Measured In Miles

Day 327: Let's do the math. There are 1760 yards in a mile (1093 yards in a kilometer), and there are 400 yards per spool of thread. I've used almost all of the first dozen I bought late this spring, so that means I've gone through roughly 12 x 400 = 4800 yards (2.7 miles/4.3 Km) in sewing and hand-quilting over the last six months alone. Since I seem to be showing no signs of winding down from this present obsession, I bought twelve more spools. That, dear readers, is a whopping lot of thread.

Many long years ago, my husband gave me a Christmas gift of stunning proportion. He had gone down the thread aisle at Joann Fabric, and gathered up a 150-yard spool of almost every colour (even a range of pinks). The box was enormous! I went through the blues and greens rather quickly and had to supplement them with further purchases and (although it shames me to admit it) I gave away most of the pinks, but even today when I pull open the thread drawer, I see a few of those original spools still waiting to match up with a project. At times like this, I wonder just how many miles I've stitched by machine and by hand. It must be over a hundred. And to think that I know people who have only a few dusty spools in their sewing baskets, people who have never sewn a hundred yards, let alone a hundred miles.

As Gifts Go...

Day 77: Roughly forty-five years ago, my husband gave me a gift which caused my face to fall and my eyebrows to raise, bewildered at the logic of his selection. I mean, what earthly purpose could one person have for a five-pound cone of string, described on its label as being something to the tune of ten miles...MILES!...in length. Here, almost half a century later, I have come to regard this most unusual of presents as one of the most useful I have ever received. I've whittled it down to just over a pound, bits of it going to tie plants to stakes, serve as stitch markers in my knitting, truss a turkey, hang pictures, bind parcels, secure the Christmas tree against attacks by parrots and cats, lay out planting lines in the garden, bundle herbs and lavender for drying...the list goes on and on. It has even doubled for carpet warp in weaving. Not a time goes by when I snip off a few inches that I don't think, "I'm going to run myself out of string some day" with a silent nod of thanks to Bruce's thoughtfulness. Its utility has even surpassed that of a box of sewing thread he once gave me, approximately 100 spools of every colour sold except pink shades. For decades, I never bought a spool of thread, confident that I had something to match any fabric I might purchase. The thread is gone now, as is Bruce, but a pound of string remains. Which of us will outlast the other?

Hard Rock Mining

Day 140: By special request: rocks and a rockhounding story.

In 1972, a deposit of amethyst quartz was discovered by a farmer near Big Lake, Washington (Walker Valley, Skagit County). A few years later, my husband and I became aware of the site through a friend who ran a lapidary shop. Avid rockhounds that we were, we made several field trips, Bruce keen on finding some faceting-grade crystals while I was more interested in collecting mineral specimens for display. Although Bruce's hopes for flawless material were never realized, we did gather both clear quartz and amethyst, and also some nice calcites (the yellowish "roses"), but the "digging" was not easy. The crystal vugs were set in a very dense basalt and had to be sledgehammered and pried apart with long crowbars.

The specimens shown here all came from one of our most successful digs. It was also the most physically demanding, and blisters, nicks and slices from sharp rock edges were par for the course despite whatever protective gear we wore. During the brutal excavation of the amethyst, a fragment of basalt embedded itself in the edge of my lower lip. I didn't notice it until a few days later, and then assumed that it was just a scab. By the time I realized it was a piece of rock, it had healed over, leaving a little spot like a blackhead which I could not squeeze out. Six months or so went by, and although it didn't cause me any particular discomfort, it bothered me that it was there.

I'm not particularly squeamish unless the blood I'm seeing is my own, so when I decided to do a job of home surgery to remove the chip, I laid out my tools (Exacto knife, tweezers and a needle) on the bathroom sink and closed the lid on the throne in case I started to pass out. It was a good precaution to take, because I got light-headed several times before extracting a tiny sliver of black basalt sharp as a splinter from a razor blade's edge half an hour later.

Walker Valley is now only open to permittees (yeah, another permit), and I understand it still yields some nice specimens of amethyst and clear quartz, but I'm content with those I dug forty years ago. I still collect rocks, but only those I can easily pick up off the ground.

