This is part two to my 2024 highlights, you might call it the behind-the-scenes to my outdoorsy adventures. It includes time spent with family and friends, along with completed knitting projects that brought joy to my year. Oh, and lots of good food.
Recap posts like this are a great way to appreciate all that a year has brought, even when it seems like there were many downs as well. And to remind me I did more than just hike, bike and such.
If you wonder how I get all the knitting done, you can chalk it up to taking advantage of any sitting time, from work meetings to car rides to binge watching This Is Us. Between time outdoors and knitting, I am keeping my mental health in check!
January
I saw the most amazing musical with my friend, Diane, based on the life and career of Carol King. The music and dancing in Beautiful was stellar, so much so I took my mom with me to see it again the next week. I don’t think many realize how what a prolific songwriter she was before she began to perform herself. She wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits appearing on the Billboard Hot 100 over the latter half of the 20th century! “One Fine Day,” “Up on the Roof,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” are just a few.
My local theatre is just a walk away downtown making it so convenient to see shows like this. If you have a chance to see Beautiful in the new year, I highly encourage you to do so!
I finished a few knitting projects, including a “precipitation” shawl. In 2022 I did a temperature blanket based on the temperature of each day but in 2023 I did a smaller shawl knitting a color for whether each day had any measurable precipitation. The last day was knit December 31st, 2023 but I had all the ends to weave in so technically it was finished in 2024. As you can see, it doesn’t always rain in the Seattle area.
You saw me knitting on this shawl in my highlights post of 2023, I love how this turned out. I bought the yarn which is based on The Wave hike in Arizona and Utah, saving it for just the right project. It came with a pattern but I really wanted one with waves like its namesake.
February
When I visited Elizabeth in February, we took a day trip down to Portland where we made a stop at the Cosmic Bliss ice cream shop. Cosmic Bliss used to be Coconut Bliss and before that Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss. It was one of the first non-dairy, non-soy ice creams available.
They opened a scoop shop in late 2022 and I had looked forward to checking it out since then. It was a destination in itself, open and airy with plenty of seating. And who can argue with gluten free waffle cones?
When I was in Breckenridge I had the wonderful opportunity to meet up with another online blogging friend, Suzie from Suzie Lindau’s Wild Ride. She is an author and podcaster with a home in Breckenridge and when I said I was going to be there, she was able to save a few hours for me the first full day I was there. We spent a few hours chatting in a local coffee shop, she was even more delightful in person!
My first full day in Breckenridge I devoted to acclimation to the elevation so after coffee with Suzie I rode up the gondola to the ski slopes to have lunch with my son. Youth meant he was already enjoying the runs, no need to get used to less oxygen I guess.
Here we are waiting for the bus, probably to take us home at the end of the week. My momma heart was full.
I did get one of two opportunities to lead the meal prep for a safe parking lot this year. The community kitchen may be opening back up in 2025 but for 2024 it was still just sending the dinners made with love out to be delivered. There is a team of about 6 of us who rotate being the lead cook, I always look forward to working with them.
I finished a lot of little projects in February, including these socks with yarn from Tiny Human Knits. She always comes up with the best colors for self-striping yarn! This colorway was inspired by a painting by Alphonse Mucha.
I finished my second Musselburgh hat on the Breckenridge trip, kept me busy while on planes, trains and buses.
Our local arboretum had a yarn bombing project where local fiber artists could knit or crochet up covers for the various trunks and then volunteer to sew them on for the month of March. It might be hard to tell but my set of three had a pattern, I used up quite a bit of fluffy yarn stash.
I finished just ONE of these fingerless mitts. I was pretty impressed with my newish colorwork skills, as you can see from the inside I did a bang up job keeping my floats straight. I have started the second one, maybe it will be done in 2025!
March
While down for the weekend we hiked Silver Falls State Park in Oregon, we also had time to stop by Bierly Brewing for lunch and Uno. My hubby doesn’t often get to travel with me so it is a treat when we can get away. Bierly is 100% gluten free and delicious!
My favorite kombucha, Glorybucha, closed its tap room at the end of 2023 in search of a new home so I was excited when they joined with Dairyland Brewing in Snohomish to offer their kombucha on tap again. It isn’t as convenient as riding my bike on the Centennial Trail to Arlington but it is on the way to Lord Hill Regional Park.
I knit another pair of socks, I really do love tweed! These are in a large size making them the perfect lounge sock with sweats.
