Mercer Caverns

We had a fabulous "Girls trip" last weekend to Calaveras County, home of the Calaveras Jumping Frog contest. We did not see a single actual live frog, however the area is liberally festooned with colorful images of frogs on the signs, streets, statuary and even the screen doors!
Our first stop was to the Chocoholics Divine Desserts factory, which we just happened to spot on our way through Lockerby. The actual factory tour was nowhere near as exciting as the high speed traffic violations required to get into the parking lot, in fact Mary was a bit overwrought by the amount of "interesting facts" Diane wanted to share with us.

I don't know why, but we always seem to end up at a rock shop on these weekend trips, so here we are again at the Stories in Stone rock shop in Murphys. Where they have some truly amazing geodes, up to 7' tall.

After staring at big rocks at the rock shop for awhile we headed off to the Mercer cavern to check out some really, really big rocks in their natural habitat.

This is what's known as a "vertical cavern", which for us meant a 16 story descent into the bowels of the earth with one of the worst tour guides we've ever encountered. It seemed as if she was in training to be an auctioneer and had to practice rattling off words at lightening speed. In spite of her annoying delivery style we did learn some fascinating facts about this cavern. It was discovered in the 1800's and has some really interesting crystal formations, like the "organ" below which the discoverer, Mr. Mercer, used to play for his guests. The formations being pure crystal, this must have sounded quite lovely, especially in near total darkness with only candles to light the way.

this cavern also boasts some of the rarest natural crystal formations known as Argonite, shown below.

finally we huffed and puffed our way back up the 16 flights of stairs to the sky side again (for those of us a little claustrophobic this was a blessed relief). There is a placard outside the cavern entrance which states that Mr. Mercer ascended into the cavern?!? I'm still a little baffled by this terminology, but if you care to read on you will see this was definitely the trip of strange and baffling signage.

Mary had a little trouble getting the map folded correctly, which distressed Diane as correct map "foldery" is so critically important to the map's actual owner.

map squared away we went exploring in Big Trees State Park.

There was some patchy areas of snow on the ground, but the weather was fine and sunny and a perfect day for tree climbing on, over and through.

another very strange sign hidden off the main path celebrating the Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo

Diane remarked that this fallen tree limb reminded her of something from a George Lucas film, to which I wittily replied "yeah, Star Woods", I do crack myself up : )

yet another baffling sign (actually, one of many on the twisting road up to Twisted Oak Winery). This is a winery with a distinct sense of humor and some pretty good wine to boot.

Our last stop was the RanchoNC alpaca farm. An idyllic place with about 50 alpacas, quietly browsing in green pastures with several really cute babies bouncing around exploring their surroundings. The owner was very relaxed and spent quite a while with us answering questions and grabbing up some of the little ones to show us how to tell what the actual yarn color will be off the animal, like this little brown guy who looks like caramel on the surface, but is really a charcoal color underneath

these critters are pretty shy, being prey by nature, but if you stand still long enough they eventually approach to check you out from curiosity, like this youngster below who actually came nose to nose with me and I have to admit it was a special moment for me.

Backyard in progress - lucky break

We had a very lucky break with the irrigation. When we started to excavate

to run the lines under the concrete walkways we discovered, quite by accident that some clever person ALREADY ran 3/4" PVC pipes underneath, YEAH!

This find probably saved us several hours of muddy mess. The new valves are now installed and ready to be wired to the automatic controller (wires already run through the attic 4 years ago : )

Guest Bathroom Makeover

The great Spring Fever indoor project will be the guest bathroom. It's always been just OK, but really needs a little lipstick makeover to become great. You can see below I've been experimenting with paint shades, I feel like Goldilocks; "this shade it too light, this shade is too dark, and this shade is too icky". I haven't hit on the right shade yet, but I'm definitely narrowing in on it, thank heavens the local Ace sells paint testers in tiny little jars.

The floor has a big gray stain, likely water damage at some point, that hasn't gotten worse, just stays ugly. I am thinking of using the click together laminate that looks like tile and just go right over this old linoleum.

The other eyesore is the original stain peeling off the side of the cabinet. I'm not in love with this cabinet style, but it's in good shape and it's such a waste to throw it away to install something new, so we are going to strip and re-stain it a darker color. I got something called "Citristrip", which looks environmentally friendly and not as likely to give me cancer as some of the other chemicals strippers on the market. I hope it works as I'm not real excited about sanding this till my arms fall off and I want to do the same thing in the kitchen eventually.

last, but not least, is replacing all the shiny brass fixtures, which I really don't like. I am thinking of going for a dark bronze or brushed nickel look. Unless we somehow mess the whole thing up, we will also keep the white tile, sink and original shower/tub enclosure, they are in good shape and we don't want to dump too much money into this project.

Landscaping the backyard

Our backyard has become quite a mess, a desert in summer because we have no automatic irrigation, only non-functional valves, and a jungle in spring with the rains.

The plan is to convert the old lawn sprinkler system to a drip system with all new automatic valves and drip lines laid throughout the dirt areas.

