The O-Zone

Taking digital pictures to write a blog for the world wide web, which is typed on a wireless laptop over satellite internet while cooking breakfast on a wood cookstove, is a really neat way to start the day.  And, what makes it even better is that it has been raining for a couple of hours.

The weather gods are watering the plant remnants so the packrats will have something more to eat.

It feels so neat outside, and the air smells fantastic.  It is 41F this morning, and the rain is starting to slack off, fog rising from the valley bottom to blanket the hills around us.  No doubt we’ll see a lot of sun this afternoon, making the solar panels productive and our batteries full and happy.

Moisture intensifies the green colors of our world view.

Dan started a fire in the cookstove this morning to warm the house, and then the choice for breakfast was obvious.

Frozen blueberries thawed in pure maple syrup.

Besides warming the house and heating water for tea, the cookstove is by far the best appliance for evenly heating a heavy cast iron griddle.

Syrup is hot and moved to the side to stay warm, and the griddle is on the hot part of the stove top.

Once drops of water dance around on top of the griddle, it’s time to cook breakfast.  It doesn’t matter if the pancakes are small or large, using the cookstove for a heat source means no hot spots to contend with, just an evenly hot surface for perfect cooking.

The kitchen is such a nice place when the cookstove is hot and pancakes are cooking.

Now it's time for fix a pot of tea. These are ready to eat.

Terry knew I was cooking and was talking to me from the other room, “Want some breakfast?  Want some supper?”  She was covering all bases that way.

Warm pancakes are serious business. No time to talk now.

The other two birds were equally happy to get some pancakes, and all was very quiet in the livingroom.

Miskin was on chipmunk patrol while I was starting to cook.  He watches the front porch intently, waiting for somebody to run past his doorway.

Mighty hunter at work.

Like all cats, he has a short attention span when nothing is happening, and he turned his focus to his toy mouse.  We had a rousing game of fetch until he stuffed the toy under the bedroom door.

Have mouse, will travel.... A fourteen pound kitten heading to Dan so that the mouse can be thrown properly.

Today is starting out to be a very nice day, indeed.

The fire to the northwest of us continues to create beautiful sunsets.  A bit of weather moved in last night and if we get any rain out of it, the air quality will improve dramatically.  We had a beautiful sunset last night but I was being lazy and just watched it instead of getting out on the front porch and taking a picture.  This sunset was from two nights ago.

Mount Baldy can be discerned in the distance.

Even if the sky is smokey, the sunsets feel serene.

Yesterday we went on another birding trip around the area and explored some areas we’d seen on a map.  This is the first summer we’ve done much in the way of exploring this part of the country.

Our first stop was the largest lake in the county, which also happens to be the lake closest to our home, roughly 30 miles distance.

Looking north from the swimming beach, located on the south end of the lake.

Looking south from the swimming beach.

The picnic area in the state park has a swimming beach cordoned off from boats.  There are a lot of motorboats on the lake, as well as jet skis, but it is never very crowded.  There simply aren’t very many people in the area.

Right now the only swimmers in the pool were two pair of Canada Geese and more than their share of babies.

"How many babies did you say we had? I think Andy and Shirley gave us some extras and went to Acapulco for a vacation!"

Watchful parents and their broods.

Swimming lessons over, heading for open water.

The goose in the front of the line looks like they’re counting heads, or giving a lecture.

"Now watch, this is how it is done."

Getting past the floating barrier is no problem for adults or youngsters, who are only a couple of weeks old at most.

The babies were so cute climbing over.  They would flap their stubby and fuzz covered wings to show how clever they’d been, and the adults would nod their heads in approval.

We heard a Northern Waterthrush calling, and saw a Red-necked Grebe on Curlew Lake.  This is the far southern edge of the breeding grounds for these two species.

