Can Blocking Save This Project?

What happened? I've never had a knitting project come out so misshapen. I followed the directions carefully and my stitches are usually very even. I have ripped this project back twice already and it looks like I may have to do it again. The pattern is from Rowan Magazine No. 47 and the yarn is pure silk Mandalay by Reynolds. The name of the pattern? Relax. Hmmm... Rowan's yarn for this project is only 70% silk and 30% cotton. It's called Summer Tweed. Could the type of yarn have something to do with it? I read on the Internet that silk blocks well, but I think I would rather start again with fresh yarn.

This little shrug knitted up in a flash. It's made from some hand-painted yarn I bought while on vacation in Northern Pennsylvania this summer. It's a mohair bouclé called Forever Annie. (Love the name.) The company is called Handmade in the Hills and is owned by Deb Schildt. Check out her website. She has some very interesting stuff. The pattern, Shrug This, came from the book, One Skein Wonders, by Judith Durant.

Last but not least, here is the finished Bam Boo Tank from CEY's Make it Modern. It was done in a hand-painted yarn also called Ambrosia by Knit One Crochet Too. And the name suits it perfectly. At 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere, it is heavenly soft—one of the nicest yarns I have worked with. I have one hank left so I will have to search for a pattern for it. Maybe something for Baby M.

Lenticular Clouds

Some time ago, Yvetta sent me an email of photos of lenticular clouds over Mt. Ranier. That was the first I had ever heard of such clouds. But last month when my son, his family, and I were in the Sierras for a vacation, we were lucky to see these clouds from our condo. They were very strange and very beautiful. They seemed almost stationary and I took several photos as the evening progressed and the sun set.



Lenticular clouds are usually formed at high altitudes over mountains. The name lenticular comes from the lens shape these clouds sometimes take. In fact, many have been mistaken for UFOs. But they also frequently form layers such as these due to some very complicated wind patterns.

These clouds are named "lenticular" because they are lens shaped. Strong wind passing over a high mountain produces standing waves in the air above and somewhat downwind of the mountain. If the air is moist, changing pressure (compression followed by decompression) in these waves results in condensation making the shape of these standing waves visible. Their formal name is: "altocumulus standing lenticularis" meaning a high heap of lens shaped clouds formed by a standing wave. Pilots of powered planes and pilots of sail planes (gliders) are particularly interested in "lennies" as they are not only associated with high wind but also vertical wind. They are usually avoided by power plane pilots because of the turbulence but are sought by glider pilots for the rapid vertical lift they give. Some physicists, including the author, think that standing waves are the basic building block of matter and thus the universe. Hence my fascination with lenticular clouds as they give me a visual demonstration of how matter is formed.
D. Mayo, at Lake Ohau, NZ.

I've always been intrigued by standing waves because violin strings vibrate in standing waves. If you Google "lenticular clouds," you can find some strikingly beautiful photos such as those here, here, and here.

Amazing Monarchs

My hairdresser is a great guy. He comes to all my concerts and critiques my hair but never the music. The music is always good, he says. He was the one who put the idea of going back to Morro Bay into my head. A few months ago he was planning a trip there as it is one place he has never been and as I talked about all the neat things to see and do, I got an urge to go back myself. But he was the one who told me about the Monarch Preserve at Pismo Beach.

There are resting places for over-wintering Monarch butterflies all along the coast of California. These Monarchs have migrated here from places west of the Rockies, while Monarchs from east of the Rockies overwinter in Mexico. (Here's a map for the fall migration and another for the spring.) They like to cluster in the tall trees particularly the eucalyptus even though that is not a native to California. They will cluster in pine and cypress trees as well. The Monarchs that overwinter live about 6 months, while later generations of the spring and summer will only last 2 to 6 weeks.

I checked out Monarch preserves on the web and found a few others that would be along my route and one right at Morro Bay in Morro Bay State Park. So my first stop heading north was at the Elwood Butterfly Grove just north of Santa Barbara. It turned out to be a lovely place for a short hike and lunch, but except for a few butterflies flitting about way up there, I didn't find any clusters. I later learned that there is one particular tree that they like at Elwood, and there was no sign pointing out which one it was, and no knowledgeable docent to help me find it. I don't think at that point that I knew what to look for anyway.

I tried again at Morro Bay State Park where I was told the butterflies like to cluster around campgrounds number 136 to 140. There is a lovely grove of eucalyptus and other tall trees at that end of the campground and I did finally find two small clusters of butterflies near the trash cans!

