Skywatch Friday

Sunlit clouds. late on a Saturday afternoon in the Simikameen.

Monday, in the early evening, the clouds come rolling across the hills and into the valley.

It's been a varied week as far as skies go, - sometimes kindly, sometimes moody and occasionally terribly exciting with crashing thunder and large sheets of lightening causing small dogs and nervous ladies to shiver and shake a bit.  Thunder and (f)rightening a friend calls these night time episodes.

For more skies visit here, at Skywatch Friday.

A wonderful exhilarating thing happened on my way to town!!

I am approaching a turn in the road at the top of a hill that falls away into the valley.  Suddenly, about ten feet in front of me and almost touching the road, a magnificent american bald eagle swoops in from the north, crossing my path.  There is another car behind me, - I cannot stop, but as I look into the rear view mirror I see that the bird has circled and is swooping once again across the road between me and the car behind!!

The heart of some poor small creature must be filling with terror, but my own is beating with excitement.

You will see that this photo was captured by Ted Steinke at some other time and in some other place, but it depicts the speed and the ferocity with which the eagle swoops.

I turn the corner and continue down the town hill, filled with awe at the serendipity of being in the right place at the right time, and the magnificence of this splendid bird.

At the bottom of the hill I look back up the valley, but the eagle is nowhere to be seen, and I know that the next time he hovers in my vicinity I will be running to get the camera and he will be a mile high in the bright blue sky, making his way in great circles and swoops southward, down the valley, and I will gaze in wonderment.......and envy?

ABC Wednesday

The letter of note this week is R


R is for RAVELRY


Ravelry is a free social networking enterprise, beta-launched in May 2007. It functions as an organizational tool for a variety of fiber arts including knitting, crocheting, spinning and weaving. Members share projects, ideas, and their collection of yarn, fibre, and tools via various components.  As of January 2010, Ravelry had over 600,000 members worldwide. (from Wikipedia)

Francoise Duparc (1726-78) Woman Knitting, n.d.

Husband and wife Casey and Jessica Forbes founded Ravelry with the idea of creating a web presence for all fiber artists.

Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration. It has been a most successful venture, with what appears to me to be pretty sophisticated underpinnings - Ruby and Rail technologies for creating research and distribution.  And all this for what was once the humble knitter, crocheter, weaver, or spinner - fiber arts which have now reached heights beyond crafts into gorgeous creativity. YouTube is loaded with videos based on Ravelry activities, many of them giving instructions in the whys and wherefores of fiber art. Here is one about an event that I would love to have attended!

If you are a fibre artist and don't know about Ravelry it's great fun to surf the net and see what you can catch....


For other versions of the letter R spin off over to ABC Wednesday here.

A welcome visitor..

A pretty sky to greet us as Caspar and I opened the door for our five a.m. business trip.

We had gone to bed amongst great excitement in the heavens - dazzling sheets of lightening followed almost immediately by thunderous drum rolls that echoed around the house.

Wild weather for man and beast, and also birds!

Mid-morning and Charles came looking for me so that I could meet our newest feathered visitor and perhaps offer a little sustenance to this iridescent homing pigeon.

I can imagine this bird, steady on course for home and then running into such confusion in the skies that  he would surely tire and perhaps lose direction.  Homing pigeons have such an affinity with the earth, either magnetically or with a built in direction finder, and I'm sure with all these magical attributes this particular pigeon would know - somehow - that right below him lived a lady who just two short weeks ago posted a blog entitled P for Pigeons, and that he would be assured of a hearty welcome and a good rest before he continued his journey.

Which he did this evening, after a long afternoon nap on the roof of the travel trailer cum weaving studio.  He moved first to the ridge of the house, and after gathering himself together and focusing all that magical equipment he carries with him, with a whir and a wave of the wings he was off!

I wished him bon boyage, - a safe trip and a loving welcome from those who watched for him at home!