Greetings from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

After a couple of days acclimating to the altitude here, we finally took on Yellowstone.  I'm so glad we waited because if 5,000 feet of elevation gave me trouble, I know 8,000 would have been awful without the wait.  Anyways, I've talked enough.  Here are a few snapshots of the most beautiful day I've had in a long time:

We drove many miles without seeing any wildlife, just enormous ravens.  I began to despair there were no Bison.  Just then, one appeared so close to the road, I could have stuck out my arm and touched him.  Still no bear or elk sitings.  Maybe we'll get lucky on our next trip in on Saturday.

Bacteria growing in sulphur & heat

The colors are magnificent

Rapids on the Yellowstone River

Yellowstone National Park

All photos Rudeek

That's all for now.  You can thank me later because between 3 cameras, I snapped about 200 photos. Hope you're all well.  I'm off to soak in the hot tub.

P.S.  Seeing Old Faithful in person, well, it's nothing like it is on a National Geographic documentary.  Take my word for it and pencil this park into your agenda.

Classic way to end disputes

Rock, Paper Scissors statue, Gillette, WY.

Greetings from Gillette, Wyoming, where I am just about to pour myself back into the car for another long day.  Thought I'd say hey and share this statue I found.  Next stop, Montana and home base for a week.

Gillette is a modest town that looks to be dependent on the energy industry.  They have a Starbucks here though, and for someone who has driven about 1500 miles with mostly awful coffee, I can now state emphatically that today, at least I'll be driving awake!

Have a good one.

Following in some big footprints

Though we won't follow the entire route, we're sure to bump into more than a few areas first described by Lewis and Clark.  In the spirit of things, we've downloaded the unabridged audiobook, Undaunted Courage, to listen to along the way.   We have Last of the Mohicans as a spare. The gas tank is full (ouch) and we're well stocked on water, Twizzlers, gum, maps, coffee, yarn, patterns and peanuts.  The batteries are charged on the Tom-Tom, laptop, iPad and iPhone.  We will make much better time than those brave explorers who blazed the path, thanks to the Toyota, and expect to hit Montana no later than Tuesday.

See you here and there with pictures from our trails and adventures.

Stay tuned.

Photo: Wikicommons

Ack! Would you look at the time?

Here I sit with my feet up doing nothing when I've got so much to get done.  I need to return those pants to Moosejaw because they make my ass look enormous, go through the clothes I need to pack and locate the suitcase in which to pack them.  Finding the cooler shouldn't be too difficult since--thanks to LG--we need to use it every 6 weeks when the refrigerator goes on the fritz.  I still have to get some banking done, pick up some Deep Woods Off, chase those dust bunnies out of the house and go buy a monster size bag of strawberry Twizzlers.  No driving vacation is complete without them in my book and driving 1700 miles one way?  Hmmm....maybe I need two bags.  Tomorrow I'll get a haircut and then we'll check to see how close I am to achieving the hairstyle I had my sites set on last November.  What yarn will I take?  What projects will I knit?  Should I even consider packing my wheel?  There's just so much to do and sitting here thinking about it isn't getting it done.  It's only making my to-do list longer.

But I am all caught up on Breaking Bad.  Must be a record...4 full seasons in 2 short weeks.  I never thought it possible, but I think Walter may be more inhuman than Gus.

On second thought, maybe it's not my to-do list that's given me this anxiety. It's Walter.

The easy bits

Like the messiest room in the house that just isn't seen, this is the private side of the blanket.  It will look better once the ends are woven into the piece.

When I began the porcupine blanket, I was really annoyed that the brown border transitions were  getting in the way of quick knitting, and then I got to the first porcupine and realized those side bits were easy.  It was juggling all those butterflies in the porcupine that was hard!  And there weren't that many color transitions.  I'm not wild about this intarsia method, but it really is the only way to get the job done.  I got away with a bit of fair isle--much easier to strand--on the legs, but once I was on the body proper, well the easy part was done.  The pink on either side was accomplished using separate butterflies.  So, yes, enough was going on with all those strands of yarn that I was slowed considerably.

Now one critter is done with only two to go.  

Today will be a day of transitional stripes.  I don't expect I'll see all those butterflies again for a couple of days.  Next go around, I'll be more generous in how much yarn I wrap in the butterfly.  I cut it close with the brown body and didn't need to add more yarn, but when I say close, I mean one more row and I'd have had two additional brown ends to weave into the work.  It was the same with the white.  Next time, bigger butterflies!

Message in a photo...

I'm twisted

Intarsia knitting, while certainly beautiful, is challenging enough that I usually avoid at all costs.  It's the bobbins of yarn and the twisting that make me nuts--not to mention the weaving of all of those ends--and every single time I finish a row, I have to straighten out the twisted strands.  For someone who likes to pound out the knitting, slowing down to put yarn aright is frustrating.

If you're trying to keep track...that's four live "bobbins" of yarn and one live ball of yarn.  Each of those strands, and one you can't see in the picture,  get used on every single row.  Oy.

My hand made butterflies of yarn, while light, have a tendency to unroll themselves and this is kind of maddening, too, but I can't seem to find my plastic bobbins, so I've been making do.  If you twist your butterflies too loosely, they unravel and if you twist them too tightly, you can't get the center to unravel when you need it to do so.  The butterfly happy medium remains illusive.

But...oh, the beauty of such a piece cannot be underestimated.

Bottom to top we have garter stitch, stockinette stripes and seed stitch.  It's the sides of the blanket and the porcupines that make up the intarsia.  The dark body of the porcupine will be adorned with a bazillion strands of fringe that will look like quills when all is said and done. It promises to be a textural delight. 

Progress is extremely slow because while I can knit in the dark, I can't do intarsia in the dark and last night we abruptly lost power when an electrical substation two miles away caught fire.  It plunged us into immediate darkness (not to mention sweltering heat) and brought an abrupt end to the activities of the evening--right at a crucial part of Breaking Bad Season 2, episode 8, and smack in the middle of the porcupine's body.

Today will be a better day in terms of the weather.  Yesterday's high was 102 degrees with a heat index of, oh, 112 degrees (what the air really felt like).  Sometime during the night, the power returned and the high is forecast for only 88 degrees.  I'm afraid to say the words aloud, so don't tell anyone, but it is raining.  Finally.  We've gone 2 weeks without a drop and today we're getting some.  There will be porch knitting today.

If I weren't working later on, I'd call the day near perfect.