Bud Blancher Snowdrops

Day 110: Not long after the Bud Blancher trail was completed, I decided to explore some of the side trails and overgrown logging roads which fork off from it to head into Pack Forest. Overgrown paths are fun. You never know what you may find (good or bad). That said, I was not expecting to strike upon half a dozen small patches of snowdrops, a "garden plant" which had apparently been thinned and tossed into the woods. Eventually, I got around to lifting a few bulbs for my own garden (I mean, these are non-natives...it's not like I was guilty of nicking wildflowers!), and even though they've established in my flower bed, I still like to visit the source when I hike the trail. It felt a little early to find them blooming, and in fact most were in the phase you see here. I only found one nodding, still unopen, so I'll be heading back that way soon if the rain allows.

Nesting Season

Day 109: I've found a lot of interesting things by deviating from well-used trails to follow what Kevin calls "bunny tracks," and despite the fact that occasionally my finds have been things I'd rather not have found (notably human ashes, and not just once), the "road less travelled" often brings me botanical discoveries. Yesterday was a good example of hitting paydirt. I had gone up an overgrown side path, ducking under arching blackberry vines, shielding myself from encroaching salmonberry branches and poky-sticks as I went in search of the cast-out snowdrops I'd seen previously. After finding them (they were not quite open yet), I turned to go back, and in the differently angled light, a twig bearing a dozen or so bird's-nest fungi caught my eye. It's "nesting season" for these, the time when the egg-like, spore-bearing peridioles are exposed and have not yet been washed from the cups by rain. The goblet-shaped cups of this species (Crucibulum laeve) are less than 9 mm in height, with each "egg" measuring less than 2 mm. As in the case here, the exterior of the cups can appear smooth; in the inset, a young, unopened cup still bears a slight fuzz on its upper portion. Closer examination of the peridioles will show that each is attached to the cup by a short cord. This cord serves to keep the egg from straying too far from the parent cup when it is washed out (the peridioles of other species of bird's-nest are not attached).

Walking It Out

Day 108: That should do it! Nothing like fresh air and exercise to get the last of a nasty bug out of your system. Okay, it's the first time in almost a month that I've felt like moving farther than from my chair to the kitchen, and it was only a little over three miles (I took a short detour up a side trail to look for snowdrops), but it really felt good to be out breathing woodsy air again. I found a few interesting things which I'll be featuring here over the next few days and revisited a lot of others which for a while I seriously wondered if I'd ever see again. This has been a nasty critter, this bug. It's been a long time since anything knocked me off my feet. And my timing for the hike was perfect. It started raining only a few minutes after I finished up.

Knittive Species

Day 107: My "Bee-Wear" hat design brought lots of favourable comments from friends, along with a number of requests for a ladybug version. I was somewhat reluctant. After all, the little red critter with black spots we call "ladybug" is an introduced species, brought here from Europe to control aphids. Our native species do not have the red and black colouration. My immediate reaction was that it would be inappropriate for a nature center, but who doesn't love ladybugs? I decided to give the idea a whirl. However, I was faced with the problem of being able to produce the hats quickly and easily as knitwear, and dismissed the options of using felt patches or big black buttons for the spots.

Although it's been many moons since I took up bobbins/butterflies to do multiple colours, I decided that the best way to attack ladybugs was with intarsia coupled with Fair Isle. Here, I carried the red yarn around the row, performing a wrap-and-turn at the end of the round so that I could work on circular needles in a back-and-forth manner, knitting one row and purling back, a technique which allowed me to pick up the black butterflies where I had dropped them at the left edge of each spot. This worked very well, although my execution of the carryovers was a little too snug on this prototype. Developing the head and antennae required a bit more thought. I finally decided to knit the piece in the round on only seven stitches. Cute? Yes, and although this "knittive species" of ladybug may require a bit more time to produce, I suspect they'll be popular in Joppa Flats' gift shop.

Tatters And Rust

Day 106: A little visual metaphor for you here, icons of America tattered, torn and rusted out. I can just hear the owner of the truck or his salesman/representative saying, "It runs great!" (gods forbid that I should ever let that word slip from my lips again). Whatever direction I go when I leave home, I see similar testaments to greatness. Some stand in the midst of clearcut, their campaign signs faded by what few glimmers of light pierce the Pacific Northwestern gloom. Others lean against ramshackle outbuildings and piles of trash, proudly proclaiming the lifestyles of the rightist occupants. Greatness shall be delivered unto them! Or so they foolishly believe.

