Fiber-Friends and Seattle

Woolnwords and Woolnski at our annual knit & fiber retreat!

In June my dear fiber-friend from Unalakleet and I met up in Seattle for a fiber visit.   Since "woolnwords" has moved on from UNK (as it is locally known up north) we decided we would meet up every year some place to knit, explore yarn shops and 'fiber related things."  I felt a bit like the Country Mouse (from Alaska/Montana) visiting the City Mouse (who grow up outside of Seattle and now lives in eastern Washington).  The trip was wonderful!

City Mouse completely comfortable with city travel! I must say traveling by ferry is still one of my all time favorite ways to travel.

Leaving Seattle behind as we head out to Bainbridge Island.

One of the first places we were off to was a nice outside cafe.  This is one of those small pleasures one craves when you live in a rural, remote, Alaskan village.  We had to go do this together as we were never able to treat ourselves to this type of a place in UNK.

Do you see those orange boxes on the shelf in the distances?  You may ask what is the big deal about those boxes?  Those boxes are one of the many little things that makes our lives in the far north wonderful!  Once a week in UNK we receive  fresh box of produce from Full Circle Farms.  Here in the Seattle area they also make delivers.   I can not tell you how wonderful it has been having fresh organic produce delivered to us in the village each week for over 5 years.  Nor can I tell you enough how wonderful it is to work with Full Circle Farms!   They are extremely professional and stand by their produces' quality. 

Once coffee and baked goods were out of the way we were off to explore a wonderful Bainbridge Island yarn shop.  The Churchmouse Yarns & Teas.   Churchmouse is a wonderful shop full or colorful yarns and knowledgeable staff.  They also have a classic collection or teas and accessories.

I am always looking for a yarn that represents the place I am visiting.  Seattle and Bainbridge were full of flowers blooming their summer wardrobe. I purchased this pattern and yarn below.  One has to agree the linen stitch has a wonderful way of showing off color with texture.  This scarf is a nice knit even if one has to cast-on 450 stitches!  Yes 450 stitches!  I thought OMG no way!  Casting on went smoothly and placing stitch markers every 50 stitches makes this process a breeze.

The yarn I am using is Koigu.  I have never knitted with this yarn before but I am enjoying the wonderful rich color ways I picked.  I truly feel like I am knitting a garden full of blossoms.

A few little tricks I am using to help keep the yarns organized are:

1. zip lock bags for the three different color ways

2. each bag is labeled with A, B, C to follow the pattern row labeling

3.  the rows are on each bag as there is a six row repeat

Progress is being made on this scarf:

Knitting away on the scarf on a recent forest service cabin camping, hiking, mountain bike trip, with knitting in between all the activity.

 The Next stop on our trip was to the Nordic Heritage Museum.  The reason for the visit was to see all things Nordic.  We have wanted to visit the museum for years to see their knitted items.  My words of advice if you are most interested in fiber and needle work is to start at the top of the museum.  The top floor has a dedicated room to each Nordic country.

 All photos were taken without flash.  Below is the classic Norwegian National dress and Setesdal sweater. Not only are we fans of this style of sweater but we both love the stitching/embroidery that is incorporated in these sweaters.

Woolnwords working on her Setesdal style sweater on the Bainbridge Island Ferry.  She always uses EZ's percentage system plus she is picking her own color work motifs from a variety of sources.

What the heck a table---I am hoping to have my FIL build us a dinning room table along these lines.

Biking and Paddle Boarding

We had a great day yesterday!  We all need to get out and enjoy what Montana has to offer during the summer.  We are right on the edge of a heat wave for Montana and luckily for us we have not gotten the higher temperatures that others have been recording.

Single track riding in the green.

Sadie cooling off as she always does-she will just lay right down in the stream and chill for a bit.

Christian cooling off as well after he fully submerged himself in the creek.

Sadie in her Ruffwear vest and I enjoying a hot afternoon on the river cooling off.

Tally sporting her wonderful Ruffwear life vest.  This great fitting vest has a handle which makes  it easy to get her onto the Versa board.

Heading home at the end of a great day outside in the sun!

Cooling off with Versa Boards and Dogs in Whitefish River

Recently we purchased used Versa Boards from my brother in law.  These boards are designed for fishing.  We love them as they are stable and can be used both while standing or sitting.  Plus, they have these wonderful seats we can use which raise us up a bit off the boards.  Right now our dogs and us are getting used to paddling the boards.  These boards are made out of very tough plastic which stands up well to the dogs claws.  The dogs are learning how to get on and off easily or at least in theory.  We were out on Whitefish River yesterday and we had a BLAST!

