Yard Work

Before we start in about yard work - a brief announcement:
Knit Witch has booth space 29 in the sales arena for SAFF - come see us!! We will have a RAFFLE with some fabulous prizes!!

Now.......on to your regularly scheduled program:

Oh yes, there was yard work to be had around here this weekend. First, we dug up all the iris (irises? What the heck is the plural of iris?), lilys (lilies? What the heck is the plural for lily?), hostas and other stuff that was planted along side our steps down to the pond. It was WAY overcrowded in there and whoever planted it used this garden fabric that, I swear, must have been made out of teflon or something. Talk about heavy duty. You could not hardly cut it and the plants really couldn't get roots through it so I wanted it GONE. We relocated the lilies (lilys?) and iris (irises?) around the pond and moved the hostas. Here is our barren stair garden as it stands now.


We'll be planting some fun stuff in there soon.

Also, our pond is under a partial drainage situation right now. We have cut off the inflow water from the creek to let it get even lower. We have a major leak somewhere so we are having some pond folk come look at it this week hopefully and offer us some help. It does not help that the jerk that owned the house before us dug a hole in the pond with a bob cat, filled the hole with trash (wood, books, PVC pipes, you name it) and tried to burn it. Yes, IN the pond. He poured gasoline all over everything and tried to set it on fire to burn it. Obviously he had missed the day in school where they learned that you can't actually burn things that are in water. He's not really the brightest bulb now is he? No one can afford THAT much gasoline these days to make it work. He obviously couldn't burn it so he just left it and most probably broke the seal on the pond in the process. Here's the hole with all his junk in it and the pond being WAY down.


I'm actually glad it is kind of low right now because it is giving us a chance to clean out more of his trash on the other side of the pond. Yesterday we pulled out a lawn chair, a bucket, some rusted tin cans, metal pipes and other crunched up metal. This is, of course, in additon the large amount of trash we had already taken out of the pond when we first moved in. He's not exactly what I like to refer to as an "environmentalist". But, we are going to get things back on track, get it cleaned up and fixed and make sure that our fish, turtles, snakes and whatever else is living in our pond ecosystem are happy and healthy!!

Our neighbor just got her house painted - dosen't it look cool?


Oh, and here's our handsome Mr. Slim. He loves to go with us when we walk over to the neighbor's house so this is him sitting on the fence between our houses as we got ready to walk back home. No need to point out the fact that he isn't actually slim.

Before we can talk about FOs.......

I must announce to you that:

THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS BEAT THE DALLAS COWBOYS YESTERDAY IN DALLAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you might be able to tell - I'm pretty gosh darn excited about that! We even got to watch the game on TV. And, our fantasy team won again so we are 3-1 so far for the season - not too shabby!

OK - on to things you all actually care about - knitting. I finished this GRAND knitting project yesterday - it is so huge you won't even believe I actually completed it. Check this out blog readers...........








Oh yes - a dishcloth! Not blocked yet, obviously. How amazing am I?

Ok, ok - I know Cristi is laughing at me right now. Whatever.

I have more roving drying outside:


And Mr. Man had some gorgeous yarn bowls come out of the kiln yesterday:




There is new sock yarn up on the site!

And.............you know Halloween is coming up next month and Knit Witch MUST run a Halloween contest, right? Stay tuned for details on a new contest announcement this week!

My Corner of the World

Here is our local Art Center. They have rotating art galleries and all kinds of classes. This building used to be the old court house but now the new court house is right next door.




When we were standing in front of the arts center at the Wildlife Festival last weekend I snapped a picture of this guy.


I also have to show you this cutie. We always have these guys hanging out on our porch at night.



And, I finally started dyeing some roving. A big THANK YOU to Heather and Little Miss Drama Pants for their help and support during this learning curve. I think they turned out really well! This roving is all 50/50 alpaca/merino and it is so soft! These rovings are going to make a wonderful spinning companion for some folks. They are all on the website. One of them has already been claimed by Turtlegirl though.

