Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest

Anyone ever been there? It is really a beautiful place. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is in North Carolina and is one of the only virgin hardwood forests east of the Mississippi. The trees here are HUGE. We hadn't been there in a couple of years so we decided to take a ride there. It is about 1.5 hours from our house or so. Here are a few pictures.

The water there is amazing. It flows into the beautiful Santeetlah Lake.

We saw 3 different snakes - very unusual that we saw so many of them up close. They were all pretty darn big too. All of these are black rat snakes. Someone on the trail told us to be careful because there was a baby Copperhead right up the trail. Well, it was a millipede - close. Someone needs a little help with their snake identification.

Here's a picture of us with Petey and our neighbor Liz with Petey. Petey sure had a great time. I packed him a peanut butter sandwich - his favorite part of the trip!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! We'll be getting stuff packed up for the Sock Summit!!!

Did you notice?

Yeah, I totally forgot to blog yesterday! I have been so crazy getting this Sock Summit stuff ready to go that it just fell off the radar. Not to worry - you haven't missed much! Have I told you how bummed I am that we are not going to the Sock Summit??? I am really glad our yarn is getting to go but I WANT TO GO TOO!!!!!!! Wah! Hopefully Tina and Steph will be signing up for more torture and doing this again next year. If they do - we are so there. Thanks so much to everyone for their wonderful support of our Sock Summit yarn colors! We have sold a lot of the yarns already. I will let everyone know when voting is up and running.

Some time ago I promised you a picture of our neighbor's garden. This is sort of a bad picture and things are MUCH more huge now. I will have to try and remember to get a picture when we are over there again. This one was taken from our property and you can't really appreciate the hugeness of this crazy garden.

Here is another picture that we took on our Fourth of July day. This one was too good not to share. Check this out. A bottle opener on the front bumper of his car!

This reminded me of a funny story. Oh how I wish I had gotten pictures of this at the time. We were at my dad's farm one day and we were helping him get a couch moved to the apartment over his garage. Well, there was NO WAY we were going to get the couch up the narrow stairway to get it up into the apartment so we were wracking our brains trying to figure out how we might be able to do this. It just so happened that there was a porch balcony on the apartment (2 stories up of course).

One of my dad's friends, Mark, was there. He lived down the street and was a pretty humorous country kinda guy. He looked at us and said "Wellllll, you know what a redneck would do?" We all just sort of gave him a blank stare. He said "A redneck would go over there, get that front end loader, put the couch in the bucket and lift it over the second story balcony.".

Me, being a nurse of course, was thinking OH NO WAY YOU GUYS!!! I'm thinking someone is going to get killed in this operation. But, my dad and husband were all gung ho about this idea so my dad ran to get the front end loader (what? doesen't everyone have a front end loader sitting around on their property?) and my husband went to go climb out on the first story roof to help get the couch over the balcony. Oh my bob I wish I had some pictures. It was hilarious but the funniest thing was - it worked!!! We didn't even kill anyone in the process which was amazing.

So now, anytime we think of a quirky good idea we say to each other "Wellllll, you know what a redneck would do?". Hence why the bottle opener on the truck reminded me of this story. I figured some guys were out in the woods and all ticked off because they didn't have a bottle opener. I could just hear one guy saying to the other "Wellll, you know what a redneck would do? He'd screw a bottle opener right there to the bumper so he'd always have one.". Another great country thinkin' idea!!

On another note - we are working on our mailing list issues so we will let you know when we have it all straight. My goal is to find a system that makes me use a lot less foul language than google mail lists does. If you did not get a copy of our newsletter via email yesterday you can look at the one on the website HERE.

Wild Release

Liz brought two opossums up with her for release this weekend. She has been rehabbing these little guys for a couple of months now. They are getting big and it's time for them to go find their own homes. I didn't have my camera on me when we released the first one, unfortunately, so I just have pictures of the second little guy getting released. It was so cute to watch him explore his new world for the first time.

BTW - I'm really glad to have these 2 on our property. Did you know that opossums eat poisonous snakes with no problem? That's good to know because we saw that darn Copperhead again yesterday. Wayne saw him REALLY up close and personal (too close for comfort). We tried to catch him but we couldn't. So, maybe a opossum will eat him!

And look at this cute little tree frog that I snapped a picture of. He was having a nap in the corner of our window last week.

Fourth of July Fun

On the 4th we attended the annual Blue Ridge Fouth of July Parade in downtown. As always, it was entertaining. Here are a few of the fun shots:

On Friday there was a spaghetti dinner and live band in the park. Liz and I had some spaghetti.

