Fret not... or do.

We've developed an understanding with our glass-blowing friend. She lets us help make cool stuff, and I bring cookies. In November, when we made Christmas ornaments, I even brought some pasta salad for dinner.  Hopefully, she'll never realize that I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, without any other perks, because she also gives us one of the pieces we make each time we help her, and we're slowly filling a shelf with her outstanding work.  I like that collection.

"Fret" is the colored bits of glass.  Here, she's laid stripes of two different colors on the marver (big steel table). By rolling the gather (glob of clear glass) over this fret, she can get two different regions of color on the final piece.

Fret has already been melted into this piece in the glory hole (go ahead and laugh. We always do), but you can still see two distinct regions of color.

For a single color, she usually collects the fret directly from these bowls.

This shot is harder for me to get, because I took it when I was supposed to be focused on my job of holding the ornament steady while she applies a loop of clear glass to the top for hanging.  This loop also seals the hole left when we remove the piece from the blowpipe.

This is my view for a lot of the forming.  I sit on a little box and provide hot air. It's a little like a management position that way.

Adding another hanging loop. This ornament was treated with some special powder she had to get that cracked-snow look.

You can see dimples on the sides of this piece. She squeezed it from the end with long tweezers (on the bench beside her). That was the first step...

The second was stretching the material, then rotating the pipe while holding the end of the stretch in line with the pipe to get a long, twisty piece.  It was supposed to be practice for a candy cane shape, but things went downhill from here. Still good practice!

I Spy: Old Rag Edition

Our Shenandoah volunteer group does a couple training weekends each year, and we spend lots of time on the mountain talking to visitors, teaching Leave No Trace ethics, and (very occasionally) assisting in rescues, but we also have one designated Fun Weekend a year.  This is an official thing, in addition to the two or three times smaller subsets of the group get together for cabin trips, snowshoeing, game nights, and the completely unrelated but jaw-dropping annual cookie swap.  In the past, I've never been able to attend the Fun Weekend, due to various schedule conflicts, and missed out on things like rappelling and the zip line, but last November we had a scavenger hunt.

I rock scavenger hunts.

My teammate and I not only found the most items on the list, but we did well enough in the Skills portion to firmly cement a first-place finish.  Some of our list items are shown below.

A bearbag, incorrectly hung.

"We were told to dress up." "I dressed up as Batman."

A stick insect. Remarkable camouflage!

Christmas fern (see how the individual leaflets look like stockings?)

A dog. (They are not allowed on Old Rag, but you're guaranteed to see them, because people ignore that rule. We saw at least four dogs that day, but only one in a pack)

We were told to find a phone booth.  There is no phone booth, so my teammate and I improvised.

A bear.

"Can you make a bear face while wearing the bear hat? We'll get extra points for that!" Not true, but worth it to get this picture.

Cacapon

We have friends who like to do "cabin weekends," when we'll rent a place somewhere, play games at night, and go hiking during the day.  Their ideas of hiking are often wildly different from mine, but we handle that by giving me a heavy pack and making sure I stay behind the group.  At night, of course, we feast.  This time, we also found a gorgeously-made jigsaw puzzle by Liberty Puzzles, laser-cut from 1/4" maple plywood.  I liked it so much, I bought one for Dad for Christmas.

On Saturday morning, we hiked a loop at Cacaopon State Park in West Virginia.  Some of the leaves had fallen, but there was still some good fall color, and the weather was pretty mild.

The loop took us along a ridge, then dropped back down through the forest to where we had parked.  The ridge meant we had lots of good opportunities for Summit Cookies.

The nearby hot springs have quite a history, but none of us felt like paying the admission fee to see the underground rooms hosting the springs.

There were some unique trophies in the cabin.

On Sunday, we took a little walk along the canal towpath. If we followed it far enough east, it would eventually take us back to DC.  Instead, we wandered west, mainly to check out this tunnel.  I love tunnels. Without a headlamp, this one quickly became creepy. The light you see here is all sunlight, reflected up at the ceiling from the water below.

I made a friend!

Old Rag autumn

We volunteer on Old Rag in Shenandoah National Park, and we work on a two-season schedule.  In the winter, the rock scramble at the top of the mountain is often coated in ice and snow, and besides being dangerous, it's just not very popular in the coldest months. Springtime brings new leaves, lots of flowers, hordes of visitors, and our volunteer group.  We take a break during the summer, when high temperatures and thick humidity keep most visitors off the mountain.  Fall is a pretty big deal on Old Rag.  Cooler temperatures reduce the bug population, and the bald, rocky summit affords incredible views of the autumn colors throughout the surrounding valleys.

As I try to alternate between working on my book and posting about food and playing outdoors, I find old sets of pictures, which is why you're just getting fall colors posted here now, as we look toward the spring season on the mountain. Forgive me; the book has been a bit of an obsession of late.

The Girl was very proud of the lunch she packed for the day, and insisted it be recorded for posterity. This is what comes of me taking pictures of my new recipes. (those are sour cream chocolate chip cookies in the back)

Shenandoah panorama from the west side of the mountain.

I took some Legos with me to make an Announcement photo, for anyone who didn't already know.

A few trees provided bursts of color in the rock scramble.

With skies so clear, I can't resist a shot looking up through vivid leaves.

The Girl gleefully demonstrates wind strength at the summit.

Say hello to my little friends

Since returning from my hike, my screensaver has been a constant slideshow of my pictures from the Appalachian Trail.  I think it's great, because it often reminds me of moments I don't usually dwell on.  It gives me some ideas for things I still want to add to my manuscript, but it's not always great for productivity, because I sometimes find myself sitting and staring at the stream of pictures, grinning at stirred memories.

Some of my favorite shots (and some of my favorite shots to take) are when I can get really close to a very small subject, and show detail that might be missed by someone else.  Pebbles look like boulders, moss looks like a forest, and lizards loom like dragons.  I love that.  My camera has a pretty good macro function, and I got a lot of use out of it during the hike, though there were a couple times when I couldn't get the shot I wanted because I was too busy flailing at mosquitoes.

Hoar frost

Garter snake

Frosty limb in the Smokies

This young mouse has no fight or flight response at all.

Pollen collection in Harpers Ferry

Black rat snake

A few drops of water to me; a puddle for him.

Wood frog

A spider in the Whites.

These alpine blooms are smaller than your pencil eraser.

This chick was napping in the middle of the trail.  I briefly entertained a thought of adopting her like a parrot, but instead just moved her to where she wouldn't get trampled.