A New Year

My friends all said that 33 is a lucky number, so this should be a good year for me. I have to say, I believe that my last few years have been very lucky and good. But who am I to argue with numerology!

And if this isn't any indication that I'm off to a good start, two of my coworkers thought I was in my late 20's!

Here's the birthday pic with the hubby! As our friend pointed out, it wasn't just my birthday, but the 2 year anniversary of when we got engaged! For my gift, he gave me a bouquet of my favorite flowers and tickets to the opera next week!

Eat Local Challenge: Week One

This was my first week of Heather's Eat Local Challenge. I almost didn't make it. The week turned out to be a little more crazy/hectic than I thought. I started out missing my weekly trip to the Ballard Farmers Market due to a long/hard training workout that was immediately followed by a nap. The rest of the week looked very similar. But on Friday night, I hit the Phinney Ridge Farmers Market after work. I'm so glad I went. If you haven't been to this market, I highly suggest it. I think it could quickly become my favorite one! I bought everything for our dinner:

• Beef Rib Eye from Olsen Farms in Colville, WA


• Lettuce from Carnation, WA which was mixed with lettuce from my container garden & carrots from our organic delivery service (they came from another farm in Washington, but I'm not sure where)


• Potatoes from Carnation, WA


• Blueberries and Raspberries from Fir Island

I added that with bread from the Essential Baking Company and a couple of glasses of wine from Chateau St. Michelle. It was a fabulous dinner. I look forward to more of these!

Apparently, I'm a Protector

You Are An INFJ

The Protector You live your life with integrity, originality, vision, and creativity. Independent and stubborn, you rarely stray from your vision - no matter what it is. You are an excellent listener, with almost infinite patience. You have complex, deep feelings, and you take great care to express them. In love, you truly see relationships as an opportunity to connect and grow. You enjoy relationships as long as they are improving and changing. You can't stand stagnation. At work, you stay motivated and happy... as long as you are working toward a dream you support. You would make a great photographer, alternative medicine guru, or teacher. How you see yourself: Hardworking, ethical, and helpful When other people don't get you, they see you as: Manipulative, weak, and unstable

What's" Your Personality Type?

Birthday Month

It's birthday month around here and I'm a big fan of it, I must say. I treated myself to a little crafting pre-birthday gift.It's the Bend the Rules Sewing book from Amy Karol. I've been eyeing this little gem for a while now. Now I own it and I'm still eyeing the pretty pictures. I'm hoping they will provide a little sewing inspiration as I dig around in my fabric stash and try to get creative.

Getting off the bench & into the game

I'm officially getting off the bench and signing up for Heather's local food challenge! For weeks now, I've been admiring the delightfully delicious creations everyone has cooked up. Now it's my turn to get creative while supporting local farmers.

And it's a good thing too. We've signed up for organic delivery for fruits and veggies, however they have all organic stuff but they still get stuff from Mexico, New Zealand, etc. I had to explain to the hubby that he couldn't buy anything that wasn't from Washington or Oregon (and I don't even think the Oregon stuff counts for the food challenge). In fact, on our first order they sent us a fact sheet about our food. It said that the average food travels from the fields to the table is 1500 miles. Our first order: our food came a whopping 1450. Clearly we have our work cut out for us.

Time to get serious

My third Danskin Sprint Triathlon is less than a month away. My fabulous training partner Darcy has been a great inspiration to workout with. We push each other, give encouragement and vent frustrations when a workout is very, very tough. Since this is my third tri, I'm really hoping to do well and push myself farther and harder than in the past. My goal is to do the 1/2 mile swim; 13 mile bike ride and 5k run in 1hour 45 minutes.

Better get back to training.

Tri Training, Knitting & One Less Car On The Road

In an effort to get in some triathlon training where ever I can, and to keep up with my goal of using my car less, I decided to ride my bike up to the Fiber Gallery after work to pick up my new sock book. I figured it'd be about 3 miles each way. Easy-peasy, right? Well, as you savvy Seattle knitters know, the Fiber Gallery is on Phinney Ridge. That's ridge as in big fat freakin' steep hill.

Not to be deterred, but rather challenged, I figured, why not. So I rode from my place up Fremont Ave to the zoo, then cut across to the main drag along Phinney Ridge. At about 39th and Fremont, I'm sucking wind big time. Muscles in my legs (and ass) were aching that I didn't know ever existed. So, having no shame what-so-ever, I got off and walked my bike up and even steeper part of the road. Now the thing about this road is, it's not as crazy steep as many hills in Seattle, it's a slight incline that just goes on and on (OK, maybe it's 2.1 miles, but it seemed like eternity.)

About halfway up the hill, I did get back on and power through. It was worth it. It was a beautiful afternoon and Jessica was working and greeted me with a smile. She didn't even mind that I was totally sweaty, panting, and slightly ditzy. I even couldn't remember if I needed a skein of Manos or Malibrego for a scarf I want to make.

