Good job

Alexia finished her intensive three-week precalculus class and these are the pages we printed out for her work, printed double sided.  They jammed a semester class into 15 days.  She was exhausted after it ended and slept a lot for several days.  She got a 94 for her grade.  Good job!

I told her that if she was going to be serious about knitting she really needed to join Ravelry.  She did a lot of pattern searching in preparation for this visit and I had the perfect yarn in my stash - Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece.  This is her first garment, rated medium difficulty.  She followed the details meticulously, even the eight-stitch i-cord straps.  And another good job!!


Our house is small and the girls had to share a bedroom, which meant that Alexia had to be up and out of it in time for Delaney's 10:00 morning nap.  Delaney still isn't walking but crawls like a champ.  She isn't really interested in going places but prefers sitting activities, reading her books which she does several times a day and investigating things I'd rather she didn't.


We've come to Yachats as a get-away in spite of COVID.  We're staying in the same Air B&B we used two years ago and can walk to the beach from it.

It's hot inland this week so foggy on the coast.  Things are quite different in this virus era but everyone wears a mask and keeps their distance.  The food here is just as good as we remembered.


We've taken several walks in search of agates.  The beaches in this area are known for them.  And this is what the "sand" looks like.  I call it pre-sand because it's really just tiny stones that don't cling to your shoes.


Someone had a lot of fun and left a circle of stone sculptures.  This one is my favorite.


Businesses have been welcoming though operating with reduced hours.  Most places are open Thursday-Sunday, 10:00-4:00.  I'm starting to see some pretty creative masks.  Even the seal has one.  Good job!

Time Flies!

We had a shuttle pick us up and we got to the airport about 7:30 Thursday morning.  Our house sitter arrived about an hour after we left and was so attentive to Sammie that for once she wasn’t a wreck by the time we got home. I thought it was cool that we got the U of O plane.  Go Ducks!  Our connecting flight was in Seattle which added a couple of hours to our time in the air.

Alaska only has a couple of flights from Redmond to Ontario so we ended up on the same flight as Rochelle in Seattle and rode to the hotel in her rental car.  It worked out so well you would think we had planned it.  We arrive at the Mission Inn about 6:30 after a long day in transit, and no, driving would not have been better.

The hotel takes up a whole city block and is magnificent.  It’s been through different stages of construction since 1903.  Ian says it’s sorta like the Winchester House of Mystery.  We ate a couple of meals in the courtyard.  The food was great as was the ambiance.

We had the attentive eye of a half dozen house sparrows at breakfast.

Friday we all drove to the the University of California at Riverside for a naming ceremony, the reason for the trip. The last time we were at UCR was for the naming ceremony of the Neil A Campbell undergraduate biology lab. This time the naming ceremony was for Campbell Hall, short for Allison and Rochelle Campbell Hall, acknowledging the generosity of their trust from Neil’s textbook and also their role as regents. It was great to be part of this and also to see family and old friends.  Our granddaughter Elise took this picture for us.

If you can read this plaque, it explains it better than I ever could.

Allison kept telling us we should take the guided tour and when we didn’t react, she marched us over to the museum store where Dougie signed the three of us up. We had a few minutes so I went back to the room to brush my teeth and grab Ian. The tour lasted 75 minutes and was far better than I could have imagined. This room is called the Spanish Gallery.

Rochelle, Allison and Jason has to attend a formal function Saturday night at the Chancellor’s house so we took a seat in a lounge area and rubbernecked. I saw three wedding dresses, there may have been more weddings than that, but I can only attest to three, and this dress was by far the prettiest.

We ate dinner in the courtyard again since the trust was footing the bill. Once the sun set it got pretty dark.

These ladies were at their table when we were seated and there when we left. I so badly wanted to see what the rest of this dress looked like. Did the dress redeem the sleeves?  I will never know.

The flight home took all day Sunday and while we were gone Matt came to finish the shower base. He had made a custom shower pan, then with his ceramic saw cut up floor tiles into 2” squares and set them in the pan. It still has to be grouted but you can see how pretty it’s going to be. The cutting must have taken hours!

I participated in a group buy of Brassard’s cotton and picked up my order today. Linda organizes and manages the whole shebang, and we end up paying about $15 a pound. It’s too good of a deal to pass up. I’m phasing out the UKI yarn, and sadly I have a lot of it. I’m thinking about putting it on a table at a guild meeting with a “free” sign on it. UKI colors are great but the hand is rough. It affects the caliber of my work.

I have some UKI in the warp, but it’s the last time. I hope that by avoiding it in the weft my towels will still be soft.

Here is a picture of the hotel and the rotunda from the self-guided tour brochure.
The first game of the World Series is about to begin!!!

On the beach

Our destination for the last part of our vacation was Yachats, pronounced YaHawts, and this AirB&B for the last three days of our trip.  Because of the extreme heat inland the fog bank had come ashore and our plans of long walks on the beach were stymied.



After having a separate room to herself all along Alexia good naturedly accepted the futon in the living room which was rather unfortunate since it was colder outside than we had packed for and the cottage got quite small at times.  We saw lots of down jackets and caps in use.



