Travel Bucket

I just finished finally putting 3 years worth of travel photos in albums. I am caught up. I usually did a pretty good job of getting prints and writing information on the backs. When we moved in July 2011, I stockpiled my photos from our June 2011 trip to Hocking Hills, Ohio and the aviation museum in Dayton, and then it was downhill from there. I didn’t even order prints of some of our trips until last year.

We regularly get catalogs of trips from Roads Scholar now. There are a few that interest me: Branson, Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg, San Juan Islands off of Washington state, covered bridges of Indiana. I found I didn’t like the historical lectures on our Quebec trip as much as I thought I would. I did enjoy being exposed to some of the local culture though. I usually learn something on trips thru site seeing and walking/boat tours and reading the tourism literature; often that kind of learning is less expensive than the Roads Scholar trips, but to be fair, they do expose people to people and places to which the individual tourist wouldn’t have access.   I suspect many tour-company trips cost more than independent travel, despite their claims of package savings.

I learned Okefenokee means “trembling earth”; that “colonial blue” does not represent the true colors used by people in Williamsburg (the colors were more vivid than historians originally thought).

    

Truer Williamsburg paint jobs

I learned what a baggywrinkle is:

That stringy mop-looking thing that protects ropes/lines from wires and metal parts.

 

I learned that the H.M.S. Bounty had an unusual below-deck because of the movies filmed in it.

 This is what FotoSketcher did with my photo of the Bounty. I like it.

 

The last two years on Hilton Head and Amelia Island, beachcombing and identifying the specimens has been very educational. I hear Sanibel Island area on the Gulf is a great shelling place. I may need to add that to my bucket list of trips. We have considered the Gulf Shores (Alabama)for a winter break.

In July, my husband and I will visit family in Southern California. We hope to spend a few days in San Diego on that trip.

I would like to tour Springfield, Illinois some day, too. Kauai, Hawaii was not on our previous journey which worked out well as about 2 weeks before our trip Hurricane Iniki closed that island to tourists. Another bucket list possibility. I spent a few days in New York City, but didn’t get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another possibility.

My brother-in-law is trying to get his sibs and spouses to cruise the Hurtigruten along the coast of Norway in 2015. With all of the hassles of overseas travel these days, I had sort of given up on trans-Atlantic trips, but maybe we will go. My husband’s grandparents came from Norway early in the 20th century.

 

What kinds of places are on your travel bucket list? Do you like tour packages/groups or independent travel?

Waiting Time and Beholding

Before I headed to Florida in February, I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church. This is not about leaving the Christian faith as much as leaving her position as ordained clergy in the Episcopal Church. I share with you the quotes I wrote down. I don’t necessarily agree, but I found them fodder for meditating and reflecting.

 

God is found in right relationships, not in right ideas. The parts of the Christian story that had drawn me into the Church were not the believing parts but the beholding parts:

Behold the Lamb of God. Behold I stand at the door and knock.

Christian faith seemed to depend on beholding things that were clearly beyond belief. Mysteries seize the heart, not orthodox doctrine. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then dumb-foundedness is what all Christians have most in common.

I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me.

 

One of the reasons I like carrying my camera around when I walk thru my neighborhood or explore new areas, is to slow down and behold God’s beauty and wonder in nature.

This quote from Terry Hershey's blog resonates with me:

I think one of the things I love most about photography is that it often elevates the mundane. When you stop a moment, and preserve it forever, and take the care to frame it, light it, and chose one moment over another, you effectively tell the world – or anyone who cares enough to look at your work; Look at this! And if, even in these mundane moments of life, we find something worth looking at, worth showing the world, then we’re effectively saying, Nothing is mundane. David du Chemin.

I can find God in my everyday world if I take the time to look, to behold.

 

Overnight and this morning we have had a dusting of snow, but by Sunday we are forecasted to be in the 60’s. Warm enough to get out and walk.

 

David Gessner in his book Return of the Osprey says: “ March is the waiting time. Everything poised ready to become something else, a world in need of a nudge.”

 

Warmer temperatures might just be that nudge. Spring at last. After this long hard winter, I am ready to get out and do some beholding.

 

 

FotoSketcher

A few days ago I went from one of my regular blog reads to another blog she had listed on the side of her frame. This new blogger was raving about Waterlogue, a photo effects app for iphones and ipads that cost $2.99. Mostly she displayed watercolor effects on her photos. They were lovely. I hoped that maybe this program could be used on a pc. Sadly, it is not available; but it led me to look for something similar. What I am playing with now is FotoSketcher. This Freeware program has no manual built into it. You can get started fairly intuitively by clicking on the toolbar icons. Some of the features I do not yet understand so I will have to read the online instructions. So far, it has been rather fun. Click on the various photos to see larger versions to note the different effects.

Here is a photo of some shells I collected on Hilton Head beaches last year.

 

Here is a water color version from using FotoSketcher.

 

Here is a colored pencil version.

 

An expressive brushstroke version.

 

Black and white pencil version

 

You can add frames or text; if you don’t want to change your original photo, you can just add text and frames. I have barely started using FotoSketcher, but I intend to experiment with it more when I have more time. There are lots more effects than I talk about here. Try it.

Desperately Seeking Spring

We had more snow Wednesday and possibly a bit more tomorrow. The good news is that we will be in the mid-thirties to forty temperature range the next 4 or 5 days. There is a very good chance we will see some melting. In the meantime, I do what I can to trick myself into thinking spring.

Bought these yesterday in the grocery store

 

Replaced the burgundy sherpa throw and blue pillow with yellow pillows with white butterflies

I have a nice little display of shells from Amelia Island (and some from last year at Hilton Head) to remind me of warmer days.

 

 

Look who followed us home from Amelia Island.

 

The government also tricks us into thinking spring has arrived by forcing us to go onto daylight savings time this weekend.

 

Winter has its perks though. It causes the deer to forage in our yards. This morning when I opened the blinds at 7:30 there were 3 deer beneath the pine trees, two sitting up, one sleeping on its side. Junior (what I call the smallest one) was here yesterday scavenging among the sunflower seed husks. He/she came right up to the glass sliding door. Not good nor safe to get that used to people. When we returned from breakfast out at a restaurant and a stop at Walmart and the bank, they had moved toward the middle of the divider plantings, except for Junior who came back to the patio. Around 10:30 a.m. they headed out single-file, and by the time I got to the west windows they were no longer in sight.

 

 

 

Maybe winter will disappear as quickly as the deer. We can hope.

 

 

 

Knitted Leisure Slippers

I have continued to knit. I made a pair of slippers. These are not heavy warm slippers. For me, these are travel slippers, something that takes up little suitcase space, but that I can use to protect my feet when walking on hotel carpets or for relaxing while sitting on a bed reading.

       

This project taught me more about knitting. Before, with the dishcloth and scarf I did not worry about size. For these, I needed to knit a small square to determine gauge. Using the suggested size 9 needle resulted in too much open space for my taste and not the correct stitches per inch. I changed to size 8 needles. I learned how to do knit one, purl one ribbing. The directions I used from the internet said they fit size 5 to 7 1/2. Since I wear 8 or 8 1/2, I had to modify the number of rows. I did pretty well in figuring out where to modify, but the knitted slippers have a bit of stretch and next time I would add only half an inch, not an inch to the garter pattern. As a general rule, I would say increase or decrease a half inch for each size change. Done according to the given directions, I think these would fit a size 7 1/2. I used Sugar and Cream cotton yarn which may also be a bit thinner than other worsted yarn. In the instructions below, I have put in brackets what I would use for size 8 slippers next time.

 

TV Slippers

 

These slippers fit size 5 to 7 1/2

3 ounces yarn (worsted weight)

Size 9 knitting needles. The gauge is 4 1/2 stitches per inch. The slippers are worked in garter stitch ( all knitted stitches) and knit one, purl one ribbing.

 

Cast on 32 stitches and work in garter stitch for 5 [5 1/2] inches. Then work 24 [26] rows of knit one, purl one ribbing.

 

On the 25th [27th] row, knit two together all across the row, ending up with 16 stitches on the needle. Break the yarn leaving a 25-inch end. Thread the yarn into a tapestry needle and pass through all of the 16 stitches on the needle.

 

Pull up these stitches tightly to form the toe. Fasten yarn securely and sew together the edges of the ribbed rows. Weave the heel seam. Attach a bow or a pompom where the ribbing starts.