Fiber Fool

was spent here, having a belated holiday with my family back in Minnesota. I made it just in time for the really cold snap (figures). The end of the trip was overly exciting (both good and bad) and it is taking a bit more time for re-entry into the real world. I’ll be back soon to share more of my first photos of 2010 from the trip.

Friday was a fantastic day! About mid-morning Amanda stopped by to pick me up and we headed down to Boulder to meet up with Kristi G. for lunch. We stopped at Shuttles first and did some damage to our bank accounts - most of which was from the shelf of orphan yarns which were marked down an additional 15% off of their already reduced prices so we got a lot of bang for our buck. Oddly, I did a bit more damage than Amanda - that is a rare occurrence!

After filling a bag each at Shuttles we had a wonderful Indian lunch buffet in the same shopping center. It is sure is nice to just park once and walk. We hadn’t seen Kristi in a looooong time so lunch ended up being a 2 hour affair - oops! But the company was fantastic, as was the food.

On our way back to Fort Collins we stopped in Niwot at The Berry Patch. It is a really fun little shop filled with all kinds of things, from amazing vintage-style jewelry and scarves to high end bath and kitchen products and a whole corner of stuffed toys for kids. Our main purpose for the stop was not all the boutique items, but rather the wall of ribbon and shelving unit of buttons. It is the best selection of ribbon and buttons that I have ever seen! Thankfully I was pretty restrained and did not do too much damage. I bought a yard of ribbon and 8 buttons. But there are plans to go back before too long with yarns in hand for matching embellishments. If you find yourself in the Boulder area I strongly recommend the slight detour to The Berry Patch! (Berry Patch photos were taken by Amanda - thank you for remembering your camera!)

Then that evening Drew and I attended a Gogol Bordello concert at The Aggie. It was a fabulous show full of amazing energy and entertainment. They call their style of music Gypsy Punk and I certainly can’t think of a better description for it. I even liked the opening act - Apostle of Hustle. They had fantastic drumming and their sound was amazing full for only two people (yay loopers).

Needless to say, there was no trouble sleeping on Friday night with a day so jam packed with fun activities!

This is the view looking west from the Lindenmeier Overlook that is at the end of a ~1/4 mile paved trail at the new Fort Collins natural area, Soapstone Prairie (there’s a nice informative 10 min video too). If you are in the area and haven’t heard about Soapstone, it is ~25 miles north of town along the Wyoming boarder. Parts of it connect to the new Larimer County Red Mountain natural area as well as a Cheyenne natural area.

Ashley and I went and hiked the 3 mile Towhee trail on July 5th. It is a relatively easy trail with only ~400 ft elevation gain occurring in the first mile and then a slow descent over the last two miles. Above and below are views from the trail near the 1/2 way point.

The photos do not do justice to how gorgeous this natural area is. Of course it was aided by our unusually wet and cool June. I’m not certain of the source or the validity of the claim, but someone told me before I went that some of the species on the prairie there only flower every two years and that the wet June coincided with the flowering cycle to produce an amazing wildflower display. I don’t know if that info is correct, but the wildflower display was unlike any I’ve seen in my ten years in Colorado!

The day was bright and shining when we arrived. Nice and cool with a fair breeze. All the sun let me play and learn more about my circular polarizer and neutral density filters. The large number of wildflowers let me play with my close-up filters too! We no sooner made a pit stop at the trailhead and it started to sprinkle. We couldn’t have planned it any better!

I’ll share a better look at the wildflowers after some more quality time with my newNational Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Western Region :-)

But, this time I made sure to bring some sights home to Colorado with me…

There is a pic of me at about age 3 sitting in this truck with grandma somewhere around the house. Now it sits on the farm yard with flat tires and ages a little more each year. It is still interesting and pretty in its own way though. The blue bike in the photo on the right was my first ten speed. Mom and dad put together a very elaborate treasure hunt around the farm for myself and one friend for my tenth birthday. There were little presents for both of as at each stop - candy bars, mystery books (yes, even at age ten I loved my mysteries) and the final stop was this bike, hidden away up in the hay loft!

I remember hopping a fence to sit in this old car that sits in the woods on the west side of the farm with one of my older cousins when I was little. I really wanted to get closer and get some detail shots, but I’m pretty certain I would have had to wade through a large patch of burning weed to do so :-( At least I’m pretty sure that was burning weed.

Of course there was no resisting these cuties! I hadn’t even though about the fact that I’d be home for spring kittens! My allergies weren’t happy, but I was :-)

Of course I needed some pics of the trees and grases of MN to get me through the usually dry Colorado summer!

I have work to catch up on now that I’m back in Colorado. If you’ve contacted me in the last two weeks you can expect it to take me until later this week to get back to everyone.

On Tuesday I got to spend some great quality time with one of my cousins, Andrea. We grew up more or less across a field from each other. I’ve shown her cutie on here before when he was much, much younger (but still cute, of course).

On this trip, he just recently turned 2 and had a 6 week old brother with him as well. His little brother took a really nice nap in my lap while Andrea and I caught up on the goings on in our lives. Then I got to tag along and take some pics of big brother feeding the “cows” :-)

How can you not snap a million pictures of those gorgeous blond curls? Especially with all that energy!

On the farm the lilacs (boo, I’m very allergic to them) and the irises have been in bloom so I had to get up close to those with my birthday filters of course…

Lastly, I had to capture this one, even if it made Amber laugh really hard. It was a good shot waiting to be taken, even if the subject is a bit prickly…