Sadie loves to just swim and spends most of her time in the river.  Tally is in and out of the river and goes from one board to the next non-stop in between chasing sticks!  They are using Ruffwear Life Jackets.  I highly recommend a life jacket for your dog(s)!  They can swim slowly in they want and don't need to be concerned about staying a float.  Like Sadie she just paddled away swimming here and there checking out the ducks.

Tally riding, and Sadie swimming away.

Whitefish River Sadie hitching a ride.

Sadie swimming along at her own relaxed pace due to her life jacket.

Cross-Country Ski Biathlon

During the winter months in Alaska, we coach a cross-country ski biathlon team.  Biathlon is a wonderful sport and the kids enjoy the challenge of marksmanship and skiing.  This wonderful promo video was just posted for the US Biathlon Team.  

If you are interested in finding out more about click here:  US Biathlon

90 Degrees Bike Ride

In the summer amongst all the great summer time activities I love biking.  I usually ride twice a day for the most part.  An early morning road bike ride on my very old Miyata 1000 touring bike.  

 

I cruise around Whitefish, Montana on the trail system and the back roads.  This ride is to get the blood pumping and to enjoy the greenery, mountains and this place I love.  As you can see this is not a serious road bike ride.  I have changed out my handle bars from drops to upright, tossed out the old toe clips and straps for a nice platform pedals.  I run errands with my panniers and my wonderful new handle bar bag by detours.


This bike ride is not about air temperature but rather about turns.  One of the areas I enjoy to ride around is farm land and true to farm land you have a lot of 90 degree turns.  Each turn one gets to view another part of the valley and the mountains.

Here is a smattering of 90 degree turn photos:

You might say why is this all a big deal the other 10 months of the year this is my world:

Early season skiing Oct. 2012 we call this "Tundra Cruising." 

Dec 2012 short days of daylight about 4.5 hours.

Checking drifts so we can groom once the wind stops blowing.

Groomer working hard.

Oh Sadie!

Groomer for nordic trails.

My love classic skiing.

Beach Unalakleet, Alaska April 2013.

May 2013

May 2013

As much as I love winter and skiing I do enjoy the green world too!

Drop Shoulder Cardigan Sweater is DONE!

A few of the things I learned about knitting is not to rush a project and enjoy the process.  Knitting will happen when it wants to happen and get done when it is time to be done not before.  I love to knit and knitting has taught me patiences.  This sweater I love and can not wait (well actually I can wait a bit) to wear it on a fall day.

My theme of "mixed berries" worked!  Read below about the name of this sweater.

Wool Gathering Sweater #68 with a few of my own design elements added.  Thanks to EZ percentage system it fits like a glove.

De-Skunking Our Dogs

It happens whether you like it or not if you own dogs, and spend time outside they are bound to run into a skunk!  At which point you, the owner, becomes an expert on de-skunking his/her pet.  There is tomato juice and for some this seems to work.  I find it too messy and when your dog shakes it looks like you and your dog are in a blood bath.  Of course there is the dish soap, baking soda, and peroxide combo.  This seemed to work well on Tally, and helped Sadie.  Sadie was definitely closest to the skunk's butt and had the smelliest  encounter.

We were mountain biking yesterday up in the Haskill Basin area that we really enjoy.   There was a lot of fresh bear scat. We were pretty sure we would run into a bear.

Oh yum a favorite treat in Montana fresh bear scat!

No it was the small furry black and white beast that caused us to spend the evening trying to de-skunk dogs for a few hours.

Dogs rolling in grass trying to get rid of that nasty smell.

We came to one of the creeks the dogs love to swim in and tried a mud/gravel bath hoping to break up some of the oder.

My poor Sadie got the worse!

This site was helpful in explaining what are the chemicals that make up skunk spray.  My husband teaches chemistry and after some of the treatments we found helped but not a  100%.  He then researched a bit to find out what actually breaks down thiols that makes up skunk spray.  It appears clorox is something that breaks down the thiols.  We sprayed this on to a damp paper towel and then rubbed it on the stinky spots.  This seems to have helped the most.  We are not spraying it directly onto our dog at all.  Sadie still smells but not nearly as bad.  Both dogs are outside today de-fuming.

If anyone knows of anythings that really get rid of the thiols in skunk spray please share!

UPDATED:

I have learned a few more things about the dread skunks spray over the last day and a half.

This is the only site that states you may have to wash your dog 3-5 times to get rid of the smell. 

Thursday night our dogs had the skunk encounter and on Friday they were still smelly but we could live with them.  They spent the day outside de-gassing.  I did use clorox wipes on the very smelly parts and that helped hide the oder for a bit.  Finall,y I tried cooking oil.  I put this on a paper towel and rubbed into the areas that had the strongest oder.  The thought here was that the oil would help to pull the skunk oil out of the dogs coats.  They both smelled like popcorn which is far better than skunk.  The smelly area seemed to smell less.  Today is Saturday and there is a huge improvement in their oder!