Now that I am on the road to recovery, it occurs to me that I should document the glory of Great America in photographs of heaps of litter, big-ass trucks with plastic testicles hanging from their bumpers, gun-toting Walmart shoppers, vagrants and homeless folk. Who needs wildflowers and clean air when the earth is ours to frack and strip-mine? Who cares what we trample, who we hurt as long as we get more, get it all? I am the singer Crow in Sandburg's poem, crying "Caw, caw" to the rats and lizards. We are the greatest nation that ever ... WAS.

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind
    ~Carl Sandburg

"The past is a bucket of ashes"

1

THE WOMAN named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: "Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2

The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
The greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

3

It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
...and the only listeners left now
...are...the rats...and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, "Caw, cas,"
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, "Caw, caw,"
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways
And the only listeners now are...the rats...and the lizards.

4

The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills:
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

A Dime An Ear

Day 105: Do you remember when you could buy ten ears of corn for a buck? I do, and sometimes you'd even find it cheaper at roadside stands, the kind where the farmer would leave a jar on the table for the money because he trusted people to be honest. My, how times have changed! And which came first, the chicken (higher prices) or the egg (dishonesty)? It's an impossible question, one fostering the other in a vicious cycle. And where is it taking us, this decline into cheating and distrust? Can we stop it? I'd like to believe we can, but we can't wait for the "other guy" to act first. It has to start with us, each individual. To that end, I'm going to get up on my soapbox again and ask you to DO SOMETHING. Don't just sit there. You have it in your power to make a difference, even if it's only a small one. If you've had something gathering dust in your garage for five years and know someone needs it or could use it, give it to them rather than putting a price tag on it. You'll be surprised at how good it makes you feel when you make a gesture of kindness. A world based in greed cannot survive. Let the change start with you.

Lozenges Lap-robe

Day 104: As you might expect for someone who knits and crochets as much as I do, I wind up with a lot of tag ends of yarn in a very wide array of colours. Thrifty Scot that I am, these can't just be assigned to the bin. They have to be used down to the last few inches. One of the ways I use up the longer pieces is in "scrap-ghans" where each horizontal row is a different colour, but usually with a unifying colour repeating at regular intervals. Here, seven rows of lozenges are separated by an eighth row in black. The edge of the afghan will also be worked in black. This one is destined to be sold at Mount Rainier National Park's Christmas party silent auction. Proceeds benefit the employee fund which in turn pays for the Christmas party. It's a self-renewing loop!

Bee-Wear

Day 103: The United States is on the fast track for achieving the unenviable status as the world's most environmentally insensitive country, and that's a shameful drop from being one of the leaders in environmental technologies and protections. You can thank the current administration for the decline. Stupid, wrong-headed and greedy, the Trumpskyites and their chief are out to grab money with no mind to the fact that they and their children are not going to have air to breathe or food on their tables if they continue on their current course. It's going to be up to us, the little people, to save the world. To that end, I beg you to support the environmental causes nearest to your heart whether they're on behalf of birds, bats, bees or bison. DO something! If you can't find it in your budget to contribute financially, give them some of your time by volunteering.

"Bee-wear" (the next installment in my Joppa Flats Hats Project) has been designed to promote pollinator awareness. Many of our pollinators are in decline, but none quite so dramatically as bees. Native bees need native plants in order to survive and be healthy. Find out what native species your local bees need and plan your landscaping accordingly.

Agates From Around The World

Day 102: While my husband and I were both rockhounds, his interest was primarily in faceting and lost-wax casting while I leaned more toward the traditional cabochon-cutting and mineral collecting. We both exhibited at gem shows locally, and frequently gave demonstrations in the art of turning rough rock into finished stones. For display purposes, I created a series of 20 x 30 mm. cabochons of agates from sources around the world. Many of these stones came from locations in Washington; some were ones we collected ourselves. Others represent global sources which have now dried up, and good examples of raw materials such as Parrot-wing and Laguna are now very difficult to find.

