Knittymuggins

What’s that?  I’m actually posting on a Wednesday?  What the craps? 

No, things haven’t slowed down very much, but I did manage to leave work somewhat on time today and it’s amazing how optimistic that can make you feel!  I even came home and worked out!  I know, I know, I don’t know how I let myself get all crazy like that.  Working out?  What is up?  I realize that’s taking things a bit far.  But when the mood strikes, I go with it.

Anyway, today will be short and sweet.  Dinner is needing to be cooked and some attention needs to be paid to Mr. Darling too.  Here is the Warm Woolies 411 for the past week (and it’s none too good really, but I do what I can….)…

Warm Woolies Items #27 & #28 - All Finished!!

Warm Woolies Item #29 - In Progress

I wish there were more, but it’s been a long ass week since I last posted about this project.  Too much to do, and too little time to do it in.  Because I love me my sleep way too much to sacrifice a single second of it.  If it can’t be done before bedtime, it will just have to wait.  Hey, I just had a thought (crazy, I know!) -  If I’m getting that much beauty sleep, how come it’s not working?  Where’s the magic, man?  My eyes still look all wrinkly and baggy when I wake up and I notice those greys didn’t exactly disappear overnight with a big ol’ sparkly *poof* of pixie dust either. 

Speaking of clocky issues, I did time myself a few weeks ago (out of distinct curiosity, rather than necessity) and I calculated that it takes me about 2 hours to complete one pair of smallish sized Warm Woolies socks.  I wish it were faster, because I’ve got a lot of lost ground to cover if I’m going to make 100, but I guess that’s not so bad over all.

By the ways….  I got my copy of Vogue Knitting in the mail today.  Can I just say that I will totally be knitting myself a pair of mittens as soon as I can afford yarn again?  Lovely!

Happy Hump Day!

Oh my goodness!  The Koolaid Mom has nominated me for a bloggy award!!  I am both awe-struck and completely honored.  Thank you so much!!  I am speechless with undeservingness and the only way to get my words back is to share the love……

Though I’m not 100% sure what the award is for exactly, I’m taking it to be for blogs that I enjoy reading, or people I’ve had fun getting to know through the bloggy world.  Because to me, the most brilliant (brillante) thing about blogging is all the lovely people I’ve met who inspire me daily! 

Once an award is received, the rules are as follows:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you. (check out The Koolaid Mom)
3. Nominate at least seven other blogs. (7?  Really?  Ooooooh, why do I always have to choose!)
4. Add links to those blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blog.

So – in completely random order – I send the award to:

1. Knit One Blog Too – We have so much in common (it’s kind of scary how much really….) and I think she could really use a smile today!
2. Pursuit of Fiber – Chrispy’s projects are always awe-inspiring and I love the way she modifies each of her knits to suit to her own personal style.  Plus, it’s been super fun getting to know her better over the last few months!
3. Yorkshire Lass Knits – There’s always something on her blog that makes me laugh or smile.  She has a way of making the every day seem ever so much more exciting!  And her projects are exceedingly lovely too :)
4. Yarn Crawl – Robin always makes it on my list!  Hers was probably the first blog I really read regularly besides Knit & Tonic, and she never fails to impress and inspire me with the amount of beautiful FO’s she is able to crank out on a regular basis.  Plus, she always has something else exciting going on that I can live vicariously through via her bloggy!
5. Knittlesticks – I adore her sense of humor and am completely inspired by her gorgeous hand-painted sock yarns (check her out at Hazel Knits).  I would love to be able to do what she’s doing and I’m so very happy for her success!
6. Jennyarn – She has a deep and very kind heart and I love reading about her darling kitties and Blythe dollies :)  Oh and the knitting too….  Plus, she needs a smile today as well!
7. Livin’ In The Sticks – I love the sweet anecdotes she has on her bloggy about her little ones, and the knitting is of course, exceedingly lovely too!

