I climbed a mountain!

Yesterday I decided to go for a hike; the cross country skiing season is almost over, and the snow at the downhill ski hill wasn't great on Wednesday (actually the snow was fine, it was the ice underneath that sucked). So I went to check out the woods that are uphill from our house; I've driven past the small parking lot hundreds of times, but never stopped before. Nothing like the prospect of coming across a bear to keep you on your toes. There were a few paths from the parking area. They are pretty rudimentary, and the one I chose was quite steep. Within a few minutes I was huffing and puffing. I initially planned to turn around once I had walked about 20 minutes or so, but by that time, I got into the "I'll just walk to the top of that rise" groove, and kept on walking until I reached the top. It took me about 40 minutes to get there (including about 5 minutes spent taking pictures).When I got to the top, I realized that I was high enough up that there was still some patches of snow around.The view up there was great. See that snow topped moutain in the distance? Here's a closeup: It's the west ridge of our local ski hill - is that cool or what? A view of the neighboring mountain.The tree is obscuring Mt. Boucherie. Mission Hill winery sits on top, complete with a huge belltower. Word on the street is that the guy who owns it made his money on "Mike's Hard Lemonade". He then got all hoity toity, added a "de" to his surname and spent big bucks on the winery - there are a bunch of huge antique tapestries hanging in "The Great Hall". I've always wanted to go take a tour there, and ask which vat holds the "Mike's". In knitting news, I did complete sock A of the Djungle Djaywalkers. You know how you are always supposed to read a pattern all the way through before you start knitting? Well, I didn't quite do that, and didn't realize that I needed to decrease the number of stitches in the foot in order to compensate for the fact that the sole is knitted in stockinette. Sigh. To add insult to injury, I realized my error AFTER I had kitchenered 38 stitches. But I decided that I might as well start on sock B, and then frog the foot of sock A once I had established that it's adequate to decrease by 6 stitches. Greedo's kind of tired because he and Somerset went to get their vaccinations today. It turns out that Somerset was busy puking on the basement carpet when I shot this.Check out that matching!! I actually adjusted my cast on by 4 stitches so that I'd be starting at the exact same spot. Mental note - if I ever decide that I want to match socks in the future, I won't just start knitting at the beginning of a skein - I will find an easily identifiable colour change, and start casting on at that point.

What's gray and white and blue all over?

Project Spectrum!! Yes, I have joined yet another blogland staple. And since today is Saturday, here's a view of/from a blue sky: And here's a closeup of some of that groovy valley cloud

Monty Python Post*

If Somerset stopped shedding... Would she look like this? Meet Kara; she and her partner Smokey are letting me stay with them while their slaves owners are in Cuba. I fear that I may have blown their pea-sized minds; there seems to be a complicated arrangement of dishes for their cat food, and I think that I may have put the wrong food in the wrong dish. However, as much as I love animals, I do not believe in catering to feeding whims. (Which is interesting, because in other domains, the cats have me wrapped around their cute little paws. I have felt actual guilt about the fact that they probably won't have a balcony to sit on once we move) This is the opposite of my parents, who have a Lab that will not eat his dinner unless there's gravy on it, and it's warmed up, and the pawprints on his bowl are facing forward or some such nonsense. My personal theory is that if you left him with nothing but the cold dry dog food, after a few days, he'd learn to like it. I have made significant progress on the socks since my last post. Sandi organized a pub knit yesterday evening which was loads of fun. I got to hang out with a bevy of cool T.O. knitters, like Lisa,Jacquie, Sophie, and other people who's blogs I cannot track down. One wee little problem was that it was in "the Vault", which had pretty dim lighting. Surprisingly, I managed to avoid making significant mistakes, until I got to the last row before I do some rounds of straight knit or purl. But by then it was time to leave, so no big loss. And I managed to knit off and on today at the hospital I'll be starting at in March when I went in for the day to babysit supervise patients during the transfer of the ICU from its dingy old location to its shiny new location. Now I just need to figure out how long to make the calf before I start on the heel (and what type of heel to do!) *And now for something else completely different: Valley cloud: When you have a large body of water at the bottom of a mountain valley, you get cold air inversions sitting on top of the moist air, leading to low lying cloud cover. Those are the Monashee Mountains poking through the cloud cover.