beyond hats

Somehow last week I mustered up the courage to start looking at knitting patterns for things beyond hats. I decided to start small and knock off a baby shower gift at the same time. I found a simple sweater pattern and whipped up a sweater (size 6 months) in under a week.

From Knitting

It came out much better then expected and I've got to go through my yarn stash to see how big my next sweater will be...

Dzia Dzia comes to Telluride

Billy flew out to Colorado in May then he and Jon drove down to Telluride to see the Colorado version of campchaos for the first time. As luck would have it we were having fine spring weather...the kind that drops over a foot of snow and takes almost a full day to melt off the sidewalks. We had a good visit and made it up to the Telluride Historical Museum which was a highlight for all of us.

 Thankfully the clouds went away and we were able to get a few shots of them on Colorado Avenue in front of Ajax Mountain.

freegrass'n in Telluride

Telluride has a full summer calendar- not just this year but every year. It's an expensive town to begin with so sometimes we skip these events- plus Bluegrass sold out months ago so it was an easy choice to skip out. Meghan and Sam got tickets for Yonder Mountain String Band on Wednesday and Friday passes at town park so they pulled into town on Wednesday with Kaya and Echo in tow.
We did hit some free Bluegrass events and also enjoyed the acoustics of the box canyon from above. 

a three hour tour...

Friday night we pulled outta town and camped in the mountains above Telluride. Our neighbor always jokes with us that we're packing for a three hour tour as we load up dog food, sleeping bags, the tent, tripods and other gear.
We camped above Telluride off the Last Dollar Road... which is the same road that once killed the midpipe of the Subaru's muffler back in April of 2006. The moon made a good showing as it peeked through the aspen trees and the puppies toys created streaks across the dark sky. You can see those here...


Sunday we loaded up the dogs and headed up towards Alta Lakes so the dogs could get some much needed time in the sunshine. We headed up the road and found it mostly melted.... mostly. The 4Runner cleared most of the hard packed snowbanks easily... until it didn't. Dave backed up and did a second take....and the undercarriage came to rest on the glacial mound of snow and ice while the tires spun deeper in the softer snow. Somehow the avalanche shovel we keep in the truck wiggled it's way into summer storage and we found ourselves working at the ice mound with our axe and Mayhem's chuck it stick. One was very effective while the other was just good for throwing tennis balls. You can view all the good times here...

The phones worked fine and Dave called Emory who came to the rescue with his 4Runner and two young labs. Emory had two shovels and the boys were able to dig the truck out quickly. Cheers to friends with four wheel drive, shovels and time on a Sunday afternoon.

Trout Lake and Balloon Festival

The dogs had their first serious swim day this weekend and enjoyed the frigid waters of Trout Lake. Both boys swam until they shook. It jumped from winter to summer in the span of a week and we're now enjoying daytime temps in the high 60's to low 70's and went from snowy days to sunshine.

This year marked the first that we witnessed the Balloon glo on Colorado Avenue in Telluride. We each grabbed a camera and captured the shots. Dave used the D100 and the tripod while I used the Nikon S6000 and just clicked away.