Familiarity breeds fondness (and Plague)

(August 3rd)

 
The lovely thing about returning to a place one has been before is the familiarity of it. You know where it is and how to get there; what amenities are around; little helpful tricks and tips that make things easier, and what the pitfalls are going to be; you know you like it, or why else go back? In our case, returning to site 22 on the Silver Creek campground, on the Truckee River, we have enjoyed immensely knowing what to expect. The walk from the car park is still just as far, but we knew about the private little beach that makes it worthwhile. There are still ants everywhere, but we know they drive away other insects and don't bite. Best of all, there have been two significant changes in the four years to the day since we were last here.

Firstly, each site now has a large bear box - not only good for keeping away bears but also for storing all our camping stuff while we're off gallivanting. Secondly, there is now a camp host: an extremely affable gentleman with braces and a cap, who sells cords of wood so we don't need to go and haul back termite-infested felled trees from the Olympic park down the road. "Bears - yes," he said when we arrived, "though not as many as there used the be. The chipmunks carry the Plague, like they have for the past 30 years [we were alarmed, before leaving the UK, to read that some campsites around LA had been closed due to Plague-infested squirrels] but this year they also have the Hunter virus which is airborne and REALLY nasty, so don't encourage the chipmunks." He has been round a few times to check on us and have a chat, and it's really comforting to know there's someone looking out for this place. Today he told us about the recent yoga camp up the road, and how impossible it had been to check everyone in because they left at dawn and returned at midnight, and how he'd stood in the road to try and get them to sign in but they were in too much of a hurry to get to their dawn workouts. Yesterday he told us about the paperwork he'd had to do when a group of people never came back to break camp, and how their stuff is still in his trailer and nobody knows where they went.

He's full of good stories. I think I would like to do his job one summer.

A panorama from our "private beach". 

Today we've been into Reno - me, to visit the Mecca that is Jimmy Beans, Mr Z, to play golf at Rosewood Lakes golf course. He returned saying it was insane and one big water hazard; not exactly Rosewood Lakes but Rosewood Islands, with reeds and geese and water everywhere. He also said he'd like to do it again which is good, because it will make visiting Jimmy Beans that bit less painful for him.

Since my last visit, the shop has moved over towards the airport. It's a modest size with a few skeins each of a good variety if yarn. But then, through the warehouse door...wow. Row upon row of boxes of yarn, all labelled and indexed and waiting for a customer like me to rummage through. I was in there a good 90 minutes before I surfaced, and my rummaging paid off because I found a skein of Artyarns beaded silk light which was my intended purchase but was listed as on back order until September on the website - and actually, was put through the till as a different colourway, presumably because of this.

I'd love to say that was all that came home with me, but I can't, in good conscience. With all that Madelinetosh and Dream in Colour and Lorna's Laces and Malabrigo to choose from, I had to go back in for a second pass after the first rummage and a lot of justifying was done of the final total, chiefly that it is my birthday and that I did extra work in July for the exam board hat turned out to be surprisingly lucrative. I could so easily have bought more, but when will I have time to knit it up? And pretty yarn should become something beautiful.

A Blissful Beginning

(July 31st)

I'm typing this from campsite 58 at the DL Bliss State Park campground, Lake Tahoe. We've just grilled steak for dinner and packed everything into the bear box overnight and we're sitting by the fire under a million stars. Mr Z is wasting the torch batteries, shining it into the woods to check for bears.

This is technically day 2 of the 2013 road trip, but it is our first night under canvas. We have a brand new blue and white tent which is a bit bigger than the old tent. That one had a broken pole from our last excursion in 2009 and we didn't want to chance it. It was cheaper to buy a new tent than it was to replace the poles, which felt a bit wasteful but I'm not complaining about the extra space. We had a bit of a mission buying it, because when we got it home and unpacked it to check, the instructions insisted that there should be two rain sheet poles but there was only one in the pack. So we drove back to the Bass Pro warehouse shop only to find that the others were the same. There was a lot of standing around and head scratching for a while until the manager came and suggested we go and look at the sample, which had been erected. Wise. From that, although it was put up wrong, we could see that one pole was indeed correct. Half an hour of head scratching for no reason.