This is my second sweater and first one knit bottom up. I do prefer top down for being able to try it on as you knit but you do get the boring round and round of stockinette out of the way first with this technique.
April
April was heavy on outdoors so here are the projects I was able to complete. This shawl was a kit I was gifted, the yarn is natural and toothy. I am not sure how much wear it will get but I love the colors that mimic a sunrise. I also tried my hand at a newish skill of grafting when I fixed it after knitting the whole thing and then realizing I had made a mistake so I cut it in two to reknit the textured stripe and then grafted it back together.
These socks were a knit along from September of 2023 that I finally finished in 2024. They are my first pair starting at the toe and knitting towards the cuff. I can’t say I prefer it because the heel is fiddly but I do love the color!
I knit my sister a hat, she goes to a lot of games at Husky Stadium.
These shortie socks knit up quick to match a tee I knit last year. Who knew I would become such a prolific sock knitter!
And lastly, I knit up some fingerless mitts for my talented niece who plays the bassoon. I don’t know music but supposedly the bass clef is a bassoon thing?
May
I have made some new friends through a Honda Element group and they held a meet up at the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum outside the town of Hood River. We camped on a field next door and woke to the sight of small aircraft taking off and landing. There is an extensive collection of antique planes and over 130 cars to explore, plus we had an opportunity to ride around in some of them! Bicycles, tractors, and other wheeled craft can be found on display, too.
May also is the time for local yarn store tours, we have two in the Puget Sound: the Puget Sound LYS Tour and PNW Yarn Crawl. You can collect yarn and patterns from each store, many of them exclusive to the tour. I had planned to do less this year but then they sucker you in with one-of-a-kind beauties like this:
I even had a chance to stop by and visit my friend Nancy of Trilogy Yarns at the Nifty Knitter in Issaquah. She lives in Spokane and we get together with other knitting friends on Zoom once a week. Here we are showing off our knits. Nancy is retiring from yarn dying and has sold her business to a lovely person in Montana.
Some teacher friends and I combined our yarn tour with stop in Poulsbo to see the school band perform in their annual Viking Fest parade. It was just a little wet!
My son said I could knit a hat for him and requested one that matched the colors of his snowboarding outfit. I blended two different patterns to make this balaclava and he loves it. He sent me a picture (in December) of him up at Mount Baker kicking off the season.
June
I mentioned in my last post our bike ride to Whidbey Island and Langley, WA, here are some of the reasons it was a highlight this year. Between the perfect weather and being able to patronize some of our favorite places, it was a great kick off to summer.
Whidbey Doughnuts was a great coffee stop with an outdoor space perfect for taking in the sun. They did close in 2024, I am looking forward to what might pop up in this location.
The Bayview Market is small and cozy so you only buy enough you can carry back in your bike bag.
The market also has a mobile yarn truck!
Ultra House offers gluten free noodles in their ramen which is as authentic as you can get it out of Japan.
Misfit Island Cider opened a storefront next to Ultra this year, prior we would just see them at the market.
In the second half of the month for the last week of school, we had a field trip with the 8th graders to the opening of Inside Out 2!
And I was invited to visit the Imagine Children’s Museum with my baby brother and his family. I am now requested by my nephew at all future visits!
These socks were yet another knit along (I am looking forward to fewer of these in 2025). This one was a mystery knit along, meaning you get a new clue for each section and you don’t know what the end result will look like. Since the sock promised to be a little quirky, I opted to make them more so by knitting them with opposite colors. It is a little harder to see the stitches on the more colorful one but I still like how they turned out.
In talking about my favorites things while in Greece, the food has to be one of the tops. I must have had this real Greek salad every day!
Just one of my favorite images from the island…
Oh, the seafood!
And lots of whole Greek family dinners.
July
My stop in Thessaloniki meant trying to find places it is believed that Paul the Apostle traveled while in Greece, like the Vlatadon Monastry. I had a chat with a man who was overseeing the gift shop, John, who one day hopes to travel to Texas for real barbeque and beer.
I spent the four months before my trip to Greece attempting to learn enough Greek that I could earnestly say, “I speak English, Spanish and very little Greek”. This earned me a few brief conversations with locals who wanted to know where my family was from in Greece because at least I had the accent down. One time on the train, a woman asked me a question pointing at my knitting. I was able to tell her I was knitting a hat!
