Any Tulane fans out there??

I did some custom orders for a few Tulane fans last week. I think the yarns turned out pretty good!! Some folks wanted white in their yarn and some folks didn't so I did them both ways.



Look at this Morning Glory that bloomed in our garden this week:


Here is some Mountain Laurel:

Here is one of the many Shasta Daisies currently blooming in our yard:


And here are some pictures of the pond that is at the end of our walk that we do most everyday. I don't think I have ever shown you pictures of this before. It's a very pretty pond. Eventually our pond Iris will be as huge as these!


AND - February Lady is making steady progress again - see??



I had to frog about 6 rows last night because of a goof but things are back on track!

Have a great weekend!!!

TOADS!

Remember all those little tadpoles we had swimming around in the pond? Well, they have sprouted legs! Look how cute they are!



These little guys are so cute peppered all over the pond plants. They are TINY.

We also had a mass hatching of these:


These are Mayflies. The larvae can last for up to a year but once they hatch they can live anywhere from 30 minutes to 48 hours. These are also what is known as an "indicator species" and only hatch out of very clean water. Frogs are also an indicator species so I think we must have some pretty clean water around here! We have LOTS of frogs around our big pond but I would never be able to get a picture of them - they are too fast! I guess toads are just lazy. :)

Guess who is going to the Sock Summit?????

KNIT WITCH!!!

Well, sort of. Our yarn is going at least. We were going to try and go so we applied for a booth space and got in but logistically, a drive all the way across the country just is not going to work for us right now. Even though the thought of driving across the country with my husband is very appealing! We really want to do it so maybe next year.

Our yarn is going in some kits that are being made up by a NEW online fiber shop that has just opened. We have done about 20 pounds of yarn and 5 pounds of top for the new site. Go check it out! It is called Uptown Stitches and is run by the delightful Sheila Mahone!! You can see some of the Knit Witch custom colors on there.

We are very excited to have our yarn going to the show. The kits will be in the Wild Geese Fibres booth. I know the kits will contain yarn and a pattern but I'm not sure what else will be in there. As soon as I have some pictures of the kits I will post them for you to see!

We have also been busy doing bowls. I know many of you out there are still waiting on your custom order from Stitches. We sent out a lot of our awaiting orders but we still have more to go. Unfortunately, the bowls don't always turn out on the first try but rest assured that we are plugging through the orders and hope to have them ALL out within the next two weeks. Some of you will be getting your orders this week though. Thanks so much to everyone for their patience as we have worked through the orders.

Quick shop update

There are new bowls up on the site as of today. There is ONE sheep bowl currently available. I know, I know - we will have more I promise! But first come first served on this one!! Update: Nevermind - the sheep bowl has been SOLD!


Oh - and there is a snazzy bamboo bowl too!!

Fun Weekend

This weekend was the Blue Ridge Arts Festival. We had a good time going even though we really didn't get a chance to do too much shopping. Brogan (Wayne's son) and his girlfriend came to visit us for the weekend so on Saturday we went down to the festival to enjoy the live music playing downtown.


On Sunday my dad and aunt came to visit and we went to the festival again. No pictures because I left my camera at home! But, I did buy some really nice handmade soap from Thistle Ridge and I LOVE IT! I am a sucker for handmade soaps.

Then on Monday we kind of just took it easy recovering from the weekend, although we both worked! I did go over to our neighbor's on Monday just in time to see this little guy before she left with him.



Someone found this coyote and then brought it to her so that she could transport it to the AWARE center for rehabilitation and release. So, hopefully all will go well and this little guy will make it back out to the wild where he belongs!

Snake wrangling round-up

OK - for my squeemish readers (you know who you are) you may want to skip this post.

The other day we had some "invaders" in our small pond who thought that was pretty good easy fishing for a few meals. So, they had to be removed. We saw this guy sticking his head out of the pond.


We caught him, put him in a pillow case and Wayne drove off to go recycle and relocate him. You can see our continued work on the flagstone patio in the background! While he was gone I saw this:


I kept waiting and waiting for him to get in the pond because I knew if he got in the pond I could catch him. Eventually, he went in.