Our next stop was Mud Lake, which wasn’t particularly muddy.  It did have some interesting birds for us to watch.  We added Ruddy Duck, Redhead, Lesser Scaup, Gadwall, and Marsh Wren to the list of birds for the 2009 county list.  Coots were also present, babies in tow.  A pair of Cinnamon Teal rounded out the waterfowl floating about on the water.

We had hoped to find Black Terns here as one of the most likely places in the county, but no such luck.

On a road branching off of the San Poil River corridor where we were last weekend, there are several lakes located in forest service property, all three of which have campgrounds and boat launches.  These lakes are home to a northern species of bird, Common Loon.  Like the Red-necked Grebe and Northern Waterthrush, this is the far southern end of their breeding range.  We found a pair of loons at each lake, which was quite exciting.  These birds are extremely sensitive to disturbance from people, and they are becoming very rare.

First was Swan Lake, the largest of the three lakes and the most popular among the local residents.  In addition to the campground, Swan Lake also has a very neat interpretive trail which goes completely around the lake, an easy level hike through very pretty lakeside woods and over granite outcrops.  There is also a very nice picnic area overlooking the lake.

The trail passes over these rocks which are way across the water from where I took this picture.

The first summer we moved here, we visited this lake and found wild blueberries along the trail.  I made a batch of pancakes with said blueberries.

Ferry Lake was the next place on our travel plan.  A loon was quite close to the boat launch when we got there, and then moved off to an area close to reeds on the waters’ edge.  We saw fish jumping out of the water near the loon.  No doubt, the loon was having great success finding plenty to eat.

This is a fairly small circular lake and no motorized boats are permitted.

They float low in the water, sometimes totally submerged except for a head peaking up above the water.   We always think of a submarine when we see them doing that.

Swimming away from us, this bird first surfaced within 20 feet of us, but was my camera ready? No!

Loons have a fantastic call; it was very disappointing we didn’t hear them making any noise but it was pretty late in the day by the time we arrived at the lakes, lunchtime to be exact.

The last lake we visited was Long Lake.  On this lake we actually got to see a loon sitting on a nest.   This lake is long and narrow, nestled between tall granite cliffs on either side.  The boat launching area is shallow and not the least bit muddy, and it will be a great place for us to go floating around in our Klepper folding kayak.  We’ve had this kayak since the late 1970’s and it is very neat to have a place so close to home that is perfect for its use.  We need to buy some hipwaders.

The granite cliffs go straight up, and have fractured into scree slopes.

We can't see all way way down the lake from the boat launching beach, the lake bends around the corner.

Long Lake added a Vaux’s Swift to the county list, and we heard several variety of Thrushes singing in the woods.  This lake was just gorgeous and the woods were full of flowers.

These wildflowers are in two colors, blue and white. The flowers get all fuzzy when they go to seed after blooming.

I would be willing to bet that if I planted clematis in our flowerbeds that the deer would munch them right down.  The wild plants grow by climbing up into trees and avoid this fate.

This violet is one of three colors, and all three will grow in the same area.

It might be my imagination, but it seems like the white color variety of violet grows taller than the blue or yellow varieties.

Delicate with blue veins through the white blossom.

The yellow variety of violet is the most widespread in this area.

A carpet of last years' larch needles on the ground behind this flower. Larch needles are golden when they fall.

This isn’t Oregon, and these aren’t grapes….

This evergreen Oregon Grape has pretty yellow flowers and red berries, and shiny leaves. A common and widespread wildflower in the mountains.

After lunch by the lake, we went up into the mountains.  The highest mountain pass in the state is located in this county, and there are some forest service roads which branch off the main highway.  This is where we went exploring next, hoping to add some rare birds to the list for the year.

This short paved trail loops through woods and out to an overlook at the top of the pass.

This whole area is under consideration for wilderness designation.  It would be wonderful if that were to occur.  I personally think a new national park would be a better use for the area as it isn’t truly wilderness anymore, and development of camping areas and trails, and management of the forests might actually be of more benefit to correct some of the prior abuse of the forest.  As far as a boost to the local economy, a national park would work wonders.  Most likely the local politicians are too short sighted to see this benefit since it would cut into use of the forests for logging and cattle grazing, both sacred cows for this part of the state.

