My mad mandala-coloring skills must be bragged about. The pink and green won first prize and the blue, purple, green won second prize. The sharpie fumes and late hour did lead to some mistakes on the pink and green mandala, but I guess not enough to detract from its innate glory.

Wow! Crazy news day here today. So last night I was heading into the home stretch at work. It was about 5:30 and I was eyeing the clock, willing it to speed up. All of a sudden I hear my boss calling my name from down the hall. He like to draw it all out really long: Beeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaatrijs....Beeeeeeeeaaaaaaatrijs. So I headed over to see what was up. He was in there with the boss from next door.

They asked me if I was still interested in the permanent state fish biologist position next door. I had applied an open position a few months ago and C from next door had gotten it. Then they had gotten a new open position and flew it in early June. I had applied, but hadn't heard back yet. I had been thinking about it and anticipating a new round of interviews and wondering if I should purchase new interview clothes to prop up my confidence and dazzle them with. Luckily I hadn't acted on that thought. They offered me the position.

They said I had 30 minutes to decide. What with budgetary woes and pronouncements from on high they had to hire asap or they were going to loose the position. I said yes.

Let the freak outs commence. I want this. I want to move forward and learn new job skills. They'll be more field work, shorter term projects, more diversity, contract management, more interaction with other people, possible supervisory experience, more responsibility, regulatory experience... It's very exciting and kind of scary at the same time. I'll have to move out of the comfort zone I've created for myself here over the last 6 1/2+ years. This is very good and kind of scary at the same time.

I'll also be taking a 30% pay cut. And move from accruing 14 hours of vacation time a month to only 8 hours.

But I'll start paying into the California workers retirement system, learn a lot, and will eventually move up in the payscale. So it's a move forward. I'm excited. Still waiting to hear on more details such as timing.

This summer is rolling by quickly! So many summery things I want to do and so little time. Plus all the smoke up in the mountain nixing summery river days. The smoke also leading to E being gone a lot. He's been working one or two overtime days a week. It's a lot of extra money, but I miss having him around. Josie does too. Meow. We're not sure if his work is going to be letting up either. If it keeps getting warmer and dryer they think the fires will burn until the rains come in October. Boo.

I got to see some of the smokey-ness up close and personal last weekend. I went to the Handmade Memories Crafting Retreat in Weaverville. It was very fun. A whole weekend just to play with crafty stuff and look at what other people are making. There were 18 of us, all women, ranging from 12 to in their 60s or 70s - a good mix of ages. There was an assembly building next to the hotel where we all got a big long table to spread out all we wanted. People brought knitting, scrap-booking, sewing, quilting, beading, crochet, and coloring. There were mini-workshops, shopping expeditions (can't have too much stash!), games, and raffles. There was food galore. Just a great chance to play all weekend. Highlights:

-I finished the cowl part of my fluffy camisole with pull-off cowl and started the camisole
I finished my summertime top contest (except for fixing the hips...)
-I colored two mandalas and won first and second prize in the mandala-coloring contest with them!
-I visited the Joss House, which was amazing
-I bought some pretty fabric and yarn
-I won the big Saturday raffle prize - an organizer cube and Knit a Bear kit
-I won oodles of little raffles - got four skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in peridot, five skeins of a fingering weight cotton in turquoise, two skeins of brown sheep wildfoote in deco lime, an older Vogue Knitting magazine with gorgeous romantic patterns, a tape measure, pins, patterns, and bunches of other little things
-I entered the hula hooping contest
-I learned how to make a wee pin cushion
-I ironed tons of super wrinkly fabric I brought from home with so much wonderful space
-I cut out the pieces of Josie's quilt
-I cut out the pieces for a skirt
-I swam in the pool
-My team aaaaalmost won the scavenger hunt
-I got to see backfires being lit across the river from Junction City and Del Loma on the drive home
-and most importantly I got to hang out with a group of awesome, inspirational ladies all weekend!

This Friday is for a knitting update. There has been quite a bit of knitting action. As you might recall, I was in a bit of a blue phase. I do love my blues. I continued on with blues on our vacation.