For the curious among you, I'll post the varieties shown here.
Top row: Blue lace, Scenic, Royal blue, Crazy lace, Cathedral, Tree, Montana
Row 2: Sunset (v. 1), Calico, Graveyard Point plume (backed), Flame, Purple lace, Green moss, Carnelian
Row 3: India moss, Buckskin, Tube, Sagenite, Anderson Dam, Sea-foam chrysoprase, Fortification
Row 4: Parrot-wing, Chalcedony, Utah, Sunset (v. 2), Mount Rainier plume, Yellow moss, Citron chrysoprase
Row 5: Dendritic, Carnelian, Horse Heaven, Banded with pyrite inclusions, Laguna, Arizona flower, Powell Butte moss

Stibnite

Day 101: This is a long walk from the realm of Botany, but I've had another relapse and am getting desperate for bloggable material. That said, I've been interested in other sciences off and on since I was a very small child, and geology/mineralogy filled much of my teenage years. I was forever bringing home pocketsful of rocks (an improvement on tent caterpillars, I suppose), and over the course of time, found a number of examples of unusual native materials including several zeolites. However, true to my nature as a Crow, I longed after other shiny objects, and by the time I was in my early 20s, I'd begun a collection of quality thumbnail specimens. A rockhounding friend had an enormous museum-grade stibnite cluster over which I drooled every time I was in her shop. Eventually, I found a stibnite I could afford (according to the price tag, it cost me all of $5). It has remained one of my most prized specimens despite competition from more brightly coloured and showier pieces. It came from Czechoslovakia. Stibnite is a relatively soft (2.0 Mohs) metallic sulfide (Sb₂S₃) and occurs in long prismatic crystals.

Another Dozen

Day 100: Even while I've been knocked flat by the combination of flu and pneumonia, my fingers have not been idle. Okay, there were times when getting through a single row felt like climbing a mountain, but the same principle applies: just put one foot/finger in front of the other and keep moving forward. You'll get there eventually. My sincere thanks go to Kelli (wife of my good friend Kevin) for her generous gift of yarns. Five of the hats shown here were made from her donation. Thanks are also due Jean, our former campground host for her contribution to my "Joppa Flats Hats" project. Much of the yarn used in previous dozen came from her stash, as did the material for three or four of these. Proceeds from the sale of these hats (to be sold in Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport MA) go exclusively to support their bird-banding program. I am thrilled to be able to contribute...long-distance!

Patty's Birthday Bathmats

Day 99: Ever hear the phrase "hoist with his own petard?" Few people can quote the line from Hamlet accurately, and even fewer understand what it means, i.e., to be destroyed by a weapon you intended to use against someone else. In the popular (and erroneous) sense, it is frequently used to imply that a plan has backfired, as mine did when in early December, I posted a photo of three rugs I had just taken off the loom. My intention was to distract a friend from thinking my chattering about weaving might indicate that she might receive a birthday gift of handwovens. I mean, would I post a picture of somebody's present before delivering it? That's when the plan went south.

Patty (whose birthday was coming up in January, intended recipient for two of the three maroon/green bathmats) commented on the photo: "Wow! I bet those would look great in sea blues and greens, too...just sayin'." Some further discussion ensued about how maroon/green would work in a different room, but I realized that if I really wanted to give her something she'd fully enjoy, I needed to get hopping and weave another set.

The first ones had taken over a year to complete because I got bored with the repetitive nature of tabby-weave. Now I had to settle in and do some serious weaving if I was to have blue/green ones done in time. Fortunately, I had nothing on the loom, so made a quick trip to town for the weft (Bernat's "Blanket") and started warping as soon as I got home. Three days later, I had two bathmats and a toilet-tank topper done and ready to mail!

Pussywillow Mystery

Day 98: A few days ago, I solved the mystery of why my pussywillow has so few catkins every year: Steller's Jays think the young buds are very tasty! I caught Mr. Steller in the act of eating them, pecking at each one to remove the husk and then gobbling down the tender center. While this wasn't exactly what I'd planned when I planted the tree, I'm glad to see that it has more than a purely ornamental purpose.

Waiting For Dead Salmon

Day 97: On my way out of Eatonville yesterday, I noticed four Bald Eagles perched in the customary trees alongside the Mashell River, two adults and two juveniles. "Yeah," I said to myself, "they've dumped another load of salmon carcases." Noble bird, my eye! These iconic birds are nothing more than glorified pigeons, scavenging whatever scraps they can get: dead salmon after spawning season, elk remains, garbage from the local landfill. I see them perched by the dozen in the trees alongside the dump almost every time I go to town. The clever crows or ravens can easily get the better of members of this rather dull species, one bird distracting the eagle while another steals its prize. The eagles don't seem to understand the concept of teamwork and cooperation, and if the metaphor of their gullibility and affinity for garbage was ever more fitting than now, I couldn't say when.