Orbs

What do you think about orbs? We have always known there is something special about this property that we have "borrowed". You can feel it here, especially around the water. There is a lot of Native American history connected to this and our neighbors properties. Our neighbor has been sending me photos of orbs that have shown up in pictures she has taken around her property. She emails them to me and asks me what I think. I have been telling her that what I think is that she needs to clean her camera lens.

She does not buy that. She says there is no way that these are due to light reflections or dust on the lens or any other such thing because she can shoot several pictures right in a row and some will have orbs and some will not. I told her that she should take some pictures with MY camera at her place. I have had the camera for well over a year now and NEVER had orbs show up in a picture of anything. Ever. She told me that we need to take our camera out on our property at night, shoot some pictures and see what we get. OOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKK Liz. Will do.

Now, we are believers in the spiritual world. Very much so. I believe there are many things that are energy connected that we don't and may never understand. So, we are pretty good about having an open mind. We went out and took some pictures at night on our property. Check these out. Hopefully you can make them bigger to get a good look.



Interesting, yes? These only showed up in the shots near the water. In this one, you can see a REALLY bright tiny light in the woods in the middle. I assure you, there is NOTHING back there. Nothing that would have light shining or be reflective. It's not an eye either.


We have also had a few "incidents" that have happened since we have been here. We have had things moved (I mean REALLY moved like pretty good distances), we have seen things that are there and then disappear and we have had a few instances of "helpers" literally helping to prevent a bad situation. Just as one example, our neighbor had left her car door open one day when she came up here. She was unloading stuff out of the car and then she just forgot to close it. It was open for about 3 hours when it all the sudden started pouring rain. She jumped up and thought "Oh my gosh!! I left my door open on my car!!" and walked to the front door of the house to run out and close it. As soon as she opened the door to the house to run outside, she saw the car door close with a pretty good force. No wind. She just stopped and said "Thank you!"

Anyway, we have had several instances of those types of things happening around here and we certainly welcome these entities. Personally, I think they are glad we are here. No matter what your personal feelings are these at least make for entertaining blog stories and are things that make you go hmmmmmm............

Butter Witch

My wonderfully crazy neighbor, Liz, calls me Butter Witch. In all honesty, I can't even remember why. It either has something to do with Mr. Man wanting to start making Butter Bells or something about her nutty German grandmother. In any event, I promised her a "Butter Witch" yarn colorway, so here it is. I love it!!!


On the same day we did these two lace weights and I LURVEEEEEEEE the way they turned out!! So, I'll share them with you here. The top one is a gorgeous teal and the bottom one is a silvery grey/blue colorway.


I'm trying to figure out what I must knit that requires lace weight

Over the weekend we went to the Wildlife Arts Festival in downtown. We went to the raptor show, which was GREAT! They had all kinds of raptors - screech owls, Barred Owls, Bald Eagles, Vultures, Hawks and Kestrals. It was a really neat show. The Vulture was my favorite - what a great personality (er. ...birdonality rather) that girlie had!! The birds were injured, raised by people or otherwise non-releasable so they go around doing educational programs.

Here's a couple pictures from the festival:



This is Liz and I wandering around the festival. We affectionately call her Lizardo.


Oh, and I totally posted a picture from the raptor show yesterday without realizing that I hadn't told you about the festival yet! So, if you missed the Red Tail Hawk yesterday go check it out!

Actual Knitting

Can you believe it? I had LOTS of time to work on this over the weekend while we sat around and waited for bands to play and such. I'm sure I completely embarrassed my son, but he'll get over it, right??? I'm actually doing some "knitting for hire" which always scares me a little because you know the speed I knit. Actually, I don't really knit slow but I just seem to have trouble finding time to actually knit!

I'm knitting this for someone who had her own alpacas. She wanted something made from the yarn she had spun. She wanted a simple, light, airy scarf so I figured that my version of a dropped stitch scarf would be perfect! This is such an easy pattern and it knits up really fast. Here's my progress so far.



It should be done in the next couple of days.

Here's a picture of the Red Tail Hawk from the show over the weekend.


And, as requested, here are some pictures of the band. Hockeymom, I'm sure that the music of Blood Oaks would be right up your kids alley! They should check them out on myspace!

