The Fair

There is a first time for everything indeed. State fairs. I had never been to one before but since I enjoy the tiny county fairs, I was a willing and even eager participant in the Puyallup Fair yesterday. This is no small statement coming from a self avowed Hater of All Things Amusement Park. The fair is different.

At the fair you can look at intricate quilts and wood carving. At the fair you can be move by photos of different lands. At the fair you can touch baby piglets. At the fair you can even smell and step in manure. Take THAT Cedar Point and Six Flags! If you wish to amuse ME you will have to add the olfactory ambience of farmland manure blowing through roller coaster alley and put a photography exhibit besides the $6 per cup lemonade stand. (Not that the fair is exactly cheap! But I don't know what else there is at the amusement park other than roller coasters and overpriced lemonade!)

Regardless. I had a great time mingling with the cowboy hat clad crowd. It was also 67 degrees and sunny and being the weather wimp that I am, the day's perfection added to my enjoyment. Topping the enjoyment list was the photography exhibit in the fine arts building. I was moved by some soul stirring amateur photographers who travel the world capturing images that bring us all closer together. The smiles from the ladies drinking tea in Mongolia will remain etched in my mind with joy. And the western owl peeking from behinds the tree that won top honors? I would actually buy a print were than an option!

Ever heard of Wool Riders? I had not. My mental jury is still out regarding the wisdom of putting helmet clad three to six year olds on the back of a 'raging' sheep to ride it for six seconds. However, it was an amusing rodeo scene and I took plenty of photos since this was quite the oddity to my back east sensibilities. The winner of the Puyallup Fair Wool Rider Rodeo will head to Fresno to compete for $15,000 in prize money. Get those inner thigh muscles in shape little dinks! Prize money could be yours!

I am eager to share photos of this oddity as well as some of the colorful grange exhibits that tap a rainbow of creativity in the farming community. Skagit County's includes bald eagles and seashells! Ah... I DO like Washington State! My frequent travels here meant I had good reason to jettison my 17" heavy laptop in exchange for an iPad. HOWEVER, in order to adequately use Blogger (one of the reasons I GOT the thing in the first place) I need to figure out an app so that you can be the happy recipient of photos to accompany my blog posts, So far, I'm not there yet. I'll add them ASAP. For the simple minded climbing the learning curve to learn all these 'magical' technological tools to make life easy (HA!), takes extraordinary amounts of time. Thus. Photos at 11.

Treasure Hunt

Remember how fun it was to follow the clues for hidden treasure as a kid? Little clues tucked in and about all sorts of nooks and crannies would lead to something that provided a moment or an hour of joy. Very few grown ups have the chance to follow clues leading to hidden treasures, but there are still some places left where that same feeling of treasure anticipation emerges in one's soul.

Take, for instance, the ubiquitous Garage Sale. Are they not just a grown up version of a treasure hunt? To find and obtain some amazing trinket for far less than the original cost leaves us with a fleeting moment of satisfaction. Perhaps an Antique Store or Flea Market provides the same sensation. Even a foray into the Thrift Store? Or the CSA pick-your-own farm field?

Last weekend I found myself on a surprising little treasure hunt as I joined a local photography club for a morning photo walk. I woke up at the wee hour of 6am (I prefer life of a night owl) in order to catch morning light in some field down in the national park. My eagerness to refine my waning photography skills got me up and out of bed and to the fog laden, dewy field in time to hear a slightly brash instructor, coffee in hand, giving guidelines for the morning.

At this point, I still thought I was going to be learning to tweak the settings on my DSLR, but alas, I was headed on a treasure hunt where hundred of spiders, thousands of flowers and millions of dew drops awaited my arrival. A few words from the photo experts and we set off into the shoulder high, damp field of flowers and thorns to capture some images. I was surprised.

