Cleaned

I cleaned yesterday, so consequently I have nothing much to share with you. I hadn't bothered to do any real cleaning in quite awhile as we'd had no guests planned. I mean I pick up, and do laundry, and dishes, and that sort of thing, but that's about it. This week we are having family over, so I made an effort. Since that left me with no new thread art to share, I grabbed another photo from our Sequoia trip to post instead.

There will likely be a little more cleaning today, but I'm hoping for at least a little knotting or tatting, if I can think of a reason to do so. Otherwise, it'll just be more enormous trees tomorrow.

Big Trees

Well, my legs are seriously sore this morning, but we had a lovely day yesterday. We headed out on a drive into the mountains. We went to Sequoia National Park for the day. It's about a two hour drive from us to entrance of the park and then almost 7000ft up to get to the good stuff which includes General Sherman, the world's largest single stem tree. That's it behind me and the girls, way behind us.

We also walked a few trails including one we let the oldest child spontaneously pick as we walked past the trail head. It was both a good and bad choice. Good, as it was completely deserted allowing up a quick, private hike in the Giants Forest, bad, as it was quite an uphill adventure that exhausted us all. Plus, we didn't actually have a trail map, so we had no real idea where we were going.

We had a nice lunch and visited with the bravest chipmunk ever as it hoped we would drop something, we didn't. It ran around us and under our table the whole time.We enjoyed listening to the largely international park guests and a bit of people watching near the more popular locations, but it was orders of magnitude less crowded than Yosemite, which we visit more often.

I've got some serious plans to sit on my rear today and recover from what my fitbit tells me was the equivalent of walking 75 flights of stairs. I'm sure my hands will get bored though and I'll get up to something. I'll leave you with one last picture of the General.

So Slow

Yep, it was just knotting and reading yesterday. I got a couple more rounds done on the tablecloth, but it's growing so very slowly now. I fear I need to get another project going to give myself a sense of accomplishment. The Armenian lace was doing that just fine when it grew at least an inch a day. Now it's got to be like a quarter of an inch and that doesn't give me a sense that I did anything at all. It's like the lace is just teasing me now.

Let's see, what else? Oh, we caught the mourning doves changing places on their nest, so I snapped a picture of the eggs in the the nest. We're just a few days away from them hatching. So that's interesting. We also had a bee get in the house and buzz against the windows in our living room. The windows that are about 15 feet up and impossible to reach without an extending pole. We eventually got it out after injuring it with said pole with a fluffy dust attachment on it. Yes, it was as fun as it sounds.

It's still quiet on the shop front and we've got no huge plans for the weekend, so perhaps I'll come up with something new to make, or maybe I'll just read and knot some more. At this point I'm really just hoping something interesting happens and surprises me with new work over the weekend. I mean, that may not be likely, but it's possible.

Back To Normal

Ah, back to what passes for normal around here. School took up the morning and we discovered that a pair of nesting mourning doves on our fence had laid an egg. Their position on the fence is perfect for us to watch them from inside the house without disturbing them at all. Of course I did have to get this picture from outside when the mother bird had gone off the nest for a short time in the morning. I sure hope this little egg makes it to baby bird.

After schooling I meant to get to tatting, but I just didn't. Each round of the Armenian lace is nearly 7 feet long now and I can barely finish one round in a day. Of course that's partly because I went smaller for the sake of density. I'd be flying around at the size the loops were before I shrunk them. I finished round two of the basket stitch and started in on round three. I want to keep going, but I know I need to get back to some tatting. I've got a necklace to remake and I really ought to make more of the pendant for Friday, so I can list it properly. There's also some cleaning I need to get done because this weekend is my youngest child's birthday and the family will be gathering. I've got the rest of the week to get to that though and you know I'm going to procrastinate as long as I can.

Less Reading, More Doing

I stayed much more in the real world yesterday. I didn't finish a single book. I did read a bit though. Other than the reading, there was some catching up on tv shows and that gave me some tatting time as well. I finished up my backup pair of ankle corsets. That there is a pile of lace in the resealable plastic back that I work with the thread in. It's an attempt to keep some of the cat fur off of the larger pieces I make. It works most of the time.

There was also a little bit of shopping. We seem to have moved our Saturday errands to yesterday in an attempt to free up Saturday. It was weird to be out with the entire family on a weekday though. We also took a nice long walk. It was a particularly lovely day outside. So lovely I even took a few nice cloud pictures.

Our plan today is a long day out to Yosemite, so much more walking. The kids have been there, but it was actually long enough ago that they don't seem to remember it. I doubt that I will get anything else done at all. It's a long drive there and back, but since I don't have anything that really needs tatting, and I get car sick if I read, I'll probably just watch the world go by.

Outside

As expected, I didn't get around to any tatting nor any tatting related tasks. We did school a little early to get ready for the kids outing. We then spent the rest of the morning at Merced National Wildlife Refuge. Seriously, I had never seen so many birds all in one place. We all got binoculars to peer though the fog, but as the fog lifted you didn't them them to see the huge flocks of cranes, herons, and countless waterfowl. We had a great time and vowed to back in the spring when they get an entirely different population of birds.

The fog was completely gone in town and I was greeted by this flower in my front yard that apparently thinks it's spring already. The rest of the day was reading while the oldest daughter read her novel for school. The television makes it harder for her to read, so I've just been reading when she does. I suppose I could have tatted in the evening, but I wasn't feeling like it.

Today I'm hoping to, at the very least, get the bracelet I showed you yesterday up in the etsy shop. I'm not sure what I'll get up to the rest of the weekend. A rain storm is suppose to come through and stay until Monday. It's desperately needed, but we just got the sun back from the fog and I'm going to miss it. It could give me some tatting time though, we'll see.

What a Day

I had quite the action packed day. Mostly because things kept breaking and needing immediate repair.Right after schooling I managed to break the garage door. No, don't ask how. The point is I did it and then had to undo it. Luckily I'm pretty handy with tools, so I worked it out. Then after running errands, that kept getting longer, it was pointed out that in breaking the door I had also scrapped paint off the trim of the house. Of course then I had to find the touch up paint, clean the wall wound and paint that. These tasks were added the ones that kept popping up inside the house too. All the while the dust kicked up from looking for things along with the pollen outside turned me into a heap of allergy suffering even though I had taken a pill in the morning. All that sounds fun right?

I did however manage to get some interesting photos while I took a break and walked out with the kids. Of course in retrospect, that just exacerbated the allergies, but at least there was nothing that needed fixing on the walk. I got a photo of the same mushroom from yesterday because it bloomed further. Though I'm not sure that's what the process is call in fungi. We also got very close to two Turkey Vultures than we ever had before. They are incredibly big birds that live near us in large amounts, but you rarely see them on the ground unless they've found something dead and are feeding. I'll spare you the details about what they are eating here, but they are actually quite beautiful close up and enormous. We got the stink eye from one bird, but it just stayed there as we watched and walked on.

So, no I didn't get much tatting in. I did manage to finish a pair of ankle corsets for the shop though. I just got an order in this morning so I have at least one small thing to make today. Hopefully the allergy medicine can win today and nothing else needs fixing, because I just want to sit and tat today.