Thanks so much to all of you for being a brilliant spot in my bloggy world!  Pass on the love & have a Happy Monday!!

Mmmmm…..dessert…….

Well, it’s been another week in laboratory hell.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my job.  But I don’t love going in nearly an hour early and leaving over an hour late for 2 weeks straight.  And I don’t love standing on my feet for the majority of those hours, knees all achy and back all stiff, hands jittery from too much caffeine.  The opportunity costs being exacted lately have bankrupted my soul and I need a break.  Could someone please bring me some dessert?  While I sit in the bathtub?  Oh and do the dishes while you’re at it too please and thank you.

Warm Woolies Item #27 - In Progress

Yesterday was supposed to be Warm Woolies Wednesday, but I was too tired to post and a wee part of me felt terribly embarrassed that I hadn’t even managed to complete a single item since last week.  I haven’t been knitting at all and I am seriously missing it.  It’s just been way too hectic here.  I’m hoping this weekend will change all that, but we’ll see.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been less than snappy on checking out your blogs and keeping up with what’s new in your worlds lately.  I feel really bad about this because all of you are truly special to me (for reals) and when I can’t keep up to date on what you’re doing and working on, and thinking and feeling, it makes me feel like a bad bloggy friend.  I promise that I haven’t forgotten any of you and do think of you often!  Right now is just a crazy crazy time for me.  When things slow down a little I’ll be back around to comment, but right now I think I just really need a break from the intrawebs.  I’ll still be around Ravelry since I help moderate a group there, and I hope to keep blogging a bit, but unless something changes with work and home life, it maybe be a while until I can catch up with each of you.  I hope you are all doing awesome though and I look forward to chatting with each of you when the seas smooth over a bit here.  Because without all of you, I’d have no reason to keep blogging and no one to share my knitting with!  And for that, and each of you who stops by to visit, I’m always grateful :)  

Have a great weekend Bloggy Peeps!! 

Safeco Field – Home of the Seattle Mariners

Where did the weekend go?  Ours was spent mostly in the car, with a slight detour for some baseball, terrible stadium food, and a helluva lot of running (for one of us anyway).  I don’t know how you city people do it, waiting in traffic, bumper to bumper, day in and day out.  What should have been a quick 2 hour trip from our house to Safeco field on Friday, turned into a 4.5 hour odyssey of clinging to the last remaining threads of our sanity and trying our best not to get into a collision.  By the time we reached Safeco field, 1/2 hour before game time, all thoughts of eating at the Spaghetti Factory were out the window and R. Darling was fuming.  If cartoon steam could have poured out of his ears, it totally would have.  I felt awful for him, but what could we do?  So we did what you do when you go to a ballgame:  we ate garbage and cheered for the home team.

R. Darling carb loading at the stadium

All smiles now that the beer is flowing

We stayed through the 7th inning and the Mariners were up 8 to 1, which doesn’t happen too often.  After driving an hour to Gig Harbor, we checked into our hotel and tried to get some sleep before our unreasonably cruel 5:15 AM wake up call.  One horrible “night’s” sleep later, we were on our way to the Crescent Forest Marathon. I think R. Darling was excited even though his stomach was busy rejecting the stadium food from the night before.  After he was on his way (you can read his account of the race here if you’re interested) I headed back to the hotel with a coffee and some cartoons and knitting of course.

R. Darling had thoughtfully supplied me with directions to the Yarn Garden, a knitting shop in Gig Harbor, and I almost didn’t give myself enough time to check it out.  I had planned to drive back to the race site to get R. Darling after 4 hours and between packing up all our stuff, and checking out, plus navigating the crowds that had developed over the last 2 hours in response to the art fair going on, I was cutting it close. But I figured, what the hell.  Might as well have a look.  It was a sweet little shop and when I walked in I was greeted by a very friendly lady who I fell to chatting with (highly unusual for me – I’m terrible at chit chat).  I told her what R. Darling was up to and she mentioned that she was training for a sprint triathlon to celebrate her upcoming 60th birthday.  It was interesting, discussing with another knitter, the challenges of training for such a serious event, as well as supporting someone who is training for something major.  I spoke of the cost in terms of time, money, travel, and commitment for all the parties involved, and she mentioned what she called the “opportunity cost”.  She explained this as the opportunities that she finds she misses out on when preparing for something this monumental: not enough time to knit, not enough time to spend with family.  She misses out on so many things because she has something else she is beholden to.  I find myself paying this cost at times myself, and I’m not even the one in training.  But she also said she was viewing this time as a “season” in her life.  Something she won’t be doing forever, but something that describes her life for right now. 

