I am suddenly in the land of unbelievably slooooow Internet. We couldn't even watch Deadwood tonight because it was too frustrating waiting to it to buffer enough to play (over and over and over again). I called tech support, and they (of course) don't see any problems or congestion on the line. So now I get to spend Sunday afternoon waiting for the technician to show up. We are supposed to have 10 Mb service, shouldn't that be enough to stream two movies at a time?
Spinning was also a challenge for the last two days. Instead of my goal of four ounces a day for each day, I produced zero ounces. I do have 16 ounces done for the first four days, but I may need to reset my goal. After all, it's an endurance race as much as anything and I need to be in it for the long haul (till the Tour de France ends on 7/23).
My one accomplishment of the day was acquiring a very nice used enclosed trailer. With all of our back and forth from Austin to Polson, it doesn't make sense to have to rent a U-Haul every time I need to take more than a couple of suitcases. I managed to drive it home and back it into the drive with no (serious) mishaps. Now I have a way to get all the blue pine and douglas fir lumber home for my building projects!
Tomorrow is our early day at the National Bison Range so I am going to head for bed.
Lord am I beat!! It stays light in Montana till quite late so home fireworks don't really get serious till around 11:00. By 10:30 we had determined that the lighters were useless, it was too windy for a candle, and the matches were all old and too humidity-soaked to light anymore. So off Dave went to WalMart (the only place in town still open on the 4th of July) and bought a small propane blowtorch. Then, so to speak, we got cooking with gas! We finished ours not long after midnight, but there were still fireworks going off in the neighborhood at 1:00 or 2:00 am.
Best shot of the night and J took it
This morning I had a piano lesson at 8:00 am and needed to get up at 7:00 to practice.
Dad, we need a blow torch...
I didn't make it out of bed till 7:30, and even after a half hour of practice I was still terrible at the Rachmaninoff concerto I've been working on since May. *sigh* I'll kill it next week--along with Beethoven's Prelude in C. I cannot tell a lie: After my piano lesson I went right back to bed and slept till 10:30. For a further bit of honesty, I could easily have slept till noon. I think it's something about the Montana air (back to that whole lack of oxygen thingie.)
One of the parachuters
Polson City fireworks
But I dragged myself/sprang (it's kind of a lively zombie move) from bed at 10:30 and rousted the girls so we could go clean up firework debris and I could move our cars out of the neighbor's drive. The neighbors on both sides go away for the 4th so they and their dogs can escape the noise. I wanted to have their yards cleaned up before they got home. One of the fireworks we set off shot a hundred little men hanging from parachutes into the air and they drifted up to two houses away in every direction that wasn't the street where they would have been easy to pick up.
My best photo of the Polson fireworks
Rocket to the moon
My duties this morning were to clean the street (it's a bigger area than it sounds as right in front of our house is a diagonal intersection where two streets join) by handpicking as well as sweeping. I also moved the cars. Then I left Kyla and Jessie to the rest of the bordel (in one of the French senses of the word--not the English) and I am inside cooling off. Dave wants to try a new restaurant for lunch, and then I'm going to take the girls out to the lake. I think it will be a challenge to spin my four ounces of fiber for the Tour de Fleece today.
Selective color effect focusing on red hues (which apparently include reddish brown too)
It's the Fourth of July--Dave's favorite holiday--and tonight is the big family fireworks. Dave and I are going to sit for this one--I plan on taking lots of photos with the new Nikon DSLR camera I got last week. After six months of taking pictures everyday with my iPhone I decided it was time to upgrade my tech. I read the reviews, was honest with myself about my aspirations and limitations as a photographer, and found a nice mid-range camera with a good bundle on Amazon. The bundle included the standard 18-55 mm lens as well as a 70-300 mm lens, a wide angle lens, a telephoto lens, and a filter kit--as well as host of little accessories and a bag. The camera is also red. Woot.
I have played around with it a bit--mostly in automatic mode--but I haven't spent a day on my own with it yet. We've driven into Missoula twice since I got it and both times I minimized the number of stops I made to take pictures. I need just me and the camera off in the Mini Cooper for a day--maybe with Gallifrey as my co-pilot--to really go in-depth. When Jessie bought her Canon DSLR (several years ago now) I bought her a book that walked her through the different features and functions and encouraged her to go through it with her camera so she could really learn it inside and out. That wasn't her learning style so it didn't happen, but she mostly figured it out in her own way.
