Camelama

Inspiration

Holy cow.

Now I want to spend all weekend being artsy and craftsy!  Alas, other duties pull at me.

Goodbye to Craig

Sad news yesterday, as I learned of the passing of my good friend Craig Anderson, seen here racing his Austin-Healey (which he'd owned since he was a very young chap):

 

Craig was a racer friend, but so much more than that.  We shared a love of books, history, language, and more.  We could sit at a race and talk for hours about authors and writing styles.

Craig was a racing mentor for me.  He taught me SO MUCH about driving, throttle control, steering ... and he was an incredible guy.  When I was unemployed, and therefore not racing as I didn't have the money for fees or the right to risk my car, he let me race the Healey - FOR FREE.  That kind of guy just doesn't come around often!  He helped me understand how to use the power in that car, how to 'dance' on the course.

He reached out to everyone around him.  He was always helping other people, giving his time and knowledge freely, and always a gentleman.

He was quirky funny, too - I never knew what silly little thing he'd have done to the car when I showed up at the race.  A mannequin head to hold your helmet between runs, mis-labeled dials, a completely different clutch, etc.  Once, as I was heading to the starting line, Craig said "Oh - and something may fly off, just ignore it!  Now GO!"  EEEK!  HA.  SO Craig.  :)   (Nothing flew off, by the way. I still don't know what it was he was thinking might come loose, and if I could ignore it, why even bother having it on there in the first place?!?!) 

And Craig loved wearing kilts and playing his bagpipes - and he wasn't half bad at them either!  And he had quite handsome knees. 

I will miss you so much, dear friend.  May all your Lucas electronics hum along forever up there in heaven, and I know you won't have a single oil drip on your heavenly garage floor!

Power video

Here's the completely unedited, shaky video I took (click on the video itself, not the title - that tries to take you to where I posted it on facebook).

POWER

A couple weekends ago Mr Cow and I went on a local roadtrip.  We headed down to the Georgetown neighborhood, just south of downtown Seattle, and visited the Georgetown Power Plant Museum. It's only open for casual visitors on the 2nd Saturday of each month, so you have to time your visit well!

Built in 1906, this power plant used to power the Interurban railway, and the Seattle trolley system, as well as the surrounding neighborhood.  It was one of the first reinforced concrete building on the West Coast.

A few informative links:

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/seattle/s35.htm

http://www.asme.org/Communities/History/Landmarks/Georgetown_Steam_Plant.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_Steam_Plant

I'd never been there before, but I fell hard for the place on first sight.

 

Outside the museum, they had some steam trains running.

Inside, the building is still as-is - in working condition.  As in, this is not some slick museum with glassed-in displays and movies.  No, this is a *working* museum, and you need to watch out that you don't burn yourself or stick a hand in some gears somewhere!

After falling in love with the outside of the building, I next fell for this: the old elevator, now disabled and sitting on the ground floor.

Look at this metal ornamentation.  I want an elevator like this!

One thing I enjoy in industrial sites is the habit of putting metal signs on everything. I took about 50 snaps of those, I'll only force one on you!

The other thing I adore is DIALS.  Dials, gauges, meters, etc etc etc.  I don't know why. I just do. And I'm not ashamed of my love!

The museum is storing this steam train that used to run in Anacortes by a married couple, until the death of the husband.  I was SO happy to see it here, I've wondered for years what happened to this gorgeous little train (It's about as tall as I am) that was so perfectly equipped. When I rode it, I got to sit in this lovely red-velvet-upholstered parlour car, with isinglass furnace and bead-fringed lampshades!

I also have a fondness for decorative identification.  Many of the burner covers had the insignias of different local power companies - I suppose as others went out of business or were absorbed, their spare parts were snagged for repairs here. 

More dials....

The lighting inside was fantastic, though I really needed a better camera to get good photos. I like how this one turned out, though.  Reminds me of 1920's industry photos.

This one is another favorite.

Here's a flash photo looking into a couple of those burner vents you can see above, along the floor.

 

I LOVE this .... suddenly I have forgotten the name of the thingeemabobber on the side. Annunciator? Nooo.... something like that, though.  Can't you just see this in an old Warner Brothers cartoon, though?  "Talking" the alarm noise, moving like a mouth?  Heh. 

Also cool were all the old buttony-dials.

And the old telephones!  This one even has the sheet of crank signals you needed to use to make a call.

And oh dear, these old heaters sang to me.

Another artsy light shot.

And another, looking straight up to the roof 5 stories up.

Switches and other equipment:

The Power Plant is right on the edge of the Boeing Field runway/airport:

And in the 80s, the Power Plant gained Landmark status.

 

This next *really* cracked me up.    The first aid kit .... with an old blowtorch on top.  Yes, I would need first aid if I attempted to use this!

More gauges...

Don't these remind you of organ pipes?  They'er power cables, going in to the boiler - or wait, the vacuum? Argh. I'm all mixed up.  :)

This "newer" phone is still a lovely old piece.

 

And that's it!  If you're in Seattle on the 2nd Saturday of the month, I highly recommend a stop by. So many things to look at, and the staff will even start up some of the massive machinery - I have a video of one bit that I'll post later!

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Groundhog-along for Groundhog Day

Are you ready for Groundhog Day?  Do you have your own little Groundhog?

If you still need one, join the Groundhog-along!

Join the Ravelry Group for the Groundhogalong and get crocheting this lovely Planet June pattern!

I picked out some yarn this afternoon - it's a nice lightly fuzzy merino in what I consider to be a lovely groundhog-ish color.

 

Ends and starts

It's been strange, over the past week, to read everyone else's New Years posts.  It's all about new beginnings, joyous looking forwards, cleaning out and looking ahead.

I've been stuck in looking backwards for the past few weeks. 

My brother David died on December 29th, 2009.  He was 50 years old. He'd had a stroke-like injury this fall and never recovered. His poor health to begin with didn't help, either.  As we learned more and more of his life I got more depressed - here was a person I really hadn't seen for about 20 years, and certainly wasn't close to. I knew very little indeed about him, I found out. Even being in the same city with him for a year prior didn't help - he made no effort to be with me, and my efforts were certainly not encouraged by him. But he loved me as a brother loves a sister, I know that, he showed it sometimes.  We just weren't part of each other's lives, really ... perhaps the age difference was too great, he was up and out doing big things when I was still a little kid.

We're finished now with burial plans (thanks in large part to another brother working tirelessly on this) but it won't actually happen until spring, when the ground has thawed enough to dig. Until then, he rests temporarily at a cemetery's holding spot. 

It's only now that the decisions were finalized that I feel like I can start to let go of the past few weeks and start looking forward again.  To better health, to organized craft space, to more time with friends I love, to new job (please oh please), to cuddles with the cat, ferry rides and road trips and time spent out in Nature.