Puzzle hunt party, part 1

Yesterday evening I celebrated my 28th birthday by arranging a puzzle hunt for my friends. It was a memorable evening - not only was it my first time arranging a puzzle hunt, but it was the most friends I've ever had come to a party at once. It was a full house! I took many pictures at the beginning, and fewer as the time went by and the sun went down.

The first people showed up at 6 pm.

I had crackers and grapes ready, and a card with a message for the adventurers. After a greeting, it instructed them to sign their names and remain on the deck for further instructions.

And so they waited for more guests. Meanwhile, Chimera posed for the camera.

And Jacques stared at this owner in confusion.

The majority of the guests arrived all at once around 6:40 pm.

So many people!

Agnes noticed that I had sent her a text stating LOOK UP.

More people realized that they'd received the same text.

And they started looking up.

They noticed a string with a tag that said PULL.

Eddie dutifully pulled (after acquiring a stool, which was a good decision).

They lowered down a yogurt container which was filled with coins.

What does this mean?? They counted the coins. They added up the total value. They arranged them in different configurations.

After some prompting (this puzzle turned out to be the hardest one), they walked through the house and noticed a few bank rolls of coins in my room.

They started to empty the rolls, and Ray found a message written inside one: "empty apple."

Off to find apples!

An initial perusal of the apples in the kitchen revealed nothing. A closer look yielded one with a hole that was covered with the missing apple chunk.

Eddie bit into the apple and discovered a yarn needle.

Everyone peered into my sewing kit and started to remove the contents. Ray picked up a crocheted ball. She squished it and then looked remorseful. "I crushed your ball," she said. "Did you?" I asked, with raised eyebrows. She smiled and picked it back up, and proceeded to pull on the string to undo the top of the ball. (A cool thing about crochet - to undo it, you simply grab the yarn and pull. It makes it easy to go back and fix a mistake.)

The ball unraveled to reveal a picture.

After an initial "WTF, a furry?" someone recognized it as a play on the Firefox logo. Ray opened Firefox on my laptop, which was conveniently turned on and ready.

To be continued....

The money tree, parts 2 and 3

You may recall my first post about the money tree. I returned a week later while hiking with the same dog, and found this:

A collection of pebbles, along with a flower and some branches from the forest. And there was more money. This time there was a single $1 bill, and $1.22 in coins. I collected everything I could find again, and then felt like I should leave something behind in gratitude. I looked around as I hiked, and picked up three small branches, which I placed by the side of the existing decorations.

I returned again this week. (It's a great trail for my shy hiker - we rarely run into anyone else.) This time there was no money, but there was a collection of flowers.

Now I really felt like I should have brought something to add. Alas, I had nothing, so again I searched the forest.

I laid down a couple of hollow sticks into which I stuffed animal fur that was on the side of the trail. (Don't know if it's from another hiking dog or a wild animal.) I also offered a twig with lichen growing on it, and a small bunch of yellow wildflowers. And... a fedora I found lost on the trail! Hopefully its owner will find it. And possibly be very confused.

Crochet flower

Made an easy crochet flower, just for practice.

The money tree

I was hiking with a dog in Claremont Canyon Preserve, and paused among a little stand of redwood trees so he could rest in the shade. As I was slowly meandering, I looked down and saw some coins at the foot of one of the trees. I stopped, leaned over, and realized that it was quite a large amount of coins. They were nearly all pennies, but I'm a frugal person, so I decided to collect them.

As I was doing so, I realized that were a few tiny items along with the coins - a bead, two sequins, and a beautiful, tiny, light blue egg. And there was a feather stuck vertically into the ground.

This was... purposeful. It didn't look like someone had simply dropped their change and not bothered to pick it up.

I looked around more, and realized that there were coins stuck in the base of the tree, in the troughs made by the bark. (You can see in the top picture that redwood bark is not smooth, but grows in ridges.) I started picking them out. And kept finding more, and more, and more coins, distributed all around the tree, as high as I could reach. They were still mostly pennies, but there were also three $1 bills curled up tightly and stuck in tiny holes in the bark, and two pieces of paper:

My best guess is that this was someone's celebration of graduating from UCB.

In the end, I had acquired $3 in bills at $3.43 in coins.

I thank whoever left the coins in the tree - not just for the little extra money (that will cover the price of two small Kindle books!) - but also for the twenty minutes of amazement and seeking circuit fun I experienced.

Pajama pants

Five weeks ago, I started a Sewing 101 class at Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley. We had a small selection of beginner projects to choose from, and coincidentally, almost everyone chose the same pajama pant pattern. I bought a very thick and soft flannel for my own pants. It took longer than I expected to complete them - the instructor took us through all the details of ironing the fabric and the pattern, selecting which size to cut, lining it up along the grain of the fabric, putting the pieces together, carefully sewing and serging, putting in an elastic waistband, and hemming the bottom.

The pattern has too much fabric along the crotch and is baggy on me even for PJs, but I was pretty much expecting that on my petite frame. Otherwise, I'm happy with it. I already wore the pants once but of course they are way too warm for this time of year! So back in the closet they go for five months.

Here is the pattern I used: Kwik Sew K3602.

I used size M, but I had to shorten both the top and the bottom of the pants for them to be the right height.

I purposely hemmed them short at the bottom because I prefer them to be well off the ground when I'm going out in the yard in the morning and evening and it's dark and there is dog poop. Plus I like my pants to be short enough that the bottom doesn't get caught in the tongue of my tennis shoes.

The pattern didn't have pockets but the instructor helped me insert them. Since the flannel is bulky, I used scrap pieces of cotton fabric - a different one for each pocket.

Here's the nicely-sewn waistband.

I used a serger for the first time!

Since the front and back look similar, the instructor had us attach little tags to the back. She sent some scrap fabric through the serger to make thin, colorful strips. I love the idea! I feel like I should find a fabric that I identify with and keep serged strips around for all the clothes I'll make in the future. It's a pretty, personal touch.

There is one more class meeting to go before the session ends. I'll be starting work on an apron, so that I no longer get flour all over my shirt when I'm making bread.

First crocheted item - v-stitch hat

I crocheted myself a v-stitch hat! I even figured out the number of v's to use by myself, because I couldn't figure out the instructions I was trying to use!

Pro: I love the ruffly brim, and the bright pink on black combo.

Con: It makes me look like a chemo patient with no hair even more than most hats do.

I broke my cheap plastic crochet hook right before the end, so I stopped by A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland and bought a proper steel one. Of course I also bought some soft Merino yarn while I was there.

One can never have too many crafting hobbies, I say.

Homegrown potatoes

I was ridiculously excited to dig up the potato plants last week! Of course I took pictures of the adventure!

The tubers are ready when the plants above are dying back.

The first potato comes into sight!

Whee! This plant was the largest, and had the most taters.

Most of them were this size or smaller.

These are the remains of the seed potato that brought this plant to life.

The entire harvest. Yeah, it's a tiny garden.

I saved the two largest ones to replant this weekend. Since we still have plenty of sunshine and warm weather ahead of us, I'm hoping there'll be time for a second harvest. (Ah, California!)

The rest of them I boiled with a bit of salt. I ate a few straight out of the pot, and the rest will be going down with borscht.

I'm thinking that I'll replace some of my containers with a raised bed before I start planting for the fall. It'll give me significantly more planting room within the same square footage in the yard.