First I finished up a cowl. There has been a bit of a cowl craze on the internets and I must admit I'm taken with the simplicity and usefulness of this accessory as well. I decided it was a perfect use for a single skein of Lorna's laces shepherd sock I had bought when we still lived in Tahoe. The colorway was Tahoe so I had to buy it. But I hadn't realized that one skein is only really enough for anklets, which I'm not super fond of. So I searched and searched on ravelry for a cowl pattern using fingering weight yarn and the same yardage. Nothing was really calling out. But I did like the sea foam scarf. I decided to adapt the stitch pattern to a cowl.

I cast on 108 stitches and did a 6 row garter stitch border on each end. I knit it flat and seamed because I didn't have the right size circular needles, but it would be easy to do in the round. I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I actually finished it in the car ride down to Reno.

One note on the colorway though. It's called Tahoe and includes purples, maroons, blues, and dark greens. The predominant color is purple. It very pretty. But not very Tahoe. I never see purple in Lake Tahoe. My Tahoe colorway would be deep blue, light aquamarine (shallow parts of the lake), dark green, and maybe some granite.



Then, I made some Spirogyra handwarmers from knitty for my sister for Christmas. I felt very virtuous so far in advance! I also loved working with Lorna's laces shepherd sock again. This time in the ravenswood colorway - more blue with faded reds mixed in. I started these on our two day backpacking trip in the Desolation Wilderness and worked on these for the rest of the trip. I finished them on the car ride home.







After we got home, I had two knitterly thoughts: 1. I need to make my summer top for the HMM summer top contest and 2. I feel like using a different color than blue for a bit. So I cast on for my summer top in Madil kid seta pink mohair froth. I'm making a crazily sexy and impractical camisole from Knitting Lingerie Style. I may never wear it, but I want to make it for fun. I've already finishing knitting the three parts and have to block them and put the whole thing together. Then a crochet edging! I'm a bit nervous about this.



So I've been procrastinating. This week I pulled out a delicious ball of Artyarns silk rhapsody that I had purchased on sale a month or so ago. I just could not resist the yummy pink, cream, and bronze (130 colorway). Think Neapolitan ice cream that you just want to roll around it. There's a pattern in the Book of Yarn that just so happens to use one skein of this glorious stuff too! The diamonds and pearls shawl. I started it before I knew it I'm already at the bind off. It's a decorative bind off I've never done before and people are reporting issues so I hope I can figure it out.





So next I need to - bind off my shawl and block it. Then I need to block and finish my camisole. But my next knitting will be tonight at craft night at HMM. I usually like to work on something using yarn I've bought there. I can't block my camisole there, so hmmm. I think I may bring some Debbie Bliss pure silk I bought on sale there a few months ago (06 color - celery). I can wind it into balls and swatch for the horseshoe cardigan I want to make with it some day. It requires a swatch in the lace pattern. I don't really want to make the cardi quite yet because it requires 5 balls of yarn and I only have 4. I'm hoping to score the extra on ravelry, but I haven't heard back yet from the people I contacted who have the same dyelot for sale or trade... I hope they write back soon.

What I really want to make next though is the fluffy camisole and cowl from Weekend Knitting in light blue - yes, it's time to get back to blue! I got the yarn with a gift certificate from Sh for my 30th birthday and I really want to make this top. I think I'll make the cowl first so I can use it as a gauge swatch. Plus - cowl - they're really hot right now!

One last note - I went to P n H on Wednesday night and had a great time. Especially because V and E brought me back an amazing gift from Black Sheep Gathering! Some gorgeous, gorgeous laceweight alpaca hand-dyed in beautiful light blues and greens. How did they know... Picture soon. I'm already dreaming of scarves from Victorian Lace Today.

Sunday I had a great opportunity to help out at the rotary screw trap on Redwood Creek. They catch the outmigrating salmonids to get an idea of how many there are. They start in April and go until the flow in the river is too slow to support the trap safely. They catch mostly Chinook salmon and steelhead trout with a few coho salmon, cutthroat trout, sticklebacks, and sculpin. I had never had to identify juvenile fishies before so it was a great chance to see oodles of them and get my id skills going.

It was really cool to be out there and seeing all the little fishies. I got good instruction and pretty soon I was sorting steelies and Chinookies with confidence. All the fish in the trap were ided and counted. The first 30 of each type were weighed and measured as well. You have to scan the fish for pit tags and look carefully for fin clips as well. There is an upstream trap and some of the fish from that trap are marked. Some fish from the lower trap are marked and re-released further upstream to measure trap efficiencies too.





