Fall's Promise

I have always said that autumn is my favorite season. It is still true. I enoy fall. In fact, I relish it! We had a bit of a cool down over the Labor Day weekend. (Which is great because we got out of school early due to heat indices over 100*F just before the weekend. And I don't do heat very well!) It was lovely enough that on Saturday DH and I went to a road near the local airport to watch the annual skydiving event. The breeze was cool, the sun was bright and our spirits were soaring nearly as high as the planes and parachutes! Fall always puts me in the mood to get active. After having been relegated to the realm of air conditioning, it is my chance to get outdoors once more. I'm eager to go caching and letterboxing again! I'm looking forward to visits to the orchard and walks around the neighborhood. And fall always puts me in the mood to visit a great Rennaissance Festival!

Of course the cooler weather also inspires me to get going on all that knitting too! (Now I have a definited date for a baby shower, so we'll see if the baby blanket gets completed in time, or becomes a birth day present.) (There's also the ability to fire up the oven just around the corner too! Oh what goodness comes from there! Homemade cookies and bread! Casseroles for supper! Baked squash and roasted vegetables! Yum!) What special joys does the change in seasons bring to you?

One Thing Led to Another

So, if you've been following this blog, you will know that we discovered geocaching when I received a GPS receiver designed for the sport for Christmas. Our love of getting out to discover new caches and new outdoor spots led me to discover letterboxing as well.

And if you know me, you know that when I discover something cool, I tend to jump in with both feet.

This, then, is my true confession...



I have been obsessively carving stamps for letterboxing (and for fun!) for the past few weeks!

It started with dollar packs of two pink erasers from Target and 12-pack white erasers for $1 at the Dollar Tree and an exacto knife. The photo you see is missing four stamps I carved. Two of them are already gracing letterboxes which have been placed at local cemeteries along with 2 other stamps which were the "First to Find" prizes in those caches. (I'm trying to get some other people in the area interested in letterboxing or letterbox hybrid caches in geocaching. I LOVE the artistic aspect of carving your own stamps!!)

I have used some of the stamps to make some Letterboxer Trading Cards (LTCs) which are akin to Artist Trading Cards. I've even done some trading with other letterboxers for cards.

I have several "signature" stamps with our trail name (helms2049) on them for stamping into logbooks. I've also done some for the series of gravestone symbols I'm doing in area cemeteries. I've done a couple of owls to memorialize my grandmother. Three on a Frank Lloyd Wright series and 4 for a planned letterbox series at local coffee shops.

So, that's what I've been up to! (It's SOOO addictive!!)

Anticipation

I feel giddy!

I have placed my first cache out in the wild, filled out the forms and sent them to the reviewer.

Now I must wait for him to review and ok publication....then, the fun begins!!

The cache contains a FTF (first to find) Pathtag (collectible coin) for the first one to discover it.

It's also large enough to hold a few very small trade items such as coins. I have been knitting miniature socks to put out in caches, so I put one in this along with a Chinese "good luck" coin. (Nickel in photo is for sizing purposes only.)



I can't wait for it to get published and to have some people visit the cache! I hope they have as much fun discovering it as I did planning it and putting it out there!

Knitting Related Caching

We enjoyed a quick trip to Omaha last weekend to spend time with extended family. While on the road we had a chance to do some geocaching and found six caches on Saturday. The little ones were thrilled that we found several with some genuinely wonderful swag for kids: toys and real change!

Not to be left out, I was genuinely thrilled with the trackables I discovered as well!

I has hoping to get to one cache in particular because I saw in its inventory an item called "Knit Wit's Travelbug." I did arrive in time and traded in a geocoin for this little bug:



I hope to show it to some knitting friends and perhaps take it to get its photo taken at a LYS before sending it on its way.

I also ran across several really cool coins. Being a former stamp collector, I couldn't resist this one:


(I think I may have this actual stamp in my collection!)

I dropped off the Iditadog travelbug (trying to make its way to Alaska) in exchange for this Denali Park stamp coin. It's goal is to see Mt. McKinley. I hope to show it at least one "McKinley" near me before sending it on closer to its hoped for destination as well.

