Rainy Day

Today started out rainy and blustery, so we opted out of the plans to join Jim and Pat for the gold mine tour. Instead, we visited the farmers’ market briefly while wearing our rain jackets, then ran a few errands and enjoyed a quiet day at home.

The farmers’ market was small, and we didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without. Tomatoes at $6/lb. (!) might have been wonderful, but we just bought 4 tomatoes and don’t need any more right now. I did talk myself into a new pair of earrings, however. The hand-made beads just spoke to me! I may re-string them with some other beads, but they’re distinctive alone.

We went to Taco Azteca for lunch, based on recommendations I found on Yelp.com. The staff managed to get both of our orders wrong and had to re-make them. I suspect our food was delivered to the wrong table and those people didn’t realize they didn’t get the right food. But when we got what we’d ordered, we both enjoyed our meal. It’s great to find good Mexican food this far north of that other U.S. border! And it was much better than what we found in North Dakota last summer.

We then visited the Great Alaskan Bowl Company factory. It was fun to see the large variety of bowls and other items made from birch trees, as well as videos about selection of the trees and traditional methods of cutting the bowls (there were no factory workers on Saturday). However, we decided we could live without anything from here, too.

We ended our brief shopping excursions by feeling virtuous, although mostly empty-handed (except for my earrings). It’s nice to keep money in our pockets and be satisfied with decisions not to buy more “things.” I remember how it was sometimes hard to give up my “things” when I closed down my house and started full-time RVing. I have to occasionally remind myself not to re-acquire a lot of “things.” There isn’t room for a lot of extras in an RV and limited space means we need to be selective about what we buy.

With the rest of the day free, I finished a small knitting project I started the other day. I noticed the hat a young woman was wearing on the Denali shuttle bus, and asked if she made it. She said yes, and told me where I could find the pattern online, on a site called Ravelry – a Knit and Crochet Community. Don’s niece Lisa had turned me on to this site several months ago, but I haven’t visited it very often. The pattern is called Star Crossed Slouchy Beret. Any knitters out there? Click on the link to go directly to the instructions to make your own. Or search for “star beret” and you’ll find 77 other nice patterns! In the process of making this hat, I learned a few new (to me) techniques to avoid having to use double-pointed needles.

The beret will keep my head and ears warm for sure! It’s a good use of this wool-blend chunky yarn I just happened to have leftover from another project.

Finally, I’ve made some changes to my blog. Comments will now appear below the post instead of in a pop-up window. Commenters will also be asked to enter a word verification. I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’ve been getting some spam comments and they’re a real nuisance. But the good news is that I’ve turned off comment moderation except for comments that are more than 7 days after the date of the blog post. This means when comments are entered they won’t be delayed until I check my email.

I’ll end this blog with some pictures transferred from my Droid phone. Thanks to Jan Tilton for giving me a link to instructions for the transfer process. Larry Forbes showed me how to do this recently, but I forgot and just couldn’t figure it out. Thanks, Jan and Larry! I think I’ve got it now!

John McBeath and Jo Wilson caught up with us near Denali.

The River’s Edge RV Park, where we’re now parked, is right on the Chena River, where people and dogs love to walk.

There was a classic car parade through our park a couple of evenings ago. I had a Corvette similar to this in one of my former lives!

I even had a VW “Bug” like this at another time in that life! It resembled a lemon, and well….enough said!

I could see myself in this one. Sometimes I feel that old. It would be fun to drive as long as it didn’t rain.