Yesterday we drove from Vegas to Lee Vining, in the Eastern Sierras, stopping for lunch in Beattie and to look round a ghost mining town called Palmetto. Lee Vining is a cute little town on the east side of Yosemite and we visited it last time during our ill fated stay at June Lake (where it snowed on my birthday and the tent was blown so hard by the wind the pole snapped - hence the aforementioned shopping trip). This time, since the journey was a long one, we stayed in a motel in the town itself. Excellent decision! I picked El Mono Motel - another excellent decision. It is a motel in the true American style - a long row of rooms with cane chairs on the porch outside each one. There was also a flower garden and hummingbird feeders and a big fan and no air con (I can't imagine why it would be needed, it was not massively hot overnight and this is July) and a duvet on the bed and fresh baked cakes on the coffee shop. The bed was a big squishy affair and I woke up at 7 to hear the hummingbirds squabbling outside the window. Idyllic.
 
We ate dinner on the verandah at Bodie Mike's Barbecue - home of "steak and ribs, burgers and things" - then went for a walk about town to gasp at the petrol prices ($1.50 more a gallon than in Vegas) and, after, sat on the porch knitting (me) and drinking beer (him) until bedtime. We had breakfast at Nicely's, where the Eggs Benedict comes with a side of pancakes. My only complaint is that the curio and gift shop no longer sells Hatley pyjamas: I bought my favourites, adorned with bears, here last time and was hoping to replace them.

Then we drove here. It took longer than expected but we saw some very lovely things. I think my favourite bit was coming over the Sierras on Highway 89. We saw what seemed to be the world's most isolated cow shack (though, since we could see it from the road - albeit through binoculars - I'm guessing it probably isn't). We took a wrong turn and saw a couple of good lakes to the southwest of Tahoe. We stopped and admired Emerald Bay and the weird little tea room built on Tahoe's only island by an eccentric rich lady in the 1920s.

Tomorrow: the beach!

Our Summer Holiday

We are returned! Mr Z and I spent three and a half weeks in the American south-west - four days in Vegas either side of an epic camping trip around the edges of California.

Here's the map of it:


View Road Trip 2013 in a larger map

I've tried to include everything on the map - the routes we took,the places we stayed, the restaurants we visited and the tour companies we used.

It's really hard to say which the best bit was, because we saw such a diversity of things, but I think I would most like to go back to Lassen. It was like a mini Yellowstone and unfortunately they were doing road construction while we were there which limited what we were able to see, so I definitely feel like I have unfinished business there.

I have a series of blog posts about the trip which I wrote, mostly by the fire on the iPad while we were camping. I will post them in the order in which they were written and all with the same date, but I'll note the date of writing on each one.

One of those apologetic posts

I am slightly embarrassed that it has been nearly a whole month since I have blogged moo about what I've been doing, but I have been SUPERbusy with work stuff and I have updated my work blog over a dozen times. I know that isn't the same and it's not really about me and therefore far less interesting than this blog, but as excuses go, it will have to do.

Here's my round up of the past busy-ness:

I have two finished objects to blog about, but neither of them have been photographed properly. One of them is the amazing blue shawl of wonder - it may have taken three years but it is finally done. Here is a picture of it blocking, on our bed -

I actually had to pin it down the side of the mattress and it still wasn't enough, so it wasn't the best blocked garment in the world, but oh well. It is truly lovely and very snug.I am looking at other shawl kits on the Knitpicks website now, ahead of my impending visit.

The other thing was a linen top of interesting construction in this -

Regular readers might recognise this as the Texere C4 linen I bought at Wonderwool this year and the REALLY eagle eyed might even note that this will be my first FO from something I have knitted at Wonderwool, in spite of this being my third trip. The shame. Anyway. The top took just under one cone (which cost around £6, making this a real bargain) and was like knitting a puzzle; I didn't think it was going to work until it was actually finished. Hurrah.

More to follow on both of those when I have time to get some pictures taken.