I felt myself identifying with her completely.  And that, of course, makes me a sucker.  Because even though I went into that shop without any intention of buying anything, I ended up with 2 baby sweater patterns and 4 balls of yarn to make one of said baby sweaters.  I didn’t notice until later that the yarn is 100% wool and would make a terrible gift for the non-knitter it was intended for.  She’d have no idea how to wash the dumb thing.  Oh well.  I’ll find a use for it someday.  It was worth the memory and the insight.

Can you say sucker?

So I guess the way to come in 17th out of 49 when you run your marathon, and feel “really good” afterwards, is to have crappy $26 pizza and beer the night beforehand at a baseball stadium.  R. Darling finished his marathon and enjoyed every second of it it seems.  Go honey!!  I’m so proud of you :)  We’re now counting down 3 weeks to the next one.  Yikes.  

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BTW:  Sorry for the crappy ass pictures up there, but dodo bird here forgot her camera in the car and had to resort to using the camera phone for all but the yarn photo.  When will I learn?! 

I have a guilty pleasure.  Well actually, I have many, but this is one I’m admitting to.  Miami (my co-worker) introduced me to this horribly snarky, terribly addicting, celebrity gossip site called What Would Tyler Durden Do.  Please don’t click the link at work or you might be unhappily surprised.  Unless maybe you were thinking of quitting anyway.  Lucky for me, my boss is just as interested in this garbage as we are, so there’s no having to quickly close your browser when the occasional questionable photo pops up.  I don’t know what it is.  I don’t normally go in for making fun of people.  I mean, it’s not nice.  But maybe knowing that beautiful, privileged people, frequently get caught doing stupid stuff or looking fugly in their swimsuits, somehow makes me feel more normal. 

Anyway, when Tyler Durden has nothing of real substance to say, or maybe when he’s just tired of trying to come up with something witty, he’ll have a post titled “Stuff From All Over” with bare bones snark on the latest celebrity gossip.  I’ve worked late the last 2 days (can you believe that nerds have to work late sometimes?) and am stupid exhausted.  I wanted to write something of substance yesterday but the punch-drunk zombie thing I got goin’ on, and trying to sound coherent, seemed mutually exclusive so it was a no go.  One of us (the computer or me) would have ended up in a twisted mangled mess and I’ll give you one guess as to who that would be. 

So today you get my version of stuff from all over!

Warm Woolies Thank You & Items #17-#25

I’ve been thinking for the past few days that I need to institute a Warm Woolies Wednesday here on my bloggy.  I’m sorry – I know it will be boring for you, but I think it would help keep me even more accountable to my goal as I try to reach it this year.  I sent my first package off to them just before we left for our Gulf Islands trip in June and when I got back, there was a sweet little thank you postcard in my collected mail.  The first package contained 16 items and I’m now up to 26 (started 27 today).  I also joined a group on Ravelry (on the intraweb here) that is knitting oddball baby blankets for Warm Woolies and I figure that each blanket I work on could be counted towards my final goal since I’ll be contributing to one finished item each time I help with one.  It will be a good way to use up some of the garage sale acrylic I have in my stash and it will be fun to do something a little different than what I’ve been doing with my own projects.  I don’t have the time to put into making a whole afghan myself, but to add to one will be lots of fun.

