Teresa

Got our ballots on Oct 14, returned them to the local ballot box on Oct 15. Vote early, folks. #ivoted #midterms2026 #voteearly

Fire roasted home-grown tomatoes, with olive oil, salt, and pepper, in one cup portions, frozen for future meals!

We don't have a lot of color here in western Washington, but we do have some! It's mostly in the understory, because the tall evergreens shade many deciduous trees out. Vine maples, being a smaller tree, are an exception. These are from a trip we took to Leavenworth yesterday. #photos #autumn

More tomatoes! And even more still on the vines in the greenhouse. I am starting to see some possible blight, though, so the end will be coming soon. These will be roasted and frozen for various dishes over the winter. #food #foodsky #garden

Smoking a couple of small home-cured boneless pork shoulder hams. Grocery store ham and bacon is often too sweet and never has enough smoke flavor for me so I prefer to create my own. #food #foodsky

Thirty pints jars of applesauce. Next is apple butter and apple chunks for pies and then I'm calling it quits for the season! Well, at least when it comes to big stuff. #food #foodsky

The rest of the apples are in for the year, and they are the cooking/saucing kind. We are making a LOT of applesauce right now. #foodsky #food

Apples! These are the last of our apple harvest here - three large baskets full of what we think are Fuji. We just finished up the Honey Crisps - which were about the same amount. Apple sauce, apple butter, apples for cooking still to process...but we are finally close to being finished this year.

India style mushroom fried rice, with probably three times the normal amount of mushrooms. (SO many dried mushrooms in the pantry - many of them foraged - and some fresh in the fridge that need to be used up.) Dinner tonight, paired with roasted chicken thighs and a vegetable. #foodsky #food

Gumbo for dinner! A more heart-healthy version with turkey sausage, smoked turkey, and double the vegetables, over brown rice.

Traditions! Pet rock Preseli Bluestone and I are enjoying the Solstice sunrise at Stonehenge together this morning. (On YouTube, of course!) I think that makes about 15 years of such quiet celebrations now. #Solstice #SummerSolstice #SummerSolstice2026

The Oregon coast was just gorgeous today. Driving out to the Devil's Punchbowl, we saw several grey whales spouting off in the distance as we watched from the viewing area on the bluff. Found a fossil clam later, too! What a wonderful day! #Oregon #WhaleWatching #Beach #Fossils #Rockhounding

Birthday dinner: Hot Pot (mushroom flavor) with four kinds of mushrooms (including Porcini we foraged locally), wild and cultivated greens (including fiddleheads and wild chrysanthemum) tofu, home-grown asparagus, kabocha, fish balls and krab. Very yummy and good for us.

Breakfast. Homemade "Heinz" beans and home-cured and smoked back bacon. Oh, and of course, tea! Yum!

Big red Clivia - no longer a seedling, now full size and in its second year of bloom. Very pleased with this one! Came in the same batch of no-nane seedlings as my new butter yellow Clivia. #BloomScrolling #Clivia #Gardening

My new butter-yellow Clivia in near full bloom! This is a seedling from the same no-name batch as the big red Clivia I've already posted. I was hoping for something in the yellow range and I got it! Two more seedlings will likely bloom next year. #BloomScrolling #Clivia #Gardening

Just returned from #NoKings in Monroe, Washington. I didn't get to go to the one in October (spent the Friday night before in the emergency room) but some friends of ours who did said turnout for NoKings3 was probably twice what it was for NoKings2, and the honks of support were pretty much nonstop.

The second of my four "mystery Clivia seedlings" has bloomed, and it's a lovely butter yellow! Two more to go, but as they are a bit smaller, they likely won't bloom until next year.

Finished Object Friday - a very large and heavy couch/bed cover I have been working on for about three years now. Bernat Yarnspirations extra-thick blanket yarn, in the color "Leather." Double and half double crochet. That is a three-seater couch in the pic, btw. #crochet #finishedobjectfriday

We have had a Pacific Chorus Frog living in our greenhouse for about 4 years now, thriving and growing well, but "disappearing" from view in the cooler season. We didn't know where it went, but now we think maybe we do. We found it camping out on top of one of our covered electric heater plugs!