The location is actually fairly unremarkable when you look at it in a 'big picture' kind of way. But, tune your senses into the world of the macro lens and all of a sudden this unremarkable field was chock full of innumerable treasures! I planted my tripod in the middle of spider webs and greenery and started shooting. Yellow! Purple! Green! Fog! Dew drops! Rainbows! There were colors and subjects of all sorts to shoot around me. Time started flying by as I adjusted my zoom lens, put on my macro lens, played with the aperture settings and shot away.

I have to admit, I do love the ability to shoot digitally and to not have to worry about quantity as I go in search of quality shots! (My overly full hard drive attests to my obsession with quantity.) I was delighted to capture a few quality shots, aka a few TREASURES on this photo shoot. It whet my appetite to explore other seemingly unremarkable natural places to photograph what might be right in front of me, ready for discovery.

This Macro Treasure Hunt was a great joy. I am likely to skip Saturday morning garage sales in lieu of waking early to catch the morning light as fall arrives and enlivens the treasures all around me.

Stay tuned.

Transformation

Yes. "Transformation" often refers to the inner work of one's soul as in "I have been transformed." In this case, it has been our kitchen that has been transformed, though I also believe that our souls will follow. Slowly but surely, the heart of the home changes us as well.

We lived with a functional '80s kitchen' for the past 12 years. Upon moving in, I declared that I did NOT care for the room, HATED the Pantry-from-Hell (rightly so since the former owners did a slap together finish with a board right at the spot where you needed to reach in), and that I would gladly feed our family and friends from this room with few complaints.

For 12 years we fed meal after meal from the garden decorated room with the 18" of counter space and antique tavern table island stand in. We hosted Thanksgiving for 16 yearly, birthday parties, catered a gigantic graduation party, learned to cook crepes from our French exchange student and smashed our heads time and again getting things out of the Pantry. We traipsed to the basement for can goods and all manner of cooking pots. We allowed food from the make shift wire shelf pantry to collect grime coming in from the back door, conveniently located by the kitchen and the See-How-Far-You-Can-Toss-the-Recycling-and-Still-Hit-the-Bins bins.

Finally, finances were such that we could make a change. A BIG change too.

Dear Hubbie and I had the conversation: "We can't sell this house with the kitchen like this. We need to redo the kitchen. So are we going to redo the kitchen to sell the house in the near future? Do we hear God calling us to relocate? OR, do we create a kitchen that would be most pleasing and usable to us now and into the future and plan to STAY?" Fortunately, the answer was fairly easy: "We're staying." Our people are here and we happen to like a LOT of things about our area. The funny thing is, since we made this decision, we have been liking things in our area EVEN MORE. Worthy of a totally different blog post as the implications of that sort of commitment are far reaching...

Those photos showed the 'before'. Here are the 'after':



The kitchen is bigger with an addition and my dream for YEARS, of having a fireplace in my kitchen. This is a Rumford Fireplace... tall, narrow and extremely efficient. We won't be cooking in it (though s'mores work just fine!) but given our long winters, we will be using it. A LOT.

And so we bid farewell to the Garden Kitchen of the 80's and welcomed in our 'vacation home' kitchen. Thus far it is totally living up to the task for which it was created. We use out kitchen to COOK, after all. It is merely a tool. A place for gathering, for hospitality, for creativity, for card playing and well, for sustenance--of the delicious and nutritious kind.

Felt

I have had a long term love affair with all things felt. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the earthly connection between my heart, my eyes and my hands when I see, touch and feel felt, but it is strong. It is no doubt about the 'natural.' True wool is utterly natural. It is soft. It is real and it pulls one into creation, rather than alienating one from creation. It sparks my imagination and my longings. For what I cannot quite articulate, but I don't need an answer to dive in and love all things felt.

I finally took a welt felting class this weekend. What fun! It was a class taught by Sharon Costello, here in Ohio from her digs in NY. She knows her stuff and brought all sorts of delicious merino wool, silk and assorted fibers for us to incorporate into our scarves. One day = One scarf. REALLY?

This is the finished baby, without the true colors since it was on the kitchen floor. Outside looked more like the real thing, but I was not patient enough to find a spot in the wet grass for a decent photo!