Selective focus on yellow flowers also catches the highlights on the pine needles
Me, I like a structured, organized approach. I took a formal film photography class back in the dark ages of high school (even learning how to develop my own black and white film) so I have a basic working knowledge of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, etc. I've also done a quick read through the manual. Now I'm looking forward to making a blended list of all the features of the camera along with basic manual photography techniques that I'll use to plan photography days. One day might be repeated pictures of the same subject but shot with different apertures. I know the theory of what will happen, but it will be good to get the hand practice in of actually taking the shots. Other skills I want to brush up on include shutter-speed-focused pictures, macro photography, night shots, portraits, fast action, landscapes, nature, etc.). This camera also has some cool special features and there is one I particularly want to experiment with: selective color. I already had a bit of fun with that one and would like to go to a very color-saturated local (like the farmers market) and practice there.
Friday this week will be my first day of play and I'm going to start with a very forgiving subject: nature. Specifically I am going to take an early morning trip to the National Bison Range where in the past we have seen bison (duh), antelope, big horn sheep, and even bears--all of them close enough to get really good shots. Tonight, however (and here we get back to Fourth of July celebrations) will be my first night shooting. And, hey, what could be more forgiving than fireworks?
Day 3 of the Tour de Fleece, and I kicked butt and spun names, or spun butt and kicked names... or whatever. I spun. A lot. I have spun about 14 oz so far leaving only about 42 left to go. Okay, even if I weren't already exhausted I'd be really tired just thinking about it.
Besides fiber, today was about my mother's roses. I deadheaded and took out large canes that had died during the winter or were killed last summer by cane borers. I cleaned house a bit. I napped. It must be summer when I can condense an entire day's activities down to a couple of sentences! Had I not been on a mission to post every day this year, I probably wouldn't have bothered today. Tomorrow, however, will have all the excitement and action anyone could want as it is July 4th and we have enough fireworks to take down a small country. Pictures will be taken. Stories will be written. We will go down in history.
We saw the new Edgar Wright film "Baby Driver" tonight and loved it! It was set and filmed in Atlanta, and I only have one criticism of the film: There were too many white people in it. Atlanta is a city with a 38% white and 54% black population. It was weird to have the postal workers, the construction workers, police officers, security guards, and the average people on the street overwhelmingly white. It really struck me as wrong. We lived there for 13 years and moved there from a city with an 8% black population (Austin). When we first moved I was struck by the large black population. Then we moved back to Austin and I couldn't help but think, where are all the black people? But there is a much larger latino population in Austin so it doesn't seem so white-bread as, say Missoula Montana where I grew up. It is 94% white. I loved the diversity when I moved to Chicago from Montana. Chicago is a very balanced city--at least as far as black, white and latino at 33%, 32% and 29% respectively.
Now we're home and getting ready to retire for the evening. I'm ready. I still feel a bit meh from yesterday--though I did find out from my uncle today that my great aunt Annabelle (Gramma Jessie's sister) sold John Dillinger his last driver's license.
It's so quiet right now that when I am not typing, I hear the slight echo in my ears of the sounds of "John Wick 2" which Dave and I just watched. There is just the faintest ringing from an excess of sound left in them. It was a good day--there was a nap in it. There were also lots and lots of fireworks of the mega variety purchased. The one thing I forgot to buy was earplugs--I think we're going to need them. We have some serious artillery shells and cakes that have 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition in them--the most allowed by federal law without a license.
The neighbors on both sides of us will be off camping somewhere for the 4th as neither they nor their dogs appreciate all the fireworks that go off in our neighborhood. Speaking of dogs, I need to go to the vet on Monday to get Jig some doggy valium. He is terrified of the fireworks and will be holed up in the basement with the doors closed and a white noise fan on too. Valium would be just the little extra boost I think he would appreciate.
After picking up fireworks, I cleared out half of the boxes of my dad's papers and ski clothing that I brought home yesterday from storage at the lake. I threw most of the papers away, but I kept his entomology and biology books. I also kept the book they made for him when he retired from the forest service. The clothes and gear will mostly go to the resale store that benefits the local animal shelter. Dad got Jig there, and I think he would have liked to see his things benefit them.
Before picking up fireworks, we went downtown to Pop's Grill for breakfast this morning. The cafe shares an interior wall with an art gallery and there are windows between the two businesses allowing one to look over some of the work while eating. So we went in after we finished breakfast, and as I was wandering through I to looked up and on the wall right in front of me was a copy of one of my great grandfather RH McKay's photos signed and dated "Flathead Belle" 1920. I bought it and it now hangs on the wall by our front door along with all of my father's photos of mountains he climbed or skied or both.
