Nancy Lake - June 12-13, 2017

We camped one night at Nancy Lake near Wasilla.  Then Lincoln wanted to try fishing in another lake - Kashwitna. James caught one little fish, but no takers on Lincoln's lures. It didn't rain on us and the mosquitoes were mild, so it was a perfect day for fishing.

Knitting success! - July 25, 2009

Remember by Knitting "AHA!" Moment? Way back in March I was learning how to do the different knit stitches for a bag/purse/scripture case I wanted to make Mom for her birthday.

The bag I knitted was made on a 'circular' knitting needle - or basically two knitting needles connected by a plastic wire. Here James is modelling my knitting needles - showing how (if they were lazers) they'd make great weapons.
The finished 'body' of the bag - modelled as a helmet cozy by our cousin, Michael.

The scariest part was 'felting', where I had to take the project that I'd worked so hard on and put it through a couple cycles of super hot in the washing machine. It causes the wool yarn to 'felt' together and it basically melts the stitches together and the overall project shrinks. It is now a super strong bag, but I was really worried about doing it incorrectly - maybe shrinking the bag too far.
I really procrastinated the felting part - Mom's birthday was July 6th. On July 8th we were driving to Idaho for the family reunion and I needed to have it done by then. So I felted the bag on July 7th and let it dry and shape on July 8th before heading out the door.

It is primarily inteneded for a scripture bag, but I didn't want to plop my scriptures into the wet bag, so I improvised. This also let me put a 'flat base' onto the bottom.
And then we were in Idaho, but Mom's bag didn't have any handles! So James and I stopped by craft warehouse before driving up to Cascade. And on our 2-hour drive up Highway 55, I used a pair of needle nose pliers to put the 'hardware' on the bag.

And here is the finished project - Happy Birthday Mom! Picture was snapped on July 25 by Kurt, because I forgot to take any pictures of the finished project.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I have enough yarn to make another bag/purse. I do think I want to think of another way to do the handles. And definitely not worry about the felting part, the washing machine & hot water did all the work!

Knitting Aha! Moment - March 6, 2009

This story begins with crochet. I love to crochet. I learned how back in 2001 when my sister Kim was expecting her oldest, McKayla. I started by buying a pattern for making an afghan out of 54 different granny squares. A wonderful project because I was able to learn how to read the directions, practice different stiches, make small accomplishments and finally end up with a large afghan.

Then it got really fun & I made some baby blankets and sweaters and booties and hotpads and wash cloths and snowflakes and even some elephants and monkeys. This year I'm making little purses for my nieces' birthdays.

Then I found the most perfect pattern for a purse / scripture bag that I'd like to make for my Mom for her birthday. So cute with verigated blue wool yarn that you 'felt' to make it fuzzy and more dense. BUT the pattern is KNIT.

I've seen tons of cute knit patterns before this, but I've always told myself that I don't need a new hobby until I've done all the crochet projects that I want to do. I have so many ideas for projects that I think I'll never run out. But I caved!

I bought the pattern. I bought the yarn. I bought the knitting needles. I pulled out some yarn left over from an old project (a pink stuffed elefant) so that I could practice without ruining my beautiful new yarn. And I definitely needed to practice before jumping into a new hobby.

I'm so FRUSTRATED. The "Basic Stitches" instructions that came with the instructions for the purse are pretty easy to follow and I felt like I was doing it correctly, but the pictures show some perfect stitches like this:

And my results were coming out like this:



Over and over and over again. So I went to the internet and did some research and watched some videos. And over and over again, I did the stitches EXACTLY as they show it, but after 5 or 6 rows, it does not look like the picture. And all the videos and instructions show you how to do ONE row and then they end. I wanted to watch for 5 or 6 rows, so maybe I could figure out where I was going wrong.

Today I figured it out! With knitting and crochet, you turn your project around for each new row. In crochet when you do that, the basic stitches look identical from both sides, but in knitting they don't! So that's why my knitting didn't look like the pretty picture. They were knitting one stitch for one row, turning the project around and then doing a DIFFERENT stitch, turning it around and knitting the original stitch for the third row. But they didn't tell me that!

