I Like #267

 Well I missed a week again last week, but I'm here now so I guess that's going to have to be good enough!  Luckily this was a week with many things to like.  I had to go to Santa Fe and pick up all my quilts that had been exhibiting at the New Mexico State Capitol all summer.  The pickup was Monday morning at 8, so I decided to drive out Friday afternoon and meet my parents for a weekend of camping and hiking in northern New Mexico.  

I grew up in southern New Mexico, but in the mountains and this weekend felt like a return to "home" for me.  LeeAnna's prompt for this week was a place you always go in the summer.  Though I don't always go to the Santa Fe area, I do try to get home to the New Mexico mountains every summer so this seemed to fit in perfectly.  

We camped in my parents' truck camper with their two pups at Cochiti Lake campground.  It was lovely with great views.  

My parents' pups didn't hike with us (they weren't allowed at either of the National Monuments we visited) but they're great campers and were excited to go for a walk around the campground when we got back from our excursions.

Saturday was overcast and drizzly, so it was a perfect day to do a nice walk through Petroglyph National Monument, the trail is really exposed so it was nice not to be in the baking sun.  The petroglyphs were fantastic.

On Saturday afternoon Mom and I went to MeowWolf in Santa Fe.  It was this crazy creative psychedelic immersive art experience.  I don't really know how to explain it but it was very fun and very colorful.  There were over 70 rooms to explore, but I only wound up getting pictures of a few. 

Then on Sunday we went up to visit Bandelier National Monument.  I'd never been there before and it was just gorgeous.  The whole canyon was exquisite. The rock is all volcanic tuff, and filled with eroded holes.  In some places the Ancestral Puebloans who built their cliff dwellings there enlarged the natural holes in the rocks into room sized openings.  It was beautiful and sunny and fascinating to see the ruins.  I hope to go back when we have more time to explore.  You don't get anymore New Mexico than this.

Finally on the way home on Monday, I made one more outdoors stop at Pecos National Historic Park and took a walk around the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo.  It was another interesting site, and a critical one for the archeological dating system that is used for the development of Native American pottery.

I was very sorry to have to leave, but the wonderful outside weekend with my parents was so wonderful and restorative.  Definitely the break I needed.

Of course I missed my pups so I was also happy to get home to them and I think they were excited to have me back too.

I hope you had things to like this week! Click over to LeeAnna's for more positivity!

I like #266

 It's been a rough few days here, but very excitingly this morning started with a something definitely wonderful to like!  I got to have breakfast with my dear friend Linda and catch up with her.  Such a privilege and always so restoring.  Really just what I needed this week.  Yay for long-term forever friends!!!

Our prompt from LeeAnna this week is what sunscreen do you like!  I'm sorry to say that I forgot to take a picture of my sunscreen before I left the house and I can't even remember what brand it is, so I'll just say I like sunscreen in general and leave it at that.  Counterintuitively, even though it's summer, I haven't been sunscreening much lately because it's just been too hot to be outside.  

Other things to like this week though:

I finished a long-term knitting project I've been working on.  This is the Ribosome sweater, and I knit it using mostly alpaca yarn my friend Melody and I dyed as well as that skein of hand dyed teal wool.  I loved all the skeins of yarn together but I didn't really have enough of any of them to put them together in a well-balanced way, and I'm very thrilled with the way it came out.  I like the cabling pattern, but I don't care for the color blocking at all (not the fault of the pattern, all me).  In addition it's too big (lots of extra width in the yoke and body) and the sleeves fit strangely because of the depth of the yoke.  Anyway, I'd been knitting on it forever and was so tired of it I just wanted to finish it.  And finishing it is a positive!  It's extremely dense and warm, so I'm obviously not going to wear it now.  I'll wear it in the winter and maybe it will grow on me.

The pups are all good- giving me lots of comfort and snuggles.  They're not too helpful when it comes to knitting, but how can you turn down a dog snuggle!

After weeks of over 100 degree days, we had a short break with two days of rain.  It perked up the flowers nicely, though now we're back to dry and up in the 100s again, so the heat continues.

Cash and Brett came over and I got some really good Cash snuggles. His fur is longer than my pups' so there's quite a bit more up-the-nose.

I hope there are things to like in your week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more goodness!