2010 in review

looking back, i am impressed with myself. i thought i only posted once last year, but there's 3 whole posts up! 2010 was similar to 2009 in many ways, which is why we have a huge round up post rather than shorter, more regular posts. so, the last year in review, if not in chronological order:

• in the spring, chuck changed jobs, then got fired, and now drives a school bus. that was a whole mixed bag. he was looking for less work stress, which he now has. he's also been wanting to get out of banking, which he has. the initial job switch let us use part of chuck's retirement to pay off a huge debt (with one tiny click. i savored that moment). we're now down to almost a third of the debt chuck had when we got married. not having that $900 monthly payment and several small miracles helped us through the 3 months of unemployment before the bus job and makes it easier to live on the lower income.

• archy work was very short this year, a measly 3 months. i worked in delta again, with all the fun side effects of living in two places that i noted last year. the work and crew were great though. site monitering is where it's at. you hike out to a known site, relocate surface artifacts, make sure the military hasn't blown a hole in anything, take some pictures and notes, then repeat. i loved it. still wish there was a good option for winter archaeological work up here........

• about the same time chuck started driving buses, i started working part time at a yarn store. work has tapered off, so i ought to look for something else, but it's been tons of fun helping people with their knitting and picking out yarn.

• i played more with homemade stuff. we haven't really bought bread since 09, and i've made my own tortillas and english muffins besides sandwich, french and flat breads. our garden gave us lots of potatoes that we're still eating, along with squash. everything else we ate as it ripened. i wish we could grow enough tomatoes to put up. we gathered blueberries, most of which we froze, and lingon (lowbush cranberries), that were turned into cranberry sauce. i also made spruce tip jelly, which has an interesting spicy sweet flavor. next year i want to try rose petal jelly from all the prickly rose in the yard. Homemade mustard and barbecue sauce are in the fridge, along with homegrown (homelaid?) eggs, some of them blue. chuck raised broiler chickens again, so we haven't bought chicken for 2 years. he also raised a turkey that grew to 25 pounds and barely fit in our tiny oven on thanksgiving, and we have 6 laying hens. they average 4-5 eggs daily, more than we can eat, so we trade them for moose and caribou meat. i even made laundry detergent too! seems we buy less and less at the store. mostly i try stuff out for fun, and because i like knowing how to make my food and what's in it and changing things to suit my taste. none of it took very much time (the jelly was a small batch) and costs very little. i made soft cheese, but for the cost of milk vs the lower cost of cheese and considering the ratio of milk to finished cheese......we will keep buying cheese.

• we bought season tickets for UAF hockey while we had money in the summer, and now the games are like free dates.

• i apparently knit a storm through the year, ending up with more large projects (shawls and sweaters) than before. i also experimented with some new things, knitting with wire and making small toys.
  that doesn't count anything started but not finished of course. i knit more for myself - it makes no sense for me to not have enough socks when i'm the one knitting them. out of 25 finished projects, 11 were for myself, almost half and a definite improvement. mostly i knit from stash, since yarn was not really in our budget this year. sweaters were probably the most satisfying projects while socks were not my friend all. year. long. fitting issues. hopefully to be fixed in 2011.

• the fairbanks knitting group just gets more awesome with time. they're a great mix of people with very different tastes and backgrounds and opinions, yet mostly we manage to encourage each other and have intriguing conversations. if we moved, they would be the people i missed.

• we got lots of yardwork done while we were unemployed together. the raised flower beds i built in 07 have been slowly but steadily eroding and we had started building boxes for them in the spring. we finished those and planted rhubarb, a red currant plant, daffodils, tulips and crocus. ever since living in sweden i've wanted crocus of my own to peep out from the melting snow. we even cleaned out the prickly rose from the raspberry bushes and raked leaves! not all of them, but more than normal. i almost like our yard now.

• my wisdom teeth were pulled dug out in the spring. i was a bit worried, from the horror stories told to my body's high tolerance for medication to getting an IV and being put under for the first time ever. my mouth felt crowded though, and the new teeth were trying to push aside other teeth. so it had to be done, and in the end? not so bad. i almost wouldn't mind doing it again. the IV took a couple tries and hurt more than anything else. the dentist had to give me two hits of anesthesia to knock me out and as i came to, he clearly asked is she waking up already? that didn't make me feel too good, but they were almost done. there was a bit of swelling, and i got a cool ice pack band to wrap around my head. made me feel like i was in an old time war movie.
  i took the (huge) aspirin they gave me and nothing else and was back to work on monday without missing a day since the surgery was on friday, my day off. the pains from crowded teeth were gone and i was happy. although i'd've been happier if i could have kept the teeth for souvenirs..........

