The O-Zone

Cats are champion at sleeping and Mishkin has made it an art form.

His tuffet is really designed for a much smaller puddy tat but he makes do. He’s especially happy when sunbeams are heating up his fur.

We had another tiny bit of snowfall yesterday but nothing to write home about. This morning it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and we have lots of moisture laden clouds heading our way this evening. Tomorrow it may be white when we get up and I’ll be able to make cinnamon rolls.

Finished with row 400 and I’m over half way finished.

And the cat is sleeping again.

Termination Dust meant a lot more when we lived in Alaska. It still is cool when it shows up even though it doesn’t seem quite so daunting as winter only lasts a few months here.

Saturday morning we drove over the pass and there was a light sprinkling of white dust flying around on the road but no actual what we would call snow. And at slightly above freezing we thought we were escaping winter driving conditions. The weather gods do not like to be mocked.

When we came back over the pass it was a different story. I never tried taking pictures with the camera out of  the windshield of our Outback before.

It had snowed at least a couple of inches while we were gone. This was the scenery heading up into the pass.

All the dead trees from the forest fires several years ago were liberally frosted and the road was “interesting.” At 33F the snow, which was still falling lightly, was sticking on part of the road and turning into water on top of ice under the tires. Gotta love stud-less winter tires!!

And this is the scenery coming down out of the pass.

The clouds broke up on top and it was pretty bright sunshine to really give you a nice look at the shiny road. And there was a tremendous very dark cloud mass to the west, perched on top of the next row of mountains.

We were glad when we got below the snowline and back into merely wet roads.

Larch trees, a deciduous conifer, are all decked out now in their gold finery.

The next winds we get will create a gold snowstorm underneath and around the larch trees which are abundant on the mountainsides around here.

Finished with row 300 on my knitting project.

This picture shows the center panel design. I will be half-way finished in about a week. Yay!

Hard to believe but there are only two months left in this year. We haven’t made any progress on the interior painting; we are both really exhausted by the summer.

Didn’t end up with a propane backup generator being installed like we had hoped. The company we were dealing with finally exhausted our patience and we told them to take a hike. We can go with Plan B instead. Now we just need to recover the up-front deposit money we gave them… four months ago!!

We took some pictures down by the creek and recovered the chips from the trail cams. Really need to take the chips back down and put them in the trail cameras but it is hunting season and we don’t know for sure that there aren’t some yahoos with guns trespassing up the creek bed, so we will wait until hunting season is over to go down there again.

Here’s one of the bear pictures from the trail cam.

We got several pictures of bears between the two cameras and I think it is two bears. They seem to be different sizes. This appears to be the large male we saw about a month ago walking around up on top in the open area.

Something had their undivided attention. But what? Squirrel? Bear? Dinosaur? Leaf?

We haven’t seen the large buck since hunting season started. Hope he makes it.

The leaves had fallen into the creek and were heavy enough on the water to make the creek look really tiny.

The sky reflected it’s color in the water.

Most of the leaves were off the deciduous trees and the light filters through the trees easily.

The leaf litter is so thick on the ground that there really aren’t many small plants around the large cedar trees.

View of the moon rise in the picture window, one evening.

The changing scenery in the window looking east is pretty amazing. This morning there are no mountains, just a misty gray fog in and around the trees. Please excuse the dirty window. When the guys washed off the dust on the new siding prior to painting, they made a mess out of the windows and we haven’t gotten around to washing them off yet.

I’ve finished the first 200 rows of my knitting project, so I’m a tiny bit over a quarter finished with the knitting.

We had had a bit of bird activity up by the house the last couple of weeks. There is a family of Flickers which seem to adore the Ash tree in front of the house. They are always screaming around through the trees, announcing to any bird of prey where they are hanging out. Recently they were joined by two Pileated Woodpeckers, which are also probably babies. Or, at least they are acting like babies.

They are so cute!!!

Speaking of cute, we also ran into a flock of California Quail when we came up from the creek. A bunch of them flew up into trees but two others got separated from the herd and ended up on the other side of the house. They made their way across the yard in front of the house until they could rejoin their brethren.

Pretty good at blending into the grass.

