Judi you asked about camp kitchens..

 

Coffee Shop ^

 

Fast Foods ^

 

Washing Up, Cold food storage, as well as range top. ^

We will lose the use of the stove and washing up facilities for awhile, maybe two weeks? So it will be off to the Bounder for washing up.

Having cooked over a campfire or on a camp stove for a long period of time when we were young, this is all very exciting! And it's just the two of us and the dog. Oh, there's the BBQ outside. It's been doing some duty. I think early summer or late spring is the primo time to remodel a kitchen.

Indroducing Baby Jay to New Food!

 

 

 

 

Next some pictures of the Jays. They were entertaining us with their introduction to corn on the cob yesterday. DH got a few snaps. They follow. First is, "What's this?" Then, "Let's have a closer look." Then the true discovery, An actual taste of delicious corn.... It's always fun when a baby gets a taste of a new food.

Lunasa in my ears, which is very happy, but the paint is drying and I have a headache from it. It's the primer and it always is the worst.

The kitchen got primed today. Cabinets next week and then, in a few, the countertop and some tiles all the way to the ceiling. This is going fast. I'm almost cringing waiting for the thing to start train wrecking. I've heard so many horror tales about kitchen remodels causing divorce among the elderly. heehee..

The IPod classic clothing industry has struck my eye...

This from Knitpicks.com would have the competition sewn up if only it was not a FELTED ipod nano cozy. I'm not sure I can face trying to felt anything again so soon after the monster red bag. Unless, that is, the system of using the nobby tire of a dirt bike, a camping shower bag of water heated to near boiling in a solar cooker, and the bravery of a rider willing to listen to the thump thump thump of the bag circling his front tire at 50 miles and hour is perfected.

I could enlist a neighbor to try this, but what if he is scarred for life by the experience? I can't ride a dirt bike or I would borrow his and give this a try. I read about it in the Backcountry Guide to Living With Bubbas and Their Bikes. One of the Mammas was a felting knitter. She claims it works.

Almost all gone.. Tomorrow the base coat

 

Next week the new cabinets. This is the only way to remodel a kitchen when you are well past your prime. We just push things around and out of the way, and this beautiful other thing happens. It's so easy! Bless the sorcerers who are doing this magic in this particular kitchen. May they always have work and happy hearts.

Ok, I'm punch.. I am going to go to bed and sleep til NOON!!!

aloha, bonna notte, buenos noches!

Guardian of the Cape Honeysuckle

 

Little Brave Bird, a Costa's Hummingbird just getting his breeding feathers in. I'll catch him again in the full glory of his breeding plumage. He guards our garden from all - just about anything with wings. The Jays leave him alone if they know what's good for them. He is so quick that he can catch a fly from a sitting twig start. He's a champion!

Morayas are blooming

 

They look like butterflies, almost, dancing on the end of a stem. Beautiful flowers.

Editted Version: Newest Header Update, the Mouse (tragedy) and Piano Stars Align

I'm very sorry and very tired, too. I had to edit this, several times actually, as it was filled with stupidity, gross grammar and probably still has some but at least it's readable! I need more sleep! Someone,anyone, please put me back in my cage!!

I was talking to one of the twin DDs this evening, and she asked me where the photo was taken. It's the mouth (delta) of the Klammath River, in Northern California. The picture was taken in late October on a misty afternoon. What a gorgeous place. There were Native American fishermen, way down at the bottom of the cliffs, catching salmon in their traditional fishing traps. Talk about stepping back in time! Lovely feeling.

Update on Baby Mouse: He rests with his ancestors. Yesterday morning, very early, I took Jazz out for a P run in the garden, and one of the adult scrub jays was on the hill, pounding what looked like a small lizard onto a big root. I said to him, "What do you have there?". He gave me a look that said, "What ever you may calls it, Human, I calls it Breakfast for the triplets." So, I stepped a little closer. That's when I saw that what was flipping around on one end of a now decidedly FURRY mass was not a reptilian tail, but a rodent tail, and the little fella it was connected to was beyond help. So, snails I have no real pity for but a little mouse trying to make it without Mama, I had sadness for. 'Tis that wheel of life. It's not really very particular about what it runs over.

Sock update: the pair is approx 65% finished, just the foot and the toe to go. I spare you yet another look at a red speckled sock that goes nearly to the knee. Once is enough, until they are both done.