While waiting for a bus, a yiayia (grandma) came up to me and plopped her bag next to me on the ground. She spoke to me in Greek, assumably asking me to watch her bag. I told her my practiced speech about knowing little Greek and then she spoke again, presumably saying I could still watch her bag, right? She eventually sat down next to me and we didn’t do too bad having a conversation in my broken Greek about why I was there and where I had been so far.
I have read that while traveling you should look for opportunities to do something the locals do. I lucked out in Meteora that a local Greek band was having a concert. The street my hostel was on was closed down for the evening, so I walked down and enjoyed the lights and sights beneath the monasteries high up on the stone features.
After walking most of the morning around Athens to see as many sights as possible before the weather forecast of 98 degrees became a reality, this little street cafe had the best onion and bacon pie and fresh squeezed orange juice.
And for my final highlight of Greece, I had one more meal in Athens and a lovely conversation with the waiter at this popular gyro stand. Now, most people in Athens speak English (unlike smaller towns) so our conversation was mostly in English. But because I had done my best to speak Greek when ordering (not common with tourists), he was more than happy to give me some extras. In smaller towns, things like tzatziki come with meals but in Athens it is extra. When I asked if it was included in what I ordered he said for me, yes. He also shared that it is his favorite thing and eats it every day and takes some home for his wife, too. He also brought me a yummy yogurt and honey dessert!
On my flight home from Greece, I had a 16 hour layover in Amsterdam! The highlights of this were being able to take the train to the central area and stay at a hostel with a visit to a popular yarn shop, Stephen & Penelope’s (of Stephen West) and an evening canal boat ride. I had really wanted to rent a bike and ride a bit but with rental shops closing early that wasn’t possible. Plus, after seeing how people ride, that is something better saved for when I can ride in the outskirts of town. The bikes were crazy and everywhere!
In Banff, we had a chance to walk through their farmer’s market which was HUGE. I loved how all the vegetables came in premeasured packages you could just grab and go.
I also couldn’t help but try some gluten free poutine! Yes, I rode into town from the campground to enjoy this.
And my last favorite moment in Banff was that I had planned my visit to Sunshine Village around a rain front that promised to come in around 11am. That is why I rode the gondola up in the morning and got on trail as soon as possible. I could not have done any better, as soon as I was back in the village the clouds turned dark and lightening thundered overhead. This meant the gondola stopped running and they began to take names for bus rides back down off the mountain. It was going to take a while so I went and had lunch (took shelter) in Mad Trapper’s, the pub close by.
The skies opened up like nothing I have seen in a while. The restaurant staff were talking about whether or not they might even be evacuated due to potential flooding as we watched the folks running back down the trails who had been caught in the deluge. An older couple who came into the restaurant soaking wet and sat next to me and tried to brag they were locals and this wasn’t in the forecast. I quietly mumbled to them it had been…
This cobb salad was not bad for high mountain food.
August
Highlights in August were virgin mojitos made withe mint from the backyard. As well as an abundance of cucumbers that quickly became pickles, jars and jars of pickles. I give Gary all the credit for how well our garden did this year, from pumpkins to corn to Brussels sprouts.
For the second year in a row, I knit a tee for the Flock Fiber Festival in Seattle and this year was even more fun. Not only did I go with friends from work, but a few friends flew in from Texas, Nantucket and Southern California. I wasn’t so good at taking selfies but we had fun in downtown and Bainbridge along with thousands others who flocked in for the 3 day festival. My friends Aaron and Chip from Fiber Hustle had their first booth and I snagged some yarn of theirs I have wanted for while that is dyed to match Journey’s Greatest Hits album.
My friends and I also decided to all knit the Bubble Bandana by Stephen West and use minis we found at Flock so when I saw these I knew exactly what they would be for.
I thought I had done a lot better this year than last as far as buying less but turns out when I got home it wasn’t that much better. I try to make myself feel better by thinking about the other haul pictures I have seen from Flock, people must save up all year so they can splurge at fiber festivals.
After a day at Flock, a group of us wanted to go out to dinner and I suggested nearby Ghostfish that I have been wanting to visit for a long time. Everything is gluten free! I probably should have gone for a salad but the last 3 days of dining had been all salads so I went for the fish and chips. Totally worth it!
Later in the month, after my backpacking trip to the High Divide, I did another first by soaking in the hot springs of Sol Duc. Because I had hiked out that morning, I was able to get there when I first opened so it was me and some folks who must have been staying at the resort. It was the perfect way to end my trip and totally worth it. Entrance is timed so I am not sure how busy it can get but being there first thing meant for a calm experience.
