December 14, 2008
It’s December already?
Where did the time go? It seems like we just got back from vacation. Which, by the way was fantastic 
We ended up taking two vacations this year, one to Canada and the other to Utah and Idaho.
First up, Canada:
We saw Niagara falls,
and a bunch of the wineries on the Niagara Peninsula. Ice wine is yummy. The best overall winery we visited was Coyote Run, every single wine we tried there was fantastic and really reasonably priced. We brought 5 bottles of wine home in one suitcase.
And then we spent a bunch of time in Toronto, including at the CN tower.
The view from the CN tower was terrifying. For me, anyways. I am more afraid of heights than I realized. The CN tower has the highest elevation glass floor in the world. I could not bring myself to walk on it, even knowing that the glass floor is stronger than the cement floor. I am a chicken.
Next up, Utah:
We visited Timpanogos Cave, which has really amazing crystal formations growing in every which direction.
We went on a great road trip from SLC to Idaho, stopping in Atomic City (bar pictured above) which is pretty much a ghost town now.
We found this great waitress in Blackfoot, ID, which is also the home to the World Potato Museum. Who knew?!?
We also stopped by balanced rock, which is in the middle of nowhere, ID. We found all these great attractions at Roadside America, a really good resource for planning road trips.
We concluded our Idaho road trip by going to the City of Rocks. Also in the middle of nowhere, ID. Seriously. There were only primitive roads coming into the park from one direction. Also, there was a cow in the road. This would be a great place to go rock climbing, it is filled with really bizarre rock formations. Unfortunately we did not come prepared to climb.
We spent an entire day at Arches National Park. It’s incredibly beautiful there.
We hiked up to Delicate Arch. It was super windy up there; we had to hold on to our hats the whole time. If the wind was any gustier I think we may have blown away.
Sandstone Arch, my personal favorite picture of the whole trip.
Sandstone formations we saw while on a long hike.
Landscape Arch, pretty famous.
Hole ‘n’ the Rock. Not so famous. The western US is filled with wacky roadside attractions! We didn’t stop at this one, but the minivan in the picture did.
We had such a great summer… it’s hard to believe that it’s over. Even harder to believe that it was over 2 months ago. Where did the time go?!
I have actually been doing a lot of crafty stuff lately… more posts to come in the near future.
July 9, 2007
Chicago
This weekend we went to Chicago, one of my favorite cities, to visit family. We took the Metra into the city and had a really fabulous time. We had lunch at the Taste of Chicago and spent some time at the Adler Planetarium. We had wanted to go to the Shedd Aquarium but the line to get in had to be a quarter mile long. The Planetarium was an excellent second choice. We briefly stopped at Loopy Yarns where I picked up a bamboo and cotton blend sock yarn and a big ball of hemp yarn, which I already have projects in mind for. Then we walked around downtown for a bit and happened upon Millennium Park, home of the world’s largest shiny metal bean:
We stopped at the Berghoff for dinner on our way back to the train station. It was one of Chicago’s oldest restaurants and obtained the city’s first liquor license after prohibition ended. It’s now the home of 17/west, a restaurant run by a daughter of the previous owners. The Berghoff is mentioned in at least one of Max Allan Collin‘s (my favorite author) books about the fictional detective Nate Heller and I’ve wanted to visit it ever since reading about it. The interior is very cool; lots of great old woodwork, chandeliers and murals. It was not a disappointment.
February 12, 2007
Orchid
As mentioned in a previous post, I purchased an orchid last weekend. A Doritaenopsis, to be precise. I’ve been meaning to take a picture of it since then, because I know it will probably never bloom again. Its flowers are already starting to wilt a bit and the unopened buds have fallen off. I suspect this is partly because it had to endure the trip home in -10 degree weather with only a plastic bag to protect it from the elements. I’m sure my being a horrible orchid care-taker has something to do with it as well. I have my fingers crossed that I’ve learned a few things from my mistakes in the past, and that this orchid will survive. Time will tell.
February 4, 2007
Pretty princess Luna
One of our kitties, Luna, acts very much like a princess. She’s very fussy, not liking to be disturbed or have any contact with the unwashed masses (people). Luna was being very un-Luna-like today, allowing me to pet her, hold her, and even posing for a few pictures.
February 3, 2007
COLD!