The Piano has found a benefactor and will be refurbished and restrung, and then it will be put into the hands of a student. The man who came to pick it up is amazing. His system for getting a piano into the back of a pick up should be patented! Honestly, it's amazing. He usually does it all by himself, though DH did help him steady it. It was dark when he got here, and they had it loaded in probably 10 minutes. Fulcrums and balancing. Almost like a ballet, too. A thing of beauty.

While I was telling my other twin DD about how this piano was going to a new life instead of into the land fill, she related her own tale of free piano garnering. She found a piano on free cycle, got together a man with a van, A very important friend to have is a man with a van, and two other able bodies fellas. They all went to get the piano, A Wurlitzer Console piano, and install it in her house. I think all of this is guided by the stars, frankly. She was so upset that she couldn't have our piano and we had long discussions about the feasibility of shipping, hauling or otherwise dragging it North tied to the top of the Jeep! We all think this is a "Touched by Angels" set of events!

I am very mellow and happy tonight to know that the girls who can play the instrument now have one. Three of them can play. It should be fun for them play the Baudy songs- well BoogieWoogie- , the old English bar songs, and Old Timey music which they love. They can get together with their musical friends and have ... well, maybe no hoedowns, but an otherwise a very good time. The stars where in the right places for once. Yay!

Pictures of the Scrub jays stealing the tortoises corn on the cob are on the camera but tomorrow we have to move a china chest. Early! Nighty night!

Other side

 

This is a view, from the dining room side, of the roughed in phase of the archway. The guys are doing beautiful mud work.

Hey, Presto!

 

 

 

 

From bare wall to archway. This is such a beautiful passage and just what I've envisioned for years and years. It matches the arch that will be on the top cabinet doors. We are on our way!

Rockhounding 1920's Style

 

This is the way to go! This photo is from a pamphlet issued about the Columbia Basin Volcanic History and the Geology of the Region. I forgot to say that I'd read it in the side bar. hmmm.. It was fabulously interesting but this was by far the best human interest picture.

Lunasa and a tin of weeds

 

Cat mint, S sent it to me from her garden where it grows wild. She dried it and sent it back in our candy exchange modules.. tins... Anyway, I have seven lucky little kitties (and one little red doggie who seems to like the stuff) lined up for felted mice. Nearly all the sock yarn leftover can go into these toys.

Speaking of mice, we saw a baby field mouse getting seeds in the dried grassy area in the sun. If he is still there tomorrow morning, I'll get his picture. Tiny wildlife, outside, as Sandy says, is fine.

I wanted to hold this little fellow but the first thing they do is give you a little nip and then they pee on you. You have to be tough to hold on to a determined baby mouse.

As a teenager, I had a pet field mouse for three years, and I loved little Speck about as much as you would love any guadrapedal pet of larger size. He was so completely tame that he would come to me if he got out. Bonded is what they now call it. Mother was pleased that I hadn't bonded with the Chuckwallas. We gave those to the University.

I'm sure that UCR returned the wallas to their little stretch of desert in the Chocolate Mountains. This was well before the military had made the Chocolate Mountains into an unpenitrable mine field. I still feel sad when I think of those mountains and their beauty being ruined. Well, best not dwell on the ruining of a place of sanctity, eh? Next thing, you will want to try to do something about it, and well, we all know there is nothing short of insurgency that will change all of this. We are in the grip of Atlantians( you know, the sunken continent) for bad or for worse, I fear.

Button Vogue Felted cozy

 

It happens to be on a shorter pot, but it will fit wonderfully well on a stadler brown betty. There's just not one available atm. So it has a little cuff. S made it for me at Christmas and then has been felting it ever since. Felting is less an art than a chance to show off determination and an iron will in the face of of recalcitrant fibers.

I love this tea cozy. DH thought he wanted it for a hat. I told him to knit his own.

Knitting Content, do not faint, please!

 

This is Susan Bates booklet from the 80s, and the sweaters are truly luscious. The even better news is that the stash also holds the Patons yarn to make it! I think it's been posted before but I'll dig it out for more show and tell. I love these 80's styles. There are at least four other sweaters in this book that will be wonderful to knit and to wear.

Also, both socks have been finished and the second sock cast on. Unless you really want to see yet another picture of the same socks, I will wait until all four socks are finished and the model for the boot socks stands still long enough for a good picture. At present he is emptying out the kitchen for the tear out, nine days away, as far as we know.

