What I'm Up To

This week, we went on our last longer weekend hike before the big one. After seeing how last week went, we tweaked our route significantly to make it a little bit easier. On the way up, we followed Gurmeet's route for the way down, going from Mitchell Canyon Road to Deer Flat Road and up to Juniper Campgrounds, and then Juniper Trail to the summit. It seems he had to walk on the road from the summit to the Juniper Trail trailhead, but we found a trail up to the right after the Juniper Trail hit the road for the first time, which avoids walking on the road, though there were 3 points where we had to cross the road in the short section from the trail's ending to the summit. When coming down from the summit, cross the parking lot to the patch of forest in between the two directions of the road and follow the trail down. Eventually, this ends at the road again. Head towards the bathrooms and picnic benches and keep going, until eventually, after a large parking lot, the trail sh...

This week, we tried to follow Gurmeet's directions to Mt. Diablo via Eagle Peak . Unfortunately, after quite a late start (started up at noon), we ended up ditching that plan halfway through, and looped back around upon reaching Eagle Peak. The late start was probably the biggest factor in this, because we ended up hiking straight through the hottest part of the day, which was rough in the portion of the trail to this point, as there was very little tree cover, and it was a very hot day.  Final route: Starting at the Mitchell Canyon Ranger Station, we took the Mitchell Rock Trail to Eagle Peak Trail, and continued until the junction with the Meridian Ridge Trail. At the junction we took a right turn until the junction with the Mitchell Canyon Fire Road, and then followed the signs back to the Mitchell Canyon Ranger Station.   Coming down from Eagle Peak A tree! The mountains looked pretty wispy on the way down, probably from the recent fires Alm...

In continuing my attempts to really get the hang of paper piecing before committing myself to a more ambitious project, I decided to attempt another free Craftsy pattern. This time, I went with a rose (pattern here ). This actually went much better than I expected. While it was quite dense, it was a pretty good practice piece, since it allowed me to practice the technique itself without getting too caught up in the details. Additionally, since it used smaller pieces, it was a good use of scraps, and it was a good way to practice appropriately cutting pieces to use the least amount of fabric but still cover the pattern.