Knittinggarden

As I documented last time, we've been going on hikes about every week this winter.  This week we added a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park to our weekly outdoor activities and it was a lot of fun. I had read in the paper last Sunday that the Joshua Trees were in bloom and were very abundant this year.  Not having been to the park in about 20 years, and never having seen a tree in bloom, we asked some friends to go and drove up there last Monday morning.  We drove east to the far entrance to the park, entered there, and then drove diagonally across the whole thing, stopping when we saw something interesting. This garden of Cholla cacti was impressive. They were in various stages of bloom and were really pretty.  The color of the flower is not as eye catching as the Beaver tail pink blossom but I loved the pale green, delicate blossoms. We passed some amazing rock formations and stopped to take photos of this one that looks like a skull. ...

We try to go on a hike on Sunday mornings and today was a good one.  Here in Palm Desert the mountains seem to come right down to the road, so it's not hard to find a hiking trail near home.  The trails nearest us are very popular this time of year and get pretty crowded, so we usually go a little farther afield.  This morning we drove about 20 minutes away to the place I call my favorite hike.  You just park and pretty much start walking uphill, then decide whether to continue on a road to the top, or veer off in another direction onto a smaller trail. Today we decided to go check out a new dam that was being built during the last couple of years and is finished now.  It was quite a project and now protects the main highway between all of the little cities here (Hwy 111) from washing out every time there's significant rain. We struck out to the left and went around the side of the hill until we arrived at a vantage point above the dam.  Then we decided...

The trouble with waiting so long between posts is that there's too much to say so consequently I don't say anything.  As I go through my week, I take photos and write posts in my head.  Unfortunately, the ones I really like go to a quick Instagram post and never make it here.  Every so often someone (my sister today) will check my blog and let me know that it's way behind.  So here I go trying to catch up again. The last post showed my newly spun blue and white yarn.  That yarn quickly turned into this pair of socks.  Knitting socks with handspun usually goes quickly since it tends to be a little thicker than commercial fingering weight yarn.  I'm happy with them.  I just did a regular vanilla sock with a Fish Lips Kiss heel.  I made these toe up to make sure I had enough yarn and reinforced my dislike of toe up sock knitting. While we're talking about spinning, I spun a batt that I bought at Stitches West last year.  I separated...