Sunday Post-Race Boats and Projects

 Good Morning Friends,

    It's a cooler cloudy early morning here at the lake this morning. Looks like rain may move in. Nice for me, but not so good for the weekend race boat events-The Shootout-34th year.  I am actually looking forward to them all going home as many have been here since last week Monday.

  These race boats are fun to watch as they are all different boat lengths with bright colors, but they are also very loud and noisy.

   I caught a few photos but many didn't turn out as well as I wanted to. These boats are beautiful-very fast, streamlined, they cause no waves as they glide on top of the water  The race-timed for each category-is broadcast live both Saturday and Sunday. One boat's time was 199 miles per hour-that's fast.  If they don't get rained out today there will an air show as well.  This event raises allot of money for local charities and rural fire departments-their goal is to surpass 1/2 million dollars this year.

This first photo I found online-a view of some of the spectators

All photos will enlarge for better viewing-just click on them

A smaller one

Yes the ocean boats were in the mix of boats too. Late afternoon Saturday there were kayaks too-scary for them I would think  I saw the pair near our dock waiting for the lake to clear-thinking they were headed back home at the time.

     It was a very very busy lake Saturday, Labor Day weekend will be very busy on the lake too, but then finally much quieter. I expect if it doesn't rain today will be busy too with race boats and spectators.

Early Saturday morning, we watched many boats full of people headed to the event. One needs to get there really early to be in front of the lines of boats to watch the Shootout

Not a good photo but only one I was able to capture-the film crew

This larger boat to the right broke down in front of us-they managed to get over to the bank opposite us The boat on the left came back to help-they were there for a couple hours before they got the boat running again.

  My calendula plants are producing lots of flowers now-so I am still picking a few more to dry. Want to have enough for a couple batches of soap.  The rest I will leave to bloom and enjoy and then gather the seed heads for next year.

  I am still not inspired to create journal pages, or pick up the sashiko project not sure why. Actually this year is the first time I have actually felt old-so perhaps my body is changing into the next phase of my life cycle. I will blame it on that for now-haha.  Speaking of journal pages, I just ordered a handmade journal that I am excited about-more when it arrives in the mail.

    I did remember that I still have lots of fibers to spin. I need to get out the bags soon and see what I can hopefully sell. At the time I bought too much.

    Haven't done any spinning in over a year. I have a bag of fibers to spin that are Yellowstone inspired colors, so I grabbed the last project I was working on and finished that skein. Then I grabbed my bison fiber-which I love to spin. Just love the feel of this fiber-very short fibers but they just seem to stick together well. Most of what I have spun already is more bulky yarn but so far I got this finer-finally.

   I wasn't totally pleased on what I spun Saturday to finish this one off-very thick and thin and bulky-but for weaving it can always be wove into something fun-pillow covers, shawls etc I sprayed it down with water to set the fibers and let it dry outdoors-it was in the shade here.

   I was fortunate at the time to find this bison fiber at an affordable price. This is labor intensive as this is the extra top layer of fibers for the bison over the cold winters. In the spring it falls off or they rub it off. So one must find it and gather it.  The person I bought it from had her own bison herd out west and was in a co op so she was pretty much selling it wholesale to the public

   I have allot of skeins where it came out very bulky, the rest I will work on getting it much finer. Would like to make some sort of garment with it. Thus is very soft  fiber that I am in love with. I still have enough left to make several skeins of yarn

  I also dug out a bag with more of the Yellowstone inspired colors, and will work on getting a finer yarn with these too. I need to search around as I know I have a few other colors. Thinking I will switch off spinning with these and the bison fibers. Feeling better getting back to my fiber craft-maybe back to weaving is in the near future-the project is waiting for me.

 I have been thinking about my Christmas cards too that I want to make this year. It's time for a new stamp, so I spent hours looking online.  I fell in love with two rubber stamps that I "had" to have. They came fast in the mail and I really love them-so now to decide on papers. If you would like to swap a Christmas card just message me with my contact form in sidebar.

  Yesterday I also dug out another project that I started on back in 2015 I had gotten stumped on how to do it, and with the move to the lake house,  just hadn't thought about it again. It's time. 

   I have been wanting to publish an ebook on Kindle of my late sister's poetry. At her early death (car accident) my Mom years later had split her writings up with me and my brother-and then I later learned she tossed allot of it-why she would do that is beyond my understanding.  I also have an original art piece for the cover that a friend painted for me and gave me the copyright for it-should I get it published. 

   I am working on figuring out how and where to type this up and get it ready to publish. Looks like Amazon Kindle has a better program to do that in now-so I will see how that goes. I am computer illiterate for sure.

 A few early morning views today

a lone duck

I was trying to capture crows flying by, not sure if this is a crow though I did also see the back of an eagle flying by to far right of me on the deck

  Happy Sunday and new week ahead