Hiking - Skamaniac gift bag - and a stranded mystery

Here's a quick bag I improvised on Sunday morning, after spending the night at Skamania Lodge in the Columbia river gorge, after spending Saturday hiking around Mt. Hood. The trip was fairly spontaneous, so I just threw a bunch of yarn and a couple of inspiration patterns in to my big old knitting bag. I wove in ends for one project as we drove out of cloudy Portland up to the sunny mountain; then, lo and behold, right by the turnoff for the mountain road to take us to the hike, there was a cute little yarn store! (it had a big banner on the side of the A-frame roof that said, simply, "YARN" :). So I picked up a couple skeins of Crystal Palace Kid Merino, for a possible future shawl.

Anyway... we had a wonderful hike, and had been intending to camp, but the bridge to the campsite was washed out, and long story short, the only hotel around that had any vacancies on a sunny Saturday early evening was the local resort. Ah, such tough luck we live with... So we made the most of it, eating lots at the breakfast buffet, staying right up til the noon checkout; and we sat for a good hour in the "lounge", in comfy chairs admiring the river view, Andy websurfing (yes, he brings his computer even when we plan to camp) and me knitting this ridiculous little gift bag out of the silliest yarns imaginable. So I would give it the name "Skamaniac". But it's the perfect size for something small, and it sparkles nicely in the sunlight (or the camera flash)

Oh, and a teaser, when we left at noon and drove up to Mount Saint Helens (unfortunately the only pictures we have from this whole weekend are a few from Andy's cell phone, as we hadn't been able to find the camera before leaving - of course, it was in the back seat of the car, buried under camping stuff....), I cast on for something new, but as it's intended as a gift for someone who might conceivable read this blog, I won't say what. But I'm enjoying the simple slip-stitch pattern, which I stole from Knitty via someone else's blog. It's a variegated sock yarn, but this isn't a sock!