Rain!

 

Everyone got a little face wash, including this tiny flower on the lemon scented geranium. These flowers are good in salads, too. Yum!

I am listening to one of the new albums, Lunasa... thank you S

Go To Sleep!

 

What a day.. Mother or Dad-because you can't tell which- is getting a well deserved break in triplet feeding. Later I did go out to see a fuss being made, and it was the calico cat. I did gently shoo her away.

This is the same cat that our ex-neighbor couldn't catch, and told me about. Well, now she has a little collar and looks healthy and happy. I've not seen the other cat lately but I'm sure she is fine because last time I saw her, she was very relaxed and well fed, sleeping in the sun on our shade patio cloth.

Back Yard Birds in Spring

 

 

 

 

This is the way the story goes;

Mother bird: "Ah! A moment to myself! I can close my eyes and eat this worm in peace!"

Two brats on the wall: "Look, Bro, I think Mom's got a worm!"

One brat flies down off wall: "Gimme Gimme, Ma! I'm the baby, see my big pink mouth?"

The parental scrub jays have been having an incredibly busy spring, raising three youngsters and getting enough to eat themselves. There is not a single bug left in my garden, not a snail, either. They have even eaten the beneficial hoverflies!

The next post is Mother or Dad, can't tell which, resting in the late afternoon shade.

Delicate Night Blooming Cactus

 

She tempts the moths in with the scent. The whole pot had seven blossoms and is a hybrid of the white and dark pink. I love the way plants pointed the way to genetics. Not Eugenics mind you, that takes evil minds working in dark and sinister ways.

I like Nature's way, with a moth or a bee transfering pollen from the pink plants to the white ones, and changing them. All gentle, and at a pace with the natural rythm of life. Enjoy the posies.

She's Leaving Home, Bye Bye

 

My main prop and favorite musical instrument is being sold. We just don't have room for it anymore and no one plays it anymore. We've had it for 30 years but all good things must come to an end. The kitchen gets started in about a week and we really are going to be working like dogs to get everything out of it, into boxes and stuffed somewhere, anywhere!

Today was silversmithing class and it was a lot of fun. I put my feet up and drew designs for a cabachon necklace and just gazed out at the big trees in the park, completely at Peace. Being there is more relaxing than knitting as long as someone doesn't start a kiln with PMC in it. I don't care what they say, breathing those fumes could render you unconscious. We rushed to open the door and turn on the exhaust fan, something that's really always supposed to be running because of the pickle pot and the torches. Whoot! Personal Highs in the low Stratispherics! The backflash to the fun of all this drama is that someone with a pickup truck load of "good rocks" showed up to sell them to us. I have now got four chunks of serpentine to carve with. I suppose I'll have to give some to DH, darn it. Shhh! don't tell him I'm being selfish here.

We are getting hickory wood cabinetry with a luscious looking granite top on one side, butcher block on the other. I'll take pictures tomorrow of the samples and post them. I can hardly believe this is actually going to happen. Hoping that I live through it with a dust mask and goggles handy for the duration. I do know that remodeling creates a dust farm. I will never complain this. It's like waiting all your life for a pony and finally getting an Arabian!

Night night. I leave you with one more picture, a new pale pink cactus. Everything is blooming pink this year!

Study in linears

 

Something about the Linear qualities of this photo intrigued me. The tulips were a Mother's Day gift from my sister in law. I had never seen a more beautiful yellow flower.

Jasper family

 

Our friend was selling these for another friend, so I bid about a buck on them. I got them for a couple of dollars. That's Dad on the left, Mom on the right and baby Chubbins in front. They are an Imperial family, but the baby looks just a little bit non-imperial to me. What say you?

Rocks, for Fuzzarelly!

 

This is called Ice Cream and is common opal which is a poor man's opal. In other words, nearly worthless. lol. But it makes a pretty cabachon, though it's very soft. I'm going to carve some little animal, or maybe a rose out of it, when I've gotten more practice.

Man, Contempating Rock, A still life

 

DH is trying to decide whether to bid on this rock or not. He didn't. He was contemplating the already stashed rock which he possesses. Actually, I wasn't going to bid on anything either but a friend challenged me, so I came home with a little bit of stuff. Got to keep your end of the rock consortium going, ya know?