• we signed up for the rosetta stone online through the military. i'm reviewing spanish, and filling in some everyday words missing from my vocabulary, while chuck is learning swedish. i love hearing him learn, it's more exciting for me than him i think. he's improved in every lesson and i can't wait till his vocabulary is large enough to have conversations.

• i read lots too, although i have no idea where i fit it and the knitting in. according to goodreads, i read 45 books this year. that's almost one a week, not too bad. some really good ones were: Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by patricia wrede and caroline stevermer, a lighthearted, funny fantasy with sequels to follow. stieg larsson's girl who.... series was a fascinating mix of mystery, journalism, crime solving, and political corruption set in sweden. they were gripping reads, and had fairly accurate descriptions of swedes. the only downside was the sexual crimes against women, but i suppose that was the point. the latest additions to the vlad taltos series, jhegaala and dzur, by steve brust added more depth to vlad's character. despite being quick reads, they kept me thinking long after reading. in defense of food by michael pollan made an interesting analysis of our current food culture and how traditional food culture has been manipulated for commerce. an extremely well-written and highly creepy fitcher's brides by gregory frost i would recommend for the writing and morals but won't re-read. i'd like to sleep at night, thank you very much. another non-fiction book i really enjoyed was the paradox of choice by barry schwartz. he delves into the unconscious and conscious factors that go into all our choices, big and small. the book was not as dry as i anticipated and points out a need for us to limit our own options to make effective choices. an interesting concept.
  
  annoyingly less good were: water for elephants by sara gruen, which a few of us in the knitting group read. the story just seemed to descend into melodrama and ended in an unlikely series of events. it started well, but i felt cheated at the end. name of the rose by umberto eco has sat on my shelves unread since high school. now it can sit on someone else's shelves. the long involved story of medieval religious heresies and dissidents is mixed with murders at an abbey. when revealed, the motive for the murders seems absurd and superficial. cheated again. wuthering heights by emily bronte confirms that british female romance writers are not for me. a bunch of whiny noble people make bad choices which have bad consequences and i think i'm supposed to feel sorry for them. um, nope. sorry. think i'll avoid the bronte's along with austen from now on.

• the week of thanksgiving it rained. this just doesn't happen in interior alaska. the warm weather made the foot or so of snow on the roof slide off, which normally happens in april. the fall compacted it all and made normal shoveling impossible. when it started coming off the deck in solid square chunks, what could i do but make a wall? crenelations and archer slits possibly to be added later.

• since summer, chuck has been working on painting the kitchen cupboards (the ones he took the doors off the summer before). the kitchen has slowly transformed from a dark green and gunky yellow 70s combo
  
  to a much brighter white (inside), blue, and yellow.
  
  the colors remind me of sweden and make the kitchen a thousand times brighter. i love it. the cupboard doors have been materializing the last couple weeks, and after a year and a half without doors, it feels odd being unable to just reach in and grab what i want.

• we watched more than a few movies in 2010, but not many made it to our favorites list. we really enjoyed blind side, ondine and the A team remake. oddly enough, tv on dvd was much more popular with us (we don't ever watch any tv shows on tv). a random series of events introduced us to the 2005 season of doctor who. september and october were a haze of the 5 recent seasons. it's a crazy, unpredictable, upbeat, funny british sci-fi space/time travel show and if you haven't seen it, do. you never know what will happen and yet only a few times is the story so outlandish that it seems impossible. we're waiting anxiously for next season to start, and have infected the grandkids with the addiction. we finished watching the dollhouse show, joss whedon is my hero for interesting tv. it's a bummer his shows have such short runs.