A Cone-vention

Day 96: There's a cone-vention going on at one corner of the intersection of Center Street and Washington Avenue! Although I don't have the data to support this assertion, I would bet good money that per capita, Eatonville has more road cones than any other city in the Pacific Northwest, maybe even the world. Except for a very few who are standing duty elsewhere, they've all gathered at this one location to prevent passersby from stumbling into a narrow gravelled area between the grocery store parking lot and the newly-laid sidewalk. Exactly why the intersection needed to be reconstructed is anyone's guess, this from the city which a few years ago, installed four-inch wide water barriers between their sidewalks and the roadways, barriers over which I've tripped far too many times; this from the city which diverts cars pulling away from the parking strips into traffic by means of similar barriers placed at the ends of each city block. Someone in Eatonville has a lot of spare concrete on their hands, and must have failed to attend the "safety" session of Roadway Design 101. Keep that in mind as you're driving through. Not all hazards are as clearly marked as this one!

Bluefinger

Day 95: When I knit for hours every day as I've been doing in recent weeks, the ball of my right index finger becomes very tender and the skin wears thin and often cracks into painful splits. I've tried various protectors over the years, everything from rubber "librarian's fingers" to ordinary band-aids and adhesive tapes. Nothing has been 100% successful until it finally occurred to me to use one finger of a nitrile surgical glove. The nitrile allows me to retain the sensitivity I need to feel the stitches and is still tough enough to withstand repeated contact with the needle point. I can cut three from each glove: little finger, ring finger and index finger. Each stretches to fit my index finger without being too loose. Of course the remaining glove with the thumb and one relevant finger still attached is worthless...although I've considered sticking it in an envelope and mailing it to the White House.

A Friend To Lean On

Day 94: Despite having been spayed as a young kitten, Skunk's mothering instincts run strong, particularly in late winter and early spring. Her two favourite stuffy-toys are a spongy-soft wolf cub and the hedgehog she's leaning against here. The wolf cub is not easily transported, although she occasionally drags it a few feet. The hedgehog gets carried from spot to spot until she feels it's properly nested, and she massages it, kneading it with her paws just like I knead a loaf of bread. When she's feeling particularly...um...driven, she "sings" to it, perhaps not feeling quite so motherly as "unfulfilled." The caterwauling which sometimes goes on for hours in the middle of the night is done in a voice which could peel paint. Although she's had the hedgehog for a number of years, she's never discovered its innermost (literally!) secret: velcroed inside its tummy are two little baby hedgies! Skunk, you're a grandma and you don't even know it.

Cloth On The Beam

Day 93: It has been several days since I felt like sitting at the loom and I'm not there yet. I'm still running a fever, coughing, find it a great effort of both physical and mental strength to knit a whole row, and the only thing I feel like eating is homemade bread. Fortunately, I made two different kinds before this bug took hold of me. As a consequence of my lack of vitality, you may be getting some rather mundane photos and superficial descriptions until I recover. That said, I wish I felt like weaving. The table-runner project has been moving along much more quickly than anticipated. Here you see the finished cloth being wound onto the appropriately-named "cloth beam" at the front of the loom. I have one six-foot runner completed, and two feet on the second. I warped for three, and I hope to put one of them in the Washington State Fair this year along with some bobbin lace. I've never entered anything in Home Arts before.

The Joys Of Rediscovery

Day 92: After several days of suffering with the flu, this morning I felt sufficiently recovered to take a very short walk out into the yard to hunt for a "blog shot," i.e., my photo for today's post. I made a circuit around the house and had gotten as far as Big Doug's nearest root when something caught my eye. "Oooooh," I said. "What's this?" It was certainly nothing I'd seen in the yard before, so I took photos where it lay and then moved the specimen to better light for the image shown above. In sunlight, I could see that it was yellowish-green, not light grey-green as it had appeared in the shade. Knowing that I'd have to inspect it more closely to make an ID, I brought it in the house and set it down beside me while I referred to Brodo. The magnifier revealed some telltale structures along the lobe margins while other minor details narrowed it down to three species. I ruled out two, settling on Platismatia tuckermanii...waitaminit...Platismatia tuckermanii? Isn't that the lichen Patty sent me from Maine? Ah, the joys of rediscovery! Yes, referring to my pictures from last fall, it was the identical specimen. Boy, did I feel silly! What can I say? I've been sick. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Fungus Makes The World Go 'Round