Happy First Day of Fall!!

Anyone who is somewhere near my age may think the same thing I thought here. My son showed up to meet us at the Wildlife Arts Festival. Can you guess who the first "Rock 'n Roll dude" that I thought of when I saw him???


If you guessed Rick Ocasek maybe you should win a prize - or maybe that was too easy.

Nathan was playing with his band in Dahlonega on Saturday evening. We thought it would be a nice little road trip. We put the address into mapquest, got our directions and headed out. Mr. Man and I were excited to have Nathan playing in Dahlonega. We love that place! It has such a nice square with lots of places to get a bite to eat or a beer (a nice change from the ridiculously dry Blue Ridge). So, we went early to walk around, goof off and wait for his playing time.

We followed our directions and they had us turn before we ever got to the downtown area. Then we headed down this gravel road, then through this very rural "neighborhood". Here's a view of what we were seeing on the way. Looks like a real 'happenin' place, right?


We thought "Surely not - this can't be right". We saw this building but didn't really think anything of it. No street number, no venue sign, no real parking lot, no one there.........


But then we realized - yep - this is it. Nathan immediately called his other band mates knowing they weren't going to believe their "venue"! We went to downtown, had a late lunch, had a beer, walked around a bit then headed back to the "venue". We had lunch and beer at the Crimson Moon. They have GREAT food!!


It really wasn't that bad once we got in there - but Mr. Man and I were, by far, the oldest people there! It was fun though, I got hit on by an extremely drunk, extremely unattractive being, the music was pretty good and we managed to be home around 11. Here's a couple pictures of the band. Amazing the things we are willing to do as parents, right?

My Corner of the World

Here's a building in downtown that is currently a real estate office. I'm not exactly sure what it was before that. I was going to try and find out before I posted but I failed in my mission........sorry about that!!!



This weekend is the Wildlife Art Festival in downtown! We'll be in attendence for a little while then it's off to Dahlonega for the afternoon and evening to mosey around and go listen to Nathan play in Blood Oaks!!!! Trust me, the only people over 20 that will be there are parents! haha!

Right now I am attempting to dye some roving. We'll see how it goes..............

Just Thursday

I really have nothing exciting to report today other than life is good!!! I took these pictures of our dog, Petey, yesterday because I thought he was so cute - and the dogs rarely make it into blogdom. This is Petey and his favorite toy "piggy". He runs around with this thing, tosses it up in the air, catches it, tosses it up again and just generally has a ball. The thing is tiny but it does not have a scratch on it. It's his baby. He is a happy dude.




Oh wait! I do have something exciting to report! Well, I think it is exciting anyway. We got 300 of these in the mail yesterday!!!


We will be taking these to SAFF for giveaways. I think they turned out pretty good! Such a happy looking pen! I ordered some roving yesterday so we will be having hand dyed roving at our booth now too!!! I got some superwash merino and some yummy superwash merino/alpaca blend. THAT should be really nice!

Here's a picture of a Kingfisher I snapped the other day. He's sitting on our dock just waiting to eat our fish and frogs.

Country Fun

Over the weekend the local coffee shop had a "customer appreciation" of sorts. They put together a hay ride from town to the site of the festivities. Now, mind you that is only about a 1/4 mile distance but still..........they drove really slow so it would FEEL like they were on a long hay ride. We opted out of the hay ride (that stuff is itchy!) and rode our bikes to the site of the festivities. Now, mind you the festivities were right across the street from our house but still.........we rode really slow so it would FEEL like a long ride.

