Mushroom hunting trip

We went up to the arboretum to look for mushrooms with the Jarviks. We knew it probably wouldn’t be a good haul, because the summer was so dry and most of the shroomies would just be hiding down in the dirt still. We did find a few boletes that we could take home and devour, and a few others that were interesting academically. The kids had a great time running around like maniacs, working off the sugar rush from the last of the Halloween candy.

Sadly, I didn’t get any good shots of Rav. :-/

Tanya said “nobody bothered” checking to see if these were edible because they were so tiny. We found a lot of them, though!

Chris and I both thought this said “Hex aquifolium” but it says “Ilex”! Bad kerning! Also, Chris thought it was cool that it was called ’Wil-Chris’.

At first C wanted all the children to sit spread out while they ate their candy, then he decided that everyone should sit together and share.

No, I don’t think C cared what the girls were doing… he just wanted some space. Then Big Boss Ruby decided that everyone should sit separately, so they did. (Of course, once C saw this, he wanted to sit next to Apl.)

That guy knows some interesting stuff!

This one is great at the full size; click it!

Love it!

I particularly like this one.

I always feel stupidly self-conscious when modelling my knitted items… doesn’t help when Chris says “Don’t do that thing you do when I try to take your picture!”

But… doesn’t it sort of sound helpful, on the surface?

No??

He’s talking about your adorable dimples.

My stylist should have pointed out that the twist on my hat was twisting wonky! It’s hard to be the model and the stylist.

Johannes gave me this fabulous yarn last time he was here, thank you so much! I made Sideways Grande Cloche from Boutique Knits. I like it a lot! It’s knit sideways, as the name implies, with the last few inches knit on a smaller needle to draw the fabric in. This makes the hat comfortably slouchy in the back, but pulling it up off the face. Brilliant! The “cable” is just two stips wrapped around each other and sewn down. The book says 3 twists, and I thought I did 3, but it looks different than the book. I guess I count my twists differently. I should have given mine an extra twist because it doesn’t seem quite firm enough (it occassionally comes untwisted slightly).

All in all, a fast satisfying knit!

Totoro, of course.

Every once in a while, I take a photo of Ruby, and only one word comes to mind:

“nerdlet”

It even seemed like they had gills on top!

There were a ton of these in a big circle around several of the trees in this one area. Thousands!