My last chance to find the type of clusters I had envisioned was to stop at Pismo Beach on my way home. At last I was rewarded. Not only were there thousands of butterflies hanging from the trees, but as the sun warmed up the air, they started to open up, flit about, and even mate. The count, however, is down from previous years. As of December 31st, they have only 11,400 when in previous years they have had as many as 100,000 and more. I asked one of the docents how they count them and it turns out it is a fairly accurate number. They capture a whole cluster in a net and go through and count the butterflies in the net one by one (and even tag them!) then multiply the total number of butterflies by how many other clusters they see.


Here is a male butterfly. You can tell by the narrow black veins on his hindwing and the black "scent gland" on the hindwing. It is unknown what this gland is used for in a Monarch.


This is the female. Her veins are broader. Below are two butterflies starting to mate. When he finds a female that he likes, the male will chase her down to the ground where they will toss and turn until he has her firmly attached to himself. You have to be careful where you walk in a Monarch grove!

He then flies up into the trees with the female hanging from him upside down. It is in the trees that the final act actually takes place. The female's job then is to go off and find some milkweed on which to lay her eggs.

Host plants in the milkweed family are essential to the developing larva; without it, they would not survive. However, there are many species of milkweed, and monarchs can eat most of them. They also eat a plant that is not called milkweed, but is in the same family: Cynanchum laeve, or sand vine.

Among the reasons given for the low counts in recent years are the ongoing drought conditions in the west and the loss of milkweed habitat. The Pismo Beach website has a very informative Q&A page that covers most of the basics of the life of these butterflies.

Here is a pair just starting to take off for the trees. Now for the clusters!

Can you count them?

Tidepools at Montana de Oro

The very high surf and tides of the morning were coupled with very low, slightly negative tides in the afternoon during my recent trip to the Morro Bay area. How lucky can you get? So on the second day of hiking at Montana de Oro State Park, I climbed down the steps into Corallina Cove to check out the tidepools. It was weird looking back towards the cliffs from the beach because all of it had been underwater in the morning.

Walking out on these rocks was not easy. The rocks formed ridges and on top were wet seaweed, aggregating anemones, and tar, all of which were very slippery. The marine animals tended to embed themselves in the ridges, too, making photographs difficult.

True to its name, the cove had an abundance of coralline algae. There was also an abundance of black turban snails. In fact, there was a general abundance of sea life. Everywhere you looked, there was something.

All of my old friends from Abalone Cove were there including the aforementioned aggregating anemones, ochre sea stars, and sea urchins. At first, I thought there were no urchins but when I took a closer look at my photos, I saw them hiding deep in the crevices of the rocks. Perhaps they were hiding from the sea otters which now range along the California coast from San Francisco to Santa Barbara County. This large anemone is a giant green anemone (Anthopleura xanthogrammica) that lives in the cooler waters of Central and Northern California. It does not have the radial lines on the center disk that the starburst anemone does.

I did find one bat star all by itself close to the shoreline. There were probably others, hiding.

For most of the afternoon, I was by myself although several small groups of people came and went while I was there. Many birds joined me as well and they came quite close to me. (Except for the photo of the Oystercatcher which is a smaller bird, none of these photos has been cropped.) They seemed to know that I couldn't move very fast on those rocks and they were hungry. They probably had been waiting for low tide all day and I was just an inconvenience. Above is one of several Snowy Egrets that came to feed.

This one Great Egret I had found in the morning clinging for dear life to a rock when the surf was crashing all around it. Later it was up on the mesa searching for something to eat in the grass. And finally, here it was down on the rocks at low tide. This is probably the real reason it hung around the shore.

A few other birds showed up that we do not often see in Southern California. One was this Glaucous-winged Gull and another was the Black Oystercatcher below. Here's a fascinating photograph of the Western, Thayer's, and Glaucous-winged Gulls clearly showing the differences between them. In fact, this site has an amazing number of photos showing gulls in their various phases (it takes the larger gulls four years to mature and every year they look different making identification very difficult).

The Oystercatchers were very noisy, making screeching sounds as they flew. That fluorescent red-orange bill and eye is unmistakable.

Our local Abalone Cove will be having negative tides through February. Bad Mom, Good Mom has an excellent post giving the dates and times. Here are the Los Angeles tide tables for all of 2010.