We got to enjoy the beautiful greenspace across the street from our house. The coffee shop had, of course, coffee and a full dinner complete with luscious cherry cobbler dessert! As a vegetarian I only took part in the cole slaw and potato salad, oh AND the cobbler - but it was still very good! Here's a couple of pictures:


See that guy on the guitar? That's Bobby Don Bloodworth. Well, Mr. Man got to talking to him and they started playing "Hey do you know so and so" and Mr. Man happened to mention Winn Sizemore, who is a phenomenal bass player who often played with the awesomist guitarist around, Barry Richman, back in the day. Barry Richman has played with some of the biggest names in music - he's amazing. This guy pictured above was like "No way! You know Winn and Barry?? I used to play in a band with them and I haven't talked to them in years!" Winn is the son of our former neighbor in Tucker, which was how we knew him and consequently Barry. Anyway, we gave Winn a call and passed the phone over to Bobby Don and they spent about 30 minutes catching up. Turns out they live pretty close to each other and are both now teaching kids to play/write music! Small world I tell ya! On another note.........Bobby Don is also "famous" for writing that song for the Pike commercial "Come Play in the Dirt Again". I know you know the one.

Oh, and I snapped this one too because I thought it was funny. Is there any doubt that Goose wants to grow up and be just like Slim??

Look!! A yarn shop!!

That's pretty much what my office looks like right now. Mr. Man made this handy-dandy display rack for the yarn. I put out all the yarn we have done so I can put prices on everything for SAFF. Here's what it looks like:




So, I guess you can see what I'm doing for the rest of the day. We have sold several skeins already and some lucky folks will be getting their purchases in the mail today!

I worked on Hey Teach! last night and finished up the side I was working on. It took a while since I had to frog a bunch of it after I realized I had forgotten to do the decreases for the arm hole. I was just knitting right along and then I thought.....hmmmm.......aren't I supposed to do some decreases?? Yeah, like 30 rows ago. FROG.

Anyhow, now the back and both sides are finished and I'll be moving right along to the sleeves soon.

Mr. Man got these cool pics of a Praying Mantis the other day:



Slim caught what appeared to be a Northern Ring Neck snake yesterday that was really cute but, of course, I couldn't find the camera. I rescued him from the grips of these vicious cats though so he is back out in the world enjoying life. He looked just like this though:


See how vicious they are? I regularly have to fight for my desk chair.

Sock Yarn!!

Oh yes, we finally have sock yarn on Knit Witch! I have done several colors and a couple of different blends. Right now we have 100% superwash merino, 75% superwash/25% nylon and 100% wool up on the site. The 100% wool is a sport weight so it is listed on the sport weight page since it isn't superwash (which will be active later today). Right now I'm working on dyeing some REALLY nice superwash BFL. The BFL is going to make for some very nice, high quality socks.

Sock yarn is under the "Celestial" name category so they all have celestial names (well except for Knit Witchery though I am waiting for them to name a constellation after me so perhaps that sort of counts). Here's a couple of the colors that are up:

Knit Witchery

Orion
Leo

Taurus
Starry Night

More sock yarn on the way soon! Don't forget - we still have Elliebelly sock yarns too!

My Corner of the World

Sara does this neat segment once a week called "My Corner of the World" and I thought it was a really great idea. She shows pictures from her little town in New Hampshire and I love looking at all the old buildings and the town and seeing what it looks like there. So, I thought "Who better to steal that idea from her than me??". Haha! Hopefully Sara won't mind me "borrowing" her blog fodder. I thought you all might like to see a little more of the little town of Blue Ridge, GA. On Fridays I will start sharing some local pictures with you.

We went into downtown to take some pictures. They have recently repainted all the streets with new markings. I think they may have been drinking while they were painting though. We found this:


Ummmmm......................what?

Here's our local coffee shop, L&L Beanery. We love this place! They have wonderful coffee and the folks that own it are super nice. This used to be a bank and they still have the bank vault in there and everything! It's a gift shop too. I'll have to get some pictures of the inside the next time I am there.


They have downtown all decked out for Fall already! These are the cute displays they have put up in front of the train station. I was going to get a picture of the train for you (the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway) but the train was out so I'll have to get that another time.

September 11

Wow.....I didn't even realize that today was 9/11. I usually write my blog posts in advance and then they post automatically so I didn't realize I had sock yarn posted for 9/11. Not that there is anything wrong with sock yarn, mind you, but it certainly does not offer proper remembrance of a day that will live on in all of our memories for so long. Sock yarn will be back on Monday.

