Deception Pass

On our last day in Washington, we took a road trip up to Deception Pass, which connects Whidbey Island with the mainland, at Anacortes. It's a breathtaking view from up there, and I was not brave enough to walk all the way across. It wasn't the height, it was the fact that the bridge wiggles. A lot. Especially when tractor trailers cross, which they do constantly.

It was so beautiful!

(Side Note: I got a new Kindle, the 8.9" HDX, with a keyboard, and I'm uploading and posting this from that device. It's pretty snazzy, and it's far more usable and portable than any of  my other laptops, so I might actually be able to post while on the road, which I will be next week again. But in the meantime, I'll try to get caught up on the July trip- it was an adventure!)

It's easy as 1-2-3

Time for an embroidery interlude. I had finished my two hippie shirts, and was casting around for a project to take on our trip (something with smaller pieces for portability, and still intricate enough to be fun and a challenge).

Urban Threads came through for me, as usual, with their Mendhika Alphabet.

So, a couple of days before we left, I washed some unbleached muslin, cut it into 11" x 11" squares and got to tracing (I could have used an iron-on pen, but those lines are very wide, and tracing manages the same result with less work). These pieces are well-traveled.

I'm planning to work each of the letters in 2 shades(light and dark) of the main color, and piece them together with no borders, just the muslin background. For the record, the dark outlines use an entire skein of floss.

It's going to be 5 blocks x 6 blocks. I don't know what I'll do for the spare 2 blocks, but I have plenty of time to figure it out...

July Travels Part 1

I've been gone. Didja miss me?

Well, actually, I was gone, and then I was home, and then I lost a battle with a hornet and have been in a Benadryl/antibiotic haze for 4 or 5 days. But I'm waking up now, and ready to show you all some great pics. We traveled far and wide.

We spent the first week of our vacation visiting friends and family in my home town of Snohomish, Washington. It was a sleepy little town when I moved away in 1970. It's not so sleepy now, and there isn't much to remind me of where I grew up, though we found a few bits and pieces of the old town.

The store is now an antique boutique, but I love this old tile entry way.

Okay, so not all of the changes were bad. I had the most amazing crab melt at a new seafood place downtown.

And Snohomish has its own distillery, Skip Rock- this raspberry liqueur was amazing. The Blackberry was also wonderful.

This will not be news to many, but it was hot in the PNW. Way hotter than they're used to, and a lot hotter than we like in the land of no air conditioning. So one afternoon, we ventured down to the Pilchuck River, which is where I swam as a teenager (though *swim* is a relative term- in the summer the water was ice cold snow-melt, and rarely more than 3' deep at our swimming hole- we got wet and then we slathered ourselves with baby oil and tanned. Ah, the good old days).

Given that the mountains had very little snow to melt, the river is even more shallow than usual, and not nearly as cold. But it's still beautiful.

I also did a little bit of shopping. Do you love these shoes? If you're a lady-type person, odds are that you do. If you're a man-style human, your reaction will probably be: seriously?  Those are the reactions of nearly 100% of the people who commented (and ladies would stop me on the street to ask where I got them) (Answer: Kohls, though Sketchers has a version too, sold almost everywhere). They're very comfortable, and I love them.

And no trip to Snohomish is complete without driving down to where I used to live. I spent many hours riding my bike down this bridge. It was thrilling and scary, and there was always a contest to see how far we could get before we had to pedal again. I lived at the very end of this road.

Which is very different from when I lived there. Maybe 8 or 9 years after I left, the whole area was razed for a highway, There used to be a very tall hill back there, and my house was about where those tall trees are standing now. Progress is progress (and frankly, that new highway needs more lanes now- it's very congested), but still... sniffle...

Next post: Deception Pass (maybe tomorrow, maybe next week- it depends on whether or not I wrestle with another hornet)