Sharry Miller

Fielding Lake in Summer

Last January, we traveled to the Fielding Lake State Recreation Area with friends for a weekend of snowmachining and camaraderie. It was cold. Very cold. I came home and immediately made reservations for the middle of summer. After many months of waiting, the last weekend in July finally rolled around and I got to go back, this time with my daughter, Rowan, and mother-in-law, Carol. As I drove down the gravel road we'd snowmachined in... Read more →

Urchin Rock Collection

It all started innocently enough. A crochet hook wielded in pursuit of novelty. One rock covered with fuzzy dog hair and silk yarn. Now they're taking over. When Rowan came home from Girl Scouts camp early last week, she brought with her a bag of cotton crochet thread and hooks generously given by my mom. I couldn't resist. The yarn, hooks, and rocks were all upstairs; the pattern was way down in my studio. No... Read more →

Rhubarb Friendship Sauce

It was a sauce that couldn't have been made without friendship. The first friendship piece was obvious: Wendy and I decided a couple of weeks ago we'd get together to make rhubarb sauce. To ease the process, she brought a delicious bottle of Three Blind Moose chardonnay. It's a true friend indeed who provides the wine. The primary ingredient in rhubarb sauce is, of course, rhubarb. It is here that friends played the most important... Read more →

Get Your Paint On

I thoroughly enjoyed having Thane's cousin, Bruce, and two of his sons here for a visit all this last week, but I have to admit it's good to have my house back to myself so I can get on with things that need to be got to. Happily, many of those things are fun! One project I've been putting off involves playing with paint. I signed up a few weeks ago for an on-line acrylic... Read more →

Thompson Pass Supper

I just couldn't do it. I'd been telling everyone who asked that I was intending to leave this bright yellow blessing string I got at a temple in Bhutan under a cairn in Thompson Pass, but when Rowan and I went up there yesterday evening for a hike, I just couldn't bring myself to take it off and leave it behind. I've been wearing it nonstop for three months; apparently it's become a part of... Read more →

Laugh at Yourself

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can. - Elsa Maxwell (1883 - 1963) I just read this quote in Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet, a humorous memoir about sheep farming by Catherine Friend. As I have been trying to do more often when I read a statement that's been quoted in a book unrelated to the quotee, I did an internet search on Elsa Maxwell to find... Read more →

Field Sketching in the Wrangells

My eyes pop wide open. Snuggled deep in my down sleeping bag at 2:00 in the morning, I was working very hard to ignore the pleadings of my full bladder. What was that?! I heard a strange snuffly snorting. There it was again. Crap, it sounded like it could be a bear. I unzipped my tent door and rain fly thinking that if it were indeed a bear repeatedly snorting snuffly, I'd try to scare... Read more →

First Crocheted Urchin

Mom said she'd send home some cotton yarn with Rowan next week, but I just couldn't wait to crochet a cover for a rock. You know, I told you about it yesterday. The idea is that a nice round rock is supposed to be reminiscent of an urchin when you're finished. Mine didn't quite turn out that way. I wandered downstairs to my studio earlier to plunder my yarn stash; with that much yarn I... Read more →

Strange in the Rain

Sometimes, I worry that I'm becoming a bit too strange. I went for a walk in the pouring rain at lunch today (mostly because I couldn't take being indoors anymore) to Dock Point beach. Besides getting some fresh air, my goal was to gather some round rocks for a project I have in mind. I just needed one or two round stones about 2 inches in diameter so that I could crochet covers for them... Read more →

Jim Creek Ride

"God, we are so lame!" I said as Mandy pushed her bike up behind me. She just laughed and nodded. We'd just pushed our mountain bikes past another mud hole. Since we'd walked around all of the mud holes we couldn't ride around, so far we had walked as much as we'd ridden. Mandy riding past a bit of mud We had good reason to be hesitant. The mud was very slippery, and between my... Read more →