We're baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

YAY! It's good to be home! We just got back from our 10 day stay in Atlanta this afternoon. Some cats and chickens sure were missing us! We are already back to work at Knit Witch finishing up the yarn for the October club shipments. If you are in one of the clubs, look for your packages sometime during the week of October 11th. We have a SUPER AWESOME designer this month, Rosi G., who seriously went above and beyond to help me get the packages ready. Since we have been so busy these past few weeks we really appreciated some extra help!

The new job is going great and I am really enjoying having the students. I am finally getting back into the swing of things and acting like a nurse again. I still have a lot to learn but I'm getting there! Wayne had his first day as a volunteer at the hospital and he had a great time playing games with kids all morning!

Nessie and Petey are loving the apartment life. For me, it gets old pretty quick. It's fine for a few days but it gets annoying having people around all the time and yelling in the parking lot when we are trying to sleep! Luckily, we won't usually be there on the Emory kid party weekends. I swear we are the oldest people in the complex. BUT, it is an extremely convenient location and we can walk to catch the shuttle to Emory or any of the hospitals there. Plus we are right across from the VA so we really couldn't be any more convenient!

Our apartment is coming together. We actually have a bed and a couple of couches now! We still don't have a TV so we have been Huluing it on the laptop! Hulu has been really convenient!

I don't really have any interesting pictures for you but here's a cute one I snapped of Nessie and Petey a couple of nights ago.





Aren't they cute!! I'll tell you all about the Indigo Girls concert tomorrow. It was awesome!

Wild Thang................

This weekend Wayne, Liz and I and a few other folks braved the intense heat and set up a booth at the Wildlife Festival in Blue Ridge. Unfortunately, the turn out was not that great but on Saturday we had a constant crowd of people at our BRAEA booth. This was because we had the only actual wildlife at the Wildlife Festival!!

We were very lucky to have Monteen from Hawk Talk at our booth for the day on Saturday. She brought Sam, a Great Horned Owl that she has had for over 20 years! Twenty years ago some people found Sam on the ground after he fell out of his nest. They kept him illegally for a year until they finally realized that owning an owl is really a lot of work! Thankfully, they gave him up to a raptor rehabber (Monteen) so that he could get proper care. Unfortunately, by that time though, he was so habituated to humans that he was not releasable. So he has been with Monteen ever since.

Sam was so much fun and such a wonderful addition to our booth!!



We also happened to have a Harris Hawk. We lucked out on this one because Monteen received a call that morning about a hawk that she was having transferred to her care. He was delivered to the festival and also hung out with us for a little while in our booth. He wasn't as used to being an education animal as Sam so we didn't keep him out for too long. He was really a beautiful bird though!! We took the liberty of naming him Sir Harris.

Monteen really does great work for these beautiful birds of prey and has dedicated her life to their rehabilitation and survival. If you would like to make a donation to her (her facility is in Holly Springs, GA which is near Canton) please go to her website and donate. I know times are tough for everyone right now but they are tough for Monteen and her birds too. They need to have the mouse money coming in so that they can have a healthy breakfast!! :) Knit Witch donated $100 this morning as a thank you for Sam and Sir Harris joining us over the weekend. Be sure to check out her website because she has a great video there about her birds. If you donate between now and Friday I will put your name in a bowl for every $5 that you donate and we'll give away some Knit Witch yarn!!! Just send me an email (theknitwitch@gmail.com) or leave a comment on the blog with how much you have donated and we will get your name entered!!

We didn't bring our camera but Liz did so when I get some pictures from her I will post a few more for you. It was a good weekend but we sure are glad to not have to be sitting in the sun all day today!!

Internet Woes

Wow...........Friday again. How does that keep happening? Unfortunately, we STILL don't have internet access at our new apartment in Atlanta - well, unless you count an internet page taking about 20 minutes to load as internet service. I certainly don't. It was supposed to be all fixed up last Tuesday but apparently we got a crap modem sent to us so they had to send us a new one and yadda, yadda, yadda.......we still have no service. This makes being an internet college instructor rather difficult.

HOPEFULLY, we can get it all set up next Tuesday or Wednesday. The new job is going good. I had my first day on the floor with students on Wednesday. They did a good job, despite most of them being scared of children, and we had a good day. I have a really good group! I think this was my prize for them having to get me up and running so insanely fast. I didn't have any of them run screaming from the building so that was a pretty good sign that I did alright. Once I got back in the grove it all started to come back.

