Look Who's Learning to Spin!

Willow!

Check out this little spinning wheel that my awesome neighbor Liz GAVE me! Liz is a truly amazing person AND an amazing artist. She is going to start hand painting some yarn bowls for us so we are really excited about that! If you like Native American design be sure to keep checking the site for when they are available (or email me and I can put you on the notification list)

Isn't it cool? Kittens added only for size comparison - not for cuteness factor at all - no way - uh uh - not me.

It is obviously hand carved and the name carved into it is NEUN. I have no idea where it came from or why it is so small (child's spinning wheel perhaps?) but it is really neat looking. Any thoughts or information that might help me find information on such an antique??

Also, the geese payed us a visit today. Look how big they are getting!

It is really getting hot here - it was 96 yesterday! - so that does not really make me feel like knitting at all (or spinning for that matter) so I haven't done any of either in the past few days. I have been spending time working with the inventory for Amia Yarn Company and WOW some of this alpaca is SO SOFT you wouldn't believe it! It feels like cashmere!! Not to tempt you or anything but there is some new beautiful handpainted yarn that I just put up on the site yesterday. It is very limited in quantity though so if you like it - don't hesitate.

Also, of course, not to tempt you again, there are also new yarn bowls up as of this morning. I think we MAY actually be starting to get caught up! Woo hoo!

Totally Awesome Country Story

This post has absolutely nothing to do with knitting BUT - it is hilarious so read on............

We had a particularly unusual day yesterday. First off, the dogs start barking like crazy so I look outside to see what they are barking at. Turns out there is this woman and two kids walking on my property FROM the creek (which is the back of our property). I am of course wondering why these three people are coming out of the woods onto my property so we go out there to say "Uh, can we help you?". Turns out it is the woman and her two grandkids that live up the mountain from us who apparently think it is perfectly ok to just go wandering onto other folks property that you don't even know. So, she talked to us for about 45 minutes telling us how her husband owns all the land around us and he would never sell it and wanted to know if we were democrats or republicans and on and on and on. Kinda weird, right? OK - that wasn't even the funny or really unusual part of our day (no pictures of said random woman walking on our property, BTW).

Later, I see our neighbor drive by our house and assume she is driving over to our house as planned. But, we never see her come up the driveway so I walk down the driveway a little bit to see if she turned in. Boy am I glad I did. I see her parked sideways across our driveway near the bottom so I am of course wondering what is going on. She is at the bottom of our driveway talking to someone sitting in a car so I think "Oh, she must have seen someone she knows and stopped". I almost just turned around but on closer inspection, it appeared that the other car was in the ditch at the bottom of our driveway so I wander down to investigate, passing a rather odd loose tire in the middle of my driveway along the way.

Turns out she is talking to this kid (about 17 years old) who is drunk as a skunk and apparently just wrecked his car trying to FLY up our driveway (our driveway is gravel and steep so that didn't work out too well for him). The kid is so incoherent he can barely even talk to us - great, thanks for driving around on our street. Neighbor asks what we should do so I say "Well, I'm calling the police because this kid needs to go to jail". Before calling I have to just see what his plans were.

Me: So, where are you going?

Drunk Car Wrecker: Uh, down there.

Me: Why?

DCW: Uh, to fish.

Me: Oh really? I don't see a fishing pole and everything down here is private property.

DCW: Uh..........yeah..........I'm just gonna back up

Me: Oh no you aren't you are missing a tire.

DCW: No I ain't

Me: Oh yes you are (points to said missing tire lying in the middle of the driveway)

DCW: Oh that ain't MY tire

Me: That is TOTALLY your tire

So OK - police call.

By this time Mr. Man has also walked down the hill to join in the fun. Neighbor and I walk up the driveway together and I call the Blue Ridge police and start telling them the situation.

Me: Hey there! I have a REALLY drunk kid that has crashed his car into the ditch on my property, blown out a tire, etc.

BR Police: Whut's yer address m'am?

Me: (Gives address and other pertinents)

Neighbor (in background): AND HE'S NAKED

Me: {{WTF?!?!?!}}

Me: He's naked?

Neighbor: nods

Me: Ummm yeah and he is completely naked too so bring the COPS cameras for the show."

So what's more disturbing here? The fact that I have a completely naked drunk/high kid that has just crashed his car and blown off a tire in my driveway OR the fact that as I was talking to him I didn't even NOTICE that he was completely naked?!?! I'll let the blog decide.

Long story short, all the Blue Ridge cops in town show up because that is obviously the most exciting thing that has gone on in a while, the Sheriff shows up and the State police show up just for good measure. Mr. Man has to go in the house to get the kid a ratty pair of shorts so he can at least be arrested decently. Neighbor, Mr. Man and I went up on the deck to have a beer and watch the festivities in true country fashion. Did I take pictures you ask? Well OF COURSE I DID just for you guys!!

