Vacation in Blowing Rock

Our very relaxing mountain-top vacation was well-timed. In the last week of July, we spent five nights sleeping under blankets with the windows open. Now, home again, it is sweaty, sizzling, sweltering, stifling hot! What are we going to do to get through August?

We had a condo at the lovely Chetola Resort at Blowing Rock. None of us had been in that part of the mountains in more than 10 years! Everything in Watagua County looks pretty upscale and prosperous compared to what we all remember. Especially in Blowing Rock, flowers were nearly as lush and pretty as they were in Victoria and Vancouver last year.

Driving 421 and 321 out of Winston-Salem, we took the Parkway into Blowing Rock and the Blue Ridge was living up to its name.

In the 80s, Duncan worked at Blue Ridge Parkway National Park and spent quite a bit of his time around the Moses Cone Memorial Park. As a park ranger, Duncan used to take visitors on a hike from the house up to the grave site of Moses & Bertha Cone and tell them ghost stories. He very much wanted us to walk up there with him, but we never made it. We spent too much time in the wonderful Crafts Showroom that fills the lower floor of Flattop Manor now.

From our deck at Chetola we could see this vast house way in the distance filling the entire mountainside. At first we were unaware it was the Cone House and we grumbled about the poor taste of whoever ruined the view with such a monstrosity. But when looking at a picture in a brochure, we realized that this mostrosity had not been built by "new money" but was Flattop Manor and had been on the mountaintop for quite awhile

We went shopping in Blowing rock, everyone bought shoes at the Tanger Outlet, and we went over to Boone and took a look at the campus of Appalachian before stopping at the Daniel Boone Inn for a blow-out meal. We had great kitchen facilities in our condo and mostly fixed our own meals and ate outside on the patio. That felt like such a luxury!

I had never been to Grandfather Mountain so we did another drive down the Parkway to see that. Very pretty and now I can say I have walked across the swinging bridge.

Truly my daddy's child, I don't think I would make it on the bridge on a windy day, but this was pretty tame -- and wonderfully cool at that elevation. We climbed around on some of the rocks, took in the views, and just enjoyed being there on a nearly perfect day.

This was one of those great relaxing vacations where we did things at our own pace and sometimes it wasn't much.

We went for walks.

 We watched the ducks on the pond. The swans at Chetola were raising babies -- (learned that baby swans are called cygnets. I am sure I will continue to call them baby swans.)

Relaxing for everyone except Duncan maybe. He did a lot of driving.

In the evenings, we laughed through episode after episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Sitting on the couch with your mother and laughing at a Priest tell almost dirty jokes is satisfying on so many different levels!

Ready for Anything

Back in the day, I thought I was thinking ahead when I made the rule: "Never set out to go anywhere without a corkscrew." My travel emergency kit consisted of jumper cables, a tampon, and always, a corkscrew.

Today, in preparation for holiday weekend travel, I knew I needed to clean out the trunk. After 5 years married to a disaster preparedness guy, here's some of what I found in my trunk: -- all of which I am told we "need to have."

• 4 bottles of water
• suntan lotion and bug spray
• duct tape
• a bath towel and a wash cloth
• a small fleece blanket
• leather work gloves
• 3 umbrellas
• 2 flashlights -- both with working batteries
• a sleeve of quarters
• 5 bungie cords
• an insulated cold storage bag
• a first aid kit where the band aids are at least 5 years old
• an assortment of wrenches and screwdrivers
• a city map and a phone book
• a pair of crocs (for emergency gardening?)
• a raincoat
• and a corkscrew

Space for suitcases and beach chairs is shrinking.

Playing Hooky from Church -- Again

Duncan and I skipped church today and instead went out as tourists in our own town. Our neighbor Harry has started doing Charleston tours and we went on his Harbor Tour today.

We've decided next time we go to a costume party, we can recreate this look and just add a pair of binoculars around Duncan's neck and some sightseeing maps spilling out of my bag and we'd be great Tourists!

We went out on the General Beauregard

Harry covered Charleston history from the 1500s to the establishment of the Navy base just before WWII

We got some pictures of the Ravenel Bridge from angles we don't usually see.

The bridge, the marina and The Yorktown. Downtown is to the left, Mount Pleasant to the right.

Passing under the bridge

 

We went right by the Yorktown.

Here's me enjoying the breezes.

And here I am again, on-shore. Fun Day.

What are Friends For?

This morning before breakfast, Duncan went over to our friend Marcus' house to help free this black snake that got stuck in the cage around a strawberry plant. I did not go. They were successful and the snake is apparently unharmed.

 

Photo taken by Marcus with I-Phone.

