Rolling On One

We didn’t go to Maine this past weekend, partly because Arlene wasn’t feeling well, partly because a big snowstorm was forecast for Friday evening and I wasn’t really interested in spinning the car off the Maine Turnpike. On Saturday we did go to Rockport to look for harlequin ducks. About twenty of them were there close to shore right in front of us when we walked down to the rocks at Andrew’s Point.

I saw a half-dozen birds flying very low over the water a couple of hundred yards offshore. I thought they looked like alcids, and asked a couple of people with big scopes if they had been seeing alcids. They said yes, that razorbills had been going by the whole time they had been looking. Before we left they spotted one much closer in. I got an excellent view of it in my binoculars. So between the harleys and the razorbill, it was a very successful winter ocean birding trip.

Maybe I haven’t ever blogged about the sweater I’m making currently. It’s mostly wool I got at the Maine Fiber Frolic last year, and what I didn’t get AT the frolic I got by mail order from someone I met at the frolic — that’s four 250-yard skeins of natural dark brown and two skeins of light tan Coopworth lambs wool from Ruit Farms and two skeins of white and one of silver tan from Hatchtown Farm, kind of sport or DK weight.

I’m working partly from a pattern from the Garnstudio web site, for the measurements and shaping, and partly from Knitting in the Old Way pp 164-166, for the Fair Isle charts. I think I started it just about the beginning of February — after I finished Matt’s sweater, at any rate.

I started out thinking I’d follow the Garnstudio pattern, but decided I didn’t have the right proportions of different color yarns for it. Then I thought I’d follow that pattern’s construction directions, at least, but when it came to knitting Fair Isle coming back I decided I couldn’t stand that, and I’d do it in the round, at least up to the armscyes. In this picture, from the weekend of the 24th, I was getting close to them.

By now I’m all the way up to the armscyes, which means doing front and back separately and back-and-forth. Rather than do color work on the purl side, I’m knitting backwards with a Clover strickfingerhut (yarn guide, but I like the way it sounds in German there. Shout out to Judy! That may be the only thing I bought at Circles.) on my right hand. Sort of knitting backwards Continental style. It’s a lot faster than I was going when I was trying to knit backwards with one color in each hand.

I really want to get this thing done while it’s sweater weather, or at least to have to wear to this year’s frolic if it’s cool enough, to show the people who grew the sheep. Stay tuned. This picture is a week out of date, and there’s another wide pattern band done by now. Still a long way to go on the front and back, but I’m going way faster on this than my first sweater or on Matt’s.

Well, there’s a little more from the weekend of Feb. 24.

First, there are the pileated woodpeckers. We saw one in our woods one of the first weekends we owned the place, right about New Years day 2006, but we hadn’t seen one in Maine since. On our way to the ice festival on Saturday we saw one fly across the road (Leach Hill Road, on the way to the dump actually) just in front of the car. I saw the big black-and-white bird, maybe I noticed the red crest and maybe not, and shouted “pileated!” Arlene wasn’t driving and confirmed the call. Then when we got back to the house after walking around the block (all 3 miles of it) on Sunday we saw two more in our woods, off to the north side of the house.

Second, a reason I was ready to buy more roving at the Ice Mall was that I made so much progress spinning up the roving I bought from Mind’s Eye when I had my spinning lesson. In fact, by the end of the weekend that roving was all spun up and my bobbin was brimfull.

Third, there was lots of snow in the woods, and even on our deck. You can never tell just by looking how deep snow is, but when you shovel it down to the ground you realize. There was about 16 inches out there. Here’s what our deck looked like when I shoveled a path for egress:

.. or this ..

At the ice fishing derby / ice sculpture / winterfest event at Lake Sebago, there was an area for vendors billed as the Ice Mall. It wasn’t on the ice — a good thing for vendors who were there all day! — but rather inside a building, so it was actually one of the few places to get warm. We had a long talk with someone who collected antique ice fishing equipment — actually, when he waxed enthusiastic about how lots of his items were handmade in the ’30s by people who needed to put food on their tables, and how each one represented someone’s ideas on how to catch fish, I could understand being interested in them — and saw a couple of people we’ve run into at other craft sales in the area. We bought from two booths we haven’t seen before. One was a man and wife who were into different crafts. She made soap and pebble sculptures, mini rock cairns and inuksuks. He had handmade knives and bud vases, wall hooks, and pendants made from flea market silverware. Arlene looked and looked and settled on a bud vase made from a soupspoon and the handle of a table knife.

The other booth was run by two women with spinning wheels. Of course it caught my eye. They were selling some knitwear and roving. I got a two ounce ball of white finn x romney roving.