September
September brought the beginning of a new school year (not such a highlight) but my friend Keashia invited me to go with her to see Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson speak at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. The event came with a copy of her new book, Lovely One, that I am excited to start reading this year.
September was also another month of small knits, mostly hats like this one that will go to charities like Knit The Rainbow or as gifts.
And I completed another sweater! It is modified a little bit because I wanted to use more of the forest green so I knit the yoke longer than the pattern called for.
October
I drove down to visit Elizabeth again and while in route to the Siouxon Creek Trail we missed a forest road turn off and then ended up just driving the back way into Carson, WA and then Stephenson, WA. Stopping for lunch at The Walking Man Brewery, we discovered a Mushroom Festival! Basically it was a mushroom scavenger hunt through businesses in town and collecting stamps. We were too late to register but had fun anyway walking around town and finding mushroom themed products. This was the first year they put it on and hopefully we can plan for next year!
The local bookstore even got into the act with mushroom craft projects.
Another stop in October was to visit my friend Justin at Burch Mountain BBQ who was having a pop-up at the newish Yonder Cider in Cashmere, WA. It was a delicious two-for-one and a great way to make the last of fall on the east side of the Cascades.
My Bubble Bandana was full of ends to weave in but I love it all the same. If I knit it again, I’ll probably only use one color!
I also finished the Kiss And Shell Cowl you saw the yarn for earlier in this post. Both it and the Bubble Bandana are now in storage for spring, something to look forward to when warmer temperatures return.
These funny looking things are ear warmers that fit on my bike helmet. I found some reflective string at the Fiber Rhythm yarn shop in Portland, OR. and knit it with the neon yellow for an extra layer this winter.
November
I voted early for the first time. I usually wait until the day of but actually dropped my ballot off soon after it came in the mail.
Gary and I took a day trip in Seattle to visit both new and old establishments. I’m writing a whole post on our day but we hadn’t visited together since before COVID and it was nice to see which of our favorite places were still around and how wonderful the skyline looks now with its new waterfront park area.
While in Seattle we had the joy of watching my niece, Claire, play at Benaroya Hall with the Cascade Youth Symphony. You can make her out in the back, she is with the bassoonists in the middle, on the far right. She has also been accepted into the WMEA All State Concert Band for 2025, we are so proud of her!
Yeah, another sweater happened. I really wanted to knit something with stripes of the teal, dark orange and yellow so when I realized that the natural colored yarns all had speckles with those three colors I came up with this idea. Did I get the 70s theme pretty close?
And these socks are another self-striping colorway from Tiny Human Knits based on the Lord Of The Rings. I just thought they looked like fall.
December
And we have made it to December! The month has been pretty mellow with a highlight being walking with my mother down to the marina because she wanted to see the visiting reindeer. I probably could have put this in the outdoorsy post but it was already long enough.
More excitement came from buying a large box of oranges as part of a school fundraiser and enjoying fresh orange juice in the morning that reminded me of my time in Spain.
My friend Edith shared about this charity knit, Knitted Knockers, and we all ordered kits from Apple Yarns in Bellingham, WA. These will be used as prostheses for breast cancer survivors, I have already picked up some more colors to knit.
I had been saving this yarn for a while and finally found a poncho pattern I like. The colorways have names like Great PNW, Fawn and Spruce!
Gary got a new hat for Christmas, my third Musselburgh. I am sure getting a lot of use out of that pattern!
And I was gifted a set of 20 20 gram minis from a fundraiser by my friend Valorie and wanted to knit them all in one project. This was my first steeking project! That means I knit it all in one big tube and then cut it down the side to make a triangle. I was a little nervous but it turned out rather nicely.
Well, if you made it to the end of another long post we must be friends (or family) because that was a lot. I hope this post encourages you to look back at your year and find your own highlights no matter how small because it all deserves some celebration. You made it through another year and who knows what the next one will bring, you may need fond memories to look back on!
You can click on any of the knit project images for the Ravelry page with pattern and yarn details. If you missed part one of my highlights, check out: 2024: Highlights Of Another Year Outdoors.
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You had quite a year! And the knitting! You have become such an accomplished and talented knitter.
Thank you! I hope you had a wonderful year, too, Elle.
So many adventures and projects! I especially like the self striping socks and the yarn bomb tubes around the trees.