Oh I'm in a melancholy mood tonight. I've always loved Montana, but this year it's been hard to be here. I keep thinking of all the family who have passed from my life. I won't get to ask my grandmother if her sister was there the day Bonny and Clyde robbed the bank where she worked. I can't ask my mother who the camel cigarette belonged to that has the words "Do you want to take years off your life?" and the date 11-3-52 written on it that Jessie found today in one of Mom's drawers is a sealed tube. Mom would have been 12 then and my uncle wasn't even born. I can't ask Grampa the story behind his Dad's middle name, Lafitte. These are only some of the questions that have popped into my mind in the past two weeks.
Okay, time to go to bed to snuggle with my spouse. I need some reassurance about life, and he is very good about grounding me in the here and now. If I hurry, I might even get there before he starts snoring. But even if I don't, he'll wrap his arms around me in his sleep and everything will be okay.
I said to Dave this morning as I was sitting at the kitchen table debating what to do today that I have craft ADD. He snorted and said, "It has been widely commented upon". I asked, "What, you mean everyone else has noticed this before me?". Answer: "Yup". Nonetheless, I am paralyzed by the decision between woodworking (designing and lumber list for the bed, the desk, and a worktable I would like to build), glass (making sample tiles with the glow-in-the-dark powder I got), or spinning (I have the fleece for the Master Spinner course to sort and wash and the fiber for the combo mash-up to spin). For some of those nifty crafting activities there are prerequisite home activities that need to be performed. For glass I need to set up the studio. For preparing the fleece I need to clean off the back porch area and set-up the fiber sorting and washing area. And there are other house activities I would like to/need to do like gardening (weeding the perennials, or pruning and deadheading the roses) and cleaning (vacuuming, dusting, changing the beds, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, washing the windows). Yet I sit unable to focus on one of the aforementioned options as the right choice for today!
Okay, breathe. Here's what we can do. I'll make my lumber list for the bed and the workbench. I'll see about renting a trailer from U-Haul to bring to the wood back to Austin. I'll make a list of cleaning supplies I need for the house. Then I'll pick up the cleaning supplies and stop at the lumber yard on the way out to the lake. I'll take the girls there for the afternoon, and while we're there I'll spend an hour or two cleaning out the metal building and then I'll spin for a bit.
Normally this is the place in the post where I would list what I'll do tomorrow to continue this line of activity, but I know better than that! No, tomorrow morning I'll get up, have coffee, and sit paralyzed for awhile again until the day comes clear.
The girls are gearing up to race on the indoor track at the Hub in Missoula and I am stuck on a conversation we had in the car on the way in from Polson this morning. As we drove down to Missoula, Jessie looked out the window at the little towns, rolling fields, and mountains and asked, "What do people who live here do?". Her question made me remember back to when I was her age and growing up in Missoula. I would have rather died than live in or outside one of the little towns between Missoula and Kalispell. Even Kalispell would have been too small for me. My feelings were based on what I had to do at the time and what I liked to do at the time. I had to go to school, and high school with its greater density of people was much more enjoyable to me than was grade school. I liked to do social things--like dance and party with large groups of people. I dreamed of traveling, going anywhere. I loved meeting new people. Living in one house my whole life (till I was 17) gave me itchy feet.
That's a nice reminiscence, but I don't think it was really what she was asking. She was honestly curious about what people would do for a living and for enjoyment in the apparent middle of nowhere. The short answer to her question is that people here, as everywhere, do what they have to do (work, school), and in their free time they do what they like to do. For many people in Montana, what they like to do takes place outdoors. They hike, bike, kayak, ski, boat, snowboard, run around on ATV's or snowmobiles, raft, hunt, fish, etc. They live here for the proximity to those activities, and for the slower lifestyle you get in a more rural area. Even cities in Montana aren't very big. Billings, the largest (and in my opinion least pleasant) had only 104K people in the 2010 census. Missoula was second largest with 67K, and Bozeman and Helena (the capital) had 37K and 28K respectively. Polson, where we live in the summer, only has 4K people. All together the entire state--the fourth largest state in the union just behind California) holds 990K people. There are half again as many people in Hawaii, and California has 39 million...
So what do people in Polson do? What do people do anywhere? They live. They laugh, cry, fall in love, pay taxes, die. Some of them go to church (yet another social opportunity) or belong to fraternal organizations (Elk, Moose, Kiwanas). They own or work in retail businesses. They work in infrastructure support (for the utility providers). They work for the government or the banks or the grocery stores. They are electricians, plumbers, carpenters. They work at the hospital or in one of the private medical or dental offices. Some of them are teachers, some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives. For entertainment they go to the movies, go out for meals, do the outdoor things aforementioned. They (like me) craft, make, build and garden. Like Dave they code, cook, play video or computer games. They read, write, paint, compose poetry, swim. In short, they live.
