In the dark of the night

this moved into our driveway. I am sure it is giving my neighbors fits of curiosity, but I am also pretty sure they are much to polite Mid-Westerners to ask. (Have you ever felt that phrase is a misnomer, as I have? I live in neither the mid or the west, and certainly not the Mid-West. I digress, once again.) It "belongs" to my friend Shivery Knits and her husband. They have a bit of lag time between closing on their "old" and "new" house. Our driveway/neighborhood is a great place to put a truck for a few days for safe keeping. It did require a tiny bit of rearranging the driveway, but we are more than happy to help out. They aren't moving too far in the big picture of things. I will also have a good reason to go on a road trip to visit when she isn't busy studying.
Apparently the phrase "Build it and they will come" can be paraphrased to "Fill it and they will come." I hadn't seen any
Orioles around yet, though I knew they should have been here. The other day I filled their bowl with some grape jelly and within a couple of hours we had several.
I am now off to meet a late train (knitting in tow, of course!).

Things I have been distracted with lately

Well, I am sure you can guess DTE is at the top of that list! I have also been distracted with knitting on the baby blanket, knitting on a sock, DTE, sourdough pancakes, making bread, talking to Hubband at weird times of the day via Skype (he is 15 hours ahead of me), DTE, an almost cat/still kitten creature, two dogs, weeding a bit of a couple of garden patches, starting a hat, DTE, and such things. (It isn't her fault at all, it is all mine.)
The last time it has been really warm enough to knit outside was Thursday, so I am glad I took the chance while I could. It was OK for the weeding on Saturday, but not really very warm or sunny. It was also supposed to rain that afternoon but it never did. It is finally raining today, which is just as well. It is supposed to get up into the 70's to 80's this weekend; I am looking forward to that since so far the weather hasn't really been very motivating towards the whole garden thing and it seems to be getting late to me for getting stuff into the dirt.
Tomorrow I am off to get my next main distraction. Fortunately it doesn't involve as much travel as the last one.

After 474 miles

of driving today, I have one down and one to go. The other one gets home next Tuesday.

A day wherein I didn't do much

This morning our weather was (finally)warm and sunny, so I headed out on the deck first thing with my coffee and a baby blanket I am making for a friend of mine. While makeing great progress I got to see all sorts of things like this

(Simon loves being on the deck)

 

and this (I didn't manage to catch a picture of the Red-Tails headed into those trees, but that is where they live),



and this (and I am sure you know by now that these all look better when you click on them).

 

I also had to be careful not to rock onto Sadie. She and Simon were pretty much interchangeable in their positions you see here throughout our session on the deck.
The blanket really spent a lot more time in my lap, growing, than it did on the back of the chair. (Yep, I headed right out in my pajamas and stayed out there for about two hours, stopping only to refill my coffee cup. If Hubband had been home, I am sure he would have done that for me. He is a super nice guy like that.)
I finally tore myself away from all that fun to run a couple of errands. I would have rather stayed home on the deck, but needed to go pay property taxes, get a book at the library, and do some drop off/pick up of packages at the post office. I also stopped in at the grocery store since somehow I was down to only having about two cups of flour in the house. Seriously, how did that happen? That is pretty much all out as far as I am concerned. While I was there, I found this new (at least to me) cool product. It really doesn't have any butter in it, it is just pure maple syrup that has been creamed. Have you ever had molded maple sugar candy (often in the shape of a maple leaf)? Do you remember how the outside is kind of crunchy, but the inside is all smooth and creamy? That smooth and creamy is what this stuff is like. Way yummy! Good thing I have someone coming home tomorrow who likes pancakes; guess I had better get the sourdough out of the fridge to be all ready for Saturday's breakfast.

 

After getting the groceries put away and a sink of dishes done, my sock finally got to spend some quality time with "The Chair" this evening.

Umm, he forgot?

OK,how does someone forget something like this? Though it might explain why he didn't have the proper "authority" and it wasn't registered.

Random things from my trip to Idaho

This is my dad's cat; he is blind in one eye and his name is "Cat." My younger sister found him on the roadside in a snowstorm and figured our dad needed company at his house on a full time basis. (She was right.)

 

This is my sister's dog, Murphy. He is an absolute sweetheart and if I could have brought him home with me, I might have seriously considered it. (Not that my sister would part with him after all these years.)

 

My dad and younger sister the evening the three of us went out to dinner.

 

Now for several pictures of the Teton Mountain Range

 

A slightly different view

 

More Tetons (Please note that each of these are different links to information about the range and the area.)

 

The Grand

 

A couple of things from our drive into the park.

Still alive

All seven of you out there that read this blog are probably thinking I have fallen off the face of the earth. I promise I haven't. I had somewhat limited access to Internet connection while I was in Idaho and limited time in SLC. Yeah, I know, I have been home since Saturday night and you'd think I could have told you more about my trip by now, but no such luck. Unfortunately, you lost out to the thirty-six hours I got to have with Hubband before he got on a plane for Australia for sixteen days.

Hopefully, you will get a post (or a couple) before I head north this week and then east next week to retrieve daughters from college. That is if I don't get distracted by catching up from being gone, knitting, and snuggling a kitten who seems to have missed me. Oh, and springtime in my garden. I am sure we all know by now that I will be distracted for a bit after they get home. I promise I have several different posts all composed in my head, just waiting to get out.

Some of what I have been up to

Sunday my dad and I decided to go on an adventure. We went to the Carnegie building of my youth, which now seems to be a TARDIS (it may not look like a Police Call Box, but it is seriously larger on the inside than it looks from the outside), and went back in time to see this. Unfortunately, because cameras didn't exist then, I can't show you any pictures of what all we saw. (You could click on the link to get more information though, if you so desire.)

 

We also went past the “new library” so I could take a picture of one of my favorite literary boys and his two dogs. I never got to meet Wilson Rawls myself, but Hubband has stories about school field trips to meet and hear him talk about his work. We sometimes worry about our Simon or Sadie missing the other one as much as Old Dan missed Little Ann did when the time comes. Our two have been together pretty much their whole lives just like those two had (since Simon was six months old and Sadie was about eight weeks). I guess only time will tell.

 

On the knitting front I have finished my Noro Scarf, have finished a gift project, made some progress on another gift project, made a dish cloth for my dear friend, and used my dad's washer to felt a gift I had finished knitting a while back.
Yesterday we went to visit the mountains, and today we went to visit the river of my youth (for the second time since I got here), but those reports/pictures will need to wait for another day!

In Idaho

I arrived safely to my airplane destination and then we traveled safely by car to our finial destination. There are mountains here! I am so happy they haven't left just because I did! I am hoping that we might be able to take a day trip to the Tetons, my most absolute favorite mountains of all the ones in my life. I promise to give you pictures as soon as I can.
Hubband is home holding down the fort and keeping the dogs and Oribel company. Or to keep them fed, depending on who you ask.

On my way

I am on my way to Idaho.... Really, right now.