Metals And Stones

Day 9: The hobby of rockhounding inevitably creates a desire to do more than tumble-polish stones, collect minerals and go on digs. The enthusiastic lapidarist finds himself (or herself) tempted by equipment such as rock saws, grinders and faceting machines. Naturally, the acquisition of one or more of those devices leads to the issue of what to do with your finished gems, and mounting them is the next logical step. Ready-made settings are commonly available for rings and pendants, but some hobbyists take their craftsmanship further and delve into casting or metalsmithing.

You would think that with my penchant for doing tiny needlework and beading that I might have fallen into this art easily, but that was far from the case. In fact, it was my ham-handed husband who painstakingly modelled the most detailed and delicate waxes to be cast in gold. His skill at faceting was amazing, and he spent hours at the machine, an Optivisor entrenched in the wrinkles of his forehead helping him see that the "meets" met at precise angles. On the other hand, I dabbled with silversmithing using pre-made bezels and shanks, soldering the parts together to hold the cabochons I turned out on a polisher. Bruce worked with precious stones: sapphire, tanzanite, garnet, alexandrite and such. I futzed with agates and opals and occasionally a piece of lapis lazuli. Mutt and Jeff we were, or Jack Spratt and his wife, opposite to what you would have expected of us. Bruce's work was elegant and classy, mine clunky and serviceable.

The stones and rings in this photo were all hand-cut save for the brown Linde star sapphire in the top left. All are Bruce's work except the bezel-mounted fire agate set in sterling. That one's mine.

A Sound Memory

Day 350: It was one of our first Christmases together. My husband and I were still learning about each other, and errors of judgment when it came to gift-giving were inevitable. I had discovered to my dismay that Bruce was not an avid reader, for example, and he had figured out that stylish clothing was simply not my cup of tea. We both knew we were on safe ground when it came to gadgets and toys, so presents often took the form of weather instruments, electronics kits, puzzles and other useful but unnecessary things with which to fiddle. We stuck religiously to proscriptions regarding box-shaking and squeezing when specified lest we spoil a surprise, but many items were fair game for tantalizing examination. We often included materials meant to mislead in our wrapping: a few beans here or there, marbles, a bag of sand, anything to put the recipient off the scent of the real object.

After we had distributed our acquisitions under the tree, we observed a nightly ritual of rattling and prodding selected parcels. Bruce handed me a box which I held up to my ear and gave a gentle shake. "Can I rattle it harder?" I asked, and got the expected approval. My memory leapt back twenty years at the sound, but in an era of plastics, I knew that what I was recalling could not be. The words jumped out of my mouth although I was sure the product was no longer made. "That sounds like the little metal cash register bank I had when I was a kid!"

Bruce concealed his reaction beautifully. He made me wait to open it until Christmas morning, too.

The Way She Was

Day 320: To look at me now, you might find it hard to believe that I was a climber in my younger days, and until this point, my proof has been locked up in a few fading prints and a large box of slides tucked away in a cupboard. A friend loaned me her brand-new, never-been-used, slide scanner (compatible only with Windows XP) and I spent the morning installing it on the semi-retired computer in the crafts room. I thought it would be appropriate to present my documentation by featuring another old gal who ain't what she used to be: Mt. St. Helens.

Getting fogged in on the Dog's Head was something Bruce and I experienced on many occasions, regardless of the season, but one of the most memorable was our very first climb of "The Lady" on the Fourth of July 1978. It was one of those ascents when you could barely see your partner at the other end of the rope, let alone tell where you were going (top left).

Bruce and I rarely climbed with anyone else, but on the day we did the Forsyth Ice Fall direct, another friend accompanied us. I led the climb, being the lightest and least likely to break through fragile snow bridges, belaying the men when it came turn for them to cross (lower left). After I had called "Belay on," the guys moved forward. On seeing the bridge, they looked at each other and said, "She's got to be kidding!" The two photos on the right were taken earlier that day.

In our opinion, the best time of the year to climb Mt. St. Helens was in the winter. The ice formations we saw on the upper mountain varied from crusts of bubbles to long, feathery plates so fragile that the slightest touch made them crumble. Although the center photo was taken on a climb in November 1978, I hold the distinction of being the last woman known to have climbed St. Helens before she blew her lid in 1980.