The biggest remaining hurdle to getting the irrigation is tunnelling under the concrete walkway to get to the new tree, which is currently marooned in a sea of concrete with no water source.

After that is should be smooth sailing, we will be contouring the dirt, laying out a dry creek bed/walkway for the doggies, then putting down landscape fabric, decomposed granite and several boulders. Once the rock is laid down we can start putting in the plants, which will be mostly decorative grasses, lavender and rosemary with scattered butterfly bushes for some height.

Step 1 completed - clear cutting the jungle

Suisun Valley WineTasting

Craig got a tip from one of his co-workers who suggested we visit several wineries in the nearby Suisun Valley. Who knew there were such great wineries, practically in our own backyard and quite affordable too. It was a beautiful, sunny and not too warm day in the valley.

First stop was Wooden Valley , a family winery with affordable and quite good wine. We came away with some of the Chardonnay, a buttery, oaky white and the Sauvignon Blanc, which is much greener and lighter, putting me in mind of spring.

Next stop, The Vintage Cafe on the recommendation of the nice lady at Wooden Valley.

The food was delicious, the service fast and friendly and the prices fair. Craig really enjoyed his plate of Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken.

Across from the cafe is this towing business with a gold statue of what we both assumed must be Chief Mankas watching over the parking lot.We visited the Ledgewood Creek winery, which is beautifully situated in the middle of the valley and surrounded by fields of wild mustard in bright yellow bloom. They have 38 large nest boxes on the site for the local barn owls, who pay rent by keeping the rodent population in check. They also had a very nice Mediterranean style garden that we strolled through getting some good ideas for our own backyard in progress. I liked the 2005 Syrah, Craig didn't care for any of them too much. Overall, this was a very relaxing place to visit.

Last stop was to the Suisun Valley Wine Cooperative, or Co-Op as everyone else referred to it. They had an impressively large selection of wine for free tasting as this one tasting room is a cooperative venture for six local wineries. At this point both Craig and I were feeling a bit light headed, so we had to be very selective in our choices. This winery turned out to have what we both agreed were the best wines of the day, a Winterhawk Winery 2007 Petite Syrah (my favorite varietal grape) and a fabulous Sunset Cellars 2004 Barbera, an Italian varietal. The Barbera knocked both our socks off, it is GOOD. Needless to say, we went home with a bottle of each.

To cap off this little adventure we conducted a brief exploration of the area and Craig determined that while quite lovely to look at this Magnolia did not have a lovely fragrance to match it's beauty.

Stitches West 2009

On Saturday, Feb 28th we went to the knitter's mecca known as Stitches West. There was a special 7 car train just for all the knitters that took us from Davis to Santa Clara. 500 of us enjoyed a bright, sunny ride on the train. Mary and Yvette brought delicious breakfast food and we met one of Yvette's friends from work there, Alison, who joined us for the ride.
this is THE way to travel! Quite relaxed, enjoying each others company, snacking and oh, yeah some knitting.

We were interviewed and photographed extensively by a reporter from the Enterprise, but I have not seen if we actually made the paper. This was some subtle payback by Yvette for a previous incident when Mary sicced a photographer-in-training on us who needed portraits for her final class project. Yvette kept that reporter at our table for at least 45 minutes, egging her on to ask Mary all about her project.

The event itself was, like last year, overwhelming in the sheer numbers. There were 262 booths and it was crowded! No pictures inside allowed, but this is what I remember most:

• Best: guy vest with removable sleeves at the Fashion show
• Worst: getting trapped in the back of a popular booth
• Oddest: hay bale twine knitting (ok, this was actually Mary's test project to see if it's even possible to recycle the plastic twine that comes on the goat hay and turn it into a market bag).

The ride home was a relief from the maddening crowd and last minute buying frenzy, Yvette actually witnessed some pushing/shoving/yelling to get at some highly sought after yarn.

We took the time to admire our lovely new yarn. Mary was quite a sweetheart and gifted both Yvette and I with some cool sockyarn made out of wool and Tencel, a fiber made from woodpulp. It's one of the many new "green" fibers, which is nice, but really we just thought it made the yarn sort of shiny, and you know how we like shiny stuff. Alison scored some gorgeous handdyed silk yarn for a sweater she has been dreaming up in her head for a while and I finally found the perfect yarn for a sweater I've been itching to make since the time I first laid eyes on the pattern.
below is a wool/tencel skein I will most likely turn into socks on the tinest needles I've used yet, #1.5 (2.5mm), about the size of ballpoint pen refills. and this is the fabulous, slightly variegated brown wool yarn I intend to turn into a sweater with the cutest cabled owls you've ever seen on the yoke. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

Knitting update

the Swallowtail shawl is progressing, sometimes at a good clip (finished all the Lily of the Valley pattern without a headache), sometimes agonizingly slowly (having trouble getting the pattern to match up between Lily of the Valley and Peaked Edging). I've ripped back 3 times so far trying to get it right, had to put it aside until the frustration subsides.

In the meantime, I've completed my first sock ever, YAH!