Blogless Friday

Technically, it isn't blogless Friday because you are sitting here reading a blog that I have posted on Friday therefore rendering this technically to NOT be a blogless Friday. But, I digress. I'm simply writing here to tell you that I have nothing to write.

Actually, that isn't entirely true. I have pictures from our fun Thanksgiving yesterday to post for you and even a couple of entertaining stories. However, I'm totally taking the day off - from blogging that is. So, what you are reading isn't really a blog post. OK - now I'm just talking in circles.............

Monday will begin the adventure of you hearing about the Thanksgiving weekend and the entertaining stories. Tonight - we are going out to celebrate my son's birthday (which is on Monday). He will be 19. NINETEEN!!! Dudes............I'm getting old. One more teenage year to go. Wish me luck.

Hope everyone had a great day yesterday - see you on Monday!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!!!

We are spending today with some of our family and we are so looking forward to it! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. Mr. Man and I take a few minutes every single day to say a little "thank you" to the universe for our wonderful home, life, pets, family, friends and love that we have been given. Today is no exception. We really want to find ways to share that with more people in the upcoming year. We have so much to be thankful for today and I know you do too. Take the time to pay it forward.......................

WIP and PIP Wednesday

Here's the progress on the moebius scarf. I think it is just about done. Anyone have any idea how long I'm supposed to knit this thing? I really don't want to kitchener 60 stitches and then realize it isn't long enough! Strangely, the pattern does not have any dimensions on it. It does tell you the number of repeats but, of course, I used a different yarn so......you know how that goes. If anyone has knit a moebius in this manner (ie - without the actual moebius cast on) feel free to chime in here. This is a super easy lace pattern. Pattern details on a previous blog post if interested.

Mr. Man made this earlier this morning.

This is the PIP (pie in progress). We donated this one to our friends that own North Georgia Diamond. They are holding a bake sale today with all proceeds benefiting cancer research. The picture looks kinda weird because Bill took the picture in his fancy jewlery photography box. Mr. Man is upstairs making another one right now for us to take to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow - yum!!

I have some swatches to make of the newest colors. This is good car knitting for the ride to Rome tomorrow.

And I caught Goose out on the drainpipe of the pond yesterday. Can you believe this silly kitten?!?! I was just waiting for him to slip off the pipe and go for a swim. He, apparently, wasn't worried about that at all. He loves watching those fish!

Of Bowls and Cats

First up - bowls. Just an annoucement so that everyone knows we actually have some new bowls on the site. This is our first new batch since SAFF (we are slackers I know) but all of these came out GREAT! Here's one of them - you can see the rest on the site.

Next up - cats! Mr. Man had a couple of empty clay boxes yesterday and he cut holes in them for the cats to play with. They had a ball! You can see the series of fun and attacks below.

Of course, those boxes lead to fun in more boxes.

Eight

That's how many degrees it was here on Saturday morning. EIGHT!! People, this is the south. This is November. This just does not happen! Usually at Thanksgiving I am hot in a sweater by mid-day!

I know, I know - you live in Canada or you read the Yarn Harlot's blog so 8 degrees (Farenheit I might add) is nothing. Well, I live in the south for a reason - it's warmer here! We don't have to ever shovel snow. When is does snow, the whole state shuts down and we all stay home (unless of course you are a nurse). I have never owned a snow shovel, snow shoes, a sled or any other such wintery device and I certainly don't intend to start now!

There was ice on our pond Saturday AM. Here are some pictures for ya.

I don't know if you can tell or not but all of the lighter part of the pond is a sheet of ice. Only the darker portion in the very back of the pond here does not have ice on it.

Here's where the inflow for the pond is.

And this is the grass on the dam.

I can't really complain though (even though I am) because our house stayed toasty warm with the wood stove and the kiln going. We have SO MUCH to be thankful for so I guess a little bit of cold air every now and then can be tolerated! :)

My Corner of the World

Raise your hand if you recognize THIS!

Yes folks, that is the famous Big Chicken in Marietta, GA. That was a spontaneous, hurry up and grab the camera because the blog is going to LOVE this kind of moment. We took the picture on our way here to eat the best Italian food in the WORLD I tell ya (shameless plug - whatever).