Day 91: This is a mushroom, i.e., a fungus. That's as far out on the limb as I'm going to go with respect to identifying it. I may not know its name, but what I do know is that it's doing an important job...one of many important jobs the fungal horde performs. Several years ago, I removed the diseased "Whatzit Tree" (unidentified flowering something) in my front yard, and since that time, I've been stump-grinding the remaining mound with the lawnmower until I've almost got it to the point that the blades will clear the wood without making horrible noises. Mr. Fungus is going to finish the job for me. He and his kin have taken hold and are happily sending out mycorrhizal filaments which will penetrate the remainder of the wood and break it down into nutrients. It's a slow process, but they'll get the job done. The deeper I delve into mycorrhizal relationships, the more convinced I become that fungus makes the world go 'round.

Ship's Hawser And Telephone Poles

Day 90: I am six hats into a second dozen I'll be sending to the Joppa Flats Audubon Education Center, and I am grateful to the friends who have donated a variety of yarns for the project. That said, I don't ordinarily work with needles larger than size 5 and never with yarn heavier than worsted. My hands are small and I prefer to work with finer gauge materials. However, the last batch of yarn to come into my hands included a couple of skeins of bulky. I moved up to size 7 needles in one instance and to size 9 for the white/almond fleck shown here. I felt like I was knitting ship's hawser with a pair of telephone poles!

Lobaria Oregana

Day 89: Lobaria oregana is one of the most common lichens in conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest, as is its cousin Lobaria pulmonaria. It often achieves a mass of a ton or more per hectare, and can blanket tree trunks and branches to an astonishing and very decorative extent. Characteristically, it develops small lobules along the ridges of the primary lobes and may exhibit an abundance of tan apothecia. The reverse is greyish-tan blotched with white, particularly close to the margins. It constitutes a large part of the winter diet for deer and elk. It's also what you get today because I'm down with the Dread Mocus, the Grand Grunge, a lurgy, the "it" which is going around, resistant to the very best antivirus healthware your doctor can offer.

Beware Of Cat

Day 88: Once I had the idea in my head, I simply had to make a blue-point Siamese version of the pussy hat for myself, freeing up the grey one to be given to another marcher who may share my dislike of pink. A small amount (the ear linings) is tolerable in the name of the cause.

When I was young, we had a Siamese who was my constant companion, a smart and very personable cat, not at all yowly as some people claim Siamese to be. As an adult, I shared my home with another member of the breed, and a dearer little soul you'd never find. If I'd been out, as soon as I opened the door, he would leap into my arms and stick like glue for the rest of the day. I've had a number of cats in my life, but some left more enduring memories than others. My two Siamese were "special people."

Sticks And Strings

Day 87: A few days ago, a friend asked me what type of shuttle I use for weaving, and included a link to an article describing how tuberculosis was spread throughout the weaving trade by the practice of sucking the thread through the pirn (core) to start the winding process. These days, we have health and safety regulations which prohibit methods which might transfer diseases, but such was not always the case. In any event, I use stick shuttles for a variety of reasons. First of all, they're much cheaper than boat shuttles and second, you can wind a lot more thread on them. The drawbacks to them are that they have to be wound by hand and when the weaver is nearing the end of the thread, the tips have a tendency to catch in the warp threads and may result in a broken strand. That said, if I was working on a loom wider than four feet, I would invest in a couple of boat shuttles because they "sail" across the supporting threads much more easily. However, I seldom work the full width of the loom, so sticks suffice quite nicely.

Three Little Kittens

Day 86: The Three Little Kittens are done. The base hat is a slightly longer variation of an original cloche pattern, and the ears went through several phases of development before I was satisfied. The first ones (modelled by Tippy on January 1) were too small. I widened them by four stitches without making them any taller for the results you see here. I'm thinking this would translate well into a fox if I used rust-orange yarn and white ear liners, maybe even adding a white-tipped tail on the back. Unless I make a "blue-point Siamese" version before the Women's March, the grey one will be mine. The other two will be given to friends who march on January 20.