Someone on the Newton Schools email system posted a question about sightseeing in southeastern Idaho. By the time I finished answering, I had written so much that I figured I’d post it here.

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My mother lives in Pocatello so we’ve been there many times. Usually we spend most of our time at her house and often add an overnight trip from there or a long day trip.

Of course you want to hit the big things like Yellowstone & the Tetons if you haven’t been there.

Between the Tetons and Idaho Falls you go along the Snake River, which has a moderately scenic canyon. Nothing like the Grand Canyon, but we don’t have that kind of scenery in the East.

After that, Craters of The Moon National Monument is pretty amazing. It’s a lava landscape with exhibits about different types of lava flows, one big cinder cone you can walk up and a couple of small spatter cones. It’s about ninety miles from Idaho Falls, out in the sagebrush desert. On the way to it you go through Arco, a small city which was the first place ever to get its electricity from nuclear power. There’s an exhibit at the Idaho National Energy Lab (used to be National Reactor Test Site, people around there still call it “the site”) about nuclear reactors, too. Nothing on that side trip is close to each other, but I definitely recommend Craters of the Moon.

Do you see a big blank area on the map between Craters of the Moon and I-86? There is NOTHING there except sagebrush and lava. Maybe a few pronghorn and jackrabbits.  Because of the porosity of the lava, what little rain there is sinks into the ground immediately and leaves the surface very arid. Just so you know. Also just so you know, the road between Twin Falls and Boise is interminable. I expect to drive a long time with nothing to see when I cross Nevada, but that stretch in Idaho surprises me in how long it seems.

There’s a very nice museum about the Oregon Trail in Montpelier, Idaho, southeast of Pocatello. It’s further from Pocatello than Lava Hot Springs, where you can soak in naturally hot water. When you look up at the hills around you at Lava, you realize you’re in the middle of an ancient volcano crater. Also in that direction is Soda Springs, where there’s a partly controlled geyser. Last time we were there we parked in the lot across from the geyser and got the rental car sprayed with geyser water, which contained minerals which only dissolved in the superheated geyser water and wouldn’t wash off the car! So if you do go there, pay attention to the signs warning you not to park too close. 100 yards is too close.

Thirty miles off the main road somewhere southeast of Pocatello is the townsite of Chesterfield, Idaho. It used to be a Mormon farming town, but was abandoned when it proved to be too far from transportation routes to be viable. People are trying to restore it, and you can see a few of the old buildings. It’s definitely a low priority place to visit, but if you happened to be interested in what it feels like to be in really isolated country where people once tried to farm, keep it in mind. I think it’s north of Bancroft, between Lava and Soda. I like Chesterfield, but expect people to say, “we drove 30 miles off the main road just for this??!!”

North of Idaho Falls on US 20, you go along the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. It’s one of the most famous fly fishing rivers in the country. Big Spring, a little off the road, is the source of the Henry’s Fork. It’s off limits for fishing, and there are huge trout in it. Harriman State Park is a good wildlife area, not quite so much as Yellowstone (which is very close but in a “can’t get there from here” way) but not overcrowded with tourists.

OK, farther west on I-86, stop at the rest area before American Falls that has a sign about the Oregon Trail. There’s a rock, Register Rock, in the rest area on the south side of the highway that has graffitti left by Oregon Trail emigrants. Do it now, it’s vandalism. Do it then, now it’s history, with historical marker and a fence to protect it. Across the way from the rest area the hillside still has wagon wheel ruts from the Oregon Trail. That one at least is not a long way from the beaten path!

We haven’t spent much time southwest of Pocatello, but one place on that side that we do recommend is City of Rocks, south of Rupert (or Burley?). It’s a very strange landscape with huge rock outcroppings. If you go there, there’s a general store in the last town before it (coming in from the East), I think Almo, that has a far corner that looks unchanged from 1920. Some places you’d pay $5 admission to see a reproduction of it. Just stop for a can of soda every place you can, you’ll be thirsty anyway, and you’ll bump into it.

While we were in the big tent with the snow and ice sculptures of the mercedes and the moose, we heard a loudspeaker announcement that there was about to be a demonstration of a rescue by a Coast Guard helicopter.

The helicopter was on display on the ground when we got to the place. One of the coast guardsmen had opened the door for us to look and told me about how it worked — normally a crew of four, a pilot in the right-hand front seat, a navigator in the left-hand front seat, and two people in back, one to handle the winch for rescue operations and — well, I guess I’m not clear on what the fourth one does, but also on the rescue side rather than the aircraft operation side. Maybe more like a paramedic? I guess I’m not clear on that.