The Baby Blanket Continued. . . and Finally Completed

The baby blanket I started in early April progressed nicely, with only a few unexpected interruptions, but still, the baby arrived before I got it to the parents. It is for a couple who were Debbie's good friends, and I wanted to do something nice for them. It always buoyed Debbie's hope for the whole world when people she loved chose to parent the next generation. I understand the baby is a girl -- and her middle name is Deborah. Nice.

Here, the warp thread have gone through the beater and the heddles. The most tedious part of this warp is done! Yea!

 

At the top of this picture, you can see that the warp has been pulled to the back and tied onto a bar. Towards the front of the loom, you can see several sticks running through the warp. Those sticks help keep the warp threads from tangling as the warp is wound to the back.

Here's another shot of basically the same thing. The back of the loom is at the bottom of this picture. I turn a crank handle that moves the entire warp back, back, back, until I can tie the ends off on the front bar. This process is hard on the tread, and if a thread gets hung up or snarled, it sometimes breaks. You can fix it, but it's a pain. Those sticks in the front help a lot. I just learned that trick. (Thank you Garnette and Michaela!)

Finally, I got to weave! This warp is 34" wide and I wanted the blanket to be square, so I wove 36" in length figuring it would draw up some when I took it off the loom. Under the tension of the loom, you can hardly see the waffle weave design at all.

Here's how I dealt with the only warp thread that broke while I was weaving: I tied it off close to the weft (so I wouldn't continue to rake the beater over a knot as I kept weaving), took the new thread through the beater, through the correct heddle, then just wrapped it around these 2 heavy bolts and laid them of top of the back beam. Subtle like a truck, but it put the thread under enough tension that everything could progress just fine.

When the blanket first came off the loom, I could see the waffle design, but not very distinctly. I could only hope it would pop out after it was washed.

And hooray! It did. White on white is always going to be subtle, but the little waffle squares show up nicely. This 100% cotton drew up more than I was expecting. The finished blanket is 28" wide and 30" long. Live and learn. I think it will be fine as a dressy blanket and it should not shrink any more with further washings.

Whoo-hoo! The Numbers Are In!

One of the things that motivated me to want to do the Healthy Charleston Challenge was a physical I had in October that showed my weight at an all-time high and enough elevation in my cholesterol numbers to make the doctor double the dosage of my medication. I went for a follow-up visit on Friday and here's what has happened since October and starting exercising and eating better in January:

Weight loss: 25 pounds
Percentage of body fat: down 11%
Total Cholesterol: down by 22 but still higher than recommended. LDL (bad): down by 12 but still higher than recommended. 
HDL (good): high enough to be a protective influence over the other two high numbers.

And here's what has really changed things for me. I figured out that all the knee pain and leg aches were not from gaining weigh or from the exercise itself -- it was a side effect of the statin drug I've been taking forever. And I've also been taking 2 Alieve tablets a day since at least 2004 to manage leg aches -- and I never attributed it to anything other than my own failing body.

Turns out, joint pain, especially in the knees, muscle weakness, and relentless aching is a very common side effect of all the statin drugs. Co-enzyme Q-10 is supposed to replace some of what they deplete. So, the doctor has reduced the dosage of my statin by 75% (wow!) and suggested I add the Co-enzyme Q-10 -- and we'll check how I'm doing again in 3 months.

We continue to go to the gym 2 or 3 times a week. It is exercise that keeps that good cholesterol number high. The bad cholesterol is influenced by weight and diet. So, I can still eat less meat and more salads.

A Good Use of Rainy Days

We've had two days of pouring-down rain this week. Not only has it washed the pollen away, but I've spent two days inside, completely happy, listening to the entire playlist on my birthday I-Pod and warping the loom with my favorite yarn -- Henry's Attic Queen Anne's Lace. It's going to be a baby blanket for a good friend of Debbie's in Winston-Salem. If Debbie were here she would do something really extravagant to welcome this baby, so I thought I'd do something special. 

Here's the Queen Anne's Lace.

Here's this cute song; Love Bug, by Joan Armatrading playing:

We've both come down with the love bug and it means we got to stay in bed.

I hope you'se guys don't get this 'cause it knocks you right offa your legs.

Love Bug. .  talkin' 'bout Love Bug. . .

Let me 'splain the symptoms - first of all, there's hardly any pain.

With the love bug, you kinda lose your memory - you see, hear, think, talk, dream, care just for 1 person only.
So don't come down with the Love Bug 'cause it drives the sense right outta your head.

:-)

Here's the beginning of the warping process. The blanket will be about 36" square. Eight threads per inch in a waffle weave. White on white. Stay tuned.