Our Forester is most at home on these sorts of roads.

These cliffs were adjacent to the road.

The granite cliffs turn a very dark charcoal gray when the iron in the rock oxidizes. The ligher rock appears when portions shear off and fracture.

A deep canyon separated us from this rock cliff.

We went off the main highway about 7 miles, and encountered one SUV about 4 miles in.  We stopped and chatted with the man and woman in the other vehicle, and the conversation went something like this:

Them:  “Do you know where Copper Butte is?  We’re supposed to meet some friends there.”

Us:  “No, but we have a good map.”

We handed them the map and told them to look on page 116.  They found Copper Butte immediately and didn’t look the least bit inclined to go back the direction they had just been to get there.  It was actually pretty funny.  They told us that immediately behind them (the direction we were traveling), was a bog in the road and they had almost gotten stuck.  Naturally we were a bit concerned since their SUV was a lot bigger than ours and they had tires more suited to muddy conditions than our all-weather radials.  But we continued on anyway.  Dan must be a better driver than the other man  was since we had no problems with the muddy spot described and can only surmise they had driven off the road or into one of the muddy ruts in the road.  They told us they were going to go back to the main highway and see if they could find their friends and then return.  We didn’t see them again, so they obviously decided to stick with paved roads.  Tee hee.

The road surface felt very weird since it was still partially frozen or only recently thawed.  We saw remnants of snow in several places along the road and out in the trees.  We also discovered, much to our delight, a lot of wild blueberry bushes with tiny berries growing on them.  And I do mean a LOT of bushes.  This whole area burned in the 1920’s, evidently providing a habitat for the berry bushes that they like a lot.  Mid July we’re going to be up there picking berries.  It is already on my mental game plan list of things to do this year.  If there is any place in this area to come across a brown bear, it will be in the middle of the blueberry plants.

Thunderstorms moved through the mountains, dropping enough moisture to get the roadway wet in places. It is amazing how much the clouds can change the character of the landscape.

We were up at roughly 6,000 feet elevation when we decided to return home.  The road continued back at least another 13 miles and had some very interesting looking sideroads off of it for exploring.  We decided that since we didn’t have a tire pump with us, discretion was the better part of valor and we’ll just return again soon.  There are multiple trail heads up there, all climbing to the top of the mountains, and one very nice campground.

We didn’t add new of the rare bird species we’d been hoping to find.  Oh well, maybe next time.  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home and I picked up vegetables with which to make tempura for lunch today.  And some strawberries for dessert.  Yummmmm.

It’s hummingbird season, which means it is also forest fire season.  There are no fires around here, but to the northwest of us there is a sizeable fire which is putting a lot of smoke in the air.  As soon as it rains, (hopefully today!!!) and/or the winds turn around from another direction other than the prevailing westerly flow, the sky will go back to the usual clear blue.

Everything is still nice and green but a few more weeks of no rain and high temperatures will not be a good combination.

We’re not getting a lot of solar gain today but we’ll gladly trade it for some raindrops.  Way to the west there is a large mountain which is just barely visible through the haze.

Last night the deer got into the Bleeding Heart plant which lives next to our front door.  Deer are messy eaters and have absolutely no sense of landscape appreciation, unless it has some salad dressing on it I suppose.  The ferns are basically munched to the ground, and the delphinium isn’t going to make it, nor are the daylilies which appear to be the most favorite.  And they are working on the Bleeding Heart, if you can call eating it and breaking off stems and leaves “working.”    Over half the plant is gone now, and parts of it are strewn about the flower bed.  Rats!  Yeah, them too.

The deer are really making a mess of this garden area.

It’s quite the mess.  To the right of the Bleeding heart is where the ferns were planted.  There are some tiny fern leaves hugging the ground, so perhaps they’ll survive.