Living here is not for everybody. Life is best spent where you find your passion and your muse. If you wake up, look around you and are uplifted by the world around you, you're in the right place. If the things you like to do are regularly available to you--you don't have to wait for vacation to do them--you're in the right place. Of course you have to be able to make a living there too. If you hate where you live, it's hard to like life.
When I was younger, meeting and interacting with people was everything to me. Now, I couldn't care less. I can go most days without talking to another being. If I am inspired by my surroundings I'll create. If I create, I'll lose myself in it. I also lose myself in books--and I can do that whether I am inspired by my surroundings or not. Beauty, cool weather, and lack of traffic (people) are now the markers of a good place for me.
The night winds down and I listen to the sound of two girls giggling and the fan running in our room for white noise. Dave has already retired for the evening and I need to do the same, but I was lost in the bed project all evening and didn't get to my post till now. I am happy to say that after many days of practicing Sketch-up, studying woodworking techniques, watching innumerable YouTube videos on woodworking, and pouring over pictures of beds on Pinterest and Houzz, I have finally put together a solid rough out for the new bed. It's big, heavy, and will be unique in both its quirky design and asymmetrical flow. I made a list on Trello of all the elements we want in it: lights, built-in charging stations on both sides, electrical outlets on both sides, beverage nooks for his diet coke and my water, a small jewelry catch-all, places for Kleenex and lotion, support for sitting up, small night tables, a big shelf, and a drawer or two.
The construction will include mortise and tenon joints with drawbore pegs in ebony or another dark hardwood, and a drawer with dovetail through joints and ebony sides. Further design elements that I am considering are ebony inlay and glass cutouts.
But for the rest of tonight, my designing will be done behind my eyelids. G'Night from Montana!
Another day in the summer paradise comes to an end. It's still beautiful, and it's still relaxing, but the day was less than optimal as I spent the morning getting fitted for a crown on the tooth I broke before coming up here, and I spent the afternoon increasingly aching as the anesthetic wore off. I did no gardening, nor spinning, nor cleaning. I didn't even start working on the bed again until about an hour ago. Instead I read all day, finishing the second book in a steampunk magic series by Devon Monk (Age of Steam). I started book three tonight, and even though the plot line is set out for eight books, the series is stalled after #3 while the author writes in her other series. It's a pity as I love these books. I like all of her books, and I especially appreciate the distinct voice these have from her other work. The first one reminds me a lot of Deadwood, and the second one has a very Firefly vibe. Steampunk in the old west that never was kind of thing with magic and the Strange.
It's the second week of our time here and so far I think I have a good balance of things occupying my time. I feel a bit unsettled by not going full out on have to's every day, but I am doing my best to relax and enjoy it. Now that the girls are here I have put myself at their disposal to take them out to the lake or wherever else they want to go. I'm spinning, planning woodworking projects, and soon will be fusing the very cool glow-in-the-dark pigment I got into glass for tiles and path pebbles. I'll also get the big garden completely weeded. Next year I'll have to have the house either painted or sided (it's cedar and not in the best of shape), and I'll finally put in the rock garden in the front where the old porch used to be. But for this year, I am not doing any major projects here. The most I think I'll do is re-stain the deck floor because I can do that with a roller in a couple of hours.
While I'm thinking of things to do, I found the box of shirt fabric for Dave's Hawaiian shirts that I left here two years ago and I have a pattern, a rotary cutter and a cutting mat. Think I'll get some shirts cut out and ready to sew up when we get home. I haven't made shirts for Dave since we last lived in Austin. I made him 38 shirts for his 38th birthday. I won't be making 51 this year, but I bet I can whip up a dozen or so. For each one I make, I can retire one from his closet and turn it into material for a quilt (yet another project I'd like to get to). All this talk of projects has made me sleepy. Off to bed!
Dave gently woke me this morning, pulling me from the wildest and most vivid dream. He was interested in breakfast at Mrs. Wonderful's Marmalade Cafe. I, of course, had to detail my dream for him before I would consider the idea. But of course the the prospect of Mrs. Wonderful's got me right up and ready to head out the door. There have been a lot of days like this recently (where I pop up and out the door without so much as a by your leave), and I really must start making time to shower. Everyone would appreciate it.
So a blueberry scone and an iced coffee for me and a breakfast sandwich for Dave at Mrs. Wonderful's, and then it was back home to spin! After yesterday's marathon design day for the bed on the computer, I determined to stay off the computer as much as possible today, and not to work on the bed at all. The creative part of my brain needed a break. Spinning is great when you want to turn your brain off.
