So much knitting, so few words...

While I am still pretty much feeling crappy and the part of my brain that does things like write and create verbal and written constructs has taken a prolonged A(bsence)WOL, about the only things I am up to doing are knitting and listening to audiobooks.

And so, apart from a whirlwind (and snowy) trip to Tulelake (thank you, Jim, Karen, Ginger and Sidney!!) to roust some of the winter cobwebs and look at hawks, eagles, owls, arctic birds, and lots and lots of icy snowy fields, I've been spending most of my time knitting and listening.

Here are a few photos to catch you up...


Some February 2008 photos taken around Tulelake and the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge, and the roads north of the refuge:

Iced canals



Nearing sunset...


This is the most snow we have seen in the three winters we have been going to Tulelake...


Tundra swans flying over the yard as we were getting packed up to come home...


Shot through the windshield heading southwest on Highway 97....


What the heck are these plants? I have several - very alien looking...*


A lone female bufflehead...



Rangers estimated that there were over 400,000 swans wintering in the Tulelake and Lower Klamath refuges this year. I think we saw almost all of them, the following being only a small slice of the massive flocks...


A couple of Canada geese who found one of the few snow-free areas to forage...


Here there be eagles. We saw ~60 of them roosting in a line of trees bordering one of the exit roads out of Lower Klamath...



Ah, the knitting stuff! A pair of black armwarmers (KnitPicks' Sierra, in 'Coal') I knit up in a cable-and-broken-rib pattern; I knit this both at the same time on 2 circular needles):


Because it's hard to see the detail, I photographed them using the Document setting on my camera - it washed out the color, and makes it easier to see what's going on.


Here's Mike in the red cabled Mondial Gold scarf I finished, like the armwarmers, just in time for the trip:



This was Ginger's first road trip. She handled it very well. Okay, so being cabled to the back helped restrict her range, but she she still managed to snuggle with her mom:



While Sidney didn't have the back seat all to himself this time, he really didn't suffer as much as the look on his face here:


I finished another pair of Socks for Soldiers, this time using on of the new Army-approved colors, KnitPicks Swish DK, in Moss:


One of the ways to make sure our sock legs will fit the generally muscular military calves is to slip the socks over a 2 litre bottle. I happened to have a bottle on hand, so:


I really do buy yarn from other places, but I sure to love KnitPicks! The following is the cuff to their Girl's Best Friend Anklet sock pattern which for some reason caught my eye and made my fingers itch to knit. The decorative cuff was fun to knit, so I've already ordered yarn in a different color to make another pair. I hope the eventual recipients enjoy wearing them as much as I enjoy making them!


And, that's it for now. See? Knitting, not so much the words...

* My friend Karen (the brain and heart behind the SonomaBlanket Project I've previously written about) identified these alien stalks as great mullein (Verbascum thapsus), and kindly pointed me towards a couple of sources, AltNature and Wikipedia. I have no recollection of plants like these lining some of the canals from when I was up in Tulelake during the summers of 1990 and 1991, but I was more focused on birds at that point, that and trying to stay out of the stinging nettle that continues to maintain a strong presence up there. Thanks, Karen!

Sunrise, sunset...

Of the two, I think my favorite is sunset. That could be because I've lived most of my life on the near the western edge of the continent, resulting in sunrises that filter over rooftops, often diffused through a marine layer. Occasionally I am somewhere more interesting for sunrise, such as Tulelake in February 2007, where Karen, Jim, Sidney & I went to see the bald eagles.

Unfortunately, the eagles partied too long and hard the night before and so spent the night in Dorris, California instead of flying back to their usual nighttime secluded roost in Oregon. So, there we were before dawn, waiting for the dozens of bald and golden eagles to fly out to their morning hunting grounds...only to see just a couple of goldens. But, while waiting, I did get some dawn shots:

The faithful assemble in the dark:



We look south across the valley the eagles would normally fly over to get to their feeding grounds in Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuge...



And look vainly once again to the north, to the hills over which they were supposed to fly...



Once it got light enough to actually see Karen all bundled up in her PORAC blanket, I knew it was time for us to go load up on more caffeine and try to find some birds. Did I forget to mention it was about 20-25F that morning?



As we headed east along Klamath Falls-Malin Highway, then south on 39/139 to go back to Tulelake, it grew quite overcast and colder, and snowed before we made it across to 39:



I do take more shots of the sky during the day (see my profile photo, for example) and at sunset. The next two are the views from my front walkway:





These next two are from a friend's driveway, about 8 PM last Saturday. She moved to a mobile home park a year ago July, and has been too ill to get out of her home to see the spectacular sunsets taking place across the street from her. I happened to have my camera that night, and was able to take these photos:





It saddens me that this beautiful, restful scene is so close, yet for her, so far away...