On 9/11 I was still in nursing school working on my master's degree. I was in class that morning when the news broke. Then, we fired up all of our big screens in the classrooms to watch the coverage. It was so heartbreaking. I'm sure there were more than half of us in the building crying. I remember going outside and looking across the street. I did my nursing education at Emory in Atlanta so I was looking across the street at the CDC thinking to myself that if terrorists are bombing strategic targets in the US then the CDC is probably not the place I want to be standing right next to. Before I could even go back in to collect my things they started evacuating the entire Emory campus. It took me over two hours to get home that day and I lived less than 5 minutes from the campus.

My first instinct that day, as a nurse, was to get in my car and immediately drive to NY to offer medical assistance. However, there was no need. Not enough people survived to need medical assistance and overwhelm the health care system too badly. My boss' brother worked in the Pentagon. We waited and waited for what seemed like forever for word of his safety. Unfortunately, he didn't survive the attack. My heart still goes out to all of those families who lost loved ones in that terrible, tragic day. I think about the people in the world who live with terrorism on a daily basis and realize how very fortunate we are in this country to not have to live with that type of environment (on that scale) day-to-day.

I remember the silence of the next few days. No air traffic in Atlanta at all was quite an eerie sound (or lack of sound rather). I was glued to the tv for 3 days. I simply could not digest what had just happened. I still have the Atlanta newspaper dated 9/12.

Despite all the political craziness that goes on here I still feel very, very fortunate to be a part of this country. Hopefully, we will never have to deal with that type of terrorist attack ever again.

We will remember.

In Bloom..........

There are LOTS of things in bloom around here lately. It seems this place has just come alive with color over the past few weeks. We are really looking forward to the Fall up here!!! I know next to nothing about plants so I can't name all of these beautiful things for you but I thought you might enjoy seeing some North Georgia nature shots! I believe the above picture is a knock-out rose.

Yellow stuff:


More yellow stuff:


Goldenrod?:


Yellow Daisies (we have LOTS of these on our property and they are so pretty!):

White stuff (baby's breath maybe??):


Purple stuff:


Magnolia:


More purple stuff (usually this stuff is COVERED in bees - of course the day I take a picture they are all AWOL):


Water Sprite?:


Impatients:

I hate to do it but.............

We are running against Rosi G. for the US presidency! Who wants to vote for us?!?!

Incredible story HERE

Oh, and pay no attention to those skeletons, k?

First priority of the presidency is that knitting needles are allowed on all flights to anywhere! The second priority is that health care thing.

The weekend..........

It didn't get any better as far as football is concerned (oh, what? You didn't know that this blog turns into a football blog in the Fall??? Well, surprise!). Not only did the Redskins lose but our fantasy team lost as well. So, no more talk about football for this week.

During the 4:00 game yesterday I did do some work on Hey Teach. I'm almost done with the second front so that will be all of the big pieces, I'll just have sleeves and button bands to go. However, it's truly not worthy of a picture as of yet.

My son was here to get his wisdom teeth out on Friday so I spent most of the weekend playing nurse (I'm sure that the weekend will help me keep up my skills for my nursing license somehow, right?). He is doing well although he did seriously look like a chipmunk when he left here yesterday. He has got to be the most non-complaining teenager in the world.

My mom came out on Friday to visit us and Nathan so that was a really nice visit. Then my dad and aunt came out yesterday so we all sat around and played cards and it was great fun! We didn't even cut Nathan any slack for the tooth surgery. He was a good sport and wanted to play every game with us. I won the first game and my dad won the second then we all went out for ice cream - it was a great day!

I did a lot of yarn dyeing over the weekend also and am working on more today. Nathan poignantly pointed out that dyeing yarn is remarkably similar to cooking spaghetti only prettier. The lace weight alpaca is up on the site and the sock yarn will be going up today and tomorrow. I love doing all this dyeing - such fun!!


Oh, and we finally got our lotions in!!! We have already sold 4 bottles - amazing. This stuff is great so check it out on the site if you want some for yourself or for holiday gifts. If you are signed up for the newsletter you should be getting your first installment late this week or early next week.

Happy Monday!

Today we shall not discuss........

Football.

That is all.

So Not Related to Knitting............