The moral of the story folks is "Get dressed BEFORE you start drinking, ok?"

Just in Case

Just in case you have forgotten how cute they are:

And big brother:

I swear the kittens think he is a total HERO. They watch him jump up on things and lounge around and drink from the faucet and you can just see that look of "WOWWWWWWW - I wish we could do all those cool things" on their faces. It is so cute!

Here is the sock progress (oh yeah, you bet your sweet patootie that is a yarn bowl that my yarn is in the background!)

Why we love Blue Ridge

This:

Is about an 8 minute drive from our house. This is Lake Blue Ridge and we went kayaking there this morning. It was beautiful!! There was almost no one else out on the water and it was nice and quiet. We don't like doing stuff like that on the weekends when there are tons of other folks around. AND we saw a bald eagle!!! I have never seen one in GA before so that was quite a treat. Unfortunatley, no picture of that though as there is no way I could have gotten my camera out of the ziploc baggie fast enough!

My son came this past weekend again so that was really fun! This is him and Tiana kayaking in our pond. We had a great time and they stayed until about 10:00 playing cards and Yahtzee - all of which I lost at.

I rescued the sock last night, got it all untangled and fixed the gosh darn mis-crossed cable. I also managed another repeat before the kittens started stalking it. It's in a yarn bowl this time though so that will help some.

Also, Amia Yarn Company is pretty much up and running! We have some alpaca yarn and roving on there now (great stuff) and I am expecting alpaca sock yarn and hand dyed yarn very soon. As soon as I get that I will be adding it to the site. I'm sure it will be evolving as we learn the site better and get suggestions from people (just like Knit Witch was). I shudder to think about what Knit Witch looked like when we first put it online - we've come a long way baby!

We have almost sold out of the first batch of Blue Ridge yarn bowls (that was FAST) and have two more batches in the works. We should have about 20-30 to put up by Monday or Tuesday.

BTW - the picture in the last post was of a very pudgy toad. I know, the picture kinda sucked but he wouldn't move out of the shadow!

Kitty Litter Crimes

The victims:

The perpetrators:

The crime:

Having kittens is so much fun. This is the sock I was supposed to frog back on and fix the silly cable mistwist on. Right after I posted about doing that - this is what I found. They had a total field day. I have salvaged about half of it - hopefully I can have enough patience to sit down and salvage the rest. Luckily they didn't pull out any needles of affect the actual sock at all - just the ball of yarn I was working from.

Can I just say that this is what I get for NOT having my yarn in a YARN BOWL like I am supposed to!!!! Lesson learned.

On another note - we had a visitor on our patio last night:

Think he is getting enough to eat around here? We just aren't sure........

Of Cutie Pies and Yarn Bowls

Check 'em out!

Also, we found these tree frogs hanging out on the side of our house yesterday. We have SO MANY frogs around here - it is amazing. In the evenings, it sounds like a loud nature chorus. The frogs were so loud the other night they were drowing out Mr. Man's guitar playing.

AND...........NEW YARN BOWLS ARE FINALLY UP! Go check them out HERE. We will be getting another batch up in probably a week or so but this is a good start anyways.

I still haven't frogged back on the sock. I only have like 18 stitches to frog back so I'm just being pathetic. Maybe updated pictures of the sock soon.

Progress

Things are moving along though they aren't really looking much better. This place still looks like a tornado came through. I unpacked a bunch of stuff in the kitchen today. Mr. Man glazed the new yarn bowls and there is a batch getting their final firing as we speak! We should be able to fire the next batch late tomorrow and then have them up on the site by Sunday - woo hoo!!!

Amia is coming along also. We will be doing a little more work on that tomorrow too. Tomorrow we are unloading more of the POD that came today, working on the upstairs floor and finishing bowls and doing the bowl and yarn pictures for the websites. Sounds like fun, eh?? :) We were going to try and make it to the drive in movie theater tonight but the movie does not start until 9 and we are already about ready for bed since we are so tired from working around the house all day (it's only 8 right now).

The kittens are doing great! They seem much happier now and are running around and playing all the time. They are still a little skittish when I go to pick them up but they have improved immensely since we got them. We have decided on the name Willow for the little girl kitty and Goose for the little boy kitty.




It sure is hard to get them to sit still or both look in the same direction at the same time! Check out the geese - they are getting bigger!


Oh..........and I have absolutely no knitting to report. I was working more on the socks, then I crossed a cable the wrong way, frogged it, redid the cable, continued on and realized that I crossed the same cable in the wrong friggin' direction AGAIN! So, said sock is unfrogged waiting for me to come back and tackle it again. I must have been tired!