Well, Wayne drove up and I was still trying to catch the little guy. It took us about another 20 minutes to catch him. And, in a pillow case he went! It turns out that Wayne hadn't released the other one yet so we headed out for a walk down the tracks to relocate both of them far away from here so they couldn't eat anymore of our fish!!! They were relocated here. You can see the little one swimming away in the lower right hand corner of the picture.



Oh, these are Northern Water Snakes I believe for anyone who cares.

The next day we went for a walk and saw a groudhog up close that our dog tried to bring home with us and a HUGE hawk. Of course, that was the day we didn't have the camera with us!!!

This weekend is the big Blue Ridge Arts Festival so we'll be hanging out there and then enjoying the re-opening of our local farmer's market on Saturday morning - YAY!!! I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday weekend!!!!

A big thanks to Wayne and all of our other military folks out there for their amazing service to our country...............

House Happenings

Mr. Man has been busy at work on the house. Here's a few things that have been going on.

Remember this? This picture was taken after all the failing handrails have been removed.

Well then it was this:

And now we have stairs!! I know, I know - we still need to get rid of that giant satellite. Trust me, it's on the list of things to do!

He is now working on the border so that we can keep all the sand in place for the flagstone patio that we will be putting in.

While he was working on that I painted some lattice.

We still have that tarp hanging up slathered in red paint because I am going to paint our rocking chairs also. I bet like the UPS driver drives up and wonders why that is there and hopes it isn't blood as he carefully drives away..........

Here is where the lattice is going - it isn't nailed up yet so forgive the wonkiness of it right now.

Knit Witch on the Yarn Harlot Blog!

Well, sort of. Our picture did make it onto yesterday's Yarn Harlot post - pretty exciting! I thought that she took this picture after she signed Wayne's shirt but alas, my memory apparently isn't as good as I thought it was!! Here's the link if you missed it. We are the first picture of the 3 pictures together if you scroll down a bit.

Here's a few more nature shots for you. I love it when there are lots of critters running around and so many flowers are in bloom.

Wayne found this toad. This is a FAT toad I tell ya.

We put her up in the garden and she promptly took residence in one of the toad houses (read: cracked yarn bowls that make great toad houses).

Here's a shot of some Cherokee Roses. We have lots of these all over our property and they smell SO GOOD.

Here's one of our wildflowers coming up.

And here is Petey nicely posed for you in front of some Rhododendron on our daily walk. Look at how pretty they all are!

Got Lace?

We do. This is what I have spent the majority of my weekend doing! So, for those of you who were interested in more of our merino/silk blend lace - it is now up on the yarn page.

Let's see - what else is new on the site............... We are now selling t-shirts on the website. Just look on the front page and scroll down. None of them have been signed by the Yarn Harlot though. We also have a few new spindle bowls on the site. Not too many so get there quick if you have been waiting on one! They tend to sell out pretty fast.

We are still working on getting more sheep bowls on the site. It is still going to be a little while though because Wayne is still working on the back orders from Stitches South. So, if you are looking for a sheep bowl in particular just email me at theknitwitch@gmail.com and let me know what you want and we will get your request on the production schedule. I am also going to be doing lots of custom yarn orders this week so if you want something in particular this is a good time to let me know.

And, totally unrelated - here's a cute shot of Willow stalking Slim in the long grass.

Yarn Harlot!

Yesterday we took a ride down to Woodstock and The Whole Nine Yarns for the Yarn Harlot event. We had a great time, as usual. The crowd was a little smaller this time (presumably because there was a ticket price) but I liked that the crowd was smaller. We actually managed to remain sober during the entire event - mainly because Regan and Sandy and Cristi were not there to be a bad influence on us. It's always their fault.

Anyway, as always, we enjoyed the talk and of course the stories were hilarious. Here are a few pictures from the yarn shop and the event.

The shop was really nice (that was our first time there) and the owner and staff were wonderful! So nice and very hospitable. And, look at their cute car!

After the talk we got in line for the book signing. It didn't take long for us to get up to the front for the book signing. We chatted with Stephanie for a few minutes and Wayne took our picture together.

Then she was gracious enough to sign Wayne's t-shirt. Check it out!

And then we got Bruce to take a picture of me and Mr. Man!

We had a great time!

I forgot one

This one is back for the Spring time also.

And - who dosen't love Miss Babs?!?! Apparently everyone in this house does!

What could possibly be more fun than a crinkly brown paper bag that smells like yarn from Miss Babs?