I started a Fake Isle hat for myself (which you may or may not have noticed in my Ravelry Notebook) and have finished over half of it but am considering frogging it and starting over.  I love the color combo and it feels good to be knitting from stash, but the Manos is too thick & thin-ny and it’s bugging me how different the thickness is between the Noro and the Manos.  I’m thinking it would be better to look for a similar color in Lamb’s Pride or Cascade 220 or some such and make something that I’ll be happier with when it’s finished.  Sorry, no pics though.  Did I mention I’m stupid exhausted?

Thanks so very much to each of you who commented on my Juliet!  I will now wear it with confidence thanks to all of you lovely bloggy peeps.  You totally made my day and I can’t thank you enough!!

I just found out this week that Pushing Daisies and Bones are both scheduled for 8 PM on Wednesdays this fall.  Oh, the cruelty!!  This makes me angry.  I cannot live without either of these shows.  Grrrr…..

Tomorrow we leave for Seattle and Gig Harbor.  We’re going to a Mariner’s Game tomorrow night (R. Darling seemed incredulous when I mentioned I might want to knit at the game; guess not….) and then driving to Gig Harbor to stay the night.  R. Darling runs his first marathon of the season (yes, you heard me right, I said first – he’s signed up for FOUR and just informed me there may be more) on Saturday morning at the butt crack of dawn and guess who will be driving his ass there at o’darkthirty?  He was sweet enough to find me directions to a yarn shop though so I think I can easily find a way to kill 4 hours.  I’m scared of the inevitable temptation though.  We spent an ungodly sum last weekend repairing his Harley so yarn acquisition is currently at critically low levels.  Then again, brain implosion from lack of retail therapy isn’t exactly pretty either.

Since I’ll be gone tomorrow and not around for the Friday Fill-In, I’m going to leave you with my version tonight.  Hope all of you have a fantastic weekend and happy knitting!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Friday Fill-In #81
(get yours here)

1. If I could be a fly on the wall I would stay away from homes with flyswatters.

2. Jealousy is terribly damaging if you let it consume you, but feeling it on occasion is probably unavoidable.

3. When I see a shooting star my wish would be that the people I care about are granted their wishes.

4. I’d rather be carefree than stressed any day!

5. Certain songs when I hear them make me wanna dance dance dance.

6. If time were in a bottle I’d chug that mofo like it was goin’ out of style!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight (Friday) I’m looking forward to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, tomorrow (Saturday) my plans include taking R. Darling to his marathon & maybe going to a new yarn shop and Sunday, I want to relax at home after all that running around!

What was that I was saying the other day about knitting socks?  Something poetic and designed to extoll my love for the craft?  Scratch that.  I think I was momentarily high on yarn fumes. 

This morning as I lovingly stitched away on my Jaywalkers, I admired the chevrons and thought to myself what a glorious sock this was going to be.  Hey, why not try it on just to get a glimpse of that future glory?  The cuff was done, the heel turned (not a single mistake – yay me!), and 5 inches of instep finished when I slipped this beauty past my toes and up to my ankle.  Hmmmm…. starting to feel a little snug….must tug harder…. what the hell?  It does not fit.  Not even close to fitting.  Not even with a little crisco.  All that work.  Wasted.

But in every knitter’s world there is a little yin and yang.  With every bad comes a little good.  Enter Juliet.

Juliet began with the best of intentions for a KAL with the Sexy Knitter’s Club, October 2007.  I was using yarn repurposed from a disastrous attempt at the Textured Tunic from Fitted Knits for the Fitted Knits KAL I had joined earlier that same year.  But after knitting away for a while I quickly lost steam and started in on the slew of Christmas gifts I was attempting to finish in time for the holiday and one thing led to another and that “another” was never Juliet.  I pulled it out again a month ago after finishing a test knitting deadline and thought to myself, I really need to finish this.  I did a few lace repeats and then put it aside again.  So last weekend I finally decided it didn’t feel very good to have this 9 month old UFO sitting around and it was high time I finished it.  I had to be close, right?  I pulled out my sweater and put the stitches on some waste yarn and then tried it on.  What the?  It was the perfect length this whole time and I hadn’t even realized it!  All I needed to do was knit 6 rows and I’d be finished!  How did I not realize this for the last month and a half????  Maybe because I’m a distracted dumbass?  So I promptly finished the last 6 rows, blocked for a week and attached the loops and buttons over this past weekend.  Voila!  The Yin to my Yang (or is it the Yang to my Yin?)!  What a good feeling to know my knitting universe is happily balanced.  For now.