• we got a couple camping trips in. we took the bratlings camping in denali in the spring and hiked with them all day with no complaints from grownups or kids.
  
  chuck kidnapped me to paxson lake for a relaxing weekend in the summer, complete with canoeing and a beautiful sunset.
  
  we also finally hiked angel rocks together. we've been saying we'd do that for years. the trail starts out on the valley floor and climbs to the ridge top
  
  where granite tors are eroding into cool formations and caves.
  which of course we had to explore a bit, crawling into that hole behind us that opens into some small caves, then out the other side.

• on the winter solstice, we saw the total lunar eclipse. apparently the last time one happened on the solstice was in the 1600s. the moon wasn't totally blacked out but looked shadowed, like seeing it through a black curtain. very cool phenomenon, but we couldn't get a photo that didn't look like a black sky.

• after the very long break i've had in blogging, i have a clearer idea how i want to blog, a way to balance my content. several blogs i read manage to have good, varied content in short posts and i think i have learned from their good example. i suppose this next year will be the test. my iphone was no replacement for the internet and so there are still podcasts and blogs being caught up on.

all in all, 2010 was a good year. i never got tired of being home with my husband. i'm grateful for my friends, talking to family over holidays, and all the little miracles that keep me going every day. i'm thankful i can do so many things that i enjoy and are meaningful to me, which luckily tend not to be very expensive. reading my summing up post on 2009, i must have got something right in the balance department this year. the year was equally disruptive, busy, and i still worked out of town yet i feel as if i did more in most areas of life and feel more peaceful and happy looking back. i have to keep doing that.

mini-parade day 2: massachusetts in may

my #5 brother jeremiah graduated college this spring and fulfilled his life-long dream of getting paid to wear camo and sneak around by joining the air force (which i did mention ever so quickly, when it happened). although he's in communications so that might limit his sneaking around sniping opportunities somewhat.

the ceremony was mercifully rather short, with about 20 ROTC graduates taking their oaths.

my mom and dad got to pin the officer bars on jeremiah. after being sworn in and getting their new rank, each graduate could say a few words. many thanked family. my brother simply said "lock and load."

the last bit was the traditional silver dollar salute. the first enlisted person to salute a newly sworn-in officer is given a silver dollar. no one really said why, but it was kind of cool. jeremiah had asked his high school ROTC colonel to swear him in, and his high school ROTC commander gave him his first salute. chuck couldn't resist saluting him after as well - after 22 years in the navy i think that was the best way chuck knew to show jeremiah he respected his choice.

i was very proud of jeremiah for doing something so crazy as joining the air force, simply because that was his dream all these years.
we also, not coincidentally, got to meet his girlfriend. she's the red head in the middle of my family (not my whole family, but it's some of us).

while in massachusetts we went to one of my favoritest places on earth: the windsor jambs at windsor state forest. our family vacations always consisted of camping for a week in july when the factory my dad worked at shut down for inventory. it was probably the cheapest vacation for a family with 8 kids, but we loved it. building fires, hiking, playing in mountain streams, and of course harassing each other. we never liked camping at windsor (the sites are small, close together and very dark) but we'd always drive there to hike the jambs. the offical site i linked to says one may not hike the jambs as dangerous conditions exist. um, oops. we never looked at that website.

the jambs were formed by some stream wearing through bedrock to create an (apparently) 80 foot gorge. there's a trail from the top of the jambs down to the bottom. normally we follow the trail to the bottom1. trail at top of bedrock to right, 2. a waterfall from above, 3. once this waterfall was low enough for me to climb up the middle of it, 4. bottom of the trail where the jambs flatten out

and then hike up through waterfalls, around fallen trees, clinging to rock ledges until we reach the top.as i've gone back over the years, i've wondered what my parents were smoking to let us climb that thing as kids. my dad just shrugged when i asked him. the first time i was maybe 10 with at least one younger brother trailing behind. it probably isn't the safest thing in the world to do (and this last time i realized how long it's been since i did something like that - my confidence isn't what it was, but we still made it), but man is it fun.

we can't ever resist taking tons of pictures. the water, the rocks, and the still sparkling pools (some shallow, some so deep you can't see the bottom) are mesmerizing, and never quite the same twice depending on what storms have blown through and how much meltwater the spring brought. but still we know it like the back of our hands, always looking for our special landmarks.
there's the mermaid's seat , in a pool we always say we'll stop and swim in, but never do,

and nature flipping the bird to the sky.