This afternoon I took the girls out to the family property on Finley Point. This is the first time we've been there since I sold my half of it to my uncle, and it felt very odd. As we were going down the drive to the cabin I spotted the pine tree where the ashes of everyone in the family who has died have been spread. Even our beloved pet's ashes have been laid to rest there. This summer I will place my mother's ashes there, and I will have no more claim to the place. It is unsettling to have severed my connection to my Mom's final home.
My grandparents bought the lake property in 1965. Originally they had a mobil home there, and later Grandpa built a cabin next to it that they planned to use for guests and laundry. The laundry part never got hooked up (there was a washer but either never a dryer or never a dryer that was hooked up). Some time after they both died and my parents took over stewardship of and a half interest in the property. The mobil home was eventually hauled off leaving just the cabin. After Mom died, I held onto my share of it for just over a year, and then I decided to let go. My uncle fiercely loves that property, and his memories of it growing up are much more vivid than mine. He is eight years older than I am, and he was already a teenager when his parents bought it. He went there every weekend while I spent a lot of my formative weekends camping on the side of the Loch Sa river just over the border in Idaho.
Even so, it was hard for me there today realizing I had no more connection to it. It is not my place anymore--as it was when my mother owned half of it or after she died and I owned half of it. It is not mine, nor will it ever be my child's. It is Ed's and will be his children's. It was a bittersweet day for all of that. I hope subsequent visits will be less emotional for me--especially since I need to clear out the metal storage building on the property where my parents stored a lot of their things.
* I realized as I went to add the photos I took today to this post that I had a bunch of Gallifrey, and none of the girls! I'll work on that for later in the week. For now, It's time to head exhausted to bed, ready to rise in the morning and get my tooth fixed!
...But I left it till the very last minute as I worked in Sketch-up all day (except for the lovely lunch with Diane and Francie after a quick trip to WalMart with Jessie and Kyla), and now I have to go see if I can find Kaiju. He got in a fight with a neighbor cat and hasn't been seen since. More tomorrow. (My shoulder hurts from being on the computer for the past 14 hours...)
Jessie and Kyla are coming in from Atlanta tonight--flying into Missoula--and I wanted to go to the farmer's market there this morning too so we came in early-ish. Oh I woke at 7:30, but then the eyelids took pity on the eyeballs and closed again till 8:30. After seeing to the pets, showering, and a bit of desultory cleaning, we hit the road.
Another vista on the road less taken
As usual we took the back trail (literally), and as we were in no hurry and it was such a beautiful day, we stopped for me to take many pictures. I was chasing down my favorite vista of the Mission Mountains and saw a dusty rise on the dirt road off to our right through the Pablo National Wildlife Refuge. It looked to offer the perfect capture point for a picture. Dave was amenable so off off-road we went. Oh we were still on a road as we were in the mini van, not an ATV, but it was a narrow dirt road, and a couple of old (old) pickups were the only vehicles we saw the entire time we were on it. We saw cows. Lots and lots of cows. We saw some deer--including a doe with a little fawn almost lost in the high grass--and ducks and geese. And I got my vista shot.
Cows!
We got to Missoula in plenty of time to park and take a stroll through downtown to the farmer's market. Unlike the Polson market yesterday, the Missoula farmer's market is all produce, meat, honey, plants and foodstuffs. There is another market, the People's Market, a block away where you can find handcrafts, crystals with special powers, hand-tied flies for fly fishing, healing oils and unguents, and anything else you might expect in the city that is the last bastion of the time of peace and love in Montana.
At the first booth in the farmer's market, run by one of the many Hmong families that sell there, we found beautiful fresh morel mushrooms and grabbed a couple of bags. It was too early for huckleberries--the Hmong will have those come later in the summer. The Amish and Mennonites were also well-represented as market vendors as were the occasional Russian or Eastern European babushkas selling pickling cucs. While we didn't get any cucs today, I have a hankering to make pickles this summer so I will be picking up some nice little ones for baby dills later on.
More farmer's market bounty
We skipped the People's Market today in favor of the street musicians, and I was absolutely blown away by Jesse Davis and William Cook of TopHouse. They were gracious enough to let me video them playing a song so I could post it here, and I was gracious enough to give them (literally again) a fistful of money. Okay, it was mostly ones, but it was all Dave would let me have. I can get a bit... carried away in my enthusiasms. I also liked the woman playing banjo and the guy in a kilt and a baseball cap singing Livin' On a Prayer. Music on every corner. Literally.
