I can’t possibly leave the sneering photo up for a week, so I’m posting this photo of us at our friends’ wedding in Maui this past weekend (sadly, it was a quick trip).

Much better! (Though not as amusing.) Here we are looking more casual later that day with the bride and groom in front of the U.S.’s largest Banyan tree.

I had been to see this particular tree once before on a previous trip to Maui, so I had to show Jason. Jun and Alex (and Justin who is taking the photo) had to see it too. It was pretty much the only touristy thing we had time for. Here’s a more zoomed out view of the whole tree that takes up an entire park.

Yeah, that’s ONE tree. In our travels I worked on taking photos for the summer photo scavenger hunt that we’re doing in the Snap ‘n Knit group on Ravelry. It’s a list of 38 things that we all came up with to take photos of over the summer. (Any of you Ravelry photo takers are welcome to join us too!) My free Flickr account is maxed out on space, so I’m going to post mine here, along with the list item that each photo portrays.

Airplane

Tourist

Cooling Off

Texture

Flower

And my favorite…

Emotion

Congratulations, Alex & Jun!

Photography, Travel | 8 Comments »

I still don’t have much in the way of bloggable projects. I’m working on two gifts and two work projects. Woo. This past weekend we traveled down to Grants Pass, Oregon to attend my cousin’s wedding. The weather was relatively nice, and it was great to visit with family. I had to share this photo, which is my favorite of the ones my mom took.

Don’t we just look the happy couple? I swear, we had a good time! This is a candid photo, and I have absolutely no idea why we were both making that face. Somebody must have been telling a bad joke (I blame my brother). I told Jason that this should be the photo that we blow up really big for our 50th wedding anniversary.

Travel | 9 Comments »

In late summer of 2006 our big project was landscaping our backyard a little, which included planting trees and digging a big trench to bury plastic bamboo barrier in order to contain bamboo. Our goal was to create a screen that would shield the view of the neighbors behind us. We bought “incense bamboo” from Portland’s bamboo nursery (a very cool place by the way), which is said to grow to 35 feet tall. Our plants were about 2-3 feet tall with canes about 1/2 an inch in diameter. We planted it, and it didn’t do much for a while, only sending up a few 1 inch shoots just before our honeymoon the following May. When we returned from our 10 day honeymoon, however, we were blown away by 5 foot canes! This year it has followed the same pattern, except this time the shoots were about an inch in diameter, and they’ve now grown to be as tall as 8 feet in a matter of weeks. Behold, here’s a view from the deck where you can see the neighbor we’re trying to block out, the trees we planted, and the bushy looking old growth bamboo.

See those thin, bare sticks poking out above the brown fence, taller than even the sequoia tree on the right? Here’s a closer side view:

With all the stuff in the background, they’re hard to photograph, but take my word for it that they’re impressive in real life (pointy too!). I’m also thrilled to show off our first tomatoes.

These three have been growing for a couple weeks, but with the sun being out all week I just counted 8 new baby tomatoes that just started. Hurray! I can’t wait for home grown tomatoes. And because no post would be complete without a pet photo, I’ll leave you with Apollo blissfully snoozing by the sliding door. (He’s still protesting not being able to go outside.)

Gardening | 3 Comments »

When I lived in Fairbanks, “sundogs” referred to little rainbows that would frequently show up on either side of the sun like brackets.

Here in Portland, the sundogs look quite a bit different.

(This photo is a very visual reminder that we need to refinish the deck this summer—ick.) Yes, the sun finally came out in the northwest, and we had a beautiful weekend. It looks like it’s going to stick around for a while too. Both humans and dogs are overjoyed. Even the cats are happy. Apollo managed to worm his way outside when we didn’t notice and spent an hour on Sunday sitting on the front porch rail basking. Now he keeps pawing the door like he’s entitled to go out (he’s not).

I hate to say it, but not only did I not celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day by knitting in public, but I didn’t knit a stitch at all that day. I did spend some time cutting out a quilt top for a cousin’s baby. The rest of the weekend was spent helping Jason’s sister and BIL move, enjoying the weather, and doing various errands. I’m afraid the blog will be lacking in crafty things for a while, as some knitting that I do need to do is test knitting for work. Maybe I’ll post later about our incredibly huge new bamboo shoots in the backyard.

Pets, In & Around Portland | 6 Comments »

Yep, it’s still raining here. I’ve been living vicariously through blogs that describe (or complain about) 90 degree weather. Apparently it’s happening in many places in the country, just not here.

I started a new project on Friday when I was home sick with the crud. It’s the Pea Pod Baby Sweater knit in Knit Picks Comfy “Honeydew”. As this is a gift, the recipient shall remain nameless.

I am loving working with this yarn, and I think it will be my new workhorse worsted weight. Normally I don’t care for cotton, but this doesn’t hurt my hands like cotton can. (It also doesn’t have that weird dusty smell. Maybe I’m the only one who’s bothered by cotton yarn smell though.) The sweater itself was fraught with problems, probably because I was starting it while sick. I had to rip back the ribbing once, and then I reknit a few inches and realized that the button bands were supposed to be seed stitch and I knit them in 1×1 ribbing. D’oh. That’s what happens when I don’t print out the cover page with the picture. Instead of ripping out again, I decided to ladder down each button band. It was exciting—especially the one that had buttonholes. They aren’t perfect now, but they’re good enough.

To be honest though, I haven’t been doing much knitting, hence the baby sweater hasn’t progressed beyond this point. Jason returned from a work week out of town on Friday and on Saturday promptly got me hooked on this computer game called Puzzle Quest. It’s like a combination between Bejeweled and a role playing game, which is a recipe for addiction for me.

I’ve been contemplating the cardigans featured a while back, but I’m not inspired to knit sweaters lately. I’ve actually been considering a shawl. I never thought I would ever want to knit a shawl (just like I never thought I would knit socks), but now I’m thinking it would be the perfect thing to keep at the office for when the a/c gets out of control (every day). It would be more versatile than a cardigan because it could fit over whatever I’m wearing. The new Knitty just came out today, and there’s a lovely stole in it that might be just the ticket. It’s knit with Kidsilk Haze though, and I’m not sure if that would be too itchy/fuzzy for my sensitive skin. I’ve never knit with it. I’m open to other suggestions for beginner shawl patterns too. I like rectangles, not circle ones. I do have some lovely Elann Baby Silk that I dyed up for a sweater design sitting in my stash. I’ve kind of lost interest in writing the sweater pattern, so the yarn looks kind of lonely just sitting there all pretty. Of course, they’re 25 gram balls which would probably be a royal pain for something like a shawl. Hmm.

Working on | 7 Comments »