Lake Crescent, Washington, summer of 2025. Biking the lake trail was a real highlight of our year. Teal waters are a famous feature of some of our lakes. The deep water is also incredibly clear. #pacificnorthwest #outdoors #washington #lakecrescent #lake #olympicpenninsula #biking #water #video

View up the Sky Valley this morning. The sun broke through the clouds for a while, warming the snow and creating banks of mist and fog. Merchant, Gunn, and Gunnshy peaks, Skykomish river. Part of the Wild Sky Wilderness area. #pacificnorthwest #washington #skyvalley #mountains #photography

We had a little bit of snow yesterday evening. This is what our woods looked like this morning. #washington #snow #woods

Happy Solstice! Me and my pet rock, Preseli Bluestone, enjoying our twice-a-year tradition of watching the solstice sun rise at Stonehenge. (Usually as a video, not live, because of time differences). #solstice2025 #solstice #astronomy #yule #winter #stonehenge

Motherboard fried on my old laptop, so I got a Lenovo Thinkpad. Decided to go with Zorin Linux Pro for the OS instead of Windows 11. Hardware so far has been plug-and-play, and since most of my productivity software is browser-based, no issues there. The few things I need to install work great, too!

The tally of my bananas is in... we grew 12 lbs of bananas in western Washington State in our greenhouse this year. It only took four years to get there! But hey, we did it. And they are tiny, but tasty. #gardening #bananas #greenhouse #washington

View out the window on this blustery, gorgeous fall day.

The time has come to cut my bananas! They have lost their angular look, the first row is starting to turn yellow, and one of the fruits has split. Can't wait until they are ripe! (Double Mahoi dwarf Cavendish variety, grown in a greenhouse.) #gardening #bananas #pacificnorthwest

Hit the finish line! #tourdefleece2025 project. 4.9 ounces, 140 grams, about 250 yards of sock weight yarn. 80% alpaca, 20% silk. Caked and ready for whenever I need more docks on my needles! I'm calling it "Affogato" after the Italian dessert coffee. #handspun #yarn

Finished with my #tourdefleece2025 spin. Plied, skeined on my teeny tiny niddy noddy, washed to set the twists, and now drying. About 250 yards, and 4.7 ounces. I'll give it a day or so to dry, then wind it into a cake and make a final decision on what it is going to be used for. #handspun #yarn

Week 2 update for #tourdefleece2025 I am about three-quarters of the way through spinning the second bobbin of single for the yarn, and hope to finish that by tomorrow. Then I need to ply, set, dry, and skein! Looking forward to seeing what it looks like finished.

Half of the alpaca and silk batt spun up. Seventy grams of single waiting for the other half to join it for plying into sock yarn. Looks like a fancy coffee! Note: pre-drafting and extra care while spinning are a MUST because silk and alpaca draft quite differently. #tourdefleece2025 #handspun

#TourdeFleece2025 week one progress... Carded shades of brown alpaca roving together with some silk, tore batt into roving for spinning into sock yarn. Began spinning yesterday. My singles are a bit uneven as this is only the second time I've used my new spinner, but should even out in plying.

Working on my #TourDeFleece project today. I'm carding five different shades of alpaca roving, along with about 20% silk, to make a more durable and lustrous sock yarn. Going to start spinning this tomorrow!

Rustic yarn from Chile swatched up in "broken rib" stitch. I made it the right size and shape for a cardigan pocket, so I wouldn't waste the yarn or the time. #yarn #handspun #fiber

One of my Double Mahoi bananas is blooming!!!! I've had it for four years, it's grown to fill it's half-barrel pot (and then some, it has two significant offshoots now) and is about 9 feet tall. I thought I saw a flag leaf today, and I was right! #gardening #greenhouse #tropical #banana

Three and a half pounds of lovely, rustic, hand-spun, natural colored, bulky Chilean wool! All wound into balls and ready to use. Planning a rustic bulky cardigan and some slippers, and the rest will likely be made into something woven. I can't wait to knit this up! #wool #Chile #handspun

#showmeyourknits purple week post! Still working on these, but I have one done. 🧶 #knitting #socks

Interesting rock found while on a bike ride the other day... Powdery minty-blue chert. Unusual color for this type of rock! #rockhounding #rocks

More information on my "three day socks." I timed the next pair I made and found it took me 8 hours per sock. Shorter socks could probably be done in 6, but I like cuffs. I knit English and "throw" so I'm not the fastest knitter. You may be a lot faster. 🧶 #showmeyourknits #knitting #socks

Grey Alpaca socks! While this picture shows them without the ends woven in, these are now actually finished, washed, and tucked away in my special sock drawer. They are SO soft and squishy - I love them a lot! 🧶 Posted for #showmeyourknits Grey Knits Week. #knitting #handknitting