We'll need to find distasteful plants next year. I wonder if there is such a thing.

I was talking to my friend Anne yesterday and she said the deer had eaten her rhubarb plant to the ground, and that’s just shocking.  I was thinking that if any plant would survive this predation it would be a rhubarb plant.  But apparently not.

Gardening is going to be a challenge.  I called around today and found some organic farmers in the vicinity, and strawberries will be ripe in quantity in 3 weeks.  Woo hoo!  Brandon is timing her visit just prefectly, I’d say.

May ended with a sunset typical of clear summer skies; these are not fleeting sunsets either, but ones that last for over an hour, changing hue and character as the sun sets lower below the horizon.

I love the contrast between the fire in the sky and the cool purple of the distant mountains.

We took advantage of this amazing weather we’ve been having recently, not too hot and not the least bit cool, to go birding.  Dan is the official list keeper for this county and not that many birders report to the list for our county since we are officially in the middle of nowhere.  Besides us, there have been two other reports for 2009.  We needed to do our part and add birds which are not just on our property and besides, going birding is one of our favorite activities when we aren’t being lazy and just hanging out at home.  We know several places where we are sure to find species which hadn’t yet been reported for the county.  We added 13 species to the county list for 2009 during our day of traveling.

The cattails aren't green yet, a very slow growing plant.

First stop was this swamp for Yellow-headed Blackbirds.  The instant we stopped the car and got out at the parking lot, we heard their sweet singing from the cattails.  Their song is described by the Peterson Field Guide as, “Low, hoarse rasping notes produced with much effort, suggests rusty hinges.”  One wonders how this song ensures survival of the species and how it came to be in the first place.  It is loud, however.

Swimming around and doing duck things.

Swimming in the scummy open water were a couple of ducks, a female American Wigeon and a male Cinnamon Teal.  A Common Yellowthroat was also singing in the reeds.  We didn’t stay very long as we had places to go.

This Cinnamon Teal is keeping a beady eye on us.

Lupin are blooming this time of year, and pretty much everywhere you look you see their cheerful blue flowers.  And, nothing appears to be munching on them, which gave me an idea that perhaps some of the domesticated Lupin would do well in our flower beds.  But I digress.

Not a munch mark was visible. It's a definite thought!...

The Tenmile campground is one of our favorite places to enjoy a picnic lunch, a cup of tea, or just to stand around and listen to the ethereal notes of a Veery echoing off the trees and rocks.  This is one of our favorite thrush songs.  We’ve done very well on thrushes for the year.  Last weekend we stopped on top of one of the passes and heard the Hermit Thrush singing, another simply beautiful song.  The Hermit Thrush likes high altitude forests of spruce and alpine fir.

A serene place to stop and relax for a spell.

The county we live in has an amazing variety of ecological zones, and road down the San Poil River valley contains a lot of them.  It goes through dramatic changes in topography and ecological zones, featuring towering cliff faces, Ponderosa forests, and sagebrush grasslands adjacent to Lake Roosevelt, not to mention the riparian habitat along the San Poil River itself.  Because of this ecological diversity the county has a lot of fairly rare species for the state.

Granite cliffs rise almost vertically up from the river.

We didn’t see anything new for the year here.  Swallows swirl on the air currents, and large raptors including Golden Eagles ride the air, surfing the cliff faces.

Close-up of the top of the rock face.

It is always beneficial when birding to stop at one of the many pullouts along the road and listen for birdsongs, or the water rushing along the riverbed, or wind in the trees.

Looking north along the road, this is the usual level of traffic.

There is a trail at Thirteen Mile we had always wanted to investigate, and we stopped at the trailhead to take a peek and see how steep it is, and to listen for birdsongs.  We added a Hammonds Flycatcher to the list, and saw that the beginning of the trail is steep but then it levels out and follows a creek that runs through oldgrowth forests which has been fragmented by logging but pieces are still there.  When we have some time and a lot of bugspray we’ll take this trail.  Mosquitoes like me too much.

