Prizes!

There are a few events going on out there that I wanted to let everyone know about. First up - Destiknits. You can find information about the KAL she is running HERE along with all the details on how to join up and win some fabulous prizes!! She is definitely putting on this contest for worthy charity causes so please go check it out. Some Knit Witch yarn is among those prizes! Also, her blog is HERE. She also has a pretty cool podcast which is HERE.

Also if you live in Atlanta, check out the sidewalk sale that will be going on at Needle Nook on Briarcliff road on Saturday April 18th from 2-6PM. We have donated a prize for that one also! We dropped it off when we were in Atlanta on Wednesday and everyone was so excited about it! This sidewalk sale is a fundraiser for ovarian cancer research so definitely a worthy cause. You can find all the details HERE. They are also raffling off a beautiful hand knit shawl! Put April 18th on your calendar!

I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!! We will be working around the house trying to get some projects finished up. I am hoping that the upstairs shower will be among those projects. I will have some pictures of that to show next week!

I'll leave you with a cute picture that Wayne took a few weeks ago during the snow. Those cutie-pie petite feet prints must belong to Miss Willow. She was walking on top of our smaller pond which was frozen. I think that I neglected to mention the story about her trying the same thing on the big pond when it was frozen. Well, that time it didn't go so well and she fell in!! Luckily, we were out in the hot tub at the time in case she needed help but she didn't. She got out of there FAST an immediately ran inside to warm up and dry off in front of her beloved heater!

For the Atlantans in the crowd

Knit Witch has been so honored by Kim of Knitch in Atlanta! Kim has graciously asked to carry some of our roving at her hip and trendy LYS - Knitch. We are so excited! We went to Atlanta yesterday and dropped off a big box of roving. Here are some pictures of it:



In all of that there are 6 braids of 50% Alpaca/50% Merino, 6 braids of 100% BFL, 6 braids of 50% Tencel/50% Merino and 6 braids of 100% bamboo. So, everyone go and support your LYS and be sure to check out the Knit Witch roving! I know Knitch has such a wonderful group of loyal followers though that I don't even need to say that.

We also had lunch with my mom while we were in Atlanta which is always a good time!! We always laugh a lot and almost get thrown out of wherever we are.

Hey - and while I have your attention - PLEASE go vote for my neighbor's dog to be the Bissell spokes model! He is perfect. He is huge and hairy - he is a Great Pyrenees. He is listed under Dudley Doolittle. Just follow the link to vote for him. Thanks!!

A picture of brave

Here is little Mr. Goose trying to sneak up on the geese! You can see how incredibly worried they are, right? As soon as he got close enough to see how really big they are, and how they have no plans of leaving just because of him, he turned around and hightailed it back to the house. There were like 10 of them and one of him. It would have been a short fight. All one had to do was turn around, open up it's wings and honk and he would have been FLYING out of there!

He is kind of hard to see because he is the same color as the straw!



We are off on a super secret squirrel mission today!!! I can't wait to show you the pictures and post our announcement tomorrow about it. For those of you in the Atlanta area - stay tuned!! :)

The miracle of fluffing

Check this out - this is bamboo roving. When it dried it looked like this.

Then we worked with it a little and fluffed it up so it looked like this!!!

Here it is braided.

Also, check out these GREAT face bowls that Mr. Man has done!!! These aren't glazed yet but I can't wait to see how they look when they are done! I love the sheep one.

Always interesting

Yep. That's what life is around here. Always interesting. Not a day goes by around here that I don't learn something new. For instance, this morning my husband taught me to properly pre-draft roving. Crazy?? Definitely. The man never ceases to amaze me. On to other things we have learned.......

As many of you may know, my husband has been married a few times. He finally got it right - haha! What you probably don't know is that he has a daughter from his first marriage WAYYYYYYY back a long time ago. Because of crazy divorce stuff he ended up losing touch with her when she was about 8. He tried to get together with her and then find her but the mom was "less than cooperative" at the time. Over the years he has tried to find her but without knowing her last name or having any idea where she was living - it was a bit difficult.

Enter last week. Wayne received an email from "Barbara". He called me over to look at the message and basically all the message said was "wow". I was totally confused. I had no idea why he was showing me this strange message. But then he said "No, you don't understand. I think this is from THE Barbara!". I was like "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? You gotta be kidding me!?!?!". So, there it is - a family instantly reunited via the internet.

There are a couple of interesting things about this situation. First, she now has 2 brothers and 1 step-brother that she has never really met. Second, she has 3 beautiful daughters aged 18, 17 and 11 that Wayne and I are now the grandparents of. Third, Barbara is two years OLDER than me!! Crazy, right? Fourth, I could feasibly be a great-grandmother before I am 40. So now I have a granddaugher that is one year younger than my son. What's that crazy country song? Something about I married my mother's daughter.......yeah, I can hear it playing in the background now.

Anyway - I know the new family members have spent hours perusing the blog to look at all the nutty stories and pictures so I think you have probably seen most of them. I will put up a couple more here that you probably haven't seen yet.

Our wedding (which we didn't invite anyone to!)