Nuno felting involves water, soap, time and strength as well as the right fibers. Keep the soap coming!

Here is my scarf laid out before the felting process. Highly tactile, it was a joy to play with the merino roving as I contemplated the design, not quite knowing WHAT in the world I would end up with. So, I experimented.

This kind of arts suits me. Planning ahead for the final product is not my style and stretches me a lot harder than simply taking materials and playing around to see what ends up developing. I am quite pleased with my first project. In fact, I collected some additional roving for another Nuno piece at some point. I love that the materials to actually DO the felting are mostly laying around my house or cheap to pick up. The only exception, of course, is the wool, but a little goes a long way.

Keep eating, oh happy sheep! We love what you naturally produce!

St. Maarten

Island life. I was healthy enough (grateful for prayers) to head off the ship today for our planned kayaking/snorkeling tour. I was so thankful as it was terrific to see another country (St. Maarten – the Dutch half) since I am, after all, floating around the Caribbean. As so many of these small islands are, it is diverse. One can easily see the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots’ coexisting. As a cruise ship passenger, I was a bit uncomfortable with my role as a ‘have.’ I took it upon myself to be cheerful and pleasant and to pay prices that help the locals earn a living rather than trying to get the best ‘deal’ by haggling. Not that it mattered much as I hardly shopped at all and I haven’t spent a penny on food outside of the ship. Why bother when the ship food is excellent and abundant.

The nationals are used to the rhythms. Mid morning flocks of tourists disembark to either find their tour or pay the stated price for “Chair, Umbrella and 2 Beers.” Not being a beach sitting type, the allure escapes me. I did find the whole scene fascinating, though. We are on a huge ship and the one in port next to us was a great deal larger. It seems like madness on the sea to continue to build bigger ships. May as well create a floating island with settlements that get pushed around by barges. (My billion dollar idea?)

I’d have to brush up on the history of St. Maarten to understand the very moving sculpture in the middle of one roundabout of a man (a slave I presume?) with his hands spread in freedom, chains dangling from his arms. More sculptures presented themselves on our slow drive from the cruise pier to kayaking cove. There was one of salt mine workers and one of a famous traffic director. Wikipedia, here I come once I don’t have to pay far too much for internet connection! Nice public art in the midst of poverty.

The weather? Picture perfect with the azure sea at every turn and hot breezes messing up everyone’s hair. Lots of sunscreen for me and my daughter as we headed out to the water. I have not kayaked on the sea before. And, the guides would hardly call our little kayaking ‘adventure’ sea kayaking. Poor guys have to make a living being clever and teaching the same basic paddling skills to underskilled and overfed cruise ship patrons day after day after day. The seemed patient enough and their British accents would surely cover up any irritation if they had any at all. We had fun in the sun paddling nonetheless. That’s the idea. We snorkeled after a short paddle. It was unspectacular, but fun to see a little bit of coral and some colorful fish in the murky water. I got a tad seasick after a while from floating on all the swells, but being out there with my daughter for her first time snorkeling was worth it.

I’d put up some photos of the water, but I have no idea how to get them from camera onto computer, so stop holding your breath. (I’ve been told Apples are user friendly. Hmm…. Not when it comes to THIS Apple and finding the illusive iPhoto. Nothing pops up that is of any help in getting my photos transferred from the camera. In the very least I expected Apple to send me a note: “HEY CHICK, YOU’VE CONNECTED A CAMERA TO YOUR COMPUTER. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH THE IMAGES?” but, nooo, nothing!)

Maybe one of the kind guys from Honduras or Hong Kong in the iLounge on Level 6 can help me figure it out when they are open tomorrow. We are at sea for the next two days. Since I’m not a big partier, my introvert self can enjoy some reading time and figuring out how to deal with my photos as the calming sway of the ship carries us back to the USA.