Whenever we come to Missoula I make it a point to go the 4 Ravens Gallery. My first artistic mentor, Katie Patten of Mercurial Art and Glass Concepts is one of the owner/partners, and I always find gorgeous work there to keep and to gift. Today I fell in love with a couple of watercolors, one of shallots and one of onions. I may have to purchase one of them before the summer is over. For today we acquired pottery--an olive oil cruet and a coffee mug to add to my handmade mugs collection.
Livin' On a Prayer
(in a kilt)
Butterfly Herbs, seductively beguiling the passers-by with scents of patchouli, ambergris, frankincense, myrrh and musk--eau de 1960's in a gem of an old building on Higgins Avenue--was our next stop. Dave shopped for spices, and I just had a coffee and drank in the atmosphere. Flower children of every age and degree of personal hygiene abounded with dreads, tats, and piercings the norm rather than the exception. I could have sat there all day. But Dave had a hankering for empanadas at the little storefront empanaderia in front of where we parked. Sadly, upon closer inspection there wasn't an onionless empanada to be had so we had to do without.
She could play that banjo...
The afternoon was spent reliving Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I have to admit that Kurt Russell as a younger Ego was much less creeptastic this time through. Maybe because I was prepared for him. Now we relax at Liquid Planet back downtown until it's time to go to the airport. A coffeeshop is not a popular hangout on a summer evening in Missoula so we are enjoying having the comfy leather couches all to ourselves. I think I'll get a kombucha (I'm sure they have it here) now and go back to designing our bed. I leave you with... TopHouse!
After bouncing out of bed this morning... Oh I can't lie, there was less bounce and more stumble. But I thought about bouncing because today was our first day of the summer going to the Polson Farmer's Market! This early in the season there is less farmer and more crafter/baker, but it is always fun to peruse the all the wares from bullet keychains to cheese curds to fresh apple pie, scones and jam. There was even a guy selling Lichtenberg burned wood objects. He made his Lichtenberg machine from a microwave transformer. It's clearly more powerful than the Calistoga one I purchased (deeper longer burns), but I'm betting less safe.
moving slabs of blue pine
After we got home (Dave, Gallifrey, and I all went in the Mini Cooper--Gallifrey was the hit of the market), I started spinning the fiber for my combination/mash-up sweater coat. That is going to be one fun project--though I'm still unsure about using merino in a coat. A little spinning, a little reading, and it was time to head out to the Dupuis lumber mill for my first foray buying raw wood for furniture building. I have my heart set on a blue pine desk and bed frame/headboard for Austin. Blue pine is so named because it is pine that was killed by mountain pine beetles and then infected with a fungus that caused dark staining in the sapwood. I have been wanting to make this bed for three years, and this summer I finally hit the tipping point for seeing what wood is available and what the cost is.
The first slabs I picked out for a desk and maybe a dining table...
Out at Dupuis, the owner, Daylen, took me to the back metal shed and we went through the dried cut slabs they already have. They have logs too, but those take a long time to dry after they're cut into slabs--even with a kiln. Picking out this wood is not like picking through a bin of fiber or a case of glass. The slabs were stacked with little spacers in between, and they were 3-4 inches thick, 20-27 inches wide and 10-12 feet long. Of course the ones that initially caught my eye were on the bottom of the pile so Daylen went out and got the biggest forklift I have ever seen and moved everything around so I could get all the way to the bottom ones. I fell in love with four 3-inch thick 12-foot long pieces of varying widths and headed home after purchasing them. Dupuis is going to plane them for me and there's no way I could have carried them in the Mini Cooper anyway. As it is, I'm going to have to figure out how to get them back to Texas... But, as Dave likes to say, that's a problem for future Brenda.
Rough sketch of bed--headboard detail not started
mortise and tenon joints
Back at the homestead I watched a bunch of YouTube videos by the Wood Whisperer, downloaded a copy of Google Sketch-up and started designing. Here is what I have come up with so far. It took quite a bit of time to get proficient enough with Sketch-up to be able to get the detail I wanted in the mortise and tenon joints for the frame pieces and the footboard so I haven't even started on the headboard part. I also didn't even try to show the natural edges that the footboard will have (I'm using a 20 inch wide, 3 inch thick slab for it).
Tomorrow we go to Missoula to pick up Jessie and Kyla at the airport (after a day roaming the Missoula Farmer's Market, taking in an afternoon movie and an early dinner) so I won't get to work on my designs again till then. Oh it's hard to wait!