Pattern: Juliet by Zephyr Style (on Ravelry here)

Yarn: Approximately 11.5 balls Karabella Aurora Bulky color #19

Needles: Size 10.5 bamboo 29″ circular 

Mods: Can’t really think of any, other than deciding where I wanted the garter stitch portion on the top of the sweater to end and how many lace repeats I wanted.

New Techniques: Nope.

Time Lapse:  October 14, 2007 - July 12, 2008 (Yikes!)

Comments: What a relief to have finally finished this sweater!! And it was nice to have found the perfect use for that $80 worth of Karabella Aurora I purchased too.  I really like this sweater. I’m not sure I love it, but I do really like it. It makes me look a little fat but I will totally wear it anyway! It’s cozy. I wasn’t sure about the Karabella at first but after blocking it has an amazing drape that I love and the lace really pops. There were some puckery sections in the back that I wasn’t too hot on which totally worked themselves out during the blocking process. My only gripe was that the sweater grew lengthwise after blocking and now seems a bit too long, even though my husband says it’s perfect.  The buttons, they were free with the June issue of Simply Knitting and luckily, were exactly what I’d had in mind.  Another happy FO! 

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And what photo shoot would be complete without at least one outtake?

Happy Monday Bloggy Peeps!

Look what R. Darling brought home for me last Thursday!

Whew!  It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these!  Hope I can remember how ;)

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Friday Fill-In #80
(get yours here)

 1. Oh, I can’t wait until I have a credit card that’s paid off.

2. Milk is the first thing I see when I open my refrigerator.

3. I never leave home without my purse (boring I know, but so true).

4. If I were a condiment, I would be soy sauce (does that count?) because it tastes good on nearly everything.

5. People showing blatant disregard for others is really high up on my list of pet peeves.

6. The last thing I thought of before I went to bed was my current knitting project, of course ;)

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to watching a movie with R. Darling and relaxing, tomorrow my plans include knittingknittingknitting and Sunday, I want to try not to do too many chores!

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Have a great weekend bloggy peeps & enjoy the sunshine if you have it!

Knit a Jaywalker: It’ll make ya feel betta!

I am the world’s pokiest sock knitter.  This is not for lack of love, because I truly adore the idea of knitting socks.  My stash is replete with sock yarns in divine permutations and I am ever vigilantly trawling for more (yes, I have a problem; let’s not go there).  My queue and faves list in Ravelry is positively teeming with sock patterns.  Toe-up, cuff down, lace, cables, I heart them all.  I daydream of socks in glorious colors and exquisite patterns. 

But the execution, well, it has its own plans for me.  Maybe it’s related to the fact that I’m knitting with the equivalent of some toothpicks and dental floss that has me uptight.  Or maybe it’s the ever present horror of dropping one teensy stitch and having it gleefully setting free all its friends as it rides down the side of my sock, unraveling hours of painstaking work.  Whatever the case, I stitch deliberately and slowly when knitting socks.  I find tension creeping into my neck, and my hands moving steadily closer and closer to my face as I squint to make the stitches.  One sock always turns out smaller than the other even when knit exactly the same.  And it’s always the second sock.  You’d think by the second sock I would have worked through the tough spots and been able to breeze on through.  But no.  Somehow the second sock always reflects more tension than the first.