Here's a big plane out in front of Dobbins AFB - again one of those hurry up and grab the camera for the blog moments.

As you can tell, we made another trip to Atlanta this week. We stayed overnight so I got a few nighttime skyline pictures for you. They didn't really turn out very well though. Someday we will take a ride into the REAL downtown and get some really good skyline pictures for ya!

Now, the picture you have all been waiting for - the Space Shuttle! Why yes, I do consider space "my corner of the world". Who saw this last night? In GA, it started out in the SW sky at 6:13 and moved across the sky for about 4 minutes before descending in the NE sky. You can see it again tonight, Saturday and Sunday night. HERE is the schedule. Obviously, this is the schedule for where we live but you can navigate around the NASA site and find your own area and viewing times. You can totally tell this is the shuttle, right? You can practically wave to the folks onboard!

Oh, and here's a peak at some of the new sock yarn on the website. I'm sending out the Knit Witch newsletter today so if you want to be on the list and you aren't just email me at theknitwitch@gmail.com with your email address and I will add you!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Wild (and Domestic) Life

We woke up this morning and LOOK what was in our pond!!!!!!!!!

I know, the picture isn't great but it was all I could get before they flew away. This is the first time we have seen ducks in our pond. Apparently these are Hooded Mergansers. Two males and a female to be exact. Mr. Man and I had just talked about putting a wood duck house on the pond a couple days ago. Nice to know that ducks find our pond inviting! Here's a picture from the website above that shows what these cuties look like up close! Fancy aren't they?

Now onto domestic life. Check out the cats - this is the wood basket next to the wood stove that the cats have claimed as their warm, happy place. Yes, that's all three cats squeezed into the basket.

I think Slim needs to lose a pound or two - what do you think?

WIP Wednesday

How about that - I actually followed a blogging theme! AND I am blogging about knitting two days in a row! Wonders never cease.

This is going to be a moebius scarf and this is knitting for a friend who is gifting it to someone else (which always stresses me out just a wee bit). The fiber is 100% alpaca and from her own alpacas. I went online and spent about 2 hours perfecting how to do a moebius cast on. Then I actually READ the pattern and realized it isn't knit with a moebius cast on at all!!!! You just knit the length of it and then kitchener the ends together. But, at least I learned how to do a moebius cast-on right? Nutty as she is, Cat Bordhi has a pretty darn good video on how to do it on Youtube. She is always immensely entertaining - I love it! Note to future self: read pattern before doing foolish things like learning.

You can find the Rav link for the pattern HERE.

It was kind of funny when I started this project because I typed in "moebius cast on" into the Youtube search and like 5 of my own videos came up. I was like noooooooooo - if I had made a video on moebius cast on then I wouldn't be here looking at how to do it now would I?!?! Silly Youtube................

BTW - our website climbed to over 50,000 hits yesterday!!! Pretty exciting for our fun little business. Thanks everyone! :)

Socks!

Alrighty then. These have actually been DONE for like 2 weeks but I'm just now getting around to posting about them. These have appropriately been named the "socks of eternity" because that's about how long it took me to make them! Not because the pattern was at all difficult, relatively plain vanilla material here, but because I am freaking slow. I'm not really a slow knitter in speed, it's just hard to get me to sit still long enough to produce more than a few rows at a time.

So, here they are in action!

These are for Mr. Man and they are artyarns superwash merino. Dudes, I started these socks WAY before I started dyeing my own sock yarn! The pattern is "made up as I went along" by Knit Witch - completely unpublished and only written on a scrap of paper in my mind. Trust me, I was regretting that when I went to start the second sock about 6 months after the first one!!! Essentially it is just a plain vanilla toe up version with an xo cable run up each side of each leg. The ribbing is 2x2 because I simply can't take 1x1 and remain sane for too long of a period. I can do pretty good ribbing continental style which is definitely helpful but I totally suck at doing continental knitting on DPNs - go figure.

Of course, the sock blockers are by the one and only Turtlegirl!

Next time though I will do a broader cast on for the toes (they are a little pointy for my tastes) and I suppose I really could just cut them and fix it with a little kitchener. Hmmmmm....................

