Up-catching miscellany

Yes, it's mid-January already and I haven't blogged since last year. I'm going to use the occasional blogger's excuse of "been too busy to blog," even though the busy times are usually the ones most worth blogging about. This is indeed the case here, but I don't particularly want to delve deeply into any one thing, so I'll just give a brief synopsis of what I've been up to since I last blogged, and possibly come back to one or two things in more detail later.

So, what have I done since my last post?

- Christmas! We had several family gatherings, which were all enjoyable. I got to see most of my family on all sides, including some new by-marriage relatives I hadn't even known about. Shaleece and Cristie inspired me with their knitting and crocheting projects, and then Mom bought me some delicious baby alpaca and I started knitting myself the most snugglous hoodie imaginable. By the time I got home from CA, I had knitted the back and more than half of the front (including the pocket). Hooray for creative crafts. :)

- Harmony was magical and wonderful as always, with a touch of bittersweet, knowing that it was to be the last year in the beautiful location in the Santa Cruz mountain redwoods. We took lots of photos. LOTS of photos. And Quena and I turned 10 this year! I am so amazed and grateful that I have had such a beautiful star-sister for ten years.



- As usual, Harmony inspired me to explore more musical goings-on back home, so I finally attended a Portland Sacred Harp gathering at my local food coop. It was highly enjoyable, and I do plan to go back. One of my coworkers has been singing shapenote for quite a while, and another former morris dancer was there as well, so it was nice to have people there that I knew. My coworker even pulled me into the middle of the square for the last song that he led, so I could hear the voices coming at me in harmony from all sides. It was very cool. It turns out that Portland Sacred Harp meets five times a month, and that three of them are pretty close to my house, so I'm looking forward to more singing in the year to come.

- Last Saturday John and I went for a lovely day-hike in Forest Park. The weather was variable -- some sprinkles, some sun, cold but just the perfect temperature for hiking. We hiked past the Audubon Society and then up to Pittock Mansion. We stopped by Powells on the way back and bought a book of local hikes, and plan to go hiking much more frequently in the future. It is SO nice to get outdoors!

- I had my first darkroom class this Thursday, and developed my first roll of film! I haven't printed any pictures yet, and didn't even get a good look at the negatives because they were wet and I had to hang them up (and leave them there). I'll probably spend the next class developing my other two rolls of film from my CA trip, and then start learning to print the pictures the next week. But I may get impatient and take the negatives to a camera shop before then! :) Developing the film was a really cool experience, especially since it is done in complete darkness and you have to be so in tune with where everything is, what your hands are doing, and how things feel when they're right or wrong. I noticed that I had my eyes wide open even though I couldn't see anything -- I wasn't even looking down at what I was doing, but staring straight ahead. I want to pay more attention to that and see if I can relax enough to close my eyes next time.

- I helped DeMara a bit with getting her house ready to move in - mostly things like lining kitchen cabinets and painting baseboards, since she did the majority of the big tasks while I was in CA. Tomorrow I will help her move in, to her very own house.

- And, potentially the coolest news of all ... I applied for a volunteer work trip to the Galápagos!!! The project is working on native habitat restoration and sustainable agriculture - right up my alley... and in the Galápagos! How could I pass up that opportunity? So cross your fingers that they accept me, because that would be an amazing trip. Needless to say, I'm just a teensy bit excited. :D

Well, that was more detail than I had planned to go into. I guess I'm incapable of writing one-liners about things that excite me. What can I say? I like to write, but concision is not my strong point. :)