I would highly recommend that everyone split their time between two households. I hadn't realized what an incredible break moving from one place to another--even for just a couple of months--gives one's brain. I cannot stress what a great life-resetter it is! I remember feeling vastly relieved and unencumbered when I moved to Austin last June. Yes, I had a ton of unpacking and organizing to do, but any bad cycle or habits of time that I had in Atlanta were broken. Every day dawned fresh with things to do, but no chains already set. I had choices, and I didn't feel overwhelmed.
Gallifrey helps separate the roving
Montana this summer feels like that too. I get up in the morning and I garden--or not, I work on my spinning project--or not, I have an appointment or lesson--or not. There is no drive, only flow. Life stretches out in front of me with endless possibilities and refreshingly few obligations. Sure there is some maintenance (it wouldn't be a home of it didn't require time for upkeep), but it doesn't swamp me.
Before we left Austin I cleaned out the refrigerator and threw away old bottles, jars, and packages of things that would be out of date before we got back from the summer. It felt liberating, and I reveled in the knowledge that I will return home to a clean (and mostly empty) fridge. I wish I had done the same thing here. I really looked at the contents of the door of the refrigerator here today and I was horrified. There was mayonnaise from our last stay here... two years ago. The door was crammed with things I know house science projects or alien lifeforms waiting to eat our brains while we sleep. Looks like I do have one upcoming obligation here...
Kaiju guards the roving I decided not to use
It's so quiet in this house that, when I am not typing on the keyboard, I can hear my heart beating in my ears, and the occasional squeak of Dave's chair upstairs. The pets aren't even snoring right now. It's putting me to sleep, but before I head off for a nap, I'm going to write about a project I have begun. It's a SAL/KAL (spin along, knit along) that I am starting now and will continue in conjunction with the Tour de Fleece. (More on that another day.)
The project is designed to help use up beautiful but random (not matched to a color or project) 4 oz skeins of hand dyed roving. Every spinner buys them, luscious little braids of scrumptious color that we have no idea what we're going to do with but which we absolutely, positively must have. Then they languish in our stashes because there's not all that much you can do with 4 oz of yarn--no matter what the One Skein Wonder books tell you. But for this project, it doesn't matter if you only have one skein of any given colorway as long as you have eight skeins that you can see going together in a glorious technicolor project. Eight skeins (11 for me--I don't want to run short) are enough to knit a sweater. I'm going to knit a sweater coat!
Look at the lovely crossover cable in the back!
I really hope a little over 3-1/2 lbs of yarn will be enough to make this pattern. Maybe I should do more than guess and actually take some measurements because once I have started spinning, it will be hard to add more roving into the mix and I have my heart set on this pattern.
When I was in high school I found a thick red mohair and wool sweater coat knit in a thick cable pattern by my mother. It was enormous--I don't think she ever wore it. She said I could have it and I wore it everywhere, whenever it was cold enough (and in Montana that meant I had plenty of opportunity). I wore it through college and brought it to graduate school in Chicago. Somewhere there I lost it, as often happens with things one loves and drags around the world. I have thought of it many times in the 30 years since it disappeared, and wished I still had it. Now I am taking roving of every color in Merino, Polworth, and other blends of wool and I'm going to spin a light yarn for a lightweight sweater coat that I can wear in Austin. Merino is not the most durable of wools. It is the softest, but I have some reservations about its appropriateness for this coat. I guess I'll have to wait for the final evaluation and choice when I finish the yarn.
Pavlova sleeps on the discarded alpaca roving
The pets all helped in the preparation of the fiber--mostly by napping on or near it. Pavlova took a brief, but more intense roll by chasing and pouncing on bits as I pulled them apart. She was eventually dissuaded.
And then it was time for a late lunch, some reading in the Sky chair, followed by a two-hour nap. Dave napped too as it was after 5:00 in Austin and the work day was done. He is convinced that we are sleeping so much because of the lack of oxygen in the air (we are at about 3,000 ft being at the top of the hill in Polson). I think it's just been a hard couple of years.
Now the evening stretches lazily ahead. Maybe some spinning, maybe some reading. There'll be enough time tomorrow or next week for more serious endeavors.
I have posted with a cat in my lap. I have posted with two cats in my lap. This is the first time I have attempted a post with a cat and a dog. But I am not going to dislodge anyone. We all just watched A Dog's Purpose. Gallifrey was fascinated at the beginning, and then went to sleep. Jig stayed agitated for the entire movie and kept pressing up against my seat staring at me. Finally I let him up next to me, and he curled into a ball huddled against my leg with his nose tucked to his tail and to my thigh. Then Kaiju wanted some lap time for the first time since we got here. And so there were two.