Tonight everyone needs to gather in front of the TV at 7:00 ET and send major knitting mojo to the Redskins, ok??? I don't care if you are a Giants fan, I don't care if you don't like the Redskins, heck I don't care if you don't even like football. They need it and I need it so just do it, ok???

Not only are the Redskins my most favoritist team ever.......we have some players on our fantasy football team going tonight who happen to be on the Redskins (sentimental picks I must say). So, you sending the Redskins some knitting mojo is helping them AND it's helping me. Hmmmm......now if I can just dig out my Redskins paraphernalia for the game - I don't think I have unpacked it yet.

I'm being very good and watching the DNC AND the RNC. However, tonight there is a problem. Does McCain know that he is scheduled to speak during the opening game of football season??? That, my friends, is poor planning. This is a problem so I'll be recording one of the two things. Sorry McCain, you'll have to wait - the 'Skins come first.

Speaking of the RNC - Hey Hockeymom - did you see all those Hockeymom signs there last night?!?! Did you sneak away to St. Louis???

You guys are amazing!

We haven't even announced that the yarn is up on the site and you guys are already buying it! Amazing!! Thanks to everyone who has already purchased Knit Witch Hand Dyed Yarn! We really appreciate your support! We also have Elliebelly sock yarn up on the site as well in some beautiful colors.

We have some lace weights up on the site and a couple of fingering weights. The alpaca/cashmere blend lace weight will go up today and the 100% alpaca lace weight should go up tomorrow (very reasonably priced I might add). I just need to let it dry and finish skeining it. We should also have new yarn bowls and spindle bowls up on the site today too. Can you tell we have been busy around here lately?!?!

Here's a sneak peak of a couple of the alpaca/cashmere lace weight yarns that will be up later today.




In other news, I recently had a friend contact me out of the blue a couple of days ago. I haven't talked to her in several years. I was so glad that she contacted me! It has been so great catching up with her and "discussing" all the things we have been through lately. All the people that have touched our lives and all of the crazy, irrational people we have encountered along the way. I'm so glad that she and I have been able to see past all the junk we have been through and understand that life is just life. It takes you where you need to go.

Sometimes you have to go through some stuff that's not so good to get to the stuff that IS really good. You gotta roll with it and communicate with people to the best of your ability. Some people just never "get it". Life isn't all about work or YOUR ideals or YOUR expectations. You have to give a little breathing room to allow people to be who they are, walk their own path and contribute in their own way. You might even learn something if you just relax a little, communicate and take it all in. I have learned something from every single person I have entered into a friendship with no matter how long or short. Sometimes I have learned how I aspire to be and sometimes I have learned about how I never want to be.

I feel so fortunate to have all I have in this life. We live a very simple life in the way of material things and are so rich in our marriage, our family and our friendships. We enjoy the heck out of life and each other so much and we love sharing all that goodness with other people, whether it is through our work or through our relationships. It's so true that time heals all wounds - don't let those really "good friends" ever go by the wayside. They are truly few and far between it seems.

How's THAT for a countrified picture??

A Walk Through Blue Ridge

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! We did, even though we did a lot of work! We did take some time to take a nice long walk down the dormant railroad tracks that go by our house. We saw some pretty interesting stuff. We saw several beaver dams and the little ponds that they have created and some interesting old abandoned houses and properties.


And here are some of the yarns we have dyed over the weekend. We are working on getting these up on the site and hopefully we will be able to get them up by tomorrow. Mr. Man is working on getting the pages built right now. I'm working on getting the gorgeous alpaca skeined up that I dyed yesterday so we should have lots to get on the site!

Blogiday

Knit Witch took a blogiday today (that's a blog holiday for anyone who is interested) although Mr. Man and I have been hard at work today! I'll have some fun photos for everyone tomorrow. I hope everyone has enjoyed their long holiday weekend and that all these hurricanes aren't impeding any knitting progress. Looks like we will have some action from Hanna here next week. Oh, and we had our fantasy football draft last night and I think our team is going to kick butt this year!! (IF I can remember to put the players in the lineup every week that is)

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day!!

Goose says "hi"!