Needles of Iron

August 6, 2009

Bits and Pieces and Something Different

My new old job, as a temp (without benefits), has been extended through the end of the year. Yippee! The boss is working for the permanent w/ benefits approval. They like me! They really really like me!! I am just lovin’ it, too. Real work, a sense of accomplishment, learning and growing, being appreciated. It’s just a nice thing to get up to each morning.

My camera is scheduled to show up tomorrow. I bought a Canon EOS 1000D (Rebel). Verra, verra excited I am. It will probably show up while I am at work, and Wonderful Guy says he will have it all figured out by the time I get home. (He works from the house.) Without reading any instructions. That’s how he rolls. Not how I roll. One of the ways we are different. And he knows how saying that will get me. After all my research and thinking and weighing and shopping around…to think he will get to it first and open it…

Grandbebe Two has not made her entrance yet.

Dearest Sister has a trip planned to my fair city in just a few weeks. She will meet her newest grand-niece (who will surely be here by then!), help me with Quilt, the Third, and together we will visit a local quilt show. And visit. And laugh. There will be lots of laughing. There always is.

I clipped the ‘more than 400 miles’ mark on the bike with today’s commute, and yesterday I saw a very large, several pointed buck elk resting in a field on my ride home. It was enough to make me stop, get out my phone (which, btw, is still working!) and snap a photo.

I have also clipped the ‘more than 400 posts’ on the blog this week, and I am wondering if some change up might be due. I am wondering about the layout of the blog, but that is cosmetic, and I just don’t know about that. Fun, but maybe just fluff. Still thinking that one through. And I am thinking about a contest later this month. A new baby/ lot of running of the bloggery mouth/ general end of summer celebration give-away. I haven’t put that all together yet. (Maybe some catnip? I have plenty after all.)

But this is what I have been thinking of for changing for a while, and I think I am going to start doing now. I have seen, in other blogs, authors who respond to their commentors as a commentor. I don’t always remember which blogger I read does that, or to check back myself, nor do I always read all the comments made by others. I am sort of a ‘between me and you’ type. I tried to answer my commentors with an email or with a comment on their blog.

But then…things change. Opinions, tendencies, ways we do things, and the time we have to do those things…and I find that I am not getting my commentors responded to. I have taken to reading the comments besides my own on other blogs, and am finding interesting discoveries there. I want commentors who ask questions feel like they are answered (Lynne-see camera, above!), and I surely don’t need a whole post devoted to such. Plus answering a question pertaining to my post in a comment on about another’s post…is disconnected at best.

So. I am going to start commenting in my own comments…right back atcha! If you remember, check back for answers to your questions, and otherwise snappy repartee.

Try it. It will be swell!

August 5, 2009

Drying Catnip

A while ago, I cut back the catnip that grows like crazy in the yard. This stuff gets seriously out of control, and if I didn’t have two old lady kittee grrlz that didn’t go goofy over the stuff, I probably wouldn’t have around.

But they do. So I have.

And I related how instead of trashing said harvest, I thought to try my hand at drying it for future…purpose, as the current ‘stash’ was diminishing. The mostly leaves and smallish stems have been down in the cool, dry, and darkish basement for lo, these several weeks, being turned regularly, and by regularly I mean whenever I remembered toss that particular salad.

Until this weekend.

Saturday I brought the catnip up and put my thinking cap on. How was I going to get that stuff cleaned up so the old lady kittee grrlz could enjoy themselves and we wouldn’t have dead leaves/stems on the carpet?

I scooped portions of the dried catnip leaves and stems into a large Ziploc and with both hands inside the bag, worked the stuff. It fell off the stems easily, and I was able to pick out the bigger stuff.
PS I did this outside on the patio (under my new-ish pergola) (it was delightful!).
I continued this first stage cleaning, adding additional leaves/stems to the stemless crumbled leaves until eventually all the dried stuff was a. mostly stemless b. mostly crumbled, and c. all in the Ziploc.
I retrieved a colander and large 4 cup mix and pour from the kitchen. I aliquoted some of the 1st stage cleaned into the colander and worked it through into the measuring vessel with hands, then a cork, when my fingers were getting too much wear and tear. This broke down the leaves further and separated out the smaller stems.

