little basin

A piece a Week – Thanksgiving Camping at Little Basin State Park

| poppypeach
Finally a week to relax and chill out – I mean literally! It was a two day week of school which was just lovely and the hubby and I got to go and see The Hunger Games – Mockingjay part 2 which I loved! As it the trilogy was my favorite read over the summer. With the kids out from school from Wednesday it was time to just catch up on stuff and get ready for our visit to our friends place in Oakland for Thanksgiving. I made yummy key lime pies for dessert and we had a veggie feast of Quorn and amazing sides including a sweet potato mash bake with candied pecans – yum! 
After our feast we had the leftovers ready for our weekend getaway of camping at Little Basin State Park – I booked the cabins in summer when we visited over June this year when it was nice and warm and I thought from our thanksgiving weekend at Napa last year with the rain it would be full of banana slugs. Unfortunately, this year we were like frozen popsicles due to super cold temperatures – the cabins are heated but with a heater that sits atop the ceiling it is quite inefficient!! As it turns out you can talk to the front office about getting a space heater for your cabin as they know! 
On our arrival the kids found the naturalist from the WOLF (Web of Life Field) School and we went searching for newts, slugs and fish in the creek – there was nothing to be found, the creek was dry and the weather was super cold! Not even a banana slug in sight, though we did find a lot of cool looking fungi. 
The kids with Sunshine the Naturalist from the WOLF school
The dark of night arrived just after 5pm and the weather was super cold by then and we had to get that extra layer of warmth on – meaning put on the thermals and add that extra knitted layer of cashmere plus another wool layer to keep the cold out. The fire was amazing but as soon as we hit the cabin it was a night of chills even in our sleeping bag and underneath a blanket – oh that space heater would have been amazing!!
Kids enjoying the fire at night after their one pot mac and cheese straight out of the Annie’s box

The next day after thawing out by the fire and having a very long breakfast and sleep in due to the super cold morning. Everyone stayed tucked away in our sleeping bags until one of the boys started a fire for breakfast. It was so icy cold and after breakfast we were ready for a short hike through the forest to get the blood flowing and some exercise.

From little trees big trees grow!

Playing with the equipment before the hike

Little berries on moss found on the hike

The morning we were leaving the overnight low was around -1 degrees C (30F) and the kids had found some frost on the ground which was so beautiful and very difficult to capture with a camera.

Their first discovery of frost on the weeds

A frosty stick 

Frosty stars in the grass

A frosty clover

Heading back for my breakfast of eggs in holes hot off a iron skillet on the fire I found some beautiful redwoods and acorns on the way back to the cabin. I always appreciate the view of the sunshine beaming through a grove of redwood trees.

Beautiful sunshine keep me warm!

An acorn family

Our cabin number 9 was a perfect hideaway

Thanks to some neighbors leaving on the Saturday who donated us some big logs of wood for our fire we were warm as toast for Saturday evening and Sunday morning it was pancakes on the grill by request of the kids.

Pancakes on the iron skillets – perfect!

Close up of the warmth of the fire, just toasty

Finally it was time to check out of camping and boy we were ready to head on home to our cozy houses and have a shower!

The gang outside our cabin ready to head on home!!

A piece a Week – Waves Handspun Wool Scarf

| poppypeach
My sister found me this gorgeous handspun yarn in Maleny, Australia for Christmas from a local craft guild and I finally found a pattern to make with it – an easy lace 13 row pattern repeat. The Waves of the Atlantic pattern I found on Ravelry was perfect for the weight of the yarn and the color is just beautiful. It is yellow with tiny specks of pink spun through which makes me very happy! I love when the yarn and the pattern fit just right and sometimes it takes more time to make that happen which can be well worth the tries and fails.

Beautiful detail of this sunshine yarn

The scarf being blocked – the drape will be so soft with the lightness of the yarn

Over the weekend we went on our second camping trip for the summer – this time to Little Basin. I was dreading the drive as I thought it was via Big Basin. As it turned out the drive is up through Boulder Creek and we avoid the 9 miles of squirrelly road that made my son throw up in the car last time we visited Big Basin for a hike. The drive was 1 hour and 30 minutes away from our house and it was the usual drive through the redwood and oak forests to get there. Back in the day Little Basin used to be used by Hewlett Packard for their employees until the land was sold to the Peninsula Open Space Trust and Sempervirens Fund and now it is park of Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the California State Parks (amazing) system!! This campground was open to the public in 2011 and is perfect for families. We arrived on the Saturday morning enjoyed lunch at our campground surrounded by redwood trees with our cabin neighbors close by. Still when night came the stars were beautiful as the open meadow was steps away from our campsite and we could look up and see the clear night. We enjoyed this campground so much we have booked the cabins for a Thanksgiving getaway – hopefully we will get to see some banana slugs in the rain, bring on some rain!! 

Tom Riddle the Gopher snake in his burial ground after he got run over by a car

The kids had such a fun time with Kaki the ranger on duty from the WOLF school. The WOLF (Web of Life Field) school is open to kids aged 11-13 for a sleepover for a week in the redwoods to learn all about life and science – in a couple of years our kids will get a chance to join in the fun. We met Kaki as we were enquiring about the Junior Ranger program and the next thing we were invited to help build a bug box for the afternoons kids camp program called Sense-o-Rama. The bug box was fun and we got an opportunity to learn about our ranger Kaki. Everything the kids were doing around camp centered around wanting to go back to Kaki to ask her questions about the goings on. Missy found a snake in the morning, as the kids were wandering around the campground while we were packing up and wanted to have a funeral for it. Next thing they had Kaki by their side with reference books identifying this road kill snake. It made for an interesting lesson on this little guy. The night before at the campfire the kids were making Ranger Apples, that is roasted apples on a stick that taste like a hot apple pie without the pastry – yum!

The kids with Kaki their hero – when can we see Kaki again??

We had to go for a hike before we left Little Basin and it seemed like we were up for it until we started and everyone was all a bit out of breath by the time we conquered the elevation of the first hill. I think a better breakfast of a smoothie and some fruit would have been helpful rather than the s’mores the kids had!!

Wandering the forest after our elevation climb

Just outside our campground this redwood stretching out it’s branches

Up up high in the sky a family circle or fairy ring of redwood trees surrounding it’s long gone great grandfather tree
The workshop that I was supposed to have next week is moving to the end of July due to hiccups at the library and my lack of time with being “on” for the school holidays and being mama taxi and the like with the kids. Lucky, I can make time to write this while the kids play with Legos or go bike riding around the trees outside. This is another sample for the video I am making as it has French seams on the inside. I will post that sometime but it is definitely a work in progress until I can find some quiet time in the house to record the sound!! 
Another sample for the library workshop