Rare Gems

My favorite sock yarn comes from Blue Moon Fiber Arts (www.bluemoonfiberarts.com). At the end of last year, they sold for a short time what they call Rare Gems. It seems that it is leftover yarn that they overdye to make one of a kind skiens of yarn. They had them grouped into rough categories of earth, air, fire, and water. I ordered one of everything but earth, sight unseen. They are just beautiful. The picture is the skien of fire. It is quickly becoming a pair of socks, and I am totally loving it. You just can't go wrong with Blue Moon, even when you can't see what you are ordering.

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Not Long

Less than a year ago, we got a second dog, a malamute. There is a picture of him here:

http://lifeonthelastfrontier.blogspot.com/2009/03/monster.html

He was a dog we adopted from someone else without knowing him at all. He was a friendly dog, but he really didn't mesh well with us.
He was afraid of James, especially if he happened to have a tool or stick in his hand, making us speculate about what had happened to him before we got him.
We have almost 3 acres, plenty of room for a dog to run, but he would run too far. And he usually would not come when we called him.
With all of that, he was friendly, very pretty, and gentle with the kids. He seemed like he was bonding with us.
Yesterday morning before I left for work, I went to put him on his chain and he got away from me. I called him but he would not come to me, and took off running. He didn't come back right away, which is not unusual. By last night I was starting to worry, as it is well below zero.
James called me today to tell me the dog had been hit by a car. He was already dead when James found him.
The kids were sad, of course, but seem to be handling it well. We will all miss him. Goodbye, Strider.


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Winter

Winter has arrived, a little late this year. This is the first year since we moved to Alaska that there was not snow on the ground by Halloween.

Snow finally came though, along with sub-zero temps. Night before last, it got down to -15. That's chilly, even for Alaska. For the last couple days, we have had the wood stove running nonstop.

Unfortunately, a couple days before it snowed, our kindling pile fell over, and it didn't get picked up. Now it is buried under 6 inches of snow. We know where it is though, and the snow hasn't melted any, so it hasn't gotten wet.

I am pretty much enjoying these first few winter days, and the kids have been having a blast in the snow. Steven came home crying today though because he sledded into a tree. He's back at it as I type.

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It's disgraceful...

Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech aimed at our school children. The text of it can be found here. It is completely non-partisan, not political in any way. He is simply encouraging students to do their best, and get an education.

Our President says to our kids,

"Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself."

I can't find anything in this that I don't want my children to hear. There is nothing partisan. Nothing subversive. I don't understand why people objected to this.

He also says:

"And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other."

I can't find anything wrong with that either. As far as I can tell, there is no logical reason whatsoever for all the commotion about this speech.

And there has been a huge to-do about this speech. People talked about it on the news, threatened to keep their kids home from schools if the schools showed it, accused him of trying to start something akin to the Nazi Youth Corps. I think it would take more than a 20 minute speech to brainwash every kid in the country.

I found out last night that none of my kids saw his speech at school. I called the schools, and they report that their phones had been "ringing off the hook" with parents upset about their kids possibly watching the speech. One principal told me I was the only parent he received a call from supporting the kids watching the speech.

I am sorry, but I find this absolutely appalling. I don't give two figs whether Obama is Republican or Democrat, whether he has made mistakes in office (after all, no one is perfect) or any of that. He is THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I think the fact that schools have opted to not show a speech made by the leader of our country to the children of our country is embarrassing, disrespectful, I don't know what.

I don't even know what to say, except that I am ashamed that we can behave this way.

socks

I really like knitting socks. For whatever reason, I decided the other day to sort out my sock yarn from my other yarn to see how many pairs of socks I can make. So, how many?

Well, in addition to the 4 or 5 pair that are on the needles at the moment, and all the socks I have already made, I could make 29 pairs of socks. That is a different pair of socks every day for a month. And what did I do during my break at work today?

Look on the internet at sock yarn.

my favorite? this stuff

getting ready for winter...

Winter is a big deal in Alaska. It starts the beginning of October, lasts until the beginning of April. It is cold, and dark. Last winter it was 30 below zero for two weeks. Fall comes early; we've already seen some yellow leaves. The fireweed is already blooming only at the top, which in local lore, means that snow will be here in 6 weeks. As a matter of fact, I had a fire going this evening, but only a small, quick one, just to take the chill off.

We heat only with wood. We have a wood stove in the middle of our cabin, and in the coldest part of the winter, it burns continuously. A few weeks ago, we finished filling up our wood shed. The roof slopes, and at the front of the shed, the roof is about as high as I can reach. Last year, we burned about 3/4 of the shed full of wood. All of the wood in our shed, James cut into stove length with the chain saw, and anything too big around he split by hand with an ax. I have not yet mastered the art of splitting wood, but I am learning. James did the cutting and splitting, and the rest of us, including Steven, picked it up from where ever on the property it was cut, put it in a wheelbarrow, hauled it to the shed, and stacked it. Realistically, besides James, only Ryan and I are strong enough to move a wheelbarrow of wood, but the kids are great for picking it up and putting it in the wheelbarrow. This is definitely a job for the entire family.