Steelhead trout (speckled dorsal fin):


Chinook (clear anal fin) and coho (dark line on anal fin) salmon:


Freedom...

Most importantly... the 4th was Josie's 10th birthday! Happy birthday my little stinky number one top kitty! She got some canned salmon and loved it!



And it was Sh's birthday too - Happy Birthday Sh!

We're back. Well, we were back last week. But it was a busy week and I still haven't uploaded my vacation pictures to flickr. There are just so many of them! We did so much on our vacation - it was great. I will get it all sorted someday soon.

I did upload some other pictures though. From this past weekend, which was pretty fun too. I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I had a very good one as it was E's only day off in ten. Darned firecamps keeping him busy. Though he's been stationed at the regular base everyday until this Wednesday. Good thing since the firecamps don't have air conditioning!

Anyways, we went on a truncated bikeride on the 4th. It got all nice and sunny so I put on my cute sundress that I accidentally shrunk a little in the wash (it was rayon not cotton - oops) and bike shorts and we headed to the beach. As we got close to Mad River we saw the ominous fog rolling in. So we decided to turn around. But I took some pictures of the pretty baby brown cows first.







We went over to J and C's and hung out with all the visiting family for a while. Then we all walked down to the plaza for the 4th festivities. There was a cool reggae band playing and lots of fair food. We opted for some pizza instead though. I tried a slice of Sunset, which had pineapple, sundried tomatoes, and mushrooms I think. It was very tasty.

Then we went home and put on warmer clothes. Picked up D and his canoe and headed for the Marina. Fortified ourselves for a drink at the restaurant and got into the water. Luckily other mariners helped us out by telling us that two lights were mandatory. E had some headlamps in his car so we outfitted up. We were happy about that when we saw the police boat harassing other canoes and kayaks. We paddled out to below the fisherman statue and settled in to enjoy the show. Unfortunately, the fog settled in too so many of the fireworks were completely obscured except for their general color lighting up the fog. But we were directly under them and across from the barge so we got a great view of the lower fireworks. Eureka really needs to invest more heavily in the lower down screaming-streaming fireworks - those were awesome. A good 4th.

Much fun was had at the oyster festival. I did not have faith in the power of the sunshine to burst through the thick morning fog and I paid with a sunburn. But I did have a good time. Hung out with my knitterly friends first to partake in Worldwide Knit in public day. Then I passed by all of the loverly food booths of the festival in favor of a Southeast Asian sandwich from Don's. Much shorter lines and yum. Wandered around some to look for C, who I never did find, but did find D and N and hung out with them for a while. Then I was thinking of going home, but ran into R and C on my way out who told me where H and R were so IO went and sat with them for a bit. The gorgeous weather and good bands were holding me there. Overall it was a very good time, though I did miss E as he was at work.

After I wandered home I thought about the 3 bbqs I'd been invited to. Then I went on a bike ride. Up Fickle - it was too nice and sunny out not to take advantage. I felt very strong a good too. I am definitely doing better on the uphills. After showering I kind of decided I didn't feel like driving anywhere. So I was playing around with the outfit I'm going to wear to S and J's wedding. Tried the dress with my new stole (! more on that later), different shoes, and different jewelry. You know how it can be fun to play dress up sometimes. Then the phone rang and it was an old drunken friend of E's: whatcha doing? Come over right now!

Hee, so I wasn't able to admit I was playing dress up. But they were just down the dress so I put some normal clothes on, put a beer in my cute kitty bag that Sz got me and headed over. By the time I got there, the drunks had cleared out, but I had a nice chat with L before I came home.

Yesterday was errands day in Eureka. Picked up a birthday gift for E - his birthday is today! Also picked up some tank tops and shorts for our up-coming trip. My tank tops had been snatched in January. Luckily I found some good deals.

So here are some pictures of my finished optic waves stole! It was 42 inches long pre-blocking and I was able to block it out to 60 inches long easily. Blocking really brought out the pretty waves in the pattern too. I'm very happy with it. (First picture is pre-blocking).

Phew. What a fun and busy weekend. Gogogo - lot's going on. Friday night was the first Knit Night at the new Handmade Memories store. It was very fun - someone even brought champaign. Yum. I worked on my stole and got quite a bit done. I still love the colors. Worked on it more at the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning with V and E.