Montana de Oro State Park

Time for some pretty pictures. Two weeks ago I was walking the Bluff Trail at Montana de Oro State Park. It was an absolutely glorious day! Even the locals that I met on the trail were remarking about how beautiful it was, mostly because of the very high surf. And to think that this was one of the parks that our governor wanted to close! Luckily, they found it would cost more to close it than to keep it open. I might mention that the cost for my day at the park was $0. Not even a parking fee.

I had been to the Morro Bay area many times but not since my husband died. I wanted to treat myself for my birthday, and I wanted to test out and learn to use all the new camera equipment I have bought. So I settled on Morro Bay. (It's warmer than the Sierras in December!) As many times as we had been to Morro Bay, however, we had never taken the time to visit Montana de Oro which is just south of the bay. These photos were taken on my first visit to the park. I lucked out! I don't know if I will ever see it like this again.

I have to say that the entire California coastline is gorgeous, but the stunning rocky shores don't really start until you get north of Lompoc and the Nipomo Dunes. I left the people in the top photo to give you an idea of the scale. It turns out that this couple are professional photographers and they were taking video footage of the waves. That sign to the left of them says, "Danger Keep Back," because all along the bluff, the land was falling into the ocean. I thought they were nuts!

And the surf was spectacular! I couldn't take enough pictures (ask my family).

I found some of the same rock formations that I have seen at Abalone Cove. It's interesting that the rocks break off in squares and then get edged with other colors. I wish I knew more about the geology of the coastline.

There was just one cove after another with the rocky cliffs like fingers reaching out into the ocean. The sea foam was so great that in the narrow cove below, the foam looked like whipped cream.

Just one more...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Forest Fire Control

We did a lot of other things while at the Grand Canyon besides staring into the great abyss and wondering how it could possibly have gotten there. One day we decided to get off the beaten track and drove up a dirt road stopping to take pictures of wildflowers along the way. Soon we noticed that controlled burns were taking place along this road.


There were small fires everywhere but no sign of the workmen who started them and we wondered how they could keep the flames from getting out of hand. Then we noticed that they were burning neat little circles under every tree, essentially eliminating the brush under the trees that might cause the whole tree to burn if there were a large fire.


Finally we came upon this structure called Grandview Lookout. It's a fire tower. We were invited to "come on up" as long as there were only four people in our party. Well, my DIL has a fear of heights and so she declined and I wasn't too sure myself that I wanted to climb up this thing. It had been very windy during our entire stay at the canyon and this day was no exception. But at my son's urging, I decided to go ahead and do it, telling myself to look up, not down. Nick joined us.


We climbed very slowly and carefully. At the top, we went through a trap door into a small square room where every inch of space had been used to store maps and equipment, even the ceiling. Here we met the volunteer who mans the tower eight to ten hours a day for six months of the year, being spelled only once in awhile by his wife. His job is to keep an eye out for forest fires and to let the workmen on the ground know if any of their controlled burns are getting "hot." The small fires that had been started on purpose were burning with a white smoke. Black smoke would indicate that the fire had too much fuel and was burning too fast.

The fire in the photo below, which we could easily see from the tower, had been started by a lightning strike, but was now under control. The black smoke prompted the volunteer to call the ground crew with his radio telephone and warn them. He said that most of the time they reply back that they know all about it and everything is alright.



He then showed us this Osborne Fire Finder which he uses to pinpoint the location of a fire for the ground crew. It occupied the center of the room and took up most of the space.


After admiring the view in all directions (the top of the tower is at 7611 ft.), we thanked the volunteer for the "tour" and climbed back down just as slowly as we went up. The volunteer says he has gotten used to the climb but when there is a lightning storm nearby, he flies down!

More on Condors

Once upon a time, there were three condors sitting on a ledge. The lower condor is No. 280, a female hatched on May 3, 2002 and released at the Vermilion Cliffs on November 29, 2003. The bird on the upper left is a young bird, perhaps about one year old and is not tagged. You can tell it is young by its black head. To the right of the baby is No. 123, a male and an old and venerable member of the Arizona flock, hatched on May 20, 1995 and released on May 26 1997. They don't know for sure yet, but they suspect condors may live to be 70 years old.

Is this a family gathering? At one point the adults did seem to be showing the young bird how to spread his wings to warm them in the setting sun. Condors also spread their wings like this to straighten out the feathers which may have gotten bent out of shape from the air pressure during the day's flying.