This is the thermometer on the side of my house. Yes, it’s reading -9 degrees (F). This was taken from inside our sunroom, which has super crappy windows from 1960 that insulate only slightly better than seran wrap. The frost on the INSIDE of the windows makes the whole picture a nice blurry white, perfect for this month’s Procject Spectrum. I have no idea what the actual temp is inside the sunroom, but I’m guessing around 50 degrees (F). Too. Cold.
January 30, 2007
Winter carnival
This weekend we went to the St. Paul Winter Carnival with some friends. We took a quick look at the ice and snow sculptures on Sunday. We may have spent longer there if it wasn’t so frigid. Here’s one of my favorite sculptures:
Unfortunately many of the ice sculptures were a bit melted from the warm temperatures on Friday, but all of the snow sculptures were in good condition. We also visited the orchid show at the Como Park conservatory, which is my favorite part of the Winter Carnival. This year there were vendors there selling orchids and I took home a phalenopsis that was in bloom. I’m crossing my fingers that it survives… I always feel super guilty when killing orchids, even when they’re not pricey or rare ones.
Not a whole lot is new on the crafty front… productivity is down due to grad school being in session. I just have one more chemo cap to finish before my set of 4 can be mailed to Mini. I’ve done some work on the Anastasia sock but I don’t want to post any more pictures of that until at least one sock is complete.
January 1, 2007
Hippy house
I LOVE this house. I think the tiles, although dated, are really neat and the colors are very spring-y. And I LOVE the giant tinsel peace sign (it lights up at night!) that the owner(s) put up for the holidays. I admire this house every time I drive by it, and I’ve been waiting until it snowed to snap a picture of it. I think it would make a great Christmas card!
December 27, 2006
Christmas lights!
I saw some pretty great (read: tacky) Christmas light displays in Iowa over the holiday weekend. Here are two of my favorites:
I didn’t even know that you could buy helicopter-shaped yard decorations.
This is the first semi I’ve seen decorated for the holidays.
August 31, 2006
Photography: Intro to liquid chemicals
So… I’ve been developing my own black and white negatives for a little over a year now. I’ve probably developed a whopping six rolls or so, all using the powdered Kodak D-70 developer and Kodak fixer with results ranging from very good, contrasty negatives to extremely underdeveloped negatives. After much debate I have decided to switch to the liquid concentrate chemicals. Some of the pros include a longer shelf life (liquid chemicals in their concentrated form last indefinitely as long as they are stored in a way that minimizes their exposure to air) and more reproducible results. At least that is what I’m told.
I’ve purchased the chemicals but have put off developing any film for almost TWO MONTHS… I know, that’s horrible, but I was hesitant to use my two rolls of vacation pictures as guinea pigs. Well, today I am deciding what the heck… I’m going to give it a shot. In my (limited) experiene, I have discovered that as long as you adhere to the basic directions (time, temp and concentration of chemicals) it is very hard to botch a roll of film so badly that you can’t get a (mediocre, but usable) print from it. Hopefully today’s experiment will not prove me wrong.
Here’s a link to the technical specs for the developer (HC-110) and fixer (Kodafix) I’m using. The data for the fixer is next to nothing, but I think (hope) all I have to do is mix it in a 1:3 ratio at the right temp. Results to follow…
October 26, 2005
Developing black and white negatives
I developed some Ilford PANF Plus ISO 50 negatives yesterday. I don’t know what happened, but they are a big disappointment. Maybe it’s that I started the roll in July and it’s now October. Maybe the tap water affected the chemistry. Or maybe it’s just that I took pictures on overcast days or low-light conditions. Or maybe it’s my new orange filter that I used on some of the pictures. The negatives look washed out, they are not contrasty at all. They look like they are underdeveloped because the frame numbers are pretty light. I mixed the developer (D-76) yesterday, same as always, and made sure all the chemicals were the optimum 20 degrees Celcius before I started developing the negatives. I followed directions for agitating, continuously for the first 10 seconds and then 10 seconds out of every following minute. The only thing that maybe would have helped is if I had inverted the tank rather than just rotating the reel when agitating… although I doubt that was the problem. This was my first roll of ISO 50 film in the camera (Nikon EM) so maybe the meter is a little off. We’ll see when I develop the next roll of Fuji Velvia… hopefully that turns out better.