i love the huge bedrock slabs, slowly eroded down, the falling boulders that shift so slowly over the years

with the blog in mind i even took a shot of our hand and foot holds

i look at that and think: what was i smoking to go trusting my life to that narrow edge of stone? we put our fingers in the cracks and hope the mossy rock will hold as we pull ourselves up, and that our feet won't slip when we have to balance on that edge.

chuck did look as if he thought i was mad when i wanted to climb, but gamely followed me through the jambs. he must have seen the gleam in my eye and known i would have gone with or without him.

after the jambs we went driving around a bit, looking for another elusive waterfall we had vague memories of visiting near the jambs (which turned out to be bashbish falls and nowhere near the jambs), and passing some very small signs that said craft festival. i was entrigued, but lured by the waterfall and mindful of everyone else, i let it go. i sure wish i hadn't and that i'd been reading blogs on vacation. turns out we were driving through west cummington, the home of the MA fiber festival. arg! i could have went to my first fiber festival........

the last highlight of our trip was a jaunt over the border to new york with my dad and brother andy to watch some drag races. sadly, i have no photographic evidence of the awesome cars (or the sunburn we all got there) but it was loads of fun. my dad loves old cars, which has rubbed off on some of us. there was a mini-car show in the parking lot, and seeing those gems along with the pumped up race cars was great. if i still lived in the area, i would be tempted to race my 74 catalina some weekend just for fun. and speed without getting a ticket of course :)

i've been a bad girl

besides the virtual pile of photos and the stories rolling around my head going back to may that i haven't posted yet, i am behind in the public displays of appreciation department as well.

podcasts are still a strange new world to me, fascinating but wildly overpopulated. discovering them rather behind the curve makes navigating through the hordes of knit podcasts to see what i like tricky, and i haven't dared cross the threshold to other topics, like music or books. especially because i want to be able to listen and quiet me-time for that is awful limited. so i haven't gotten very far, to be honest.

with one exception. the most wonderful podcast in existence (i am convinced, despite it being my first and only) is faery knitting by erin. erin reads and discusses a (public domain) faery tale (with voices and clever asides), then talks about yarn and gardening. brilliant! it's a perfect mix, and so fun to be read a story, discuss the background and underlying messages, then hear about planting and knitting and raising alpacas. and to top it off, she has little contests with book, yarn and gardening prizes.

one of which i won, ever so far back now. a little package with pole bean seeds, a book mark and cool chinese print card were waiting for me on my return from our MA trip. yes, in may. i told you i was bad. thanks, erin!

sadly, or perhaps luckily, the seeds did not get planted this year. the very little that did get planted was very late, and due to lack of sun (it's literally been raining for a month straight), hasn't grown much at all. the seeds would have been wasted. they'll spend the winter in the freezer and next year we'll see how they do in an alaskan summer.

roxie, of sanna's bag, recently held a contest for her 600th post. rather than picking one or two winners, she generously picked everyone! almost a week ago now i was the ever-so-proud recipient of a skein of bamboo hand-dyed by Teresa Ruch from the portland handweavers guild.
it's got the loveliest dark blue and purple shades, highlighted by surprising green and magenta streaks. i love it - thanks roxie! now if i only knew what to make with it........

one of chuck's daughters (also in oregon, hmmm) has an etsy shop selling pendants she designs. apparently she's done well enough to be copied now, frustrating as that compliment is. she had promised way back when the gift of whatever pendant caught my eye. finally i looked through and made my choice, which arrived last week, along with an extra ladybug design (for chuck's nickname for me).the pendants were larger than i expected somehow from the etsy pictures (not that this was a problem), and i've got the smallest size. her designs are so simple that they enhance the natural wood of the pendant. the dark woods were really my favorites. thanks val!

while i am publically confessing my failings, i may as well add another. last weekend we went to the tanana valley fair, which after solstice, is practically the highlight of the summer. it is THE thing to go to. why, i'm not sure. back home we had the eastern states exposition, called the big E. that lasts 3 weeks, and you could spend all day there and still come back for more. the tanana fair on the other hand, takes about 2 hours if you walk slow and look at everything twice. my first summer, we'd heard so much hype from locals about it, our expectations were rather high. when i went with some friends from work, we walked through at work-speed and were done in a half hour. then stared at each other, saying, that's it?

