Colorado tatting

The last week of September my husband and I joined some friends of ours for a week in a cabin in Colorado. We have vacationed with this couple multiple times, they are very long time friends. Like all the other times we’ve vacationed with them, we had a fantastic time.

During the eight hour drive from our place to Fort Collins, Colorado where we spent our first night, I did a little tatting.

For all that I try to have a variety of tatting threads and miscellaneous items with me when we travel, I’m never sure what I’m going to work on after we leave the house.  Once we were on the road and I delved into my travel stash I found this finding and a shuttle that had this size 20 blue Lizbeth thread. I had thought to bring the ball with me so was able to tat this piece. I finished it the first evening.

After we started through the mountains I didn’t tat much due to the marvelous view. I had been afraid all the aspens and willows would have already changed colors and possibly dropped all their leaves before we got there this year – we are two to three weeks later in the year than usual – but there was plenty of fall colors still showing. We were so busy that I barely touched my tatting for several days.

The next time I picked up my shuttles I made this small medallion in purple size 20. This was not a good choice to tat with. It is such a dark color it was hard to see the stitches while in the cabin, especially when I made a mistake and had to untat. I did finally get it done.

The next time I started a project I chose the lightest color thread I had with me, size 10 light pink. I hadn’t realized it was size 10 at first, but it was a good choice. I started this on the way home and didn’t finish it until after we got home. This picture is not of the finished doily, I’ll share that later.

The cabin we stayed at had several chipmunks that were extremely friendly. We could see right away that had been fed before. My friend immediately decided to buy a bag of critter food (seeds, peanuts, corn). These little critters kept us entertained the whole week with their antics.

I had one chipmunk come to check out my tatting. When he saw it wasn’t anything to eat he abandoned me in search of more tasteful things.

We had another visitor. This fox would come by twice a day. He would pose for us and gave us time to admire him through the cabin windows.

Our cabin is on one end of Grand Lake, just down the road from the west entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. We bought a seven-day pass, which we used every day. There is a campground about 10 miles inside the par where it is very common to see elk, usually in the evening. One evening this magnificent bull elk was there keeping an eye on his harem. At one point he and one of his ladies ran past our truck so close he almost scratched the paint with his horns.

My husband and I took a hike one day on the trail to Cascade Falls. Did I mention that there was still a lot of fall color to be seen?

This is the Colorado River just before it enters Shadow Mountain Lake. My husband stopped the truck in the middle of the road so we could get this picture. The only thing I did to this picture is crop it to get rid of the window frame. I can hardly believe these gorgeous colors are real.

The timing for our vacation was right on. We caught the color change when we thought we would miss it. The weather was pretty warm for the end of September, but not hot. One week after we got home Trail Ridge Road, the highway through RMNP over the continental divide, closed due to snow.

It was such a wonderful vacation. But like all good things, it had to come to an end. We are now back to work with only memories – and a lot of pictures – to remind us of our beautiful week in the mountains.

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” Emily Bronte