One thing I’m been meaning to do is update my web site – making it cleaner & easier to use/navigate. And yes of course, buy my patterns. Today I got it done – yeah!

I’m happy with how everything looks and works well together – I think you will be too. Would love for you to visit – Desert Rose Designs.

Getting everything just so took most of today so it’s a short post and off to do some knitting. Hope you are enjoying the Labor Day Holiday

Cheers! Jean

Yeah – it’s Friday! I am so glad we’ve made it to the end of the week and today is beginning much better than the rest of the week has. For starters, the dogs managed to go outside this morning and come back in without needed yet another SKUNK bath – the bath count remains at six. Yep, you heard me – we’ve had to give three of our dogs a total of six baths this week because they can’t seem to understand that you don’t mess with SKUNKS. DH has been doing his best to get rid of the SKUNKS who have been most uncooperative in this effort. They seem to enjoy hanging about our barn, which only houses motorized things, no animals and therefore no food for the SKUNKS to get into. I really, really, really dislike SKUNKS.

And we’re heading into a three day weekend – yeah a “free” day to do something fun. There is an arts fair in Manitou Springs I want to go to and a Concours de Elegance at the Broadmoor and the farmer’s market in Old Colorado – humm, where to go?

I don’t have any new pictures of completed knitting projects for you today, although I’ve been getting some knitting done. My “to be published” project is coming along nicely. I am taking time to make sure this one is as perfect as I can make it before sending it off to the publisher. Not that I don’t always make sure any of my work is the best it can be, it’s just that this one has to be absolutely perfect in every way. The publisher gave me a generous deadline so I am making good use of that time. Two new submissions also went off to another publisher – if even just one is accepted I’ve be in seventh heaven. More ideas have been sketched and initial notes made for new designs, some I’ll submit and others will be self published.

Knitting for the home front has been the socks for DH, not quite done; a sweater for Bezer since nothing fits him anymore, the weather over the UTE Cup weekend gave me a heads up fall & winter will be here before we know it and Bezer needs at least one sweater to start with; another puppy sweater for a friend is just about done and I’m hoping to get it sent off next week; and I’ll be starting this year’s RMTA project next month – have the yarn and pattern sketched – just need to make my chart.

Speaking of RMTA, I agreed to take over maintaining the club’s web page so the membership secretary job is open for volunteers. This is pretty exciting since, will some help, we’re looking at redoing the web site from the ground up and I’ll be working with open source CMS for the first time. I love learning.

And for those of you who enjoy my list of blogs to read – I’ve got a new one. The WritingCoach, who is a friend of mine and I’m really glad she’s started a blog. She’s one very wise person, I’ve learned tons from her -  you will too.

I’ll end on that note today – Hope you all have a safe & great Labor Day Holiday!

Cheers! Jean

It rained, and rained, and rained, and hailed, and thundered, and rained some more. This past weekend was the wettest UTE Cup I’ve been too! Our motorcycle club – RMTA – held the 38th Annual UTE Cup at Rainbow Trail/Hayden Creek on Aug 16 & 17th. I think “Rainbow Trail” is a really appropriate name for the area – you know, rainbows come after the rain. Anyhow, as usual I was doing signup and scoring with some other regular helpers. Sign up opened on Friday afternoon and after a couple of hours, in the rain, and only a few folks signing up, we moved sign up to our trailer about 3 miles down the road in Cutty’s Resort Campground. Had more people sign up there than on site. BTW, I wasn’t impressed with Cutty’s – they seemed to be less friendly than the last time we stayed there.

Come Saturday morning we prepared for a wet event. All day long it rained and hailed off and on. We started getting rivers of water in the pits and through the scoring “tent” – at least we did have an EasyUp. Riders brought in score cards that were so wet we couldn’t write the scores on them. We ran out of paper towels and dry cloth towels to wipe the cards with. It rained so much we couldn’t write the scores on the score boards. DH and I spent Saturday evening drying cards with my hair dryer (yes – I antied up for full hookups & am glad I did). We ended up listing all the riders with their scores on paper instead. The laminated, weather proof score cards were coming apart. And then it stormed hard between 10 pm and about 3 am making sleeping impossible in an aluminum skinned trailer.

Sunday – repeat of Saturday. One of our scoring crew, Evelyn, took the scoreboards back to her rig to dry them with a hairdryer – she keep popping fuses but did get the boards dry enough to write on. By the end of the weekend we had moved our scoring EasyUp three times to try to get out of the “rivers”. We did get through it all, most riders finished and awards were presented at the end of Sunday’s ride. Congrats to Bailey, winner of this year’s UTE Cup and a local up & coming rider. Watch for him on the national scene.

I had taken a couple of knitting projects with me thinking that I could work on them during our “slow” times – but no, it never stopped raining enough to be knitting outside. And evenings were spent trying to get things dried out for the next day.

What was good about this event – well, I got to ride my birthday present new “bike”, a Honda Ruckus, between the pits & our trailer. Ok yes, it’s only 49 ccs but it’s fun, and cute, and has a place under the seat to carry things. Lots of people were having fun taking it for a spin, even in the rain. We got to see some friends we haven’t seen for a long time since they moved out of state. Got to see other friends we only get to see at the UTE Cup or national events. We learned that the some forest service folks aren’t so bad – they helped us build a campfire on Saturday (hope no one is in trouble over that). I think they felt sorry for us.

Now we’ve got to get the trailer dry – with all the rain and moisture from clothes we had condensate dripping off vent & window frames. Full hook ups don’t include propane to run your heater so you’ve only got the trailer tanks which will empty pretty quick if you run the heater on high all the time. There are clothes & gear to get the mud out of, clean out the trailer, get the event results into Excel and posted on the club’s web site and get back to normal schedules. And get back to my knitting~

Cheers! Jean