It was a foggy day last Saturday when we went to Sheridan, a small town about 45 minutes south of us, for a visit to Bret and Serena, our landlords, who had invited us for lunch.
They moved there about a year ago from the house that Doug and Brenda are now renting, although they kept their business in Newberg, at the property we're parked at right now.
Sheridan is a very small, rural town and they live on the outskirts, at the top of a 34 acres (!) piece of land sloping down in front of them, which gives them a beautiful view of rolling pastures and woodlands and even a distant view of the mountains!



We had a great time visiting, got a tour of their beautiful house (very reminiscent of our house in Skyforest, but a lot larger), had a great lunch (pull-apart pork with a layered salad and peach pie for desert!) and talked for a long time about everything and anything.

This is the view towards the house (it's only just visible there, a little right from the middle) from one of the ponds, about halfway down the slope

Afterwards Bret took us for  a tour of their beautiful property in their quad. There are several ponds, barns and large meadows, one of which they planted with Christmas trees last spring. It's something Bret wants to continue to 'do' when he retires from his roofing business.
Unfortunately, because of the drought they lost almost all of them! They'll try again this year, although getting seedlings is a little bit of a problem due to the recent forest fires ...

OK, what else .. oh, right, there was this .. James' Birthday!

Look at that handsome old fart!

We went for happy hour to the Golden Valley Brewery and Restaurant in McMinnville, which is advertized as a 'sprawling brewpub with its own garden & cattle ranch, serving housemade beers & upscale pub grub'.

                                    

Unbeknownst to us some of their appetizers are half prize between 3 and 6pm, which of-course we happily took advantage of!



In addition to Thai Chicken Skewers with peanut sauce (saté!) and a Mediterranean salad with hummus, we had a 10 sample flight of their beers, more than enough for several birthday toasts!

Due to all the rain of these last couple of weeks, we'd seen the tires of the truck(s) sinking in the mud a bit, but James, always the (overly) optimistic one, thought we were fine and 'probably' would be able to take them out.
Well, when he needed them last week (since I was out with the car) it turned out that .. guess what .. they both were stuck!

  
Fortunately though, Bret had stored a little tractor in the barn next to us so James rolled it out and happily went to play in the mud for a little ..

That green truck by the way isn't ours but Doug's. He wants to sell it and had no room to park it at his house, so it's been sitting here for a while ..



Both trucks came out very easy but they left some deep tracks as you can see. Oh well ...
For now they're parked on either side of the barn on the gravel driveway, but James is going to put down some boards this weekend, so they can move back to the previous spot again where they are a little less in the way.

To pretty up the muddy garden a little bit I got these little pots with daffodil and crocus bulbs at the grocery store. A little early but they're hardy and with a little sun on them they look so pretty. They make me happy every time I see them!

OK, this post is a little short this week because I'm using James' laptop to put it together, which doesn't have my pictures on it. My own laptop is in the shop to be repaired since all of a sudden, while sitting on my desk (opened) but without even touching it, my screen fell out and cracked a corner!
Fortunately we'd bought an extra 3 years warranty, which we almost never do, so after some e-mailing back and forth they agreed to replace the screen, we sent it in, and hopefully I'll have it back somewhere next week.

(Yeah, I'm keeping my fingers crossed too!)

Although still quite grey and occasionally rainy, we've had a few dry days this week too, hence this beautiful sunrise on one of those mornings ..

On days like that, when the temperatures are nearing 50F, you'd almost think the worst of the winter is over, but we're only halfway through January, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Besides, I like winter and wouldn't mind having some more frosty days and, if possible, a little more snow please!
For now though, that beautiful sunrise changed into a frosty, wintery morning .. our thermometer showed a whopping 26F (-3C). Brrrr ..!

It sure was purty though!

Everything had a little frosty 'edge' to it:

Nevertheless, and despite the cold, the daffodils are already popping up. They're such a hardy bunch!

Around 2pm, with the sun at it's highest and warmest, I ventured out to read in the sun for a while.

How about that? In the middle of January!

                                                            

We even went for a little walk that day. My heel is still hurting like the dickens but every now and than I just have to walk a little!

       

We walked by this little stream, Otter Creek, just up the road from Doug's house, which has a lot more water in it than last spring/summer when I took the picture on the right!