The movie is over, the tears are dried, and the animals remain nestled. All I need now is Pavlova deciding to join us. I was disappointed that the critics panned the movie (it only got 30% Rotten Tomatoes on Netflix), but I was encouraged by the audience reviews (4.5 stars from 511 reviews). Even Dave liked it--while saying it was the most manipulative movie since ET (and, yes, he cried too). All that remains for me is this post and the inside of my eyelids--oh yes, and some soppy snuggling with my spouse.
We started the evening by going to the East Shore Smokehouse for dinner, then home for wine, chocolate chip cookies (Dave is the cookie god), and a wonderfully sappy movie (made a change from our usual fare of Deadwood Season 2). Now it's 10:00 pm and it's still light out. I love summer in Montana!
The time zone is a bit problematic as my piano lesson is at 8:00 am Wednesday morning for the rest of the summer (9:00 in Austin and 10:00 in Atlanta where my teacher is), but I got up at 7:00 (it gets light about 5:30 am) to practice, had my lesson, and then went out to the garden for a couple of hours. I don't remember all I did this afternoon. I know I worked on my upcoming spinning project (a fascinating piece I will describe on Friday) and read, and I didn't nap. Well, I didn't really nap. I did lie down for half an hour before going to dinner but the J called from Atlanta halfway through and we talked for a good long while. I have missed her and am really looking forward to seeing both her and Kyla on Saturday!
I told myself (and my spouse) that I would rest and relax this first week. Yesterday I didn't really follow through on that plan, but I'm all behind it today. So far I've read email, signed up for the Tour de Fleece (similar to Spinzilla only linked to the Tour de France and our teams spin as theirs do), planned my project (based on the random stash basket of hand dyed rovings I brought with me to Montana), and had breakfast. I've also lazed in the Sky Chair and done a bit of reading. Now I'm contemplating a nap.
-------
Nap over, dinner over, a ride with Gallifrey in the Mini Cooper with the top down over. It's only 9:15, but bed is calling me again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll wake up and get back into the groove. As soon as I get all the pets (including the kitten) back in, I'll wrap up for the night.
Somehow the night before last when I got online to post, I didn't notice that my post from Friday on Glass Incarnate was missing. However tonight I noticed that both of the posts from the past three days that I did on my phone ended up on the misbeehiving blog! Apparently when I post from my phone it goes there by default. Who knew. So I moved the posts over tomnight, and sadly lost the comments (sorry Bill!) Ididn't want to lose my streak of posting every day since December 27, 2016. Now I'm ready for today's.
I am very relaxed right now--a super-sized Negroni will do that for you, even if you had it over four hours ago--and I still don't feel up to a long post. I think the idea of posting earlier in the day is a good one. Today I managed to get up by 9:00 am (I heard Dave on his conference call on the deck above me and that was enough to get my bones moving out of bed). Dave took a short break from work--sadly no day off--and we went to Pop's Grill for an enormous breakfast, and when we got home, I decided to give myself a treat and I weeded in the garden for an hour. There were many other things I could have done--maybe even should have done--but I chose to clear my mind and zen out in the dirt.
They don't call it Big Sky Country for nothing
The garden at my mom's house used to seem so big and overwhelming to me! I used to look at it and I couldn't imagine getting it all weeded. Today I parceled it out into a week's work, and I determined a good treat for weeding would be to go buy some perennials to take the place of the weeds I pulled. Expanding your projects makes you grow, and the experience of putting in the botanical garden in Austin makes this entire yard look small. Most of the weeds in the bed are grasses--though there is a dandelion or two in the bunch--so weeding goes fast and I feel no angst about pulling up wild flowers. Tomorrow I'll plant the perennials I got at the nursery this afternoon, and then I'll weed the next strip in the garden. I should have taken pictures today, but I'll do it tomorrow.
Plants here are very expensive. Next year it might be a good idea to grow seedlings in Texas and then bring them up here to plant in the garden. I still have a big bed in front that I covered in plastic three years ago in preparation for turning it into a a large raised bed and it's going to need a lot of plants. Pete from two doors down offered me some irises and poppies when he splits his this week, but they'll just make a dent. Or I could just continue to support the small local nursery which has to provide a living for its owners in an inhospitable climate in a very small town.
The view of the lake from dinner last night
But enough of plans. This summer is all about relaxing and recharging my batteries. Sure I'll source some blue pine to make our bed and my desk, and maybe I'll design the mosaic for the front hall and fuse some experimental glow in the dark tile for our master bath remodel (the powder came Friday!).l But, really, relaxation and recharge are the watchwords. Pictures of the lovely lake and garden tomorrow.
