My last trip to NM, just a couple weeks ago, was a time to visit with friends.  We had a little get together, at Amy’s,  filled with munchie food and “Train.”  If you’ve never played Mexican Train, a domino game, give it a try.  You’ll be hooked!  I have a set and will share.

L-R:  Dallas and Amy, Si and I, Woody’s peeking behind  Rico and Amber.

Si busted out the guitar and serenaded me with song:

We went to the ABQ Botanic Garden which was all lit up.  I’ll bet it was visible from space!  I couldn’t get decent pics, even when placing the camera on a solid object.  Just a couple:

A trip up the tram to the top of Sandia Mtn was in the cards.  It was 20 deg. with a 30 mph wind up there at 10,000+feet.  Was crazy to go but hey…    It was very pretty with great views.

Tram cables.  See all that granite?  It’s adventure rock climbing up there. Long approaches bring one to crumbly rock at the easy grades and better rock at the harder grades.  See the main tower at the tippy-top?

A setting sun cast some shimmery light on the city below. I thought it looked like water:

Si succumbed to “Mountainous Terrain”:

He wore his XMas gift, a Botanic Hat (find the pattern here).  It’s reversible!  So cool!  Details in an upcoming post.  It looks great with his eyes, I think.

There’s a great little museum, the NM Ski Hall of Fame, at the tramcar start point.  It’s full of memorabilia including old skis, poles, clothing, a wooden T-bar that looked ancient, a gondola car and pics of NM ski hills long defunct.  It’s a great spot to check out if your in ABQ. 

1896!  A woman named Charlotte Ellis on home-made skis and a tree branch pole in the Sandias.  Wow!  Skiing in a skirt on planks.  She was hard-core.

To think what we ski on now.

Good trip with good peoples.

Took a trip to NM to see friends last week.  Albuquerque loves its murals.  Color splashed on buildings, legitimately, (I think) is a fine way to share art and beautify a city.  While down there I snapped some pics in the downtown area, just a small sampling of a colorful city’s displays.

Tile Mosaic:

A Route 66 Tribute:

More abstract in meaning:

Promoting warm-fuzzies:

Or the painted window of a flamenco dance organization:

Side wall of an antique store (in Nob Hill, I forgot the name but it’s next to Double Time dance studio):

Public art. I love it!

Finally got the buttons sewed on this baby.  Finished it in, oh, July.  Buttons on a couple weeks ago.  Erm…I can’t stand finishing/hand work.  Took a couple pics of it on me but didn’t have the flash on.  Doh!  Didn’t lay it out on the table well in the pic below.   Makes it look wonky.  Thinking of other people’s blogs, their pics are so pretty.  Maybe I should start paying attention to mine?  This doesn’t do the sweater justice.

Pattern:  An amalgamation of a couple bulky weight top-down patterns I have in my stash.    CO 93 sts.  Markers at 10, 20, 33, 20, 10 sts. K f&B for raglan increases. 5 st seed stitch collar, button banding, bottom and sleeve hems,  and k2 tog/yo button holes.  Left 46 sts on holders for sleeves, knit down once body done.  Waist shaped.  Could have added another inch to length.   Shaped 3/4 length sleeves with four total decreases. 

Yarn:  Silk Garden Chunky, 9 balls.  Have 1/2 a ball left!  Bought at Taos Sunflower when they still had a shop.  Got a  killer deal on the yarn.  It’s a sensory picnic to knit up.  Soft, slightly fuzzy, the colors flow in streamers of stripes.  I did match up the sleeves color-wise.  It’s a WARM sweater! 

Buttons:  Shell?  Bought plain purple ones and they were too blah. Found these at Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder.  They sparkle.  Eye candy.  Clear backer buttons reinforce their attachments.

Sooper quick project.  I’ll do another.  Perhaps in aran wt. Silk garden?  Lessons learned.  The raglan lengths aren’t perfectly equal.  I can tell.  One is a tad longer.  Though the stitch count was equal when I put the arm stitches on holders, I must have increased too much on one side and fudged increases to account for that.  Can’t remember.  Also, some fabric bunches in the front armpit area.  I could have stopped increases on the front raglan line, I suspect, while continuing to increase on the shoulder raglan lines. 

