Parties and a Flood

Roger's Dad Al stayed with us through the celebration of Roger's 55th birthday at the end of the month.  It feels a little quieter now that he is back in Auburn.  But we will be seeing him soon enough as we go down to celebrate Christmas with the Ellisons in a week.

The Christmas Season began in earnest for us with a couple of parties on Dec 4th.  The first was our annual National Park dance at English Camp.



I dressed up in my 1850's garb but had no time to change before the next shindig, and open house at the new Brickworks Farmers' Market.  Roger had gone directly from the market to the open house. 

The next day the Soroptimists had their annual Holiday Party at the Community Theater. I made devilled eggs. Three days after that, I drove one of the cars in a caravan of Textile Guild members to the Burke Museum for a show on fabric from countries throughout the Pacific Rim.  A nice weaver named Erica gave us a talk on the similarities and differences in weaving techniques.  It's a good show.  See the link Burke Museum And on Saturday, we attended a lovely Caroling Party at Heritage Farm.



Our new floating dock



our road?!



Meanwhile, back at our farm, the waters were beginning to rise.  And rise.  And rise.  What happened was--Alaska Place overflowed its culvert which overflowed the ditch to Eric's place which jeopardized his shop so he diverted the water into the Ellison Lane ditch which couldn't keep up.  So our road became a mini-stream.  And the pond filled and filled and filled and the stream became a river, and then a lake.  The paper said it rained 2.66 inches that day on top of the 2+ inches in the five previous days.  Oh, and our shop flooded, too.  I, myself, vacuumed 35 gallons out and Roger matched that amount.

our stream?!

Don't worry, the waters have already receded.  Although they do say we are in for more rain through December.

Oh and Tuesday, the Textile Guild Holiday Party was a big success.  They seemed to like the tree ornaments I made by pressing Queen Anne's Lace into snowflakes.  More parties planned for this coming weekend.  Stay tuned.

October flies by

I didn't mean to skip the whole month of October without an entry.  Lots of things happened of interest.  Getting back in the swing of things after the Sicilian trip took awhile.  I hosted a couple dinner parties with a Sicilian theme--complete with cannoli which you can actually buy here on the island.  I also got busy with both the Textile Guild and the Soroptimist becoming the San Juan Island Rep for the former and the Mentor Program administrator for the latter.  I painted the kitchen.  We picked all the apples. And we hosted several visitors.

But the big events in October had to do with family.  I got to babysit the four year old twins Iliana and Lenora for a few days while their parents and baby Audrey were on a business trip.  We went on field trips to the beach and worked on crafts and watched a lot of movies.  When their parents returned three days later, they stayed on for a few days to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with the Barreca Family.  Sometimes referred to as "Thankstween" and rotated through the family, this year it was my turn to host with help from my nearby sister Rosalie.  Twenty-five people for dinner, two turkeys, five desserts and lots of jamming from the musicians in the family.  Barreca Family Jam Session

We went to a Halloween Party.  I was an owl.  Roger had a hatchet in his head/hat.  We joined a team for Trivia Night on Thursday nights at a local restaurant, and our team won first prize one week.  The questions can be very hard.  But Roger's expertise in musical history came through with Peter Townsend as an answer.  No one else knew who coined the phrase "power pop". 

The first of November, Roger drove down to Auburn to help his dad through cataract surgery.  Al is staying with us for the month so we can help put drops in his eyes twice a day.  He seems to be settling in nicely.  In fact, he's putting a satellite dish on his r.v. this very evening so he can watch his shows.

Roger and I are milling some logs into tapered posts for our carport.  This takes a lot of measuring.  I'm hoping my carport will be ready sometime in 2011 or 2012 (at the rate we're going).

And this past weekend, I got to go to Camp Orkila, which is a big YMCA camp on Orcas Island, for a San Juan County Textile Guild Retreat.  Three days of hanging out with knitters, weavers, felters, spinners, and basketweavers.  We had several workshops, I spent days ahead of time sorting out buttons from my mother and mother-in-law's collections so I could braid a button bracelet.  But I also reserved time to hike all around the camp.    It reminded me of my old CYO summer camp days.

Gosh, looking back on it all, we did get a few things done.