Here's a view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains! You don't always see that when you're whizzing by in a car!

Christmas in July

This is the year that I actually start my Christmas gifts early! And I even whittled down the list of who gets knitted gifts. This year's first project goes to my dad. He's getting knitted socks. I'm very excited about this project because I'm learning how to do socks on two circular needles and I have to say, I'm totally loving this and wondering why the heck it took me so long to get here? It's a pretty simple sock pattern (more on that when I actually buy the book - look for post to come later this week.)

But here's the reason for the socks for dad (aside from the fact that he's the best dad and deserves handknit socks from his kid). My sister and I have a running joke about who's the favorite daughter. It can be for either parent. At any time and for any reason. For example, I was talking to my dad the other day when he got a call on the other line. He went to answer it, came back and said it was Lindsay (the sister). I said, "Did you tell her you'd call her back later because you were talking to your favorite daughter on the other line?" That type of stuff.

When I was visiting the family over the Fourth of July at our place in Cascade, my dad proudly displayed his new favorite toy. It was a gift from Lindsay for Fathers Day. And I can honestly say, I've been dethroned as favorite kid. This gift freakin' blew everything out of the water. No comparison.

My dad now owns a bright orange Boise State University beer bottle opener that plays the Paul J. Schnider final call of the famed Fiesta Bowl game where the BSU Broncos came from behind in the final seconds to win the game. (I hate to do this, but to get an idea of how great this play was - in the minds of Broncos - here's a link to a crappy YouTube clip where the BSU fan actually spelled Boise wrong in the title. It's just classic.)

And the best part, she found it for 99 cents. (Editor's note: personally, I believe that's because no one would want that reminder of a game, but whatever.) So needless to say, he went around all weekend offering to open all of our beer bottles. The rest of the guests were all Idaho Vandals (for those readers not from Idaho, this is the big, massive football rival. It's messy. It's personal. It ain't pretty.) But it made my dad happy. Especially as we all squirmed when the damn thing would go off.

Now, to give my non-Idaho readers another perspective of how beloved this damn game is, it was played about two years ago and if you go into any big store that sells T.V.'s in Boise, they still replay that game on all of their T.V.'s and people still stop and watch it. Plu-eezeee, get over it for crying out loud. Move on. That's what I'm hoping these socks will do for my dad, help him move on past that damn game. And put me back in the favorite daughter throne that I so rightfully deserve.

(Pictures of these fabulous-favorite-daughter-winning socks to come later, my camera battery is recharging.)

Mystery Project Revealed

(Editor's note: This photo was totally stolen from Pike Schemes. Photo credit: Shawn)

It has finally arrived at Sara's place in D.C. A very late graduation present for finishing her masters! It's the Easy Lace Scarf pattern made from Tess' Designer Yarns Cascade Silk Worsted in blue. I know it's not scarf wearing season just yet, but I think it looks great on her! Congrats Sara!

Vacation Pics!

The view from our deck across from hole 1 of the golf course and Lake Cascade.

It was a fabulous fun time in Cascade, Idaho! It felt like I had never left. One of the many things I love about Cascade is how relaxing it can be. I did a lot of reading, hanging out with friends and family, and oh, out fishing my dad! Not to brag, but within 10 minutes of throwing the first cast I had landed two Rainbow Trout. Then it did get a little slow, then Matt caught a fish, then we headed in. Our second day out on the water, I once again, out fished dad. What can I say, I learned from the best!

Here are my two favorite fisherman....too bad I caught all the fish!
I love a good small town parade and their floats! But the crowd had gotten much larger over the years. I don't remember that many people along the street when I was a kid.


And another treat for my trip, was visits with friends who were in the area to celebrate the 4th! Like cute little Kellan, who makes a silly face on command for pics!

Summer Vacation

We're hitting the open road to take in some fresh mountain air for the 4th of July! We're heading to Cascade, Idaho to spend a long weekend with family and friends. We're going to be staying at my family's place, and while, it's not fancy by any stretch of the imagination, it's perfect to me. I have lots of happy memories of us staying there as kids, riding our bikes into town to buy ice cream, climbing on the rocks along the lake (which in hindsight may not have been the safest activity, but hey, we were young), and family visits. Then as I got older, more great memories of fun girls weekend get-a-ways with margaritas, gin and tonics, and relaxing. And in one case, a very fun game of mini golf in the front yard while we were all still in our p.j.'s. You had to be there.

I don't have a picture of our place along the lake, I'll have many to share when I get back. But for now, as we in Seattle deal with a lot of heat right now, I'll leave you with shot my dad sent this past winter. They had record snow in the area and he had to park on the street and snow shoe into our place to shovel all of the snow off of the deck and roof. He did that a couple of times.

(Yes, that is snow up to the roof in some places!)