We stopped for lunch on the San Poil River and watched a male Black-chinned Hummingbird going about his daily routine, and added a Willow Flycatcher to the year list.  The Black-chinned Hummingbird was at the same location as we saw a whole flock of that species drinking from sapsucker holes in an Aspen tree.

Our next stop was on Silver Creek Road where we looked for White-headed Woodpeckers.  These little woodpeckers love Ponderosa forests, and we saw one female who was not making a sound, but was lightly poking around bark looking for food, and then flying around like a woods spirit.  They are a beautiful species and it was the highlight of our day to get to see one.

Relaxing and reading a bird book.

Heading further south towards the ferry that crosses Lake Roosevelt, we saw one of the Osprey that nest along the larger water.  They are such an amazing species, and we love watching them fly.

The picnic area is sometimes much more occupied, but this day it was almost vacant.

The level of water in the lake will continue to rise as the mountains thaw and lose their snows.  The swimming area nest to the picnic area has several swimming platforms which are high and dry at the moment.

Looking north along the lake, the dam which created this lake is Grand Coulee Dam and is about 30 miles south of this picnic area.

We turned off the main road and headed up a dirt road we’d seen but never traveled before.  We were rewarded richly for our experiment with a Gray Flycatcher, a Brewer’s Sparrow, a Rock Wren, and a Lark Sparrow.  Speaking of weird evolutionary development, the Brewer’s Sparrow must have an interesting tale to tell.  This species likes the dry sagebrush country, or it can be found at timberline in another dry climate, or one pocket of them can be found in the far north up in the Yukon.  How did that all happen?

All in all it was a highly entertaining way to spend a day.

Dan said, “I have some bad news.”  Since he had only been up walking around for less than five minutes, and I wasn’t awake yet, I had no idea what could have happened in that amount of time.

Oh.... yeah..... we forgot about those guys....

So, there are FIVE plant predators around here, one being the most voracious of all, namely a Packrat.  Argh.

The moral of the story is:  If you are going to postulate a theory, try to include all the variables.

Some might say it is a delusion instead, but it all remains to be seen.  We have plant predators here, and they come in a lot of shapes and sizes.

Starting with the smallest, we have Pocket Gopher.  These attack plants from underneath.  Think the movie, “Tremors” and you have the right idea.  Next in size is a Snowshoe Hare.  They like to munch virtually everything, but their reach is limited by their height and they’re little guys.

Next are deer – two species here, namely Whitetail and Blacktail, or Mule Deer.  They eat plants from the ground up to about six feet off the ground.

And last we have Black Bears.  They eat anything and everything, and they climb.  We have seen baby Black Bears forty feet up a large Ponderosa Pine.

The upper deck is roughly six feet off the ground.

So, now my theory.  I theorize that if I put plants out of the reach of predators that we might get to harvest our garden produce and enjoy our flowers.  From the two smallest predators, I know this plan will keep the plants safe.  Pocket Gophers rarely  come above ground and they never climb anything.  Snowshoe Hares do come up on the front deck, but I seriously doubt they will then also climb a short flight of stairs to the upper deck.

Deer could conceivably reach planters on the end of the deck by standing on their back feet and stretching up.  But they don’t like to get that close to the house normally, so I think they will give the plants up there a pass.  They might sniff in their general direction and give us dirty deer looks; I think we can survive that sort of attitude.

Bears, now, that is going to be the real test.  They don’t care about being on decks at all, and getting close to the house doesn’t faze them.  But climbing up stairs to a second deck, that might be something they decide is just not really worth the risk.

So, now we test my theory.  I’ve wanted to do this since we moved here three years ago, and if it is a success, then next year we will add some additional pots and expand the scope of our gardening.

The front row planters are flowers and not as yummy smelling as the back planters will be when they produce fruits.