In other news, I took the time to learn Judy's Magic Cast On for the super secret sock project I'm working on. Magic is right!! How did I ever live (& do toe up socks!!) without this ingenious knitting device??!! (I'll never go back to crochet cast-on for toe up socks!!)

I am in the throws of learning some new increases for these socks as well. Not having so much success with that as the dark yarn I'm using requires good daylight to see where the bits are that need picking up in order to form the increase. That means no knitting on that project after nightfall for me.

We're in the midst of a blizzard right now. School was released early and I have my doubts as to whether we will have school tomorrow either.

Does that mean I won't be able to make it to my weekly sit-n-knit? Dear lord, I hope not!!

Happy knitting (and cache hunting!)

Mum's the Word

I'm beginning a stealthy project doing a test knit for a designer in Germany. I can't post much information, but I think it's ok to let you know I'm using my Knit Picks Stroll - Kettle Dyed yarn in the colorway "Jay." (Think deep, lovely blue!)

Once the designer has the pattern perfected and up for sale, I'll point you all to it!

Here's something I can show and tell:


This is the pattern Pimpelliese available on Ravelry for free. I'm using my Chroma yarn in the Sunrise colorway. I like it a lot and the pattern is fun to knit. In theory it will only take this one skein of fingering weight yarn. It is a shawlette/scarf.

In caching news, we received our first souvenir for finding enough caches right here in our home state.

That's pretty fun! I'm hoping to add another souvenir in the near future.

Looking forward to the weekend; how about you?

Happy Knitting!

New Adventures

I'm not going to do one of those year end wrap up type entries. If I want to take stock of what happened in 2010 I will go back and look at archived entries.

Did I mention that my DH got me a GPS unit for the holidays? Specifically, this one:


I did a story for Fort Dodge Today a couple of years ago on a family who were geocachers (pronounced: jee-oh-cashers). I was intrigued by the idea of this high-tech treasure hunting, but the gps unit remained elusive in the budget. Thanks to a Cabella's charge-card and the price of gas the past few years, he had earned enough credits to get one!

We've been out on a few geocaching adventures already with seven successful finds and two we couldn't find. (I'm blaming the snow cover!)

If you don't know what it is you can check it all out at this website.

We visited my brother's family yesterday and took them out "treasure hunting" with us. The little ones had great fun and we found a cache with some trinkets in it for them to take home. (I had some other trinkets with me to leave behind per protocol.)

Another fun element to geocaching is Travel Bugs. These are metal dog tags with serial numbers and trinkets attached which cachers pick up in one place and take to a new place per the wishes of the owner or the goals listed for the bug. We were able to deliver one to the western border yesterday. We also picked one up!



This one is called "Iditadog" and was started in Anchorage, AK by some school kids in 2007. It's original goal was to travel around and get back in time to go on the Iditarod race in 2008, but it is still traveling. We may keep ahold of this one until vacation this summer when I hope we will be able to deliver it much farther west (and north). We'll see!

Today we're having sleet/ice/snow. I'm going to have to take a nap if staying up until midnight is in the cards. We shall see.

Happy New Year one and all! See you in 2011!

Heroes For The Holidays

I am pleased to report that I received the company of two of my knitting heroes for the holidays: the commemorative edition of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac (complete with an Introduction by Stephanie Pearl McFee, a third knitting hero of mine!) along with Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

I have already delved into both volumes, and am happy to report that I am already busy incorporating one of the patterns from Walker's tome onto the sock currently in progress on my needles.

I always enjoy reading EZ as well....she is so liberating!! One cannot help but become more self-confident as a knitter after reading her encouraging words. (I think that confidence spills over into other areas as well.)

In non-knitting (and non-photography) news....DS and I went in search of our first geocaches today. I also received a Garmin GPS unit for the holidays with which we can now take part in the fun that is geocaching. We did an earnest search for three caches today, finding two. (I am convinced the third one was not meant to be found in the winter with snow on the ground. We will have to try again in the spring.)

If you don't know about the sport/game/fun, check it out at Geocaching.com!

Here's another photo from my forray into the woods a few days ago. (No caching involved...we were only out to take photos!)



Happy knitting and shooting and caching!