When we heard the announcement about the simulated rescue demonstration, we went over to the lakeshore to look. The helicopter was warming up, and took off after a couple of minutes. The announcement had included a warning to clear the area where the rescue was going to be, because the prop wash under the helicopter would be kicking up a lot of ice and snow. Sure enough!

Pretty soon we saw a pair of feet dangling off the far side of the aircraft. A guy came down out of the plane on a cable, landed on the ice, and unhooked himself from the cable. The helicopter circled over the area a couple of times more (I guess to show us that it could really find someone who needed to be rescued, rather than only being able to pick up someone it had dropped off in a spot where it was hovering). The guy on the ice set off a smoke marker/flare combination —

— and the helicopter returned. Pretty soon the helicopter crew had lowered the cable again, the guy on the ice connected himself to the cable, and he (in orange, to the left of the leftmost ice fishing shelter) was winched back up the the helicopter.

Definitely a “don’t try this at home” moment! I’m glad the coast guard guys know how to do that.

The biggest attraction of the icefest at Lake Sebago was the ice and snow sculpture.

The pre-event publicity had talked about an ice miniature golf course. It turned out to be the regular miniature golf course at the resort where the event was being held, with the addition of ice sculpture hazards. I think this hole has two ice squirrels facing each other.

That wasn’t all that impressive. Much of the snow sculpture was, flat out, spectacular. In a big tent, which was there to keep the sun (and I guess any additional snow or sleet) off the sculptures, were two monumental snow sculptures and one full-sized sculpture of a Mercedes convertible made of ice.

Snow being snow, you use specialized tools for sculpting it. One sculptor was using a scraper, sort of two concentric cylinders with coarse saw teeth along one edge. Another showed us a snow saw, cut from eighth-inch aluminum plate, with very coarse but not awfully sharp looking teeth. I think it was home made by one of them, but maybe there’s a web site where you can buy saws for snow sculpture (I couldn’t find one, but google ‘Snow Sculpture’ if you’re in a snow-deprived part of the world and have never heard of this endeavor). It looked as though you could rough out a shape from packed snow in a few seconds with it.

The most impressive sculpture there was billed as a fire-breathing snow dragon with a tail kids could sled down.

There was even a dragon-slaying knight challenging the monster:

The fire wasn’t in operation when we were there, but there sure was a line of kids with sleds waiting their turn to go down the track all the way down the dragon’s spine.

Several times now the smoke alarms have been going off when we’ve got to the house in Casco. I’ve found that if I reset the circuit breaker for them they don’t go back on; but it’s disturbing. We contacted the company that made the alarms to ask. They said that smoke alarms really should be replaced every ten years. These were probably as old as the house, fifteen years, so we called an electrician to get them replaced. Nothing much to say about it, except that the new ones have battery backup, which the old ones didn’t. We hope not to get the false alarms from them.

Arlene has been wanting a garage door opener in Casco. Well, since we don’t have a usable garage in Newton (there’s one taking up a third of the basement level, but there’s no driveway to it) it would have to be in Casco. When we get there late at night, in the dark and cold and weather, it would be nice not to have to get out of the car, fumble for keys (I’ve learned to find the key before getting out of the car), and look for the lock in the dark.

At any rate, Arlene’s brother got us an opener for a present. I started to try to install it a few weeks ago and determined that the door was too close to the ceiling for the opener to fit. We got Steve, the guy who installs garage doors for Sears, to come out and look at it. He said that yes, firstly the door was the wrong size for the opening, and secondly the tracks were the wrong kind, and indeed there was no way to put an opener on that door. He could get us a new door, put in new tracks, and install the opener for us, for about three times what the opener had cost.

So he was back this past Saturday. We expected him at 7 AM so I set the alarm for 6. I had just got to the kitchen and rolled up the blind at 6:50. Nicole was already up. She had a better view out the window than I did and said, “Someone’s here.” It was Steve and his assistant. It took the two of them three hours and five minutes, from 6:50 to 9:55, to remove the old door, remove the old tracks, put in new tracks, put in the new door, install the opener, test it, get me to program the controls, and tell me how to use it. I was amazed at the efficiency. Here’s what it looks like now:

Yes, lots of snow. Those poor guys were working down there with the door wide open a lot of the time. The temperature was in the 20s outside. They said it wasn’t bad, this was the only heated garage they had been working in all week.

I started several posts about last weekend, mostly about the Maine ice fishing derby and winterfest on Lake Sebago. I have a load of pictures to process and add to the posts before I put them up on the web, and have been hindered by having lots of stamp mounts to index. Also, I’m trying to get a sweater for myself made before the end of the winter. I think it’s on track for late March, if I can keep making progress on it. Half a row, a couple of photos, half a row…