Need Stamps?

Mr. Man has been busy at work doing graphics for our new found addiction - custom stamps! We have done several designs on Zazzle and they are all available for sale to anyone who is interested. No boring stamps here! We have ordered some and they look really nice. If you click on the pictures the link will take you to the Zazzle purchase page. You can order them in several different sizes and denominations.

Here are ones for Knit, Crochet and Spin.

Here is a "Happy Holidays" stamp - the snow is little yarn balls!

Here is a general Knit Witch stamp.

And here is the "LOVE" stamp. This one says "LOVE" on it but I couldn't get the right image to populate but it is correct on the stamp.

So go check them out and I hope you enjoy browsing them. We think they are fun!

My Corner of the World

Chattanooga!!! Well, ok. It's not exactly my corner of the world but it's only 1.5 hours away! We went to Chattanooga the other day to go to Sam's and the clay store. We went to the clay store, got so tied up talking to the girl that worked there (for like an hour) because she is a local music junkie, so she knows Ian, and because she is a knitter. We got so tied up talking to her in fact, that we FORGOT TO BUY CLAY!! Can you believe that?!?! I mean, we didn't go there specifically to BUY clay - we wanted to check out the store in Chattanooga - but seriously, if you have to drive 1.5 hours everytime you need to buy clay, don't you think you would buy some while you were there?? Sheesh.

OK - pictures - that's what you came to see. Here is the drive up there which goes right next to the Ocoee River and Lake Ocoee. VERY beautiful!

As you can see, the dam had not been released for a while. I don't know about you but this does not look like fun kayaking to me! When they release the dam and the river is high, you can't see a vast majority of these rocks.

Then, on the way home we stopped at this old abandoned copper mine in Copperhill, TN which is right across the GA/TN border (about 15 minutes from our house). I just thought this place was kinda cool so I thought you might think so too!

And here is a beautiful tree we took a picture of last week in downtown Blue Ridge right in front of the train.

Have a great weekend everyone! I have fun stuff for you on Monday!!!!!

Spinning!

Someone requested to see a picture of my spinning wheel last week. Well, here it is!

This is an Ashford Traditional. I really like this wheel though I think I am going to be in the market for a more portable wheel soon - maybe an Ashford Joy or a Schacht Ladybug. Anyone with either of those wheels want to weigh in on their opinions? I'm kind of leaning towards the Ladybug.

Here is the fiber that I got at SAFF all plied up! It ended up fairly even though I did have trouble in some spots with the singles. I am assuming that these were hand carded batts. I have never spun hand carded batts before and it was definitely a little different. Not bad by any means - just different. As I plied I actually tried to be purposeful about the amount of twist I was putting in the yarn. I like to work with tightly twisted plies so I tried to make this yarn like that. I think it turned out pretty good. I tend to undertwist the plies - for some reason it just always seems to look like I am putting more twist into the yarn than I actually am. But, I'm learning! I have some hand dyed merino top in the que next.

Pond Enjoyment

Well, someone is really happy to see the pond getting all filled up! That would be Goose. Here he is standing out on a rock in the water watching the fish. Of course, once I went to zoom in - he moved.

Poor little babies have gone to get spayed and neutered today. I'm sure they will be pitiful this evening after we go pick them up.

We had a small "incident" with the wood stove in which there was a copious amount of smoke in our house. I went upstairs and I thought that the morning sunshine coming through the window looked pretty neat with the smoke. I figured I better get a couple of pictures because this is not a situation I would like to re-enact anytime soon.

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY!!

Here's my Mr. Man all decked out in his military garb (sexy, eh??). Luckily, he is retired from the military now and enjoying the benefits that come with being a veteran. A big thank you to my wonderful husband for serving in our military and working to protect our country. A big thank you to all the other military veterans out there too for their amazing service and sacrifice.

Weekend Visitors

We had a busy weekend with friends coming to visit. I don't know what is wrong with Hockeymom and myself. Neither one of us got any pictures of our visit!! I know, we are both bad bloggers. She really was here though - I know, I know. Pictures or it didn't happen. Whatever. She WAS here, I swear! She and her husband both - we really enjoyed their visit and hope they will come back SOON - right Hockeymom!?!?!