After Farmer's Market I finally got down to business with my garden. I bought many types of squash, lemon cucumbers, lettuce, and chard. Put in some more s oil to replace the soil lost this winter and scooped out the cat poop. Eew. Luckily there was less than I'd been expecting. I do believe the neighbor's dog had been... ahem...sampling. To prevent future poopage, I set out to enclose the garden bed with a chicken wire fence. My vision may have been more spectacular that my follow through though. Luckily, E fixed it up for me on Sunday : )

Before:


After:



Saturday night E took me out to a musical. We went to see 'Little Shop of Horrors' at the North Coast Repertory Theater in Eureka. E's friend J's niece played the lead Audry. She was great. It was a really good show. Really good singers and a silly fun story. I loved the way the play really looked like it was singing. J played in the band and they sounded great too. Went over to J's after the show for a small party.

Sunday was chore-a-rific. Laundry was done as well as closet season switcheroo. Happily after all the chores, E and I went for a nice bike ride in the community forest. Then I made the very tasty mango asian noodle salad from the cover of this month's Vegetarian Times for dinner. Yum!

Yesterday we went for a longer bike ride. We went out to Blue Lake via the old side road. It's a gorgeous ride. So lush and lots of blooming flowers. We passed by a field with a donkey hanging out with some deer. We went over to the Mad River Fish Hatchery and then to the bridge over the Mad River where we looked at all the fishies in the water below. Very fun. Got home and made the mango-teriyaki tofu from the same magazine as above for dinner. More yum.

Friday! Hurrah! Tonight I'm going to Knit night in McKinleyville - new location for Homemade Memories. Then this weekend I'm going to try to get a bunch of stuff done. I want to get to the gardening I never got to last week. Need to pick up chicken wire on my way home today. Need to fence off the garden bed because of the cat pooping. I also need to change out my winter/summer clothes. Not that I've felt very motivated lately as the weather has sucked pooballs.

I finished my simply lovely lace socks last week and I quite like them. They went super fast for socks. I love the lace patterning. The yarn was not the most fun to work with, but will hopefully wear well. I'm thinking of entering these into the county fair. Hmm.



I started my next project: the optic waves stole from 'the Book of Yarn.' I'm using Brooks Farm primero that I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool in deep blues and black. This yarn is luscious! The colors are so deep and beautiful with a nice sheen. The pattern calls for 800 yards, but I only have 500. The pattern is also supposed to be 80 inches long and that seems looooong. So I've cut out one repeat (still seems plenty wide) and I guess I'll just see how long it gets. I figure if I'd kept the same number of repeats it would have gotten 50 inches long (seems a bit short) so I just hope it goes to over 50. I'm 65 inches tall and your 'wingspan' is supposedly the same as your height so I'm thinking anywhere's from 55 to 65 would be a good length for a stole? Though a 50 inch stole is probably fine too?



I'm kind of hoping I can finish this in time to wear to S and J's wedding in late June. That means I'd have to finish it at least a week ahead of that as we're planning a backpacking trip before the wedding. Planning has been a bit tricky so far. Mid to late June would normally be good for the Trinity Alps and a bit early for the Sierras. This year they have low snowpack for the Sierras and higher snowpack and more downed trees than normal in the Trinities.

I had kind of wanted to go for a trip in the Trinity Alps. I love them and they are pretty close so less driving overall. Unfortunately they had lower than normal snowlines this year. Thus tons of extra downed trees and the ranger said they were anticipating less trail crews than normal due to budget cuts. He mentioned 40 huge downed tress on one trail we were considering - not simple hopover downed trees either. He thought some high country trails might not be open until mid-July - quite late for the Trinities. Of course we could do a low country trail, but that involves my nemesis: poison oak. Bleh.

So... we've been hearing about this drought in the Sierras and weeks of glorious sunshine... The snowline is a 7000 feet right now. This makes the Tolumne hikes E was thinking about a bit out of reach. Or rather, under snow. But, the ranger said the first hikers were going through and reporting so sketchy areas, but other open areas. So we are hoping for blazing heat and sun and maybe some rain to clear up some areas. Though we need to look in the guidebook and see if there is a lower elevation trip in the Sierras that looks good. E was kind of in love with the idea of the cross range Yellowstone-Mammoth hike or just Yellowstone-Tuolumne or Tuolumne- Mammoth. But that might be asking for too much this early in the season.