We tried to take Lexi to all the things we have enjoyed in this area over the years, like lighthouses and tide pools.  Lexi had said all along she didn’t want to visit light houses or tide pools.



We hiked up to Heceta Head lighthouse, one of our favorites but it’s closed for the month of July so we had to content ourselves by looking at the outside.



True to her word, Lexi was not impressed or interested.  She had more fun playing with the dog.



We should have listened to her from the start.  She had been researching the things she wanted to see and once we let her pick, she was informative and interested again.  This is Thor’s Well and best seen at high tide or storms so we timed our visit for high tide.  It was cold and windy but she loved it.



Her absolute favorite spot of all was the Cape Perpetua lookout.  From here we could see Cook’s Chasm and Thor’s Well, where we had just come from.



We took the circular hike from the parking lot to this WPA-era lookout.  There’s a lot of CC construction along the coast like this.  It was put to use during WWII as a lookout for enemy submarines.



This bridge was also built during the WPA era.



We got home on Wednesday and Friday we were back at the High Desert Museum ranch house for her last time this summer.  Her parents drove up from Reno and all of our family got to spend the weekend together, then it was time to go home.  Oh my goodness, how the time flew!  And speaking of time flying, on Monday she’ll start high school as a freshman!



Thursday morning (the day before yesterday) I demonstrated at the county fair for our guild with both my spinning wheel and a drop spindle.  I checked on my entries and as I had thought, my sweater received no acknowledgement.



These were the judge’s comments, and yes, the sleeves are a different gauge since the body was knit from triple ply and the sleeves double ply.  Since all the yarn was spun over ten years ago I can’t remember why I switched in the middle like that and of course, there’s no more wool left.



This on the other hand was a complete and utter surprise.  I hadn’t actually entered it, but last Monday but Mary Wonser dropped off a fair admission pass, she lamented that entries were way down this year.  I felt bad since I had only entered two items.  She said that if I had anything else, that she could enter it for me, so we went upstairs and she picked out three more items, this being one of them.  I passed it over since it’s such a simple project, but it pleased the judge and that’s what counts.

Vashon Island

Wednesday morning we were in line early for the ferry from Tacoma to Vashon Island.

The past couple of days in Tacoma had been unseasonably warm but it was plenty brisk on the ferry.

The whole family came over for the day and since the weather cooperated, it was a water play kinda day.  In spite of Lexi having responsibly slathering herself with sun screen, Ian wanted her to cover up in his orange t-shirt, plus he also he wanted to be able to keep his eye on her.  Her cousins are struggling to make the Corcle work as a two-man operation.

Alexia got a chance to take the Corcle out and she nailed it.

Jason decided she was ready to kayak and the next thing I knew, she nailed that too.  In fact, she kayaked until her arms were exhausted.

Low tide called for some scavenging.

The difference between low and high tide on Puget Sound at that parallel is mind boggling.  This is low tide.

This is high tide.

We played a rousing game of Bring Your Own Book, ate Shrimp Boil for dinner and the family caught the ferry back to Tacoma, leaving us with perfection for three more days.

This was twilight on Puget Sound with Mt Rainer in the background.

This was our last evening and I milked the twilight until I was driven indoors.

It seemed like no time at all until we were back on the ferry, headed back to Oregon.

The tide that morning was super low and you can see how low by how high the ramp was compared to the ferry deck.  Alison told me that there are times when the tide is so low that the ferry simply cannot run.  People have to wait to cross until the tide comes in.  What a different world from mine.

Quick trip to Washington

We arrived in Tacoma late Monday afternoon. The plan was to walk a 1.3 mile trail downhill through an old growth forest and meet Allison after work at a seafood restaurant. The walk down was beautiful. The walk up was something else!

The cousins take a break and pose for the grandmas.

Tuesday morning after breakfast Rochelle drove us to downtown Tacoma for a visit to MOG (the Museum of Glass) and lunch at The Swiss, a historic eatery. The old railway station is in the background, now the courthouse, and is also filled with art glass.

My favorite part of MOG is the hot room where visiting artists and their crews work in a seemingly effortless choreography of glass making.

On display is an example of the work in progress, glass set into a ceramic base -

That is created on this ceramic 3-D printer.

They work,

They blow,

They heat,

And after 30 minutes it’s ready to insert into a ceramic mold that’s held firmly in a bucket of damp sand. This is one of the guest artists.

There’s a dramatic flare of fire, as if in protest.

And what comes out is glass in the shape of a giant quartz crystal. I could have stayed in their arena all day but lunch was beckoning.

I didn’t leave myself much time to zip through the gallery which was filled with the impressive work of Albert Paley, who also just happens to be a printmaker, and then it was time to go!


Our trip to Fort Nisqually had to be a quick one but Allison was in costume and we got to spend about 15 minutes with her before she had to lead a group on a “lock room” escape.

Alexia loves to “teach” Gus things and apparently he likes what she teaches.

We walked the two blocks from Rochelle’s charming bungalow to Jason and Ali’s charming bungalow for dinner. Tacoma is a sea of bungalows!  The kids played a card game.

Wednesday morning found us in a line for the Vashon Island ferry.

Alexia has been on the ferry to Ellis Island but this was her first time on a car ferry. We are still on the island until tomorrow morning.