We also had our former neighbors in Tucker come for a visit. They have two kids and the older one seems to really miss us as neighbors amazingly enough! She had such a good time here and made a big fuss when it was time to leave. We don't miss Atlanta but we sure do miss having this great family for our neighbors!! I did manage to pull it together enough to get a few pictures of them.

It was a really fun weekend. Obviously, Leo had a great time. He LOVES kids - mostly because they drop a lot of food on the floor I think. Man, when you don't have small children in the house you forget how much work they are! It's no wonder that moms with small children are constantly exhausted!!

My Corner of the World

Today's "My Corner of the World" is our pond. I am SO EXCITED that it is almost full again! The water is crystal clear and the fish are so happy! Here are some before and after shots.

We are planning a great weekend with several visits from friends that we are looking forward to! One of our visitors will be none other than Hockeymom!! So, that will be a lot of fun. We are also expecting a visit from some of our former neighbors when we lived in Atlanta so we are looking forward to seeing them too. I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend! The weather has been beautiful here so we are looking forward to a few porch beers with friends!

Getting the dust off the wheel

Remember these that I got from PetuniaLu at SAFF??

Well, so far I have turned them into these. I still need to ply them together.

I ended up with 2 bobbins of the lilac color and one of the fawn color. I am planning to ply one bobbin of fawn with one bobbin of lilac and then leave the other lilac as a single. I'm not sure what I am going to do with it yet, I was thinking of maybe making a hat and using the single for the trim or something like that. Not too bad for having to literally dust off the spinning wheel before using it I don't think!

Here's a picture of Petey swimming out in the pond to retreive his favorite toy. As you can see - the pond is coming up nicely! It is almost full now and NOT LEAKING! YAY! I'll post more pictures of the pond tomorrow.

Proof that I do actually knit

But seriously, who can knit like this??

Here are a couple of other cute kitty pictures. They love the new basket we set up for them! I know - they have it rough, right?

A Trip to Clayton

Over the weekend we also headed over to Clayton, GA to see a friend that I have not seen in YEARS! She lives in Florida most of the time but she has a cabin in Clayton that she spends the winters in. The drive took us a little over an hour and it was one of the most beautiful drives we have taken since living here!

Here is her cabin.

Here is the view off of her back porch.

Here is our friend Kris trying to run from the camera!

Here is Mr. Man with her dog, Dewey.

We took these on the road.

Our friend is on her way here now for an election party! OK - it isn't much of a party since it will just be the 3 of us but we have homemade soup and cornbread, caeser salad and lots of fun cocktail mixings! The most interesting part of this party should be that it is a "she" vs. "us" party - yes we are on different political sides of the fence. However, we can actually talk about politics and respect each others opinions - amazing. I guess she does not mind being "wrong" - haha!! Wish us luck!!!!!

And the winners are..................

The winner for the best story was LizzyK8!! She won a skein of Knit Witch hand dyed sock yarn! It was REALLY difficult to choose a winner. There were so many great stories entered. Also, we did a random drawing from everyone who reposted the contest. The winner from that is Amanda Wansley!! She will also receive a skein of Knit Witch hand dyed sock yarn.

Thanks to everyone who sent in ghost stories! They were really fun and interesting to read. We will post them all on the website this week. I will definitely let everyone know when they are up.

We had such a fun weekend. On Halloween we went downtown because our neighbor told us that some kids get dressed up and go around to all the stores downtown and go trick-or-treating. Ummmm.........I think she meant to say HUNDREDS of kids get together and go downtown for trick-or-treating! We couldn't believe how many people were down there. They had all the streets blocked off and had costume contests and lots of fun. The kids were so cute! Here's a few random shots that we took while we were down there.

Here's a Knit Witchy looking witch!

Here's the cutie that won the contest. He is Indiana Jones. They actually painted chest hair on him! He was such a ham too!!

Here's the graveyard they set up downtown.

This is me and "The Thing"!

This is me and the witch in front of the graveyard.

Here's my wonderful Mr. Man.

The weather was beautiful!! I hope everyone had a great Halloween and congratulations to the contest winners!!!