So how to enjoy knitting my beloved socks?  Accept my inner pokiness and just knit socks anyway I suppose.  It’s always winter somewhere.  A pair of socks finished in days is just as useful and lovely as a pair finished in months.  Maybe it’s just a bit like life – it’s all about finding ways to enjoy the ride.

Our trip route for Day 6

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Image courtesty of KayakSuccor (aka R. Darling)

Our last day.  Though I desperately wanted (needed) a shower and I was ready to go home, there’s always that small desire to stay on vacation and run away from everything else in the “real” world.  I knew that when we got home, there’d be chores to do, gear to clean, and Father’s Day preparations, and I really wasn’t very keen on rushing back to that.  We had some paddling to do first!

After a little breakfast we got our gear on and the kayaks in the water with the plan to discover more of Sucia’s wonders.  As we started out of Fossil Bay, the weather was much nicer than what we’d encountered for most of the trip, but the wind was picking up a little as we reached less protected water.  I’m not a hugely experienced paddler so this made me a little nervous, but I tried to swallow my uneasiness and follow R. Darling’s lead.  From Fossil Bay, we paddled across the mouth of Snoring Bay (love that name), peeked around Johnson Pt. and then headed towards Echo Bay, passing the Finger Islands on the way.  There were seals, beautiful wooded islands, eagles, and astonishing cliff faces to draw our eyes up and away from the choppy water.

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Doesn’t that last photo look like a skull?  Creepy!  After reaching Echo Bay, we pulled the kayaks ashore and had a little break.  A granola bar and plain old water never tasted so good!  The sun was getting warmer despite the wind still blowing a bit, and it had turned into a really lovely morning.  Sucia Island has several spots where very small spits of land separate one side of the island from the other.  We had happened to land very near one of these narrow spots separating Echo Bay on one side and Shallow Bay on the other.  Taking a look at Shallow Bay, we saw that the water was nearly glassy calm on that side and decided it was feasible to carry our kayaks over land to the other bay.  I happened to be all for calmer waters. 

From Shallow Bay we paddled on down towards Little Sucia Island where we caught sight of a very regal bald eagle perched in a tree.  He seemed very unconcerned as we floated on by down below him snapping photos as he sat there.  It was wonderful to be able to get so close to such a majestic creature. 

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After seeing our share of Mr. Eagle, we paddled across Fox Cove (this was where we’d watched the sunset the night before) and headed out around Ev Henry Pt. and Wiggins Head on our way back into Fossil Bay.  It was a good 3 hours or so of paddling and we were starved!  While FIL got us under way for the trip back home, we heated up spaghetti from the night before and chowed down.  Then, complete with hot chocolate, we headed up to the flybridge for the rest of the trip home. 

Goodbye Sucia!
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So all in all, it was a fantastic trip, even if I didn’t get as much knitting done as I’d hoped ;)  Thanks for keeping me company as I recounted my memories and shared my photos.  It was fun to look back on everything with all of you.  We may not have found Sas and snapped that million dollar photo, but we definitely made million dollar memories.  I don’t think I’m quite done with my Sas dream though.  R. Darling and I decided that there are plenty of hairy Sasquatch-looking guys living around here.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if we bombarded Field & Stream with photos of hairy dudes?   There’s got to be a prize for Honorable Mention or something.  A girl can dream.

Hope you all had a Happy 4th of July!

Our trip route for Day 5

(click for larger image)
Image courtesty of KayakSuccor (aka R. Darling)

This morning dawned cold and grey (again) as we prepared to leave Ganges and return to the U.S.  By law, you are required to check into US Customs as soon as possible after entering our waters, or you may suffer up to a $10,000 fine.  Yikes!  So you can bet our first stop was Roche Harbor since none of us happened to have that kind of cash just sitting around.  And anyway, if I did, I sure as heck wouldn’t be spending it on customs fines!  Fine customs, maybe.