Then we saw Elvis.

On Saturday morning there was a parade. We saw this guy with a rather large bell.

What country parade is complete without a few big tractors?

And some confederate soldiers (please, no one mention to the folks around these parts that our particular Southern county here actually sided with the Union - they won't hear of it even though it's the truth).

There were some Fannin County Democrats.

The community garden float.

Herbie the Lovebug. He looks pretty good for his age, don't you think?

I bet you didn't know that there are some Hare Krishnas in Blue Ridge, GA, did you? Well there are. 3 to be exact.

Sparky the firefighting dog.

And then this guy. I'm sorry but I have no explanation for this one. I can't even make up anything good. Where does one even buy red fishnet stockings??

And they were doing these little scenic rail cars rides in town. These things must have gone by our house 25 times in the past few days. So, we spent a lot of time waving to the people that were riding. The train hardly ever comes by our house (it goes north to TN from downtown, not south) so it was fun to have the visitors riding by all weekend.

We had a really fun weekend. Sunday was just a relaxation day (I love those!). What did everyone else do for their 4th of July weekend??

New Contest!

I hope everyone is off of work today! Not me. I am still dyeing yarn for the Sock Summit plus I have the club shipments to get done this weekend. I'm sure not complaining though - I can think of A LOT worse ways I could spend my time! I have really enjoyed getting all this stuff ready for the Sock Summit. I have seriously considered packing myself in one of these boxes. If I ship Priority I can be there in 2 days, right?

OK - the contest. Again, this one isn't mine but the prize IS Knit Witch goodies! It's another one of those easy contests so check it out HERE for full details. The prize is 2 skeins of Knit Witch sock yarn and a copy of the new Zodia pattern.

We did notice sort of a small problem with our new pond set up yesterday. Since the little pond has all of those rocks around it now - it isn't nearly as easy to catch the snakes that get in the pond! We found one in the pond last night when we got home from a walk and he scooted right out of the pond and into the rocks and we couldn't get to him. So, I told Wayne we really need to get one of those snake grabby thingies. That will make it easier. I guess we will try again today to catch the little bugger and get him relocated.

As promised, here are a few more flower pictures for you. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend!!!!!

City of Roses

Here is the latest (and last) entry for the Dye for Glory contest - City of Roses.

I must say - I am in love with this color. I think it will be a good choice for an entry into the solids category.

I decided to also add this color in the "out of the box" category. So that makes 6 total entries for Knit Witch.



The dye technique here is a bit unconventional however that song "It's all Been Done" by the Barenaked Ladies keeps running through my head! I'm sure it's nothing new but the technique didn't fit into any of the other categories. I went with Grace's suggestion of Oregon Merlot for this one in honor of the Oregon Wine Country. So, Grace, email me at theknitwitch@gmail.com with your address so I can send out your prize yarn when it is ready. Thanks!! This color is also now for sale on the website HERE.

Many people who have entered have "tagged" their yarn as socksummit so you can go to the yarn page on Rav, type socksummit into the search field and then click on search by tags to see them. Some of the entries are beautiful! I love seeing everyone's interpretation of what they saw fit to send in.

Speaking of flowers, check out some of the flowers that are currently blooming around our pond.

Aren't these pretty?? I'll show you a few more pictures tomorrow.

It has been decided.......

Happy July!!

Thank you all SO MUCH for your help in determining the entries for the Sock Summit contest! Here are the lucky entries. I'll let you know when voting opens.

Portland Rain - Name submitted by Beverly

Brewtopia - Name submitted by Bronwyn

Waters of the Willamette - Name submitted by Sarah

Illumination - Name submitted by Knit Witch!

There is also another one coming. I decided to ditch both of the solids that I had and go with Theresa's suggestion of creating a red. So, that one is drying and I should have a picture for you tomorrow. I must say - thanks so much for that suggestion! I always forget about how much I love red. Mr. Man helped me with the color combination and I dyed it on a 50/50 Suri Alpaca/Merino blend. I love it!

The yarns have been entered into the contest and are for sale HERE on the website. I need to order more stock because I am dyeing everything that I have to send to the Summit so please know that when you order it will be a few weeks for you to get your commemerative Sock Summit Yarn. If you would like some though please do go ahead and order it so that I will know how much yarn to buy and dye for these colors.

I am actually sending a lot more yarn than I thought I would be to the Sock Summit so we are pretty darn excited about that! Speaking of which, I better go get busy getting things inventoried and packed to ship off.