A learning process, knitting is.  That’s just one of it’s knock-your-head-on-a-wall-frustrations charms.

It happens every year. You’d think I’d learn.  Ambitiously I planned mostly small knitted gifts for all three siblings, a nephew, my mom and a couple friends.  A few are done.  Many not.  With travel plans this weekend, and just 2 weeks to go I realized, while laying in bed last night, it AIN’T happening. 

Sooo…I hit online Amazon.com yesterday for “PLAN B.”  Perhaps a couple more knitted gifts may be completed.  Some will become B-day gifts or “just because” gifts. 

Here’s a gift-wannabe: 

ENTRELAC TREASURE BAG – by Pastiche Knitwear

http://pasticheknits.blogspot.com/

Size 7 needle (which I need for a boy hat I’d like to get done, another reason to get this bag done.  I almost took the needle out of this and thought, “STOP!  Stop your usual ways and just get it done!”)  Harumph…

NORO Kureyon, 2 skeins, Color 231 (teal, olive, gray, gray) a very thoughtful b-day gift from my friend Lisa who knows I worship this yarn.

Having loads of fun with ENTRELAC. So much fun, I had to share.

It’s a processs of knitting little squares, around and around, they make blocks, here in NORO, the yarn brand I pray to each night before falling asleep, the colors unfold.  At 6 minutes knitting time per square (I’m a dork, I timed it) the proces is like watching the drops of color fall from a bucket and eagerly anticipating the next as the colors stack on top of each other.  Corrugated two color knitting at  the bag opening is quite dashing, I think.

May full a tad bit for sturdiness. Will line and include small interior pockets. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Next year, my goal, a Christmas gift shall be completed every two months to avoid the dreaded dumb-ass I am superwoman knitter syndrome.  I just don’t learn!

My nephew Lucca, in his halloween costume.  Onesie by my sister Rachel.  She just had a killer/profitable weekend at a Mpls., MN craft sale.  Her adorable, beautifully made childrens/baby clothes can be found at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SweetPeaandCo

Hat, by me.  Details on Ravelry here:

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/hfrank007/berry-baby-hat

Dang he’s cute!

Look out kid. Auntie Heather’s only 14 days away from lovin’ and squeezin’ and smoochin’ you all up!

Here’s my catch up on NM travel-related posts.  I last left you in ABQ, NM at the Dia de los Muertos parade.    Find that HERE.  The route home from ABQ involved a fruitful stop at Trader Joes in Santa Fe where I stuffed my cooler full of all those products I miss (esp. cheap cheese and 2-Buck-Chuck Wine.)  When will Denver get smart and let T. Joes in?

Veered north and east to Taos.  My target that night was to camp in Cimarron Canyon State Park.  I drove the lower part of the Enchanted Circle, Hwy 64.  It was dark, unfortunately, yet my mind played games filling in what the scenery looked like from trips past.  Can’t wait to return to those parts, pretty enough to rival CO in ways.  Had little time to poke around.

Camped.  It was cold.  Thermometer read 23 when I woke.  Coffee could wait.  Hoping for a hot breakfast at my next destination I headed down Cimarron Canyon toward a little town named, yup…Cimarron.

How do I find these places? A patient of mine, this summer, used to live in NM. He listed out a few favorite destinations.   “Have you visited Cimarron yet?”  He queried. “The hotel there is haunted, you know, had the likes of Jesse James and Billy the Kid stay there.” 

I’m a sucker for such western history and was hooked on the thought.

Cimarron Canyon pinches in at a point called the Palisades. There, fins and columns of tan rock  fan down the hillside.  Being a rock climber my interest peaked and I stepped out to investigate.  Looked to be bullet-hard granite(?).  Very climbable.

I need a wide-angle lens. There was more rock than this:

Looked it up on Mountainproject.com once home here and lo and behold, CLOSED to climbers.  This canyon is a big fishing and hunting destination.  apparently, the state purchased the land using funds from the Federal Sport and Wildlife Restoration Act.  Money came contingent on a management plan that includes hunting and fishing only, from what I read.  For years the park allowed climbers access to the rocks. Not anymore.  apparently guns and rods are the tool to conservation of wildlife in their management plan.