I have been doing many work things, and that's about all, really. I have spent two weekends at conferences, both of which were very interesting but the latter of which was REALLY exciting in that more opportunities became available as a result. Good stuff. I have been marking, of course; it was a bit harder this year because I had a colleague who struggled, so I had to do a bit more than usual. I have also been doing some scrutineering - this is undoubtedly the best-named job in the world - which has involved completing and checking exam papers and markschemes for the future. And I've been doing some writing, for an app to go with my book. This needs to be done by the end of August which makes me a little nervous as I'm away for a lot of August, but I'm sure I'll manage it.

And, oh yes, my actual job, I've been doing that too. Exciting things happening but I have to say PRAISE THE LORD this year is over and we have a new head from September and hopefully it will be a much happier place to work then. It has been a loooooong term, not helped by the marking starting right at the very beginning of it and dragging on for what felt like the whole time (although it didn't really) and the heat hasn't helped. I am a lover of many kinds of weather but I have found the heat quite draining, tbh. Sports day was especially hard, even with my gazebo and half a bottle of sunscreen.

End of term was yesterday; I won the drinking game and was hailed as the Griffmeister for the rest of the evening (even though I had to drink half a WKD it was totally worth it) and I was the only girl on the bottom of the human pyramid we made -

Quite proud of myself. Superstrong!

I have also seen my lovely friend Beccy who came over to visit from Australia and was in bristol for one night. We went to an excellent bar in Stokes Croft. I can't remember what it was called but from outside it looked like a dump. Total hidden gem.

And that's probably about it for the past few weeks. Too much work, really. I have thrown myself into it a bit too hard, maybe. But now I have over five weeks off and I'm fleeing the country tomorrow for a while, so expect some more blog posts, maybe in video format, of our adventures.

June Goals Round Up

I can't even bring myself to copy and paste the list in here. It's just too depressing. I am only posting this so you don't worry that I've dropped dead or something - no, I am still alive, just spectacularly busy. Today I reckon I have marked for about 8 hours. With hindsight, perhaps it was a bad idea to pick up monthly goals again when I have been away for two weekends of the four and up to my eyes in exam board duties when I do make it home. I fear Mr Z has forgotten what I look like.

Onto business. I HAVE finished the shawl - I owe a blog post.I need to take some good pictures first, though.

I have ALMOST finished the pink linen top - I need to do some kind of mystical crochet to it before I can pick up and knit around the bottom edge, so that I don't run out of yarn. Impressed that I've managed to get almost the whole top out of the one cone of linen.

I haven't blogged, or cast on, or cleaned, or tidied.

As for the last three worky things - they are in progress and nearly done.

I miss my life this month! Can't wait for July 13th, which I have pinpointed as the ultimate day off. No work, of any description, and nothing else to do. Bliss. Hopefully I will manage to blog though. I'll never make it to 127 posts this year if I put up such a pathetic showing every month.

Wednesday WIP

Breeze on a sea air! It's nearly finished!



I have been really motivated to finish this. Firstly, I realised that if I actually, yknow, KNITTED it, it went quite quickly, in spite of the rows being an intimidating 380ish stitches. Secondly, having it sitting in my lap made me realise how warm it would be and how perfect for the plane to the USA this summer. Thirdly - such pretty colours. The phasing is much more gentle than I was anticipating.

I have bound off five scallops now. Thirteen to go. But, of course, marking has just begun....Still, at least there's the train journey to London on Friday.

Goals for June

It's been a while, but I always come back to it! June is going to be BUSY. I am excited but I need to be on my game.

• Finish knitting blue shawl of joy (8 border rows + 18 edging points left to work).
• Finish knitting pink linen camisole (just the back left to do).
• Cast on for new project of some description - possibly another summery top.  I am considering the Nostalgia Top and wondering if I can use short rows to make it A-line....only one way to find out....
• Blog about Lisbon.
• Also blog about Edinburgh.
• Dust and tidy dressing table and side table.
• Get rid of/file magazines next to bed.
• Write action plan for school techie project.
• Plan and record online assembly for techie day at school at end of month.
• Plan session for history conference in July. 

I feel like there are more things that need adding to this list but it does seem to be getting very long and I might have to leave it at that. Also most of the other things are work related and I am not disposed to give them any more of my time than is necessary at this point.