now chuck and i go, and take our time. there's a couple food booths we always hit, the fried dough one (called elephant ears here, very appetizing eh?) and the homemade french fries & potato chip booth. there are artists galore up here, photos of mount mckinley and the northern lights being very popular of course, and some of them are very talented. we always walk slowly through their booths, trying not to drool or whip out the credit card. we might not have succeeded at that last one this year.

the really dangerous to me booth this year was a new one, offering hand-dyed and hand-spun yarns, along with stained glass items. oh, and spindles and roving. i held out against the spindles, and the hand-spun and dyed quiviut, but i was no match for two 1/2 pound hanks of hand-dyed merino, one lace weight and the other fingering/sock weight, or the hank of handspun merino dyed that mellow yellow i've been fascinated with lately. chuck was no help at all either - even he knew at $35 a skein it was a good deal and made me buy all three.*sigh* there goes my resolution to only buy yarn as needed. i have no idea at all what i'll do with those. i'm sure i'll figure something out.

and, again with chuck's encouragement, i finally signed up for a sock club. they've always sounded like fun, but seemed very pricy. now, i don't know if the fearless fibers one i signed up for is just a good deal, or if i've been buying more expensive sock yarn, but it seemed very reasonable. maybe it being only three months long helps too. i've been watching anne at knitspot make all kinds of socks and shawls from fearless fiber yarn, and wanted to try them out. here i go! each month's yarn comes with a pattern, and i get to choose the colors i want. so it's not quite as adventurous as most sock clubs, but it'll be a good start for me.

apparently falling off the yarn wagon hits pretty hard. linking photos to this post, i discovered some other recent additions to the stash (we won't talk about any possible internet orders that haven't arrived yet). while waiting for the fair to open, we stopped by a LYS in the neighborhood i'd only been to once. they have a rather random selection of books and yarns, along with spinning and weaving supplies. a skein of bearfoot jumped at me and wouldn't let me leave it. chuck insisted (i suppose we could say he was being a bad boy too?).and we had stopped by the LYS we visit most a couple weeks ago, and grabbed some opal on sale.

how can i explain myself? it calls to me, chuck enables, it comes home. at least we'll never run out of socks - once i make them all. hehe.

among the virtual photo stack are finished knits that i'll save for another day with one exception. in a draft started in the dark before summer, i discovered my finishing up notes on the anastasia socks. the finished photos never were posted for them, so here they are.they're very comfy cozy squishy and soft. the shibui seems to be good yarn, i machine washed and dried them with no ill effects. i'm lucky it's not sold locally or i might have another public confession to make.

one of the best things about alaska.......

my backyard at 12-something or other last night/early this morningah, solstice. you gotta love it. no flash either (the flash actually made it look darker than it was - weird, huh).

sunrise: 3.00 amsunset: 00.43 am (the next day)

fairbanks has a solstice festival downtown, which is ok, but i have to say swedish midsommar celebrations knock it out of the park.

speaking of which, here's a cool shot (my sister took) from 2 years ago when we actually went to the midnight sun baseball game (and a ball got knocked out of the park and chuck ran and wrestled a fence for it, then had to wrestle a little kid to keep it, but we won't go there).the sun just sat on the horizon and never really went below it.

cool, huh?

time is relative

right now we're in this transitional period where light equals daytime and dark equals night. it's kind of a weird sensation really. i'm so ready for spring, even though i have no idea how march is already over. since the new year i've been in this time blur, where one day feels like forever, but then the endless days blur into one and seem to have gone by fast. terry pratchett said something like that once.......i may have to look it up.

but anyway. somehow march has whizzed by and i still have pictures from the beginning of february that i haven't posted yet. ajajaj.

there was the ice park, which was held a couple weeks early. the temps were in the 40s for a whole week, so they panicked and moved the contest up. a bunch of sculptures ended up classical styledue to bits and pieces melting off. we went with our 3 stepbrats (and a dad but he's not in any pics)

the 18month old decided halfway through that it was way past his bedtime, he was bored, and maybe if he screamed *nonstop* he would get to bed faster. he did. so we didn't really get to see the multiple block sculptures, and only got a few pictures.

a chameleon and a very odd abstract couple.

and my favorites: a different kind of seafood dinner, and a teardrop. i love how the carvers can make such realistic drops of water.