There are names for everything - my new vocabulary includes knit stitch, purl stitch, garter stitch (what I was doing over and over and over again), stockinette stitch (what I should have been doing to get the results that I wanted), and lots, lots more.

AHA!

Now I have a pretty little practice sample:

And I feel like I can actually try this purse pattern without making a mess out of the beautiful yarn and hopefully have an end product that I'll be happy to give as a birthday present.

Next Step: Practice with knitting in the round.

Busy Day & The Big LaPowSki - February 28, 2009

I spent Saturday with Grandma & Granddad Price. They drove to my house before 08:30 and we drove together to American Fork for Carson Price's baptism. He looked so cute all dressed up in his suit!

It was very fun to see Aunt Barb & Uncle Doug's family get together for such a fun event. Jeremy & Sandy & family came up from California and Kip & Amy & family came up from St. George. Only Eric was missing. Yummy, yummy lunch at Tom & Chanelle's house.

I didn't take any pictures with my camera, so you'll have to check on Tom & Chanelle's blog for pictures. Thanks for letting me participate in your day Carson!

Afterwards, we went to the Jordan River Temple for Grandma & Granddad to participate in Tammy's endowment. My recommend is expired (oops), so I spent a couple hours in the sun listening to the BYU v. UofU basketball game and trying to learn to knit. I'm getting pretty good, but I'm still frustrated at the 'knit' stitch... With five minutes left in the game & and BYU ahead by a small margin, my car battery died. I'd been sitting with the radio on & Granddad's GPS plugged in for a couple hours. Luckily, temple security has jumper cables. Uncle Glen & Granddad & the security guy rescued me and got the car started while I took a few pictures for Tammy & Brett.

I'm including a trio of my favorites. They're so happy together & I look forward to taking more pictures at their wedding and reception next weekend.

P.S. BYU won the game!

MEANWHILE...

We signed James up for the Big LePowSki! It was a fundraiser for the Billy Poole Fund and one of the sponsors is Backcountry.com. For less than the price of a regular day lift ticket at Brighton, James got a lift ticket and two clinics and lunch and a hat and a bunch of stickers and a bottle opener and an autographed poster and was able to mingle with professional big mountain skiers. He loved it!

It actually started on Thursday night with some ski films - we didn't go to that.

Friday night was the mandatory pre-registration with Meet The Athletes. We talked to a bunch of people - including Chris Davenport who would be doing a slide show on some of his adventures up at Alta on Monday night. James also met the Backcountry.com guy who works with the athletes and getting their links on the websites. I didn't know that Backcountry.com has a Pro Team, but it was fun to meet some of them.

On Saturday, James' morning clinic was with Chris Davenport and was about the basics of backcountry skiing - safety, picking lines, etc. James enjoyed skiing with a small group of people, getting skiing tips, and being the 2nd best in the group (only behind Chris)!

Chris Davenport & James at Brighton -

James now has Chris' autograph on his Survival ski jacket.

At lunch, James text'd me that it was sunny & warm & he wished I was there. I'm keeping him!

In the afternoon, James skied in a How to Huck Cliffs clinic. I guess the conditions weren't too friendly toward cliff jumping (very firm), but he still picked up some pointers.

Saturday night was a party / auction / raffle / fundraiser event. James went for an hour-or-so and did a little more mingling with the athletes.

Monday - March 2, 2009 - Chris Davenport was at Alta Ski Resort giving a presentation about one of his projects - Ski the 14ers. There are 54 mountain peaks in Colorado over 14,000 feet, and in one calendar year, he hiked & and then skied them all. He completed that project in January 2007, so we saw pictures of that adventure & then pictures from first descents on Denali and in Antarctica that he's done since.

It was a pretty relaxed event. Our Lady of the Snows Center was full of chairs & full of people. James even chatted with the guy from Backcountry.com again after the slide show (the one who works with their pro-athletes). The guy said he saw James skiing and was impressed and would drop by the warehouse and say "Hi" sometime. We were impressed he remembered meeting James, but I'm not surprised that James is impressive while skiing!

James is so jealous of Chris' goggle tan!