Alyeska Resort

My daughter works at Alyeska Resort.

She arranged for us to eat at the Seven Glaciers Restaurant.

At the top. We took the tram that moves nearly vertical. During the summer it moves slower. In the winter with anxious skiers, it can go top to bottom in three minutes. Awesome speed.

You can see some of the "kettle ponds", leftover from the old glaciers. Sometimes you can see bear or moose around the ponds. The tourist want to know 'when' they'll see their wildlife, as if you can schedule wild things to appear on the half-hour....

The clouds drifted in and put again in a nearly white world up here.

King Crab Legs - nums

...lets see how much gets cut off on this post...when published...

Alaska 1

Girdwood, Alaska.

Where the daughter lives.

Along the Seward Highway, Girdwood is about 45

May Madness

 I'm gonna throw a bunch of photos at you.

May has been super busy and I think The Daily Drizzle is finally fizzling out. Another of my favorite Iris above with the Bearded Iris close behind. That will be the end until next year.

  My friend from Kyoto sent me some special items for my birthday earlier this month.
She is getting to be an awesome airplane spotter.
 She found a keychain of the Torii Gates which was one of my favorite sites in Kyoto.

 My sis sent me a Marimeko plate. Also, the cute dish towel on the left.

I had to have a huge talk with myself. I've been hoarding pretty dish towels lately because a certain someone in the household doesn't understand kitchen rules. I made myself put it out anyway. And I ended up shout-ing it, as there are already scorch marks and tumeric from our curried chicken. (le sigh)

I made two more Clothesline bowls for easy peasy gifts and they were well received.

 This was my birthday/anniversary dinner. Yummy. Steamed clams on zucchini noodles. I think I need a spiralizer after all. Super delicious. Just a savory wine sauce instead of a cream sauce.

My iphone isn't great at capturing Mt. Hood in the distance. Lots of snow this year.

  I then "Gave" myself another gift of clumping bamboo. My friend, Teresa, mentioned she had five varieties and I penciled her into my birthday week off.

If you've ever had the joy of dividing bamboo... I took a sharp shovel with me and got a teeny bit of four of her varieties. The black bamboo would have needed a pick ax. ...and maybe very strong young men.

Nearby her is an old favorite restaurant of mine (and hers). My hubby and I came on the very first warm and sunny day and ate our dinners.
The sliding doors were open to the dappled shade along the Sandy River (very high this year).

My hubs had the famous chicken and dumplings. Which I can no longer eat (flour). My dinner was very tasty too. For the life of me, writing this, I can't recall what I ate.

I got to some of my weeding during my week off, but there is still lots to do.
Below are three medium sized blueberry plants. It has been so soggy that this section had to wait until the ground dried out a bit. Maybe in a week or two.

Right to the left of the weedy area is a section that looks all pretty in it's new barkdust coat.

The other morning, I awoke to this pretty picture out my bedroom window.
The Stearman got pulled out for some air.
The pink early morning air with my lovely Weigelia in front

Part of my birthday week was volunteering for Junk Refunk. A local business owner that is an Annie Sloan stockist put it on. Cheryl has previously done two street markets in town and brought a lot of people (and their money) into Canbyland. She needed some help so I volunteered.

I had forgotten how much I love volunteering. With my job, it's nearly impossible to commit to anything except getting through the long work days.
 
This one vendor, who is local, makes these awesome crowns. Because I was The Most Awesome Volunteer - ever-.

I have some escalating family problems, one in crisis mode. I also have one of the four clerks MIA for an indefinite time at work. Overtime will be the norm as if it wasn't already.

I am going to unblog for a while. I'll still be on Instagram more frequently (RocketGirl50). If you want to see my photos, that's a good place right now. I am seriously time challenged right now.

Trying to find time for sewing and unleashing my creative juices just got harder. If I do find a chance to make anything, I will try to blog just because I like the documentation and my notes.

Next week, I'll be visiting DD in Alaska, so I may have another go at blogging by iphone. Or, not. Photos seem to be more permanent on the blog (as a storage solution). We'll see how it goes.

We plan to go halibut fishing out of Homer and also a flight seeing trip around Denali. I'm especially looking forward to  Denali as this has been an awesome snow year up there as well.


Keep well and have a delicious summer.

Potato Planting

This spring has been soggy and cold. I planted my potatoes today - a bit late, but the soil finally dried out enough to till.

And my snap peas did not rot in the ground - they are all of 4 inches high.
Also a late plant in mid-April.

 Anyhow - I thought as I was digging holes that I would share some potato tips.
These are Norland Reds.

The first thing to do is cut them up. Two eyes per piece. See those growths that look like warts? Those are called eyes. Some of the eyes are really growing, others are teeny with just a pink/red spot on the potato skin.

On these smaller reds, you can cut them up into two or three pieces. Let them 'dry' for a few hours. This seals the wet part so it grows instead of rotting.

Your holes should be about 2 feet apart and about 10 inches deep. Or so. By the 20th hole, whatever floats your boat. You can add fertilizer or compost if you desire but my soil is pretty awesome for potatoes.

Place two pieces of potatoes at the bottom of each hole with eyes up to the sky.
Cover the hole halfway with dirt. We'll be infilling later as the green shoots emerge.

 That's it.

 Onto the patio. Most of the hanging baskets and pots have been pruned, churned up, and planted. Lots of time-release fertilizer and slug bait. These hanging baskets are heavy feeders and need extra food to grow.

If you look closely, I have hung my airplane decorations.  My kids painted these over twenty years ago from wood kits. They have held up remarkably good hanging outside all summer.

Junk Refunk Tshirt Hack

 My friends at BigWhite Goose, here in Canbyland, are hosting Junk Refunk this coming weekend.

I have my birthday week off work and volunteered to help out. Cheryl got in these cool tshirts for the event. Hers had a v-neck. But when I went into the shop to get an X-large before they sold out, all the necklines were round. Up against the neck.

But I know how to fix this. At least, I have a tutorial earmarked to turn a round neckline into a v-neck. It was super easy and fast. The longest part was unpicking the serged seam at the front neckline.

I managed to get the neckline down about 1 1/2 inches. So much better. And flattering.

 This shirt has no side seams. I dithered about adding in hip room at the back but then I would have to unpick the back neckline, so I caved and did the gussets/godets at the sides. I had to lay out my shirt just so to get a 'side seam' to cut up to the undersleeve. I put them in the same way I did my previous tshirt hack.

I auditioned quite a few fabrics to find something that would coordinate. When I was up at SewExpo this year, I bought a few laces. None of the laces quite worked colorwise, but this thin knit zebra stripe in blue did.

Since this is an event, I'm thinking I need to do one more thing to this shirt to get it into the Wowza zone. Pencil Girl suggested tracing the crown onto the back. I would sew the outline and then cutaway the blue - revealing the zebra stripe underneath. I'm thinking I might try to add it to the sleeve instead.

If you are near Canbyland this Mother's Day weekend and want to know all about Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, feel free to come up and get my autograph (lol).

 I forgot to get a before photo. I was going to meet up with Pencil Girl today and I wanted her opinion on a couple of sewing UFO's. This shirt is your basic women's x-large tee.

Other tshirt hacks/ideas here.