Growing Catkins

With the warm Wyoming temps lately, the aspen catkins have been growing, and the fuzzy little "kitten tails" are hanging so delicately on the branches.

I'm wondering if the leaves will pop mid-April, like last year.  It's possible.  The aspens are always the first ones to leaf out, taking a chance that freezing temps are behind them.  On the other hand, the cottonwood trees patiently wait until they are pretty sure the weather is going to stay warm.  They seem to know that Wyoming springs can vacillate between spring and winter temps until we're into mid-May.

The cottonwood buds are just beginning to swell.

Accordian Scarf

I have this absolutely beautiful lace weight yarn in deep purple.  It was supposed to be made up into a shawl, but I wasn't motivated to launch into that project.  So, I waited.  And when I was introduced to the Accordion Scarf pattern by one of my dear knitting friends, I knew this would be a project I would finish! 

So far, I have knit a little more than half of the bottom border.  It needs 11 "teeth," and then I can pick up stitches to begin the length of the scarf. 

The yarn came with matching beads, and I'm planning to incorporated the beads in this pattern too, but haven't worked out the details of their placement yet. 

Easter Eggs

This may be a little late to be posting egg pictures.  But I tried something new and have to report the findings!  I tried boiling eggs with onion skins in the water to color them.  Apparently this has been  a very common practice in Russia for many years.  Perhaps it is popular in many other countries?  Anyway, it works beautifully, and I rather like the color/effect.   Using natural materials for coloring/dying is very appealing to me.

Down to the toe...

I'm down to the toe on the second sock.. and on the last inches of the skein!!  OH NO!!  What to do?  I contacted the store from which I bought the yarn and discovered they are OUT of that color.  So, I got on-line to see if I could find it at any of my usual sites...but apparently it's not available. 

I am currently on HOLD, considering my options. 

Sunday drive continued...

On the outskirts of Thermopolis, we turned right off the highway, leaving civilization once again.  I did dig deeper for a more recent highway map and found one, but it was of no help.  If we could make it all the way to Lysite, which looked like about 30 miles, we would make a nice loop. 

This road was all gravel/dirt, and there was literally nothing but scenery the whole way.  At the start, we passed a sheep ranch, and it was interesting in that the dirt there was so red that all the sheep were tinted red with dust.  They had been recently sheered, and I can only imagine that it must be a mess to clean those sheep pelts.

We continued on and on and on, slowly climbing elevation.  Soon we were seeing drifts of unmelted snow in shady areas on the hills. We didn't count on melting snow.  The road started to look a little questionable in terms of mud.  But when we stopped to check, the ruts were dry enough and no mud was sticking to the tires...so we drove on. 

Don't these scraggly old cottonwood trees look spooky?

Now we'd traveled 25 miles, getting close to reaching Lysite...and the highway leading home.  But, we continued to see melting snow banks, and they were ever closer to the road.  I cautiously verbalized my fear that we would come this far and then face a muddy bog we couldn't get through.  Julie was getting a bit concerned too. 

At that point, we came around a corner, and it looked like we had a muddy stretch ahead.  But it was downhill, and there was dry road ahead.  If this was the worst of it, we'd be in fine shape.  I had to make a quick decision, and I decided to go for it, giving the car a bit more gas, getting some momentum through the muddy section.  We got down that hill just fine, BUT at the bottom we saw trouble.  (I was not thinking about taking a picture.) The road ahead curved to the left and then made a steady climb uphill again...AND it had melting snow COVERING the road nearly to the top of the next hill.  We stopped the car, got out and walked out on to the snow and mud.  It's hard to say if we could make it our not.  My wheels were already mud packed, so they had no "grab."  And what was ahead?  If it was worse, we'd have to come back through this mess!  We were "who knows how far from help," and we had no phone service.  My previous experience was saying to me, "Turn around, gal, this is not worth taking a chance." Julie agreed and admitted, "I never really thought about having to deal with this kind of road condition today." Me either.  Looking at the set of muddy tracks we'd been following for miles, we realized that a week earlier, we wouldn't have made it this far. 

OK, we'll turn around... but we were not exactly out of the woods yet.  We had to go uphill through that muddy section we just came down.  Back in the car, seat belts fastened, car in low gear, we bull-dozed our way up and out.  I had to put the "pedal to the metal," and Julie was a bit jumpy about sliding off the side of the hill, but we made it, with a minimum of sideways action. Whew!!!  We had to back-track 25 miles, but we were going to get home before dark!!

Relieved, I stopped for one more picture, that of one of the horses in a herd we'd passed earlier.  Note the length of its tail;  might be part of a wild herd.

 This wasn't quite the leisurely Sunday drive Julie had envisioned, but it was memorable.  Laughing, she said she wasn't too eager to share the details with anyone: What happens near Lysite, stays near Lysite!  We decided we would wait until the road dried out, and then make the trek from the opposite direction and see how close we actually got to the highway.

Well, we left a nice pile gumbo mud at the car wash in Thermop...leaving all traces of the "incident" behind.

A stop at McDonalds for a dipped cone was the topper for the day.  The ride home was delicious.

Let's take a Sunday drive...

My friend Julie and I met for Easter Lunch, and then she suggested we take a little drive.  OK.  Actually, that sounded so much like what my family used to do when I was a kid…take a Sunday drive.   It was a beautiful day, so it seemed like a great idea.

On the way, Julie asked if I’d consider taking a side road, driving out to Bonneville.  Hmmm.  Hadn’t been there since I was in grade school.  It’s basically a train stop (in the middle of nowhere), and “back in the day” you could ride a passenger train from Bonneville, north through Wind River Canyon to Thermopolis; that  train ride was our class trip.  In recent years it’s become a place where soda ash is loaded onto rail cars and transported…somewhere. (This spot was named after Capt. Benjamin L.E. de Bonneville, who led an expedition along the Platte River.)

When we arrived at Bonneville, it wasn’t what I expected.  There was no longer a train station, only five giant silos near the tracks, used to store and load soda ash on to rail cars.  Nothing scenic, interesting, or attractive.  Didn’t reach for the camera.  There were a few homes in the vicinity.  On our way out, I saw one noteworthy picture as I passed it. Since there was no traffic, it was no problem backing the car up and snapping a photo.  How about this abandoned cabin with a new grill out front, ready for a spring bar-be-que?

Soon we were back on the highway.  Not long thereafter, we were passing Boysen Dam and driving through 3 tunnels at the opening of Wind River Canyon.

 This river flows north through the canyon.  It really appears to flow uphill.  Crazy.  It was pretty cool to see the train coming toward us too.  Luckily, it was traveling rather slowly, so I had plenty of time to get a picture.

After we got through the canyon, Julie had another suggestion: "How about taking this other side road" (that neither of us had traveled before)…"I think it would take us all the way to Lysite" (another place that’s in the middle of nowhere).  I suggested we look at a map, and we found one in the glove box.  It indicated that the road was dirt all the way , with a section several miles long that was questionable (broken lines on the map).  If we were in a 4-wheel drive pick-up, no problem, but we weren’t.  Julie noted that the map I had was dated 1975… and maybe the road was in a little better shape today than when the map was printed..???  LOL!  Whew. We had to collect ourselves after laughing ourselves silly.   

  

Well, all we had was time…and it was a nice day for a drive…why not give it a try?  We could always turn around…

More tomorrow.

Rag Socks

The Rag Socks are off the needles.  I used two balls of yarn, and I just started the socks with whatever color was on the tail.  So, they are not a perfect match as far as the stripes go, but I like the way the colored pattern worked out.  This Patton yarn was great to knit with, and I would use it again.  I hope it is nice to wear too!