Today we went up to the eagle tree so I could take a picture of our house in the woods, and see the fall colors starting. So some pictures of things in or on other things.

A picture of our house in the mountains and trees.

We call the tree the eagle tree because Bald Eagles like to hang out in it.

The larch trees are starting to turn and there are spots of gold in the woods.

A picture of my knitting on my computer.

My new knitting project is off to a good start.

I have completed the bottom border (the boring part) and picked up all the stitches to form the bottom row of the shawl. Now it’s just a matter of following the pattern I have charted as an Excel spreadsheet on my computer until all the rows are done.

A picture of a cat in a tunnel.

Mishkin seems to like the little tunnel in his new scratching post. I told him he’s pretty invisible if he closes his eyes. He gave me a patented blank look in response to that tidbit of information.

Amazingly enough he fits inside of the little tunnel. We haven’t seen him actually use his new scratching post for scratching; no doubt continue to use the rug as his go-to feet sharpening apparatus. He even does take little cat naps on the top padded bed when the sunshine is in the right location in the morning.

Starting a knitting project.

One of my most favorite patterns, a Pine Tree Palatine in the Orenburg lace style of knitting.

Cast on 14 stitches to begin.

The other evening we saw this White-tail buck following the trail of a doe.

We don’t see many bucks this far down the mountain. All summer long they are up high frolicking with the elk. He’s got four tines on each antler so he’s pretty old.

He was heading down to the creek, trying to ensure the beginning of next years’ fawns. He’s a bit premature, if you pardon the expression. It’s too early for breeding season as far as most of the does are concerned.

Seeing a lot of really pretty colors recently. I’d blame forest fires but I think they are mostly out by now. Lots of rain recently. Fall is really here.

Wish it would last all day instead of just a few minutes.

It rained really hard and then it stopped shortly before the sun went down. There was lots of moisture in the air, so we had a rainbow on one side of the house and this is what it looked like on the other.

Saturated color came all the way down to the ground reflecting the sunset in all the drops of water and fog hanging in the air.

It never lasts very long but it’s oh so pretty when it does this.

The other day we bought two varieties of pluots for jam making purposes.

The color of the peel gives a hint to the color of the pluot inside.

One of the pluots has a deep almost maroon colored flesh, and the other is a bright yellow-ish orange.

First step is to drop them into boiling water and let them sit until the peel begins to split. Then fish them out and drop them into a bowl of ice water.

They feel very slimy at this point but oh so much easier to peel.

Remove the peel and cut the fruit into little pieces, then add sugar and a bit of lemon juice.

I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish the jam that day, so I prepared the fruit and covered the bowls with plastic wrap and put them into the fridge. The lemon juice keeps the color from changing.

Then simply cook the fruit and sugar down until it is the consistency I want.

I decided to use an immersion blender on my fruit so that it would be a smooth jam.

Finished! I ended up with three small jars for each variety.

It would be nice to say we are organized. It would be a total lie if we did say that, but it would be nice if we could ever get there. I have a long list of things I want to do to achieve the goal of being organized. Maybe I should write them down on paper. 🙂

We still have a lot of things left to do inside the house to complete the renovation project, hopefully before snow flies. As fast as time is flying past who knows how successful we will be at achieving that goal.

The weather gods approved of the contractors finally being done with our house.

Our list is long. We need to paint the interior of the house. That will happen in stages since we have to move stuff every time we want to paint a wall or portion of ceiling.

Then we have seven light fixtures to hang, four in the kitchen, two in the bathroom, and one in the hallway.

The beams in the living room and kitchen ceiling need to have tiny nail holes filled in and then we will varnish the boards with a water based clear coat. That whole process will be tedious at best and it might wait until next year when we can open the windows and air out the house as we are varnishing. We could open the windows now if we had screens! That is another story. Maybe those will show up this week.

Once the walls and ceiling are painted we can hang pictures and cellular blinds. The blinds are supposed to improve the heat retention on the house. Of course replacing the funky windows and exterior doors and siding and roofing all did way more to make the house retain more heat, but every little bit helps.

Yesterday we re-arranged furniture in the living room in our continuing efforts to make the house more efficient. Here’s a video with the results.