Me and your brother Brogan on his birthday

Your dad and I getting ready to go on a cruise in 2006

Our house in Blue Ridge (back when the hot tub deck was still in progress)

Fancy picture on our cruise (probably one of the only times I have seen your dad in a tie!)

Your dad and I at the Southernmost point (OMG that platform was SO HOT on our feet!!)

Your dad and I at Ian's gig at Sweetwater BreweryYour dad, me and your step-brother at his HS graduation in 2008

Your brother Ian jamming it up at Sweetwater Brewery

Your brothers Brogan and Ian and us at our wedding party (which we DID invite people to!)

Anyways - to Barbara, Mariah, Ashton and Taryn - WELCOME to our crazy family!!!! We may not be wealthy in the traditional sense of the word but we are very, very fortunate to have this wonderful family (despite a few bumps in the road) and be living out our dream here in Blue Ridge. Come visit soon!!! We all look forward to seeing you!!! Man, family reunions around this place are gonna start getting interesting!!!

Friday Fun

I found this little guy in our yard yesterday. I guess Petey dug him up for a "friend". I have never even seen one of these little guys before! He is a mole (correction - not a shrew!!) - check out those diggers!

And - this is why I can't let Mr. Man help with the roving. He just wants to wear it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Look who's back!

The geese are getting active again. They are starting to pair off. Sometimes we have two "honeymooners" in our pond and sometimes we seem to have the whole slew of 'em. Yesterday I counted 17 of them in our neighbor's pond!! I think there are about 12 in this picture.

Granted, they didn't really GO anywhere - they just stayed at the pond right across the street - but they haven't been venturing out much over the winter. They are just flying all over and making all kinds of noise lately!

Finally!

The new DK weight yarn is now up on the site HERE! I love this new yarn! It is so sproigy and round and happy - it just makes you feel good to knit with it! This yarn is great for a myriad of projects and will also work for super-fast socks because it has a great twist. Here are a couple of the colors that are up and available. We are doing more solid colors for the DK line.

Aphrodite

Sol

Triton

Diana (named after my mom!!)

There is also another new slew of bowls up on the site as well. Happy browsing!!

$400

Ever wonder what $400 looks like? Well, here ya go - courtesy of Knit Witch's abode.

I should have taken a before picture of the nasty ruts left in our driveway by that terrible wind and rain storm the other day - but they were bad! So we got a load of gravel delivered to make it all pretty again. Ya know - $400 would have bought a lot of yarn..............sigh............

Ooooooooooooo - Lookie!

Here is what we sent out for our clubs this month. Obviously, the theme was "Valentine's Day" this month. The theme for the clubs is "Stars of an Era" specifically referring to my favorite 80's music era! I have decided to keep the club colors similarly themed each month (this month was reds and pinks) mainly to save myself a little sanity.

Sock Club - 100% SW Merino fingering weight - The Romantics


Roving Club - 100% SW Merino - Two of Hearts


Not a Sock Club - 100% SW Merino DK weight - Raspberry Beret (I LOVE this DK weight yarn!)

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!!!!

And for all my fellow nurses and medical friends:


How's that for a chocolate heart???

More baskets

I noticed that Willow was taking an interest in a basket we have sitting in our living room. I usually put our gardening books in there so we have them for quick and easy reference. Of course, I caved. I took out the books and put a nice squishy towel in there for her so she can curl up and keep warm. Well, this has been the scene ever since.


Well neither one of those cats is Willow.


THIS is Willow. All by her lonesome on the couch curled up on Wayne's socks.


Notice how the boys have taken over her fun! Darn boys..........they are SO pesky.

Oh well. She totally thinks that we bought this heater just for her. Mr. Man moved one of our entrance rugs in front of it for her. Poor thing. No one cares about her at all.

OH - and happy Friday the 13th!!!! AND - Happy Valentine's Day!!

Kinda windy

Wow. Did many of you have CRAZY winds yesterday?? Holy cow - the wind here was pretty scary for a while. We had this huge mirror sitting outside waiting for someone to pick it up. It was leaning against the house. Well, not for long. The wind got behind it and knocked it over - that was the end of that mirror. It was blowing big pieces of wood around and I'm sure there are things we need to go fish out of the pond this morning. I'm glad that's over!

We had covered our garden beds with garden fabric and put rocks all over it to keep it warm until we are ready to use them and discourage weeds and encourage worms. That stuff didn't last long. So today we will be going out there and spreading our compost pile over them and covering them again. I can't wait to see how many happy, juicy worms we have by the time we are ready to plant - YAY!!

This morning we are off to Home Depot because of this:



I swear this is going to look like a shower at some point in the near future. Now, this is the upstairs bathroom (3rd floor) and the guy that lived here before us TOOK THE BATHTUB WITH HIM??? Who does that??? Well, in the process of him "taking it with him" he broke the pipe that drains the water from the shower located under the floor and then just stuck the pipe back down there in the floor. Of course, he didn't tell us that. Mr. Man was NOT at all happy about that especially since he couldn't get to the darn thing to fix it! So, he had to use a little creative engineering to get it fixed. Have I mentioned before how much I love this man?!?! :)


Hopefully next week we will have some progress pictures to show!!