heel).

So you can see where I am on sock #1.... getting to the toe in hopefully short order.

And even though I started THIS project and added to the UFO list, I feel kinda sure I'm going to be starting yet another project soon.  I've had had a non-knitting friend ask for a holiday gift of a scarf and some mitts, and I finally got a colorway dyed I think will suit her.  Considering the holidays are .....um.....like 7 weeks away (??!!!), I'd maybe best get started on that, eh?

All for now.....

November Pre-Order Kit

Need a little something to kick off your holiday knitting?  Anne of Knitspot has done me up another beautiful kit just in time to make something nice for a gift recepient (or give the kit if you're looking for an easy holiday gift!).

Introducing the Snow on Cedars fingerless mitts kit as our November pre-order.

This kit contains the pattern for these fabulous little mitts and a skein of our merino/tencel yarn (which happens to be machine washable), enough to knit yourself a pair.  The lace patterning shows off a grove of pine trees encircling the wrist, with gently falling snowflakes drifting down from the upper edge, and finished with a delicate border at the finger and wrist openings.

The kit is available in two colorways:  Our popular Sagebrush and Cedars (pictured above), frosty forest and sage greens, with highlights of bark brown, or Winterberries (pictured below), a deep rich brick-red with purplish-black highlights.

This month's kit comes with 50% off parcel post shipping costs in the US and discounted shipping for Canadian or European/overseas customers for all orders placed before November 1.  Kits will be shipped out after November 1st, with requests filled in the order they are received through the Wooly Wonka Fibers store.  (To order kits, please visit the storefront under the "Online Store" link, and then then "Kits" section.)

All for now.......

Something Old(ish), Something New

Long-time readers may recall I wove a little cotton baby blanket a while back (something old-ish).

It's a simple pattern of stripes of naturally colored cottons (in a sage green and khaki) against a bed of creamy white.  VERY soft and cuddly. 

It's been sitting in one of my "finished projects" plastic bins - done all but the hemming and a final wash and dry (machine washable!!).  Last week, however, I had a very good opportunity to pull it out and get it finished-finished.

Introducing "something new" - born last Saturday, the 6th, and already at home and doing well with his mum, dad and big brother, our new nephew, Charlie.

Ain't he a cutie?  We feel sure nephew Will has already told Charlie everything there is know about horses.  He is the expert, after all, being best boyfriend to Hap, the wonder horse.

All for now......

Book Meme

I am back from beyond.  Just busy, busy, busy - so I was MOST grateful that Cathy tagged me for a meme for a little blog fodder. Maybe I'll get back to "real" posting next week.

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?

Paperback.  Unless it's a reference book I think I want to keep for a good long time (something like the collected works of Shakespeare or knitting pattern books).  Otherwise, I feel kinda like it's a marriage I've been roped into and not a fun dinner date.  I have no qualms about jettisoning paperbacks to the library, but an awfully hard time letting go of hardbacks even if I had no plans to read them again.

2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it…

the Book Nook? 

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

"The Lord will provide.......or not" (Cold Comfort Farm - which is, in fact, virtually littered with other pithy sayings.  If you don't feel like a good read, go rent the movie.  Particularly if you have relatives in the hill country.  Even more so if you have slightly interbred relatives in the hill country.)

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…

Charles de Lint.  I would be fascinated to hear if his "out loud" mind works in the same way his "on the page" mind works.  Anyone that can come up with some of the concepts he can, and intertwines natural world phenomenon with fantasy - could that conversation be boring?

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be…

Hm.... a hard one.  If was able to take my yarn stash, I believe I'd take Barbara Walker's #2 stitch pattern guide, because that would keep my occupied for years.  If I was going to just take something to keep me entertained, it'd definitely be the Collected Works of Shakespeare.  All the comedies, tragedies, sonnets - I could read and re-read all of those quite happily for decades.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

Would hold the pages open while you read AND respond to a "turn page" voice command when you reached the end of the open pages.  Ya know... so you can read and knit without having to pause for either.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…

Cathy hit that nail on the head - Old houses.  Specifically old house attics.  Big steamer trunks full of books.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…

This is my problem - overloaded memory ice flow - and no room for things like book titles.  But I'll give you the gist.  Young girl who is separated from her family, who is taken in by a neighboring tribe (think Celtic Britain era).  She is from a clan who has a way with horses and she winds up with a fantastic dog and an uber wonderful horse and goes on to become a warrior queen.  A day out on my horse, with a well-trained dog at our side, seeing the British countryside and slaying eeevvvil warlords?  Perfect. 

9. The most overestimated book of all times is…

I have not a clue.  I tend not to read reviews or recommendations about books.  I tend to pick and choose based on my mood at the time (or suggestions from my Da, who usually knows just what I like).  I'm sure there are plenty that fit that category out there.  The world of marketing sometimes outstrips the value of said marketed product.

10. I hate it when a book… 

Sucks you in during the first 3 or 4 chapters and then goes nowhere.  (Consider this pet peeve quadrupled when trapped on a cross-country airplane flight and this is the only thing you've brought to read.)

Taggees?  Well, I already know what Cathy thinks.  Mim, Liz and Judy - if you are inclined, I think I'd actually like to hear your list. And, of course, anyone else who might wish to chime in.

All for now......