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!! We will be off to see the Yarn Harlot on Sunday. I'm sure we'll have some entertaining pictures for you next week. If you are going - we'll see you there!

Things in Trees

We were walking around our pond the other day and look what we saw in the tree!!

Here's a closer shot.


THAT, my dear blog reading friends, is an honest to goodness Copperhead snake. Nice. Normally, we would capture this guy and relocate him to a place FAR AWAY from our property. However, this tree is on the bank in back of our dam surrounded with thick brush. And plus, as stated earlier, he is up in the tree. Not exactly friendly capturing circumstances. So, he will not be being relocated at this particular time. We will definitely need to keep an eye out for him.

This guy is also back but is definitely welcome to stay. I know Slim knows to steer clear of snakes - he won't walk anywhere near one. Hopefully the kittens will get the memo.

He/she is about to shed - see how cloudy the eyes are?

On another wildlife front, the baby birds are gone. I took this picture of them in the morning and by that afternoon they were all gone. Mom and dad will be back in a few weeks for another round.

I wouldn't let the painters paint that little spot because the birds had eggs in the nest at the time. I guess at some point we will get up there and get it cleaned and painted so that she has nice new digs for next season!

Wayne found THIS LINK of a live streaming video put in a Blue Bird nest. This is somewhere in North Georgia I think. Very cute.

February Lady

The February Lady has been making fairly steady progress, see?

Well, let me rephrase that. It LOOKS like it is making steady progress. Boys and girls -this is why you do not knit in the dark. For some reason blogger does not want to load my picture at the correct orientation but look on the left side of the photo.

See what I did there? At some point I started knitting the wrong side rows on the right side and vice versa. Of course, I didn't even realize I had done this until a full 3-4 repeats later. I was being so careful with the pattern to make sure that all of my center knit stitches were lining up properly. I just wasn't looking at the big picture. GRRRRRRRR!!!! So, I will be frogging an inch or so in order to fix the problem. I bet you can't guess what I will be doing later this evening!

I love the color of the yarn though and the DK weight yarn is really nice to work with. Perfect for this pattern I think. You can find this yarn HERE along with some other available colors. This particular color is Aphrodite.

So far, this has been a really easy knit (despite my attempts to make it more difficult). This would be a great first cardigan project for someone. I found my copy of the pattern HERE.

OK - that's it. Happy Hump Day!!

A trip to Atlanta - Part II

I didn't want to put all my pictures of Atlanta in one post so here are some others I thought were interesting:

I thought the architecture of this building was cool. This is obviously one of the older buildings in downtown.


You can't really see it well in this picture because of the trees but this old building butts right up against this new skyscraper. I thought the contrast was interesting.


Here are just some random building shots.


Look at all the taxis! No wonder you can never find a taxi in Atlanta - they are all parked in downtown!

It's funny how quickly you repress (I mean forget) what it is like to live in a major metropolitan area like that. I could not believe how many cops we saw - in police cars, walking the streets, on segways, you name it. We must have seen close to 100 cops/downtown security in the 3-4 hours we were there. We pretty much stayed in a 6 block area or so. Then I started thinking - I can't even remember the last time I saw a Blue Ridge cop. I guess it was back when they came to pick up the drunk, naked guy out of our driveway. Ahhhh.........good times.

Tomorrow - actual knitting content - I promise!

A trip to Atlanta

We had to spend last Wednesday in downtown Atlanta. Now, when you live there you avoid downtown Atlanta like the plague, right? No one wants to voluntarily drive down there, pay to park and deal with all the Atlantan inconveniences down there. Needless to say even though I have lived my entire life in Atlanta (with the exception of the last year) I have actually spent very little time in downtown.

While we were there on Wednesday we just made a fun day of it. We took the camera and walked around and saw all kinds of cool stuff. It was sort of fun to act like a tourist in my own hometown! Here are some pictures we took:

This is the building we had to go to. This is tower one of the Marquis buildings.



Here is a picture of the Westin Hotel. All those damaged windows are from that tornado that came through Atlanta last year.


I took this picture because I thought it was funny. See that round building with the blue dome on the top (well, you can't see the blue dome very well - nevermind)? That's the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I actually remember when that was the tallest building in downtown Atlanta. These days it is seriously dwarfed.


Here's the Hard Rock Cafe Atlanta!