What we did instead of painting.

I have yarn I ordered from Amazon which is in the hot little hands of Fedex but are they delivering my package? Noooooooooo. Their website for tracking the package said it was out for delivery on Thursday and Friday, but it never arrived. This morning the package tracking said the business was closed or nobody was there to accept the package. What the hell???  We hate being lied to, so we called Fedex and said what the hell. They finally admitted the package is sitting at Moses Lake but they are “too busy to bring it to us,” which doesn’t explain why they are writing bullshit on their package tracking information. Tried to speak with a supervisor but that didn’t work because they just put us on hold to make us listen to really crappy music until we couldn’t stand it anymore. Assholes. I guess we’ll report the package lost on Monday and tell the shipper to re-send because if Fedex is lying about one thing who can believe they even have a package?  Grrrrr. Maybe they have staffing problems, or who knows, but we absolutely hate being lied to.

Fortunately I have an alternative.

A birthday present! I’ve been fondling this soft yarn and trying to decide what to do with it. Do I combine the yarns into one project since they compliment each other, or do I make two things? Decisions, decisions.

It’s been a long six months working on house renovations for both aesthetic and practical and necessary changes, besides the present to ourselves which consisted of a stairway to the creek.

The last major project for our contractors was to replace the shower in the bathroom. The actual shower itself was the first piece of our puzzle we purchased, and the last to be installed.

Before we could make the change to the larger shower, we had to remove the water heater and closet. Before we could remove the water heater and closet we needed to get an on-demand water heater, and before we could install the on-demand water heater we needed to have propane pipes and a tank installed at the house. We did that when we were working on the kitchen renovation so that we could install the gas range. The whole renovation has been like that.

The incomplete bathroom renovation which at this point just had a new bathroom vanity, sink and faucet.

The electric water heater was in a built-in closet with shelves next to the shower, so all of that had to be removed down to studs. The water pipes and drain had to be relocated for the new shower, and concrete boards had to be installed. I’m sure everybody will be shocked to know that the walls were not square or level which added some additional entertainment to the process.

Four days, and many steps later the shower was done, the toilet was moved to center it in the space between the vanity cabinet and shower, and the flooring was replaced, as well as a new medicine cabinet hung and towel rods and toilet paper holder were hung. Sheetrock repairs required a lot of extra work but now the walls and ceiling are ready for paint. That will be our project for this week.  Our project!! We will get to do this part at our convenience. Yay!!

We had to grout the tile in the shower and will need to seal it when the grout is completely cured.

The flooring extends from the bathroom into the hallway and utility/laundry area between the kitchen and our bedroom.

The whole room feels way more spacious and efficient, highly useful characteristics for a small room in a small house.

Once the painting in both the bathroom and hallway is completed we will install the new light fixtures. Then we can turn our attention to painting the living room and kitchen. So we still have a lot of work to do but it will be quiet work that we can do ourselves.

Happy cat in a sunbeam on top of a pillow in a quiet house. He won’t be doing any work. He’s a supervisor only. Or king. Depends on who you ask.

The house is still a total mess with moving things around in order to facilitate the recent changes we made. Now when we put things back and get everything cleaned up and organized it will get to stay that way.

View from the living room window looking east in the evening as the sun is getting lower in the sky.

It’s kind of amazing how much the colors change on the trees and mountain and grass, depending on the height of the sun.

The pile of tree pieces in the picture above is going away at the moment. The guys are cutting it up, splitting it and hauling the pieces away. Next year it will be truly excellent firewood. It is going to take them quite a few pickup truck trips but soon the two trees will be gone.

Another view out the same window of our resident flock of Wild Turkeys. The flock consists of several hens and their chicks from this spring. These are big birds.

The turkeys congregate around this side of the house and then one by one they fly up into the trees by the creek to roost for the night. There must be some sort of order to who goes first and who goes last; we just haven’t figured it out yet. It’s fun watching them do this every evening and even more fun watching them all bailing out of the trees in the morning.

This morning one of the youngsters landed inside the garden fence and couldn’t figure out how to get back out again until I went out to open the garden gate to provide him with a really good reason to use the same wings he used to get into the garden in the first place. Silly bird.