The ledge they are sunning themselves on at the end of the day is down below a very busy viewing spot called Lookout Studio near Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon. At first, the humans are totally unaware of the gathering below them.

Along came A6, a juvenile perhaps about four or five years old. You can tell this is a juvenile because although the head has some pinkish color to it, it is mottled and not as bright as the adults. (I couldn't find the statistics on A6.)

When A6 lands on the same ledge as the trio, 280 decides to investigate the newcomer and to put him in his place. Condors have a keen sense of hierarchy, adults are dominant over juveniles, and generally, adult males are dominant over adult females. In this photo, you can see 280's bright red crop below her neck which bulges with the food she has eaten. You can also easily see the antennae of her transmitters attached over the number tags on her wings. Someday, it is hoped, the birds will not have to wear these tags and be so closely watched and will all be able to fly free and unencumbered. (They only show the last two digits of her number on the tags to keep them from being too large.)

She lets her wing brush up against A6 as a warning, not as an attack.

They sit and stare at each other for a long time. 280 averts her head to prevent A6 from being able to peck at her.

Finally, A6 gets the message, "This is my ledge. Go find another spot to roost tonight," and takes off for a nearby treetop. Later 123 and the baby join A6 in the trees and 280 is left with the ledge all to herself.

Condors!

I'm a cruel mother. I actually woke my son up at 5:00 am so we could go out into the 35 degree weather to watch this condor sleep at the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon with the hopes that eventually we would see it take off. A man had alerted us to the condor the night before and I wanted to see if it was still there the next morning and watch it fly. We knew it was a condor mainly because of the number tag on its wing. All the adult condors that have been re-introduced to the wild wear these tags along with a radio transmitter.

The story of the California Condor's brush with extinction (down to 22 birds in the wild in 1982) and the truly heroic efforts by biologists and conservationists to capture these birds, and then not only return them to the wild but to encourage them to breed in the wild again is amazing. Sophie Osborn, a former Field Manager for the Arizona Restoration Project, has written a wonderfully inspiring book on the subject, Condors in Canyon Country, which focuses on the birds in Arizona. I hadn't known that the Grand Canyon was a release sight (actually it's the Vermilion Cliffs to the north of the Canyon) and was excited to hear that the condors were flying free over the Canyon again. I had never expected to see one of these rare birds in my lifetime but by the end of our trip, we had observed five of them, including two young birds.

Condors live a slow, relaxed life. They take 6 months to fledge and 5 to 6 years to become adults. Like ravens, they are very intelligent birds and have a lively curiosity. They can see 6 to 8 times better than humans and can magnify things in the center of their vision. But unlike most other birds and because of their slow maturation, the young birds must learn condor ways from their parents. Foraging, etc. is not totally instinctive. This was the problem facing the scientists who wanted to return the birds to the wild. If there were no more birds in the wild who remembered, who would teach the young birds bred in captivity?

This bird, No. 241 (only the 41 is shown on the tag), is a good example. She was hatched on April 13, 2001 at the World Center for Birds of Prey sponsored by the Peregrine Fund, and she was released at the Vermilion Cliffs on May 9, 2002. When she was first released, she was prone to roosting in unsafe locations, not high on a cliff as she is here but down on the talus slope where she was exposed to coyotes during the night. Ms. Osborn and her crew tried to coax the bird to a better location, but she wouldn't move, so volunteers spent the night with her (at a safe distance) to protect her from potential predators. Others were up at the top of the cliffs to keep in radio contact with the volunteers. After a few days, 241 learned to sleep in a safer spot.

While my son and I watched her, we caught the sunrise and saw several other species of birds including Western Bluebirds, a Three-Toed Woodpecker, and a nest of Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers that was very close to the wall at the edge of the cliff. At one point, 241 opened her eyes, looked around and stretched out her enormous wings (wing span is about 9 feet!), and then tucked her head back under a wing and went back to sleep. Later, she again woke up, stretched and decided to catch the sun's rays on her wings to warm them. We thought for sure she would fly now. But no, she sunned the front and then the back of her wings and moved up to a higher perch for more sunning, but did not take off. Still too cold? Condors like other raptors fly on warm thermals coming from the canyon bottom. Condors are known for being able to soar for long periods of time without flapping their wings.

As we danced around trying to keep warm, my son took this photo through my spotting scope. Soon I was so cold, I couldn't hold my binoculars steady and we decided to give up and go in for a hot shower and breakfast. When we came back, she was gone.