The apartment is coming along nicely - I'll have to get some pictures of it the next time we are there. It is always good to get back home to our chickens though. When we came home yesterday we had 21 eggs out in the coop!!!!! Eggs anyone?

We have made a few decisions about Knit Witch and have a couple of announcements.

- We ARE still going to SAFF, even though it will be a bit more abbreviated then originally planned. We are sharing a booth with the wonderfully talented Fleury Sheep and Wool so we are really excited about that! I just simply have not had time to dye enough stuff to fill up a booth so sharing seemed like a great alternative. We will have some bowls and some yarn but if Knit Witch products are on your list of "must haves" be sure to make us one of the first stops on your list. AND if you need a fleece processed, Jen and Jared will be taking fleeces for you!!!

- We are about to pull all of our yarn off the website and go to wholesale only status. I know, I know, but with everything else going on, we just can't keep up with everything. The bowls will still be for sale on the website but our yarn will primarily be being sold through Only Ewe and Cotton Too and maybe some clubs. That is still to be determined. Things will calm down pretty soon and then we can really see where we stand and what we can realistically accomplish. So, I'm telling you this because if you see something you like on the website - NOW would be the time to get it. Hopefully I still have most of what is on the site as I have not updated it in a few weeks but if I don't I will let you know. We will probably pull all of the yarn off of the website sometime next week.

Well, I think that is it for now. I actually have been doing a little knitting and am about halfway through the front of the Rugby Sweater from Knit Simple. I'll get some pictures for you before we head back to the big city. I think Petey and Nessie really like being apartment pets! They are so funny together - they love each other! I need to get some pictures of that too!!!

Nessie!

I know you have been missing her!!!!


She is getting SO BIG! She went for her shots the other day and she is almost 3 pounds now! The first time we took her in there she weighed 6 ounces and we had already had her for about 2 weeks!

Groundhog Day!

Check out these pictures of the super cutie pie groundhog that was in our neighbor's yard!!




Unfortunately, the tops of all of her sweet potatoes in her garden are now gone!

Hummingbirds!

We have had an insane amount of hummingbirds at our house over the past couple of weeks. At any given time there must be about 30 of them buzzing around on our porch! They have been going through about a gallon of hummingbird food every other day!!!!!!! Wayne got some great pictures of them the other day. They are so busy getting food they don't mind us standing around taking pictures of them.

Wow!

What a busy week we had last week! Crazy!!!! On Monday, Wayne went to the apartment complex we had picked out to put a deposit on the apartment that we wanted that would be ready on October 20th. When he got there, another person started doing all the paperwork than the woman that we had originally started working with there. He said to Wayne "Well, ok but do you just want the apartment that we have like this one that is available right now?". Wayne was like.....uhhhhh.......sure! So I get a text message in class saying that Wayne got an apartment and that we would move in the next day!!!!

Soooooooooooooo......................back to Atlanta to pack up some stuff and drive back the next day to move in. We didn't bbring much - it certainly isn't the lap of luxury but it will at least get us started until we can start getting some "real" furniture. It sure is nice to have our own place to keep our pets and such while we are down there. We wanted something with zero maintenance so an apartment was a good choice for us.

The apartment is directly across the street from the VA, which is super convenient for Mr. Man, and we are walking distance from all kinds of restaurants and stuff. AND we are walking distance from the Emory/CHOA shuttle that goes to the hospitals and to Emory so SCORE! That will be nice if we ever need it, especially since parking at the Children's hospital is a complete nightmare (well, not quite as much of a nightmare as parking at the VA so score on both points!).

Here are some pictures of our little humble abode. It will be really convenient to have a place in Atlanta - woo hoo!!!! This isn't fancy but keep in mind that we did all of this in ONE DAY! You should have seen this place before we got rid of all the boxes. We pretty much had to buy everything for the kitchen and bathroom (silverware, dishes, pots & pans, etc) so Nessie was having a grand time playing in all of those boxes!!!




I have finished all my training for the new job and I officially start with students on Wednesday. I actually have no idea if my new hire paperwork is all finished and I still haven't been able to go and get my Emory badge. Come Wednesday, I sure hope I am officially an employee!!!