We used our Polaris Ranger to haul the pots down the hill to a potential garden site where we have some amazing topsoil.  We filled the pots and placed them into the back of the ranger.  That sounds easy, but the large pots are so heavy and it was almost all I could do to help Dan move them around.  Then Dan backed the Ranger up to the upper deck and we lifted them again and slid them into place.

We planted tomatoes, Anaheim peppers, parsley, basil, and a few types of flowers.

Someday we may put in a real garden but it will take a lot of work building fences strong and high enough to withstand deer and bears, and we will have to build raised beds with wire cages inside to keep them safe from pocket gophers.  That will all be a very expensive undertaking.  If container gardening works, that may just be our solution.

Wild Hyacinth

The most recent wildflower blooming off the front deck is this beautiful Wild Hyacinth.  Spring time is just an amazing season around here.

Twenty bags of bark fit into a Subaru Outback.  This is a little known fact.  Not sure anybody will care but there you go.

We got home, had some lunch, and went to work.  First I spread out some landscaping ground cloth around the plants to the right of the front door.  No all the area got covered with ground cloth but I used all we had and it made tromping around in the dirt a lot cleaner.

The plant that looked the happiest with mulch is the rhododendron.

The ferns are small and I cut a small hole in the landscape ground cloth and pulled them through.  They will appreciate having cool roots and moist ground.  They are in the darkest corner and they will most likely fill up the whole corner and then die down over the winter.  They are right in the path of snow sliding off the roof.

Small ferns are hiding in the corner.

The flower bed to the right of the front door is only about half covered with the bark; the other half is still in its original wild state.

The new flowering plants will grow a lot over the summer, hopefully.

It was a beautiful day for working outside, temperatures hovering around 75F (+23C), totally clear skies.  We set up some chairs in the shade after we were done working and watched the hummingbird riot.

Yet another house picture.

Now it is time for a shower and then some relaxing, watching a movie and knitting.  The hummingbirds have gone through 4 cups of sugar water so far today.  I imagine we will have to refill all three feeders once more before we retire for the evening.  Ah….  Sumertime!

Mishkin has been catching some mice in the house this week, earning his bed and breakfast.  The last mouse he caught was still very much alive and active when we got up in the morning.  He was catching the mouse, going to the middle of the livingroom floor and releasing it, letting it get a bit of a running start and then catching it again.  He was very into his game of catch and release but the mouse was not having as good a time.  Then Mishkin made a tactical error – he chased the mouse into my purse.  I carried purse-containing-mouse out onto the deck and dumped the entire contents on the deck.  The mouse was hyperventilating, not a surprise there.  Mish spent the next several hours looking for the mouse and he was very consoled when I gave him his toy mouse to play with and we played fetch for an hour.

I’ve started a new knitting project using the yarn I got from my friend in March.  I’m going to make a vest and I’m making up a pattern as I go.  I totally adore how the colors are developing on my ribbing, and I think she should call this color “Blue/Gold Macaw.”

This is an amazing color progression.  It will be exciting to watch it become a vest.

While I’m knitting, Mishkin is on chipmunk watch. He spends many hours a day being highly entertained by the chipmunks on the porch and windowsills. They are totally unimpressed by him, and will sit up straight on their back feet, nose to nose with him, the sliding glass doors on the patio separating them, and look him in the eye. They wiggle their noses and whiskers at him, and he is completely entranced by this behaviour. Then, they scamper sideways and Mishkin goes full speed in the livingroom, anticipating which window they will end up in. The game goes on for hours.

Kitty-TV - the Rodent Channel

Early last week we had snow showers in the higher elevations, and cool spring temperatures.  The hills are getting less white on top, and turning greener day by day, and so we know it is spring.  The morning light on the hills when the sun first peeks over the mountain peaks to the east of us is the prettiest light of the day.

Snowing yet again. We even saw flakes outside our windows, but they didn't stick to anything.

