Emptyknitster

 Hubby had been planning this camping/gold panning trip all winter and even though I had a cold, who was I to say no? I knew I could nap and blow my nose in the trailer as well as at home…. So I made and froze several meals ahead for the trip: 1 ) Stuffed Green Peppers 2) Easy Chicken Pasta Bake 3) Taco meat for tacos 4) Lentil Soup 5) Cookies, and bran muffins We loaded up the new trailer for her maiden voyage and off we went, down the road.  It was a quiet weekend, Hubby would leave early and get back around six. Denali and I spent time knitting, reading, playing solitaire, and yowling. (You decide who was doing what!) I like the new digs - it’s nice to have a Murphy bed (it just disappears and the trailer becomes a living area but then Denali has no safe zone under the covers or under the bed itself and that’s been a trial.) We have a bathroom and that’s nice, it’s one reason BIG reason I'm glad not to be a pioneering woman.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been looking forward to Stash Dash since January! I love the camaraderie the planning, the scheming, and looking at all the completed projects. But this year, I must admit, there was no early planning…no almost finished projects, no Down the Rabbithole Blanket, in fact until last week there was no plan at all! I’ve been out and about traveling and so it wasn’t until our return I caught up with The KnitGirllls. It was during one of those catch up podcasts I began to form my plan. LaLa reminded viewers the original spirit of the Dash is to finish the projects which have been languishing, or get the oldest skeins (can I say ugliest? or at least the skeins you have no idea what possessed you to buy them) and use them up. Plan of Attack Number ONE: “What to do, What to do…“ with that big pile of Tag Ends Of Sock Yarn. It seems as though this is my constant dilemma. Even though I finished the Down The Rabbithole Blanket last year during Stash Dash and hav...

Today, May 25th, was yet another election day for Montana.  Earlier this year trump selected Montana Rep. Zinke Secretary of the Interior creating an open seat and making a special election necessary. The candidates were questionable from the start, a reported billionaire with a recent failed run for governor and a Montana good old boy, country singer. Neither candidate has any political experience but then this seems to be the trend. The National Democrats appeared slow to realize a win would gain a seat in a Republican dominated arena but our Republican billionaire  “wanna be” quickly poured over a million dollars of his pocket change into the race.  The race went on sadly, with “He said, He did, He didn’t” political ads being continually run on media. With no political records to grasp at, commercials were about health issues, unpaid bills, lawsuits, and how long it takes to become a “true” Montanan. Must you be born in Montana or is twenty years enough to claim Mo...

The next day we were off to Guilin via a high speed train. The landscape was beautiful as we sped by at 150 miles per hour! Upon our arrival to Guanzhou we drove south by the Guangzhou Circle, one of the most interesting buildings I have ever seen. We continued on to the Chen Family temple for a tour. It had beautiful handcarved artwork everywhere. To maintain the beauty of the carvings everything at the temple is painted every five years on a rotating basis. The next morning we went to Macau for a tour of the city. I must say we at this point in our trip we were getting tired, our brains were on overload. Macau is a mini Las Vegas. The casinos are the same buildings as those in Los Vegas but just smaller in scale. Really no photos were taken. Hong Kong was built between water and steep hills and so the only place to go is UP.  The view out our hotel window.   After a rainy day in Hong Kong our tour of China came to an end. The next morning we cau...

Shanghai  Down this alley was a shop which sold knock-off Gucci and Burberry scarves. We visited a silk factory while in Shanghai. From Shanghai we flew to Guilin, a beautiful vacation area. Guilin runs along a narrow valley surrounded by high rounded mountains   In Guilin we visited a tea plantation and participated in high tea.   Through the tunnel we were on our way to the small village of Yangshuo and a ride on the River Li . School was just beginning as we walked by. You could hear the students in all the rooms singing. I loved that there were student greeters, three girls on the left and three on the right.