Snow is coming

 Snow is coming, or so *they* say.  I guess I'll believe it when I see it.  And maybe cry a little. Snow shouldn't happen until Thanksgiving, in my humble opinion. 

 "Where have you been?" you are probably asking.  Or not. 

Well, nothing to terribly exciting. Fall chores. Morning walks in the woods ... you know, the usual.  

I've woken up twice now to frosty mornings. 

Photos taken during one of my morning walks on one of the frosty days. 

I've had some beautiful morning walks.  The walking keeping me warmish, of course. 

You can't beat some of these sights. 

Yes, morning walks in the woods to collect/swap out SD cards for the game cams. The rut is on, but I haven't seen too much on the cameras.  I sat out last weekend and I didn't see anything but turkeys. 

So that was fun. 

The other big thing that has been going on is cutting, splitting and stacking wood.  

I can't believe the last time I wrote I didn't mention the wood delivery.  I think it was back in September my hubby said something like "Should we get a load of wood delivered?" I immediately said yes.  

Quite frankly I like the security of having plenty of wood for the winters. Yeah, it's work to get it prepared and ready to burn, and I might whine once or twice, but I know the work is worