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Squirreling Around: A Fall Acorn Harvest
Last week, I took the kids acorn gathering after school. The rain hadn't really started in yet, and it seemed about the right time. My favorite spot is the middle of the University of Oregon campus, because they have good oak varieties that are really well cared for and well watered, thus producing abundant, fat acorns. Also, it's a lot of fun to have all the college students bustling about ...
I Wood and I Could: The Story of Heating a Home
The rain has set in, I have a warm, cheery fire in my woodstove, and my woodshed is piled with neatly stacked wood. Now, I love wood heat, and tend to really thrive on it in the wintertime, so these things are pretty exciting to me all on their own. This year it is much more exciting because it is not only the heat supply for a winter in my home, but I gathered, cut, split, and stacked that ...
Mountains and Rivers Without End
While spending the weekend at Bald Knob Lookout on a retreat in solitude, I needlefelted this wool wall hanging of the lookout perched above the Wild Rogue Wilderness, Eden Valley and the Rogue River watershed spreading out below. The mountain peaks and river valleys seem to me to stretch on forever here, and always makes me think of Gary Snyder's book of poetry, "Mountains and Rivers Without ...
Solitude on the Peaks
I have just returned from a rejuvenating getaway with the best person I could think of to spend three days alone in a fire lookout tower with...myself. I rented Bald Knob Fire Lookout for the weekend, and set off with my books, my banjo, wool and needlefelting tools, the makings for delicious meals, and some Laphroaig single-malt scotch. I had been on several fire lookout trips before, discovering ...
A Day at Blair Lake
On the Fall Equinox, we headed up into the mountains outside of Oakridge for our annual Blair Lake huckleberry picking trip. Typically this has been a big weekend campout, but with how busy life has been the Fall (and you will notice the Fall Equinox was some weeks ago, and I'm just posting about it now) we decided to make it a day outing with friends and head back after dinner around the ...
Scenes from Seattle
Last weekend, I travelled to Seattle for the Northwest Chocolate Festival. One of the many hats I wear these days is working with my friend's business, Chocolate Alchemy, and we were giving a demo on roasting cocoa beans. This classified the excursion as a business trip in a sense, which just tickles me, because I had always been intrigued by business trips and this one ...
The Gleaning Girls
Even though I live on a farm where there is fruit, September got me thinking about all my annual wildharvesting and alley-way gleaning spots around town. While slicing and drying seconds apples and Asian pears from boxes the farmers couldn't use is fast and convenient, I was missing the challenge of going out and gathering. It was to my benefit that they didn't have seconds of Italian plums, ...
Backpacking Carl Lake
For my last backpacking hurrah of the season, I headed up with some friends to Carl Lake in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness last month. September is such a golden, wonderful time to get up into the mountains. The days are perfectly sunny and warm, and the nights crisp and clear but not too cold. I am often so busy with harvesting, gleaning, gardening and preparing for winter that I have rarely ...
A Felted Family
I just finished this custom order for a felted wool family that is going to be a playset for Grandma's House. It was a very warm feeling to create a family treasure for her grandkids to play with. Folks must be settling in and getting cozy for the long winter ahead with their families, because I am also working on a custom order of a fairy family for a little girl who likes to pretend ...