Thursday night. It has been a long but good day. I have 4 plus oz. of delicious hand spun merino wool. Purple wildcat passion in a sport weight 2 ply. Yeah. It is so beautiful. I'm getting much, much more consistent and uniform. Relaxing and inspiring. The color magic happens in the plying. It goes from varied color change with handpainted roving to the complete deal.

On an other high note, my son in law, James has set up the laptop to be its own wifi signal so the ipod will work at home on the internet. Just brilliant. I'm going to miss him staying with us. But he and our daughter won't be to far away. This is good. Love them both.

Off the yellow brick road

Last weekend my Hubby and I went to TEXAS. Yes, don't mess with Texas. It is a large place with lots of variations in land and cultures. And did I say it was big. We put 2000 miles on the truck. That is a lot of truck time. We saw hours of highway.

They have a different (read, really really odd) road system there. Intersections are strange. Highways are layered. And stop signs are planted right in the middle of the roadways. All of these are road hazards for mid west drivers. The stop sign almost went home with us.

I enjoyed the trip and the time with Paul. Got lots of knitting done. Finished a big lace vest. The crochet edging needs help Melissa! I'm more than half way done with a just begun afghan. It is of cotton and feels great. Both of these pieces are out of the same yarn. Completely different looks.

Tomorrow I need to catch up on my dying. Blue, blue and purple and more blue. This is what I'm out of in Knitty Bits. I can hardly wait. Lovely shades of blue. My favorite color.

So much for random thoughts. I'll be dying tomorrow in the land of OZ.

Hi, I'm back

Hi this is Deb and I'm back after 18 months of vacation. That is an 18 month vacation from blogging. I've been at home with my normal life and nothing seemed to interesting. Then a revelation bounced into my head. Most people have normal lives, at least normal to them, and my life and loves might be interesting to them. So here we go.

I'm a hand painter of yarns and knitter. Color is a passion of mine. The many shades of each color are just fascinating and amazing to me. Each person sees and identifies color differently. I'll see a beautiful turquoise and call it blue. My mother sees the same color and says green. I'll see an iridescent sun set and see pink, someone else with me sees orange. We are all different and that is a good thing.

Another passion is the Creator of Color. God did a great thing when he made color and things colorful and gave us eyes to see them with. I'm grateful for this gift and for all the other gifts that I've been given.

I've been working on several projects as of late. Keeping fairly busy. Always there is yarn to paint and laundry to do.

Alaska Trip fini 9/28/08

Wall Drug, Wall SD: what can I say. You'll just have to stop in. We counted 64 billboards advertising Wall Drug from Rapid City to Wall, about 50 miles. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't take any pictures. We left Wall SD at 8:30 Thursday morning and drove our longest day by a long ways, 640 miles. Dad and I tagged teamed drove, switching every 2 hours. The beauty of this is that we got to Ames at 8:15. That is, in the parking lot of Hickory Park at 8:15 for a celebratory Saucy Southern. The waitress was a bit, well really quite a bit, surprised to be taking our picture. It was a good end to a remarkable trip.

The next morning, after getting Cinderella, from Betsy and James, that I said good by to Mom and Dad and drove for Hutchinson. I stopped in Manhattan to see Zoe, and Trevor who was visiting her from the USAF. I was home by 9:45. I knew that I had been gone a long time when I missed 2 of my turns getting off the highway and into my neighborhood. Paul was happy and grateful to see me. 8388 miles. That was the length of the trip not counting the 4 days/5 nights that we spent on the ferry. It was amazing , remarkable, awesome, stunning, fun and a good trip. I would do it again, but not next week.

Mountain sheep

Mountain sheep. We went to Alaska and back and saw them in South Dakota! This trio was right beside the road by Mount Rushmore. They are furry fluffy and I want to hug one. But I'm afraid that they would not like that. I see those small horns. And I'm guessing that they are used for butting complete strangers who try to come up and hug them.

Today we saw deer, prong horn antelope, mule deer, mountain sheep, cattle, horses, sheep, ground squirrels, brown squirrels and bees.

South Dakota 9/24/08

Crazy Horse Mountain. A lot of carving has been done on the mountain since 1970. If you look closely, you can see his nose and eye.











George, Tom, Theo and Lincoln:
Mount Rushmore. Begun in 1927 and completed in 1941. WW II started then for the US and the sculpture had just died. There were several changes that happened during the design phase. First, he wanted to do WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN. Then he was going to add Jefferson. But Jefferson was going to be to the left of Washington and Lincoln was going to be to the right of Washington. And there was going to be a dedication where Lincoln is now. There wasn't enough room to the left of Washington, do Jefferson so he got moved to the right of Washington and Lincoln was moved to where the dedication was going to be. This left a blank and Roosevelt was carved in the opening. You ask why Teddy? Borloug thought he was the all American president and had done positive things for the US, Panama Canal and National Parks.

The allee of states leading up to the viewing area. Dad is pretending to be a moose. (On our whole trip we only saw 1 moose. It was on the highway in Fairbanks. It looked lost and lonely.)

Animals 9/23/08

Elk.











Bison. (These were very close to Old Faithful Lodge.)













More Bison. This small herd walked right beside Earthie as we sat inside. We were stopped on the road and just watched them come, surround us and leave. Totally, totally memorble. They are such big animals.

Lots of warnings about bears, but no bears sighted. Or moose for that matter.