Most of the time though I'm still, grudgingly, staying of that heel and pursue one of my hobbies that don't involve having to walk.
Like weaving for instance!

      

Yes, indeed, I finally set up that loom and started 'dressing' it.

I first wound the warp on my nifty warping board that James made for me all those years ago (those are the pictures at the top in the collage below ..

The warp than was placed on the raddle (left bottom pic) and than sleyed through the haddles (bottom right) ... right .. sounds like Chinese doesn't it?
But I got it done!
Look at that! I'm weaving!

I'm following a sample-pattern out of Ashford's 'weaving on a 4 shaft table loom' book. It guides you through the whole thing and describes a lot of different, but common, patterns and weaves that you might come across most frequently.
So far I'm having a blast! Now when the world-as-we-know-it comes to an end, and in addition to my spinning, I can make my own clothes. Handy!

My birds are still hanging around, and by now I feel of course that I can't let them run out of their feed at all, especially in this cold weather, so I've added 2 more feeders, just in case they run out while I'm not watching ..

They're my substitute for not having any pets anymore I guess. I just love to take care of 'something' ..

OK, time to end this epistle. I'll end similar to how I started, but with a sun-set this time ..

Another year, another chance!

As usual, the new year arrived without much ado here in the Hess-mobile. We had our traditional lobster on New Year's Eve ..

And the next morning we made the, as always much anticipated, Oil-balls!

The only difference was that I run the whole show this year, meaning that I prepared the dough and baked them as well.
Normally James does the baking part, but he looked like he had too much fun organizing the file cabinets, so I thought I'll just start and before I knew it I'd finished them all!

                                           

                                                              Out with the old, in with the new!

We watched the Rose Parade from sunny Pasadena, which went on as usual again after being cancelled last year!

                                   

And we toasted the New Year with some (real) bubbles at happy hour:

Let's hope this year will be the year that Covid finally gets under control, so life can finally go back to normal again.

According to a Swedish researcher, due to the latest 0-micron variation that spreads incredibly fast but isn't half as potent as the previous ones, the virus will run it's course in a couple of months and come March it will be reduced to nothing more than a flue and fully manageable, even without vaccines.
Which of course will be totally awesome .. we'll see, I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed!

In the meantime life goes on like 'normal' here. The snow is gone and temperatures are up a little, but instead it is raining cats and dogs pretty much the whole time.
Everything around us is dripping wet and soggy, it's dark and gloomy most of the time and I'm having the lights, and the heaters, on all day!
I'm keeping myself entertained with watching 'my' flock:

                      

Some of the finches have finally discovered the thistle seeds in this little feeder!
And every now and than the King-of-the-suet-feeder, aka a Northern Flicker, comes along to hack big chunks out of the suet ..

                                       

                                 He's making a big mess, and is a bully, but a strikingly handsome one!

During the snow we also had another interesting visitor:

    

He/she, a coyote by the way, was rather small and very scruffy looking, and made several passes through the orchard over the day. I think he was hungry ..

I'm still not doing any walking because my heel/foot is still hurting like the dickens. I've tried several different insoles and I should be doing a variation of stretching exercises, which I keep forgetting, and of course I don't see much improvement at all.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to work on it harder and get that resolved this year so .. we'll see.
Fortunately I have more hobbies than is good for me so I'm never bored, but I do love my walks and miss being outside something terribly.
Oh well, patience dear Watson ..

Talking about patience .. I finally finished my 'crazy elves' puzzle and am working on my Christmas one. I know, a little late but that one's actually  almost finished also, after which I'll move on to the one of the New Year's party ... I'm on a roll!
I've also dusted off my table loom, which I bought way back when in 2004 in a Texas thrift store and have not ever done anything with .. yeah, one of those buys ..
But, it's another one of my New Year's resolutions to finally set the thing up and do something with it.
So here goes nothing: 

 

At the moment I'm studying two you-tube videos on how to wind a warp, since that has to happen first even before you get to actually 'dressing' of your loom.

                                      

                                          

  

The lady who's explaining everything has a very strong New Zealand accent (where this brand of a loom, Ashford, is made), half the time even closed captioning cannot come up with the correct subtitles, and besides that it's sounding extremely complicated so .. we'll see how it goes.

New Year's resolutions are not my (any-one's?) strongest suit to begin with ..