This container? It has taken 9 years to use what filled it previously. (See the line of demarcation? My new stuff is green!)
It took hardly any of this to fill that jar up. I have catnip to last til the cows come home.

I hope it’s good stuff. The girls like it well enough fresh.

Geezopeez! All from one harvest!!

Wonder what the neighbors would have thought if they saw me doing all that?!

August 4, 2009

Progress and Keeping Busy

Last Saturday, Wonderful Guy headed out early on the Bandit to meet a friend for breakfast. I chose to stay home, wanting and hoping to get some things finished up and off. my. list.
Well. I had a pretty good run at it.

The results of quilt, the second have been posted. And thank you all for your very kind and generous comments. Dearest Sister and I both appreciate your remarks.

Planted iris, which means I found places to plant eight different iris rhizomes. Not an easy thing at all in the yard, and still allow for maximum unimpeded lawn watering by the sprinklers, which is someone who shall remain nameless greatest concern. (Or so it seems.)

Six dishcloths were seamed. All caught up.

Two bebe sweaters had ends woven and were blocked. Seaming was completed last evening. Only fasteners remain.

I cleaned and stored the dried catnip and lavender.

There was a trip to the farmers market.

All the inside plants, and the outside container plants were watered and fed.

I caged the tomatoes.

I caught up on some paperwork for a group I chair.

The current book was finished.

I completed my research, and decided to change to a free internet security provider.

A call to Verizon resurrected the flushed phone when the battery arrived.

And we took a field trip to Mount Evans on Sunday.

It was a really, really good weekend.
And to top it all off?

I ordered the dSLR camera I have been jonesin’ for since last fall.
I hope I can wait ‘til it gets here…which ought to be Friday.

August 3, 2009

Sunday Field Trip

...to Mount Evans. Oh, we drove!

Apparently, the original plan, back in the day, was to connect Long's Peak, Mount Evans, and Pikes Peak, all fourteeners, with a peak to peak highway. For those not from Colorado, a fourteener is a peak above 14,000 feet. That's really pretty high. Above treeline, which is about 11,400 in these parts. Oxygen is...different up there. Like less. Noticeably less.

But I digress. Back to the Peak to Peak Highway. It proved to be unfeasible at the time, which was...I forget...back in the day...when the day was 1920? 1930? Up above treeline, weather can be brutal. It was 90F in Denver on Sunday. It was 50F at the summit. On August 2nd. Heat of the day. That's the middle of the alpine summer.

But gorgeous? Bee-yo-tee-full! (P.S. I swear that I did nothing to this photo but size it down a bit. Honest. The colors are as they were captured by my little point and shoot. It is a simple fact that the sky is bluer and the trees/grass is greener here in Colorado. I am sorry. It cannot be helped. Don't be hatin' me for it...)

And there are flowers! Kings Crown (or Queens...I can never keep them straight).

And we saw mountain goats! I have only seen real live mountain goats like these up in Glacier, and then with a telescope. These were just over a ridge off the road. Hard to see them, I know, and there is a baby! almost in the middle of the photo. The grownups were all sheddy and ratty looking. One of the coolest parts of the day. Seriously. (Lynne, these were the real thing!)

As we were walking back to the car, after the goat siting, I spied this, a Big-Rooted Spring Beauty. That's the for-real name.

We made it to the top...of this sign. No, really, we made it to the summit. How could we not. We were in the car! One other thing about the Mount Evans road...it's the highest paved road in North America.

It was this guy's shift to entertain the touristas. (noon to four, sit on the rock by the road and let them take pictures....what a job...) It's a marmot, and related to the groundhogs back east.

Artsy sky shot, just in case I couldn't get any closer to the alpine sunflower in the center.

But then I did! It's the largest of the alpine flowers, and stores up energy for...alot...of years before it finally blooms, sets seed, then that is all. Or so I read somewhere. I am pretty sure I am remembering that right.

Also in this patch of National Forest, there is the northern most stand of bristlecone pines in North America. These were cool. Really really old. Sloooo-ooow growing.