Sidelined at Sea

I have a knack. Oh, I suppose I have several of them, but this one if just plain irritating. All too often when I am on vacation, I get sick. Not that, “oh-I-am-feeling-a little-under-the-weather” kind of illness, but the full-fledged, “all-this-has-got-to-come-out-of-me” kind. And, so, it has happened once again. The other night, I became far too acquainted with the teeny stateroom bathroom on our cruise ship. A nice little bathroom, of course, which comes in handy, but it wasn’t the spot I had hoped to spend most of the night.

Our cruise line had a few too many cases of this sort reported on the last sailing, so our departure was delayed by thorough disinfecting of everything. In fact, the first thing with which we were welcomed aboard was a generous squirt of Purell, followed by champagne. There are also many ship attendants who are spending many hours dispensing Purell pretty much everywhere. Their dream job, I’m sure!

But, alas, that extra attention to disinfecting failed to be communicated to my system. Too bad. As the cruise lines are particularly sensitive to the topic of “noroviruses,” I was confined to my stateroom for 24 hours. That confinement is why I am currently blogging away rather than seeing tonight’s show or out feeling the Caribbean breezes on my face. I could not have gone anywhere anyway and I have learned a great lesson: never cruise in an inner cabin. Had I been in one, I would not have seen any of today’s brilliant sunshine or the extravagant yachts beside which we were docked. I would not only have been ill, but felt as though I had been confined to a dungeon—one that I paid big bucks to inhabit! The balcony decision was for Mom’s pleasant travels, but it has ended up benefitting me greatly.

I made the best of a bad thing. Missing the trip to the St. Thomas beach was quite a disappointment to me, but sometimes you gotta just roll with what shows up. Instead, I opened the balcony door and kept it open all day watching the sun travel across the sky, glinting off yacht mirrors here and there until it faded behind a small island as we left port, only a couple of hours ago. I’m feeling better at least and I really, really want to be able to kayak tomorrow at our next port. I can’t imagine the outing will be ‘strenuous’ anyway, as it appears cruising in general is created to be indulgent and anything but strenuous. Lord willing, the stateroom bathroom will perform only it’s regular duty this evening and all will be well.

Spring Break

Tonight I am surrounded by palm trees, warm breezes, a huge full moon, lots of southern Florida traffic and my daughter and my mother. This is all new, that’s for sure. Heading out to sea on a floating city tomorrow, the likes of which I have never set foot upon before. Fresh adventures for the women of my family. It is, in fact, an amazing thing that this experience is something new for me, the fifty something; mom, the seventy something; and daughter, the twenty something. There aren’t too many things we could choose that would put us all on equal footing as far as knowing what to expect ahead of time. Our common experience of discovering something new altogether will no doubt solidify our bond.

Today’s other first time travel experience for me was be the official escort for a ‘disabled traveler.’ Mom was understandably apprehensive about such a long journey accomplished through very little power of her own. She was pushed along by the kind Delta pushers who were far more adept at driving a wheel chair than I am at this point! I complimented them on their obvious skills and made mental notes of my own: “When entering an elevator, take yourself and the wheelchair rider in backwards.” “When managing luggage and wheelchair user in the middle of traffic—airport or hotel parking—care for the wheelchair user FIRST and then deal with the luggage!” “When heading down jet way ramps, take rider facing up the ramp so if a sudden bump is encountered, said rider will not fly forward and land on the jet way headfirst!” This is obviously going to be an educational vacation for me, as well as warm and breezy!

Mom fared well, though she is weary. She kept saying “I can’t believe this!” and then smiling which was a joy to see. Her take on this journey and her seeming unreadiness to undertake it, was that the Lord kept saying to her “Trust Me on this one. I’m going to make it work out!” So far, so good. (Thank you, Lord) All we have yet to do is transport ourselves and far too much luggage onto the cruise ship and into our teeny weeny staterooms with the sea views.

I really don’t know what to expect, but I eagerly anticipate all the new things we will see and experience at the cruise port tomorrow. Bon voyage!