Just looking at this picture makes me nauseous.


I'll post a few more pictures for you tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to my Sweetheart!!!!

OK blog - everyone wish my sweet husband a happy birthday!

Thanks so much for coming into my life sweetie! I wouldn't have nearly as much fun in this crazy life without you by my side!!!



For his birthday we are working on this:



Here's what it looked like before:



We are getting rid of this completely unnecessary huge stair structure and just using a few stairs where needed. The flat parts will be flagstone and on the sides we will terrace it a little and plant some herb and flower gardens. THEN we tackle the area around the little pond. I can't wait! I am so excited about getting this project done. It is really going to make our house look great when you pull up into our driveway.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Flower Power

We have all sorts of stuff blooming right now. I love it!!! I'm looking forward to next Spring too when we will have even more blooming since we have been busy planting stuff around the yard and around the pond. We planted a lot of Iris, Lilies and Caladiums around the pond. Right now they are just a tall slender leaf but they are growing fast.

Here are some geranium baskets I made a couple of weeks ago that are hanging on our upstairs porch.



Here is our beautiful rhododendron bush that we planted last spring. I love the color of these flowers!


And some azaleas:

Help with dyeing

It seems that yesterday Willow thought I might need some help with dyeing. So, she hopped up on my dye table and promptly fell asleep using the yarn I tie the skeins with as a pillow. Wow, is she ever helpful!


I am testing out a new yarn to add to the shop! This is a fingering weight 70/20/10 Baby alpaca/silk/cashmere. This stuff is soooooooooooooooo soft!!! I dyed up a test batch of 2 skeins the other day. What do you think???


What should I do with it?

Oh - and check out these cool pictures I got yesterday of some newts! I was sitting down on our dock seeing what was going on in the water. Luckily, I had the camera in hand. The whole thing probably lasted less than a minute.

BABIES!!!!

The feathered kind, mind you - not the human kind. Look at these little cuties!!!!


If you remember, last week they looked like this. Amazing how fast they grow.


On a business note - Google is giving me fits about sending out my newsletter. Apparently I have acquired enough membership on my newsletter list that Gmail now considers me "spam" when I try to send the newsletter out to everyone on the list! I have tried breaking the list in half but am still being locked out from sending my newsletter to a large group of people. So, I'm still working on it. But, I wanted to let you all know that I now have 4 skeins each of Sagittarius and Pisces sock yarn on the website. We sold out of these at Stitches and I know there were lots of people still interested in these two colorways. I will definitely be dyeing more soon but this is at least a start!!

Rain

That has been the story of our weekend. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy to have all the rain. But, when we get so many days of it in a row I really start missing the sunshine! I did manage to get a few more things planted during a break in the rain on Saturday. I planted some corn, cantelope and beet seeds. We have learned a lot starting our garden this year. There is so much to learn it is just amazing. I think we started our tomato plants a little too early and we should have repotted them into larger pots before putting them in the garden. But, when you have like 75 tomato plants - repotting them is a bit of a logistical issue! So, next year we will just start them a little later so that they are ready to go into the garden when they are a few inches high.

Here's how the garden is looking right now. The yarn bowls that come out cracked make GREAT toad houses for the garden!


Sunday I spent dyeing some of the colors that we sold out of at Stitches. I have four skeins each of Sagittarius and Pisces now available on the site. These colors were the fastest to go. So, if you were waiting on them you can get a few skeins now. I'll be dyeing more as soon as I get my yarn order in - hopefully by tomorrow!

Sagittarius

Pisces

Here's Mr. Man in the Fun Specs he bought at Stitches!! Aren't they fun?!?!

I know it's not February but..........

I started the February Lady sweater! Yes, I know - shocking!!! Actual knitting on my blog!

So far I am really enjoying this pattern. I have been itching for a project lately that is not socks. This is Knit Witch DK weight in colorway "Aphrodite". I love this DK yarn!!! It is absolutely wonderful to work with.

Of course, I can't leave my blog to ONLY knitting. Check out these cute little guys about ready to fall out of the nest!

And we have some Iris blooming.

And some pansies and petunias and other such stuff blooming.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!! Don't forget to keep voting for Wayne's Kroger bag design! You can vote daily until May 15th. The link is on the blog on the right hand side. Thanks!!