The other major necessary thing for winter preparation is cleaning the chimney. We have a chimney brush, which is much like the brushes used for cleaning rifles, only bigger. James and Ryan climbed up on the roof and cleaned the chimney, resulting in lots of screeching noises coming from the chimney, and a pile of black soot on the floor of the wood stove. The soot was then shoveled into our ash bucket and taken out to the compost pile. We also caulked the seams in the chimney pipe, and replaced the gasket around the door of the stove. Everything is in tip top shape.

So, the most basic and necessary part of winter prep is done, which gave me a huge feeling of relief. My family will stay warm.

easy come, easy go....

Just about a year ago, I was posting about my husband showing up with a brand new car. August 6, to be exact. One year and 5 days later, I am most likely saying goodbye to my little car.

At 12:15 this morning, I was on my way home from a quick trip to Ketchikan, and was only a mile and a half from home when a moose walked out into the road right in front of me. I was going about 55, and all I had time to do was think, "Oh CRAP!" before I hit it. It rolled up and over the car, luckily more on the passenger side, which was empty. With the way the windshield broke and the roof collapsed, it would have hurt if it had been on the driver's side.

The really scary part was that as I was driving down the road at 55 mph, with oncoming traffic in the other lane, my airbag deployed right in front of my face. I remember swatting at it, trying unsuccessfully to clear my vision, and focusing on making sure the car moved to the right. Since I couldn't see, my main goal was to NOT let the car go left, into the oncoming traffic. I was able to keep the car straight, and came to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

The moose was given to a charitable organization to be butchered, as is done with all moose roadkill here.

I suspect the car will be totalled. I have full coverage, but the insurance company will only pay resale value, so there will most likely be a gap between what they pay and what I owe. If they total it, we might take advantage of the cash for clunkers program, and trade in our 98 Durango that needs lots of work, and get another car. The problem is that the Mitsubishi dealership in Alaska closed, so we would have to do major car shopping. Yuck.

fireweed jelly

The other day, I made fireweed jelly. Fireweed runs rampant around southcentral Alaska, and we have lots of it on our property. Since last summer, I have wanted to make jelly with it, and I finally got around to it. Ryan and I picked two shopping bags full of fireweed blossom ends, which left no noticeable dent in our fireweed population. Then we picked all the blossoms off the stems:

Then rinsed them, put them in a pot with some water, and heated them until the blossoms lost their color, which only took a few minutes. Then strained the water, which then was actually fireweed juice. The fireweed juice was an ugly light yellowish brown, not at all what I expected.

To the fireweed juice, I added sugar and a little lemon juice. As soon as I added the lemon juice, the mixture turned a beautiful pinkish-purplish color, the color of the blossoms. Very interesting chemical reaction, I thought.

I then brought the mixture to a boil, added pectin, boiled for another minute, and poured into jars. Sealed the jars, and voila! fireweed jelly, 28 1/2 pint jars. This isn't the greatest picture, but the jelly is a beautiful rich clear pink color. And delicious!

I really enjoyed this experiment, because I was able to harvest something that grows wild and abundantly on my property, and turn it into something delicious for my family.

canoeing trip

This is a little behind the times, but last weekend we and another family we do a lot of stuff with went camping. We went to Tangle Lakes, which is about a 4 or 5 hour drive from our house, depending on how fast you go, and how bad traffic is. On Fourth of July weekend, with perfect weather, traffic was pretty bad, especially traffic of the rv variety. Motor homes go very slow on windy semi-mountainous roads, and you can only pass so many of them, since there are few truck lanes and the roads are, well, windy and semi-mountainous.

Traffic aside, the trip was wonderful. The campground was full, which we didn't mind, since we don't especially like the campground-that-looks-like-a-refugee-camp scene. We found a nice little lake on very rocky ground, so we could drive on it like driving on a gravel road, something we do every day anyway. No one else was camped on this lake, so we had it all to ourselves, the dogs could run around as much as they wanted(there were 5 of them, 2 of ours, and 3 of theirs), and so could the kids (6 of them, 3 of ours, and 3 of theirs).

James, Ryan, and Steven went fishing one day, and brought back 4 grayling, which were yummy cooked over the campfire. They say they caught and released many more, but no one in the other family likes fish, so they didn't want any to go to waste. (Our malamute ate all the fish parts that we didn't, and seemed to enjoy it tremendously.) We took the canoe out several times, and it was great. The lake we camped on fed into a larger lake. At the far end of the large lake, there was a beaver dam that we portaged across to a small stream that we followed until it got too shallow and rocky for the canoe. It was very pretty, and we found a beautiful spot that we could camp on if we wanted to load everything into the canoe the next time we go there.

We discovered that neither of our dogs particularly likes to swim, although one of the other dogs with us did and almost drowned because he followed behind the canoe for so long.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and very relaxing. This is the first time in a long time we have camped for enjoyment. Two summers ago, we camped on our property every weekend so that we could work on our house, and last summer we were tired of camping. It was great to be reminding that camping can be relaxing and enjoyable. We wore out the dogs and the kids:

first fruits

Had my first strawberries of the season last night, after the sun had been on them all day, warming them and making them juicy. Yummm.......