We started on our outdoor landscaping projects this week.  Our first chore was to remove a lot of wild rose bushes, and I do mean a lot.  We didn’t attempt to remove their extensive root systems and they will return over time but they should be easier to manage now that it isn’t so hazardous to get near the plants.  We’ve also been removing the jungle of grass in the flower bed by the two Service Berry bushes and putting down ground cloth and bark mulch.

Underneath all the grass are rocks, a juniper and fruiting bushes.

The daffodils were hidden underneath a thorny jungle.

New flowering plants have been planted, mostly perennials and only a few annuals to fill in the blank spaces.  We have a new rhododendron, delphinium, day lily, fern, azalea bushes, columbine, and a stonewort.  All the perennials are small versions of their adult size and we’ve left a lot of room for them to grow before we add any more plants to the beds in years to come.  When the rest of the bark mulch is spread, it won’t look so bare.  What we really want to do is to get some more native plants for our perennial gardening, but that will be next year.

The beginning of a finished flower bed.

Most of our perennials were planted in this flower bed. They're small now.

More weeds need to be removed, and ground cloth and bark mulch needs to be spread.

Our hummingbird population has exploded, a lot of migrants still moving through most likely is the explanation.  Yesterday they drank their way through six cups of sugar water.  Immediately prior to taking this picture, there was a swarm of ten birds around this feeder.  They take turns scrappily getting a drink, and then chase each other out through the woods.  Their evening feeding frenzy is as much a party as anything else.  It is important to tank up for overnight.  They are so fascinating to watch.  We had over 20 birds on the front deck last night swarming around the feeders.

Hummingbirds at sunset.

Orenburg lace shawls are time consuming to knit, but once they are done they are worth the time spent.  It’s so hard to say which is better, a small project which gives instant gratification, or a large project which provides months of entertainment.

All yarn ends tucked in, and a blocking yarn woven through the border points.

This was phase one for the blocking process, which is the last thing to do on a lace project.  The  pattern is visible but not super clear, so blocking is critical.  The yarn which is used for blocking on a project this large is nylon which is not stretchy.  I wanted the shawl to stretch, not the blocking yarn.

A mixture of a mild non-rinse soap and water, add one shawl, and wait.

The shawl soaks up a lot of water, which makes the fibers very elastic.

A surface for blocking and a lot of T-pins.

I spread an old quilt on the floor, and pulled the soaking wet shawl out taut, pinning all the points on the border out.  This gives the shawl it’s final size and shape, and shows the pattern clearly.  This takes about an hour to accomplish.  Now the hard part, waiting for the shawl to dry.  This takes at least 24 hours.

Shawl is light as a feather and so warm.

Time to start planning my next knitting project!

Our pantry is now finished enough to be totally useful!  The floor trim is all installed in the pantry and the kitchen, with the exception of one side of the floor by the stairs in the lower pantry.  We haven’t figured out how we want to finish the stairs quite yet, and until we do reach some conclusion, we’ll leave it unfinished.

So much space and nothing will be hidden in a dark corner.

But, the shelves are up and I can start organizing things in the pantry for the first time since we moved in here a hair over three years ago.  Wow!  Time flies!!  I moved in some things last night but we were so tired from all the woodwork during the day we just vegged out and watched TV.

Unlike Mishkin, who was in this pose most of the day while we were working….

We wish he wasn't so highstrung.

While we were watching TV last night, I finished knitting my shawl!  Well mostly anyway; I have the fourth corner left to knit this morning and all the loose ends to weave in.  I’ll get the shawl reading for blocking and do that this afternoon once the pantry is all organized and we’ve reclaimed the house from all the clutter we created a few weeks ago when we started the pantry project.  I’ll make sure to take a before and after blocking picture of the shawl since it so demonstrates the magic of blocking lace and the change is dramatic.

Happiness is a finished project.  There is Joy and Rapture in our household today!