Go figure…

Furthered on down and saw some pretty sights.  10-12,000 peaks nudge the skyline to the south whilst conifer-covered high plateau stretched to the north.  The usual, blue-bird NM sky framed it all.  Have I mentioned how much I love NM landscapes?

Tooth of Time Ridge, I think:

Found Cimarron. Found the St. James Hotel and had breakfast and  plenty of coffee.

Cute, dusty, historic little town.  There’s a fantastic map and historical (meaning OLD) pictures HERE. 

A few snapshots of town:

St James Hotel inside and out:

Aztec Mill – Built in 1860, it provided wheat and corn flour to locals and served as a dispensary for blankets and food to Native Americans.  The gold rush’s influx of white residents soured that “kind” treatment of Native Americans.  A small “skirmish” in 1875 between agents and Native Americans drove up tensions.  The agency was closed in 1876 with the tribes moving to n.w. – NM and CO.  The museum, unfortunately, was closed.  A huge building, it impressed me.  This pic does not show it’s true size:

This building’s for sale.  Houses a gallery and a home.

Painting from a window in that building:

Local transportation.  It’s not everyday I see someone riding their horse down the hwy.

Further down the road I found COLFAX.

COLFAX, NM – A Meager Ghost Town

Not much is left of Colfax.  At the meeting of RR track and the hwy sits a small reminder of the fragility of 1800’s land promoters’ investments.  Lasting shy of 20 years, the post office closed in 1921.  A school, church, mercantile and gas station lasted into the thirties.  Nearby Dawson, a relic of a coal mining town and the close proximity of Cimarron may have sealed the towns fate as they competed for inhabitants. 

The remains are tightly sealed around in barbed wire fencing. Glimpses in were all I could obtain.  Find great pics from another here. 

Here, a couple pics, skeleton of a passenger train car:

Huh?

Ghost towns fascinate me.  I seek them out.  The concept of a place flourishing, being called ‘home,’ kids going to school, lives established, then boom, gone, with structures and artifacts just left behind.  Baffles me.

Barreled home after a quick stop here.  Much left to see in the area.  Added to my mental list of trips for the future. 

PS:  The old Raton Pass Rd., which parallels the modern I-25 Raton Pass, does not go all the way through anymore.  Private land gates it off near the pass.  I checked with the nice ladies in the Raton City Building.  Bummer.

I read the book The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, about a year and a half ago.  In two days, with few breaks, I digested it and chewed on it and filed the content under the “what if”  tab.  Any readers read it?

After a year of release dates being pushed back, the movie has finally surfaced.  Tonight I saw it with a friend whom also read the book.  Though the paper gave it a poor rating [I wonder if they read the book?]  I found it fascinating and quite true to the book.

It is dark.  It’s not uplifting, but the post-apocalyptic tale is moving.  There are themes of cannibalism and social atrocities that are tough to read/see. 

If you can get past that, it is well worth the read.  McCarthy left much of the story’s detail up to the reader’s imagination.  He also planted the seeds of important questions as well as metaphors of hope.  You have to think to read the book (and see the movie) and I wonder if that’s what the film critics did not like?

I recommend it! (Hope I can turn my brain off and fall asleep.)

Snowy, cold and on call for work today.  Perfect day for knitting.  Two Christmas gifts on the needles. I’m extra crazed disciplined and not starting any personal projects until all gifts are knitted. Two left.  Top secret no pics.

I’ll leave you with this thought:

Belle’s loving the sit next to me time, chew on the working-yarn time. 

22!   5 of those are a travel trip.   E-Gads!

Not to be missed!   Watch Second Hand Lions.

Susan’s been away forever.  She’s in Mali, in the Peace Core.

Her last blog post summarizes the last year and few months.  I can hear Susan’s voice telling the stories when I read her blog posts.  Great reading, I highly recommend you do so:

http://susanrsahara.blogspot.com/2009/10/year-in-review.html

Sure do miss her!

An exerpt (pretending to plan and direct a movie):

“I will be called tubob, either to my face or as they talk to each other. I will be ask to give them money or a present. Some times the younger ones don’t get the French right and ask how my candy is, instead of how are you, can I have some candy? After another year of this it is going to really strange to go back to Ameri-key, as it is called here, where no one gets excited that I am walking down the street. These are my five minutes of fame. I just pretend that these are my groupies and that my stage name is ‘Tubob’.”