Platismatia Herrei

Day 85: If Platismatia herrei has taught me a lesson, it is that a single experience may lead us into erroneous suppositions, and consequently, may affect how we respond in the future. My prior encounters with Tattered Rag Lichen (cousin to Platismatia glauca, "Ragbag") were with specimens which had been delivered to the forest floor by windstorms. The erroneous "ergo" was the assumption that they were a species of the upper canopy, and if I wanted to see the lichen in situ, I'd have to work on my tree-climbing skills. However, while I was searching for a better example of Bloody Heart than the one I presented yesterday, I stumbled across a veritable forest of herrei at eye level. Admittedly, the examples hanging from almost every tree trunk were not the lovely globose shape you'd find occurring where the lichen could expand horizontally over a supporting framework of finer twigs, but they were certainly herrei and, even more surprisingly, the dominant species in this one corner of Mount Rainier's woods. Unfortunately, I did not have a GPSr with me, so I painted a mental X on the side of the metaphorical boat so I can find the location again. Thanks for the wake-up call, herrei; objectivity is a tough tool to keep honed.

Anatomically Correct

Day 84: According to at least one source, specimens of this crustose lichen taken from locations in the Cascades and other inland areas have probably been misidentified as Mycoblastus affinis because they lacked the characteristic pigmentation apparent in Mycoblastus sanguinarius which gives it the common name of "Bloody Heart." It has been suggested that the lack of red pigment is typical of inland examples and indeed, I've sectioned several hundred of them with my thumbnail and have only found it in a few cases. The tiny (1-2 mm.) black apothecia erupt from a nearly-white crustose thallus and are quite common in the Pacific Northwest's conifer forests. This one was anatomically correct.

This May Take A While

Day 83: This may take a while. The new project is on the loom: three six-foot table runners worked on a rose path threading. The repeat is 22 throws, just slighly over an inch. I warped at 15 dents per inch (i.e., the number of warp threads per inch) and the weft (crosswise threads) is packing at 21 throws per inch. The thread is a 6/2 cotton, natural in colour for the warp and a dark blue-green weft. Amazingly, I completed slightly over a foot of cloth before bedtime last night.

This is the type of weaving project I most enjoy. It takes quite a bit of concentration, as opposed to the brainless "tabby two-step." In fact, my attention faltered for a moment during one session last night and just as I began what should have been a new sequence, I noticed that my last diamonds only had a single eye rather than the two they should have possessed. I picked the work back about eight throws until I came to a position I could identify easily and then resumed at the point where I had gone astray. Mistakes are usually obvious, but you have to be paying attention to catch them.

Lichen The Attitude

Day 82: More than any other lichens, Cladonias have attitude. I found this particularly opinionated one while prowling through snow and blowdown in search of Fringed Kidneys in an area where they are known to occur. Although I failed to find the Kidneys, my exploration was not entirely an anatomical bust. I also found Bloody Heart, although its core showed very little of the signature colouration which gives it its common name. Later in the day and in a different location, I also discovered a veritable forest of the lacy Platismatia herrei, but that's a subject for another post.

Got Your Ears On?

Day 81: Last year, I attended the big Women's March in Seattle and was bemoaning the fact that I hadn't heard about "pussy hats" until the day of the event. A woman standing next to Kevin and me reached in her bag and pulled out a hat and a felt headband and offered them to us. I couldn't bring myself to put all that pink on my head, so I passed the hat to Kevin and I took the headband, resolving that if there was ever another march, I'd make a hat in a different colour with a tolerable amount of pink to represent solidarity with the movement.

A week or so ago, a reprise of the march was announced for January 20. I was in the middle of making hats for the Joppa Flats Education Center, so I bought some appropriate yarn, shifted gears and made a kitty-grey cloche, intending to make pink liners for the interior of the ears. Tippy obligingly modelled an ear for me.

Looking Forward

Day 80: New Year's Day morning wasn't quite as rosy as I'd hoped, but any day you can see the Mountain is a good day. Although there's no substance to omens and portents, I will offer one up by saying that this bodes well for the coming year. In words from the Pixar film "Up," "Adventure is out there!" and I'll be looking for it under rocks, on mountaintops, in swamps, on trail and off. There is always something new to find (or new to me at least, and that's what counts). Will Myrio sprout in abundance again this year? Will the Phantoms return? Can I possibly justify a road trip to Mount Adams to search for Drosera anglica, the "other" Sundew native to Washington?

We tend to become somewhat myopic when surrounded by events like those of 2017, and it's difficult to focus our vision as we look forward. I find myself having to use a magnifier to bring the picture into view when you'd think a telescope would be better suited to the task of seeing far ahead. For me, it is the small, neglected bits of beauty in Nature which inspire my forward progress. In them, I find the compass I require to keep me on track and out of the sinkhole of despair. One lichen, one tiny flower, one botanical mystery, and all else pales in my mind's eye. We all need such helpers as these. I hope you will find yours as we look forward to 2018. Happy New Year!