Tag Archives: walking

settling into summer.

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A day on the porch. Here, with coffee:

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A picture to indicate that the coffee, for whatever reason, was just not working.

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More porch work. This time with a huge salad.

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Afternoon light. Porch work with a glass of water. (Flowers from my yard!)

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Morning granola. (Boh supervising.)

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Wide-eyed Boh — a face I love. (He usually makes this face when he is getting belly rubs, but sometimes also when I scratch him behind the ears.)

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And then we went for a morning walk around a reservoir on campus, in an attempt to tire ourselves out before it got too hot.

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On a bridge!

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View from the bridge:

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Happy dog.

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Slow, steady progress on my Avery cowl.

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Chocolate chip walnut cookies. I put most of them in the freezer so I wouldn’t just eat them all, and then remembered how good cookies taste when you eat them right out of the freezer. Good thing this recipe only makes a couple dozen. (Boh and I had a dog/friend playdate this week, and I took a bunch over there.)

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Morning nap.

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Morning…work? We’ve had much cooler temps the last few days, so in this picture, Boh is actually doing the very important work of keeping my toes warm.

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A walk on the bike path during a break in the rain.

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Silliness.

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Mid-yawn.

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We’re trying to settle into a summer routine over here. Hoping it will include lots of good walks, plenty of course prep, some knitting, and maybe a few more batches of cookies. (Where summer means the next few weeks of June! My summer teaching begins at the end of this month…)

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oops.

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I didn’t mean to just not blog these last few weeks, but it seems that is exactly what I did. Want to see some pictures?

Sweet, silly dog.

Mick told me about green shakes, and I’ve been making them pretty regularly for the last few weeks: some combination of banana, almond milk, green stuff (spinach, kale, etc), something sweet (local honey, a medjool date), and some kind of frozen fruit (mango, berries). They are magical. And delicious.

Lots of walking = happy dog.

Boh and I at a local waterfall, which was roaring the morning after a lot of rain.

Awesome.

A spectacular sunset on the dock.

Boh and a beer: excellent company down at the lake.

Storm coming in at sunset.

My grades are due a week from Monday — so close to summer! Happy weekend!

my end of the deal.

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You know, the deal I make with Boh all the time: he is a good boy, and I take him on good walks. I’ve been slacking a bit with regard to my responsibilities in the W-A-L-K department, especially these last few weeks. With my writing deadline behind me (last week’s colloquium went very well), I set out to make things right.

On Saturday we headed up to campus to wander the little paths, shortcuts, and suspension bridges tucked all around it.

Here we are after our walk. I know Boh just looks worried, but trust me, he had a great time. (And snored for hours to prove it.)

Today it was absolutely gorgeous out — sunny, and into the high 80s. After a busy morning on campus, I took Boh down to one of the parks at the base of the lake. We walked until he seemed a bit too hot (after all, he’s still wearing his spring coat), and then headed back to the house, where he lounged next to my spinning wheel in the shade of my office.

See? What a good boy. I finished spinning the second bump of the Pigeonroof Studios fiber in bronzed teal, and I’m psyched to ply it. Stay tuned for yarn pictures!

yellow.

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It was a quiet Friday, spent trying to catch up with the week: lots of list-making and stock-taking, but also a longer walk to the reservoir with Boh to clear my head and stretch his (okay, our) legs.

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yellow2 six mile creek

It was a proper eve of Halloween — the sky was grey, the wind, howling, and the familiar scent of leaves settling and decomposing whirled about us. The seasons are starting to turn again, but there are some leaves, branches, whole trees, even, that seem to resist. These solitary bursts of yellow made me smile, and I found myself looking for pockets of color in the muted beauty of these woods.

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late fall six mile creek

Everything always seems more manageable after a walk along this path.

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The oven helps, too. A friend of mine from college has this gorgeous cupcake website that you should all check out, and yesterday she posted a recipe for savory cheddar and scallion cupcakes. Moments after reading this, I was in the kitchen melting butter and measuring out flour. Yum.

winter storage first bobbin

I also finished the first bobbin of Winter Storage, and I’m hoping to start the next one this afternoon — but only if I can get some writing done today.

boh admiring himself

I’ll leave you with a bit of Boh humor. I caught Boh admiring himself in the mirror yesterday. He was so engrossed in his own reflection that I was able to snap a few pictures before he starting looking at me in the mirror. Silly, silly dog.

rustling.

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(Not cattle. More like leaves, branches, half-thoughts, glimpses of moments past.)

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This is one of my favorite paths to wander along, as those of you who’ve been reading for the summer, even the last year, are well aware.

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The wind in the beech trees, the water pouring over the spillway, even the distinctive vibration from the trucks on the state road I walk to get here; these sounds stir me. I see and hear echoes of words I have felt, said, thought. My memory surprises me. These walks are harder on some days than others, but always strangely restorative.

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Yesterday’s walk (and the walk I took last week, with our houseguest) was different. After an incredibly delicious mushroom-leek quiche (everyone should find friends who will bring breakfast to your house) that I wish I had photographed to share here, we bundled up and headed out the door with Boh and Coltrane. I guess I write all of this to say that it seems important to experience solitary places with other people. It’s not that the reservoir was transformed by the company; more that I noticed new things around me, and at the same time, rustled up a little less. It is nice to turn my regular route into a space filled with chatter, storytelling, community.

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One of the great things about friends who are also early-risers is that you can enjoy an indulgent brunch and take a relaxing walk AND have plenty of time left over for productivity, of both the academic and fiber-y variety.

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In between bouts of reading and writing, I sat down at my wheel and spun up two bobbins of luxurious polwarth from Southern Cross Fibres in the Boogie Wonderland colorway. This was incredible stuff to spin, and the depth of these greys and greens is stunning.  We’ll see if I can get through today’s pile fast enough to start plying this today.