We reached Roche Harbor (on the northwest corner of San Juan Island) after about an hour of travel and tied up to the Customs dock to await clearance.  My FIL took all our paperwork up to the booth while we waited on board the boat and then came back with a Customs Agent in tow.  The agent asked us if we purchased anything in Canada and when we answered, “Some soap,” I think my FIL almost had a mini-stroke right there on the dock.  “And a bottle of wine,” he quickly interjected as we were laughing with the Customs Agent about the importance of being clean (not like we’d know anything about it, having only had one shower in 5 days).  “Oh right.  And some wine,” we said.  Turns out, FIL had told the Customs Agent about the wine, but didn’t know about the soap, so when our stories didn’t match up he got a little nervous.  ’Cause you know, R. Darling and me, we look like some pretty shifty characters.  But luckily the Customs Agent didn’t think so and we were free to go.  I’m sure if he’d decided to detain us though, we could have easily overpowered him with our collective stink and gotten away.

As we approached the fuel dock, not a soul was in sight except for Sarge, The Fuel Dog (R. Darling gets credit for that one), who greeted us rather nonchalantly and then via some secrety doggie signal, alerted his human peeps to our need for fuel.  While FIL fueled the boat, we snapped some photos and walked up to the historic grocery building for some refueling ourselves.

Sarge The Fuel Dog
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I loved this adorable white church
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Hotel de Haro
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The historic grocery building
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And I do believe I mentioned in a previous post that I’m about as mature as an 8 year old and anything to do with poo, or funny names for its disposal is guaranteed to make me laugh.  So for all you fellow 8 year olds, here’s a funny shot of something I saw cruising around in Roche Harbor:

Gotta love that tagline!
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With customs and fuel out of the way, our next stop was Sucia Island.  I decided to ride out the trip in the cabin again because it was just too cold on the flybridge with the boys.  How cold you ask?  Well, when we were in Roche Harbor a local newspaper headline caught our eye:  “Colder Than Siberia!”  It was a sad day to read that headline.  How often is it 61 degrees in Siberia vs. 59 degrees in Seattle?  Brrr…..

By the time we arrived at Fossil Bay on Sucia Island it was starting to warm just slightly.  We tied up to the dock and decided it would be fun to have a look around the island.  It’s a large, hospitable island and I could envision people settling here at the turn of the century.  We did read at some of the vantage points that there had been sandstone mining, homesteading and logging here at various points in time.  In fact, we saw quite a few massive stumps that bore the signs of early logging techniques.  What struck me most was the sheer number of eagles populating the island.  I remember a time, not that many years ago really, when seeing an eagle was a rare and wondrous occasion.  Here, their presence was constant, from massive wingspans soaring across the horizon, to whistling cries in the distance.  I was sorely tempted to take a feather home with me, but it’s illegal for someone non-native to possess one here in the U.S.  Though I am of native descent, I don’t have the proper paperwork to prove it and figured I could do without a fine and a black mark on my record, so I refrained.  But we did take a photo for posterity.  I have to thank FIL for this one as it was his idea to hold them so artistically against the wild roses.

We saw so many other lovely things on our walk around this charming island.  Sucia was, by far, one of the most enchanting places we visited during our trip.

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But I have saved the best for last!  After our walk, we relaxed at the boat a bit while FIL socialized with the newcomers.  The Park Ranger had arrived and was chatting with him when we noticed something moving around in the water.  Since I love the creatures and all, I had to get closer to investigate and R. Darling busted out the “good” camera just in case.  Swimming around the boats was a river otter.  He appeared unfazed by all us humans hanging out watching him, and seemed very intent on having himself some lunch.  We watched him, fascinated, for quite a while as he swam around catching fish (at one point swimming under the dock beneath my feet and then surfacing so I could hear his breath under my toes) and later, as he climbed onshore to roll in some mysterious ecstasy on a muddy patch of land.  It was really amazing to see one so up close and personal like that.  Sooooo cuuuuuute was all I could say the rest of the day.

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After a nice dinner, we ended our day the way any good day in the islands should end:  with an island sunset…..

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