the two older stepbrats stayed the night. i read them a grimm's faery tale for bed, which they repeated almost verbatim to their dad when he picked them up the next day *raised eyebrows*. since it was warm out, we went outside for a bit. their dad was literally throwing them around.

they crunched into the snow and disappeared from view. they seemed to like it thoughafter (finally) finishing the snowflake headband, i jumped right on another quick fix, the army helmet hat. that went so fast it didn't even make it up on the sidebar. the fit is a bit snug, right on the line between just right and a little too short. the pattern picture only shows the side view, but i noticed on ravelry that the hat looked a bit small on almost everyone, so i wasn't that surprised. the applied i-cord in front was kind of fun and really topped off the helmet look. i love the yarn, but noticed it has very little twist, so it might pill. that's the sort of thing i've been noticing more about yarn, how it's spun, but alas not until after i've got it home. so far no problems though. i may frog the top and add a couple rows before the decreases, just for a little more height. some day. right now i'm just happy it's done and cozy to wear.

and speaking of being done, i even picked up the FFF shawl this week. knit night at my house, and i figured the pleasure of company would dull the irritation of the shawl. and i finished it this weekend. off the needles. whoo-hoo!!! technically i still have to weave in the ends, but as far as i'm concerned it's done. thank goodness.

limited knitting time has forced me to focus on one thing at a time, which inwardly makes me horribly twitchy, but does get results. i also finished a sleeve for chuck's sweater he says it looks like a sting ray. i could see that i guess. i even cast on the second sleeve yesterday.

a couple weeks ago now, i gave a presentation at chuck's rotary group about alaskan archaeology. it went pretty well despite my swedish computer refusing to play nice with the projector (after a week or so getting it all together *sigh*). the group was small enough that they could still kind of see the powerpoint slides on my laptop. i think the problem may have been the screen resolution, so i'll have to figure out how to change that.

still, everything seemed to flow really well, and nobody got the glazed-over look of too much detail. archaeology is very fun, just in very short bursts. i was glad i could explain what field work really is like yet still keep everyone's interest. they even said i could come back in the summer and do it again! so it was fun, and i was flattered.

another compliment i got recently was at the doctor's office. i was waiting for chuck and knitting (on the snowflake headband i think) and some guy walking by thanked me for keeping a tradition alive. he said it's lots of work and most people don't bother anymore. so even though it was totally random, it was kind of cool to get a sincere compliment for doing something i love.

happy anniversary to us!

and happy birthday to sara! (not that she ever looks at this, but she is my sister and all)

since we got married two years ago, we've been struggling to pay off debts from chuck's previous marriage. slowly, and very agonizingly, we've been making progress, enough that the last few months we started thinking we might actually pay it all off some day. so for our anniversary we decided that rather than buy each other presents, we would do something together and give the checkbook a rest (i'm not sure that actually worked, but that's totally ok).

so today we both took the day off, and slept in. chuck crept out at 8 (cuz despite my best efforts, he has not learned to keep his eyes shut much later than that) and got me theseso pretty, so pretty.

chuck made us breakfast, then we headed out for chena hot springs. we figured out that the last time we were there was almost two years ago when sara was up for the summer. then we tried to figure out how to get our very own hot springs in our back yard because they are the most amazing thing ever. turns you right into a limp noodle and you couldn't be un-relaxed if you tried.

the coolest thing was seeing the temperature contrast: steaming water next to frost-covered rocks and trees.after the hot springs (and showers to rid ourselves of the wonderful sulpher perfume), we went to the turtle club for dinner. that's the best steak restaurant in the world i think. and that coming from a non-steak person (i hardly ever eat it on purpose). chuck could eat it every day though. you've heard of steaks that melt in your mouth? i think the turtle club was the origin of that phrase. they are, however, a bit spendy (even for fairbanks) so it was a special treat to go there.

we also got the coolest surprise of the day there. we're waiting for the check when the waitress walks over with 2 cakes, which she lights and gives one to our neighbors - and one to us! when we came into the restaurant, chuck was on the phone with his son and mentioned it was our anniversary. the hostess picked up on it and sent us a "turtle cake."cool huh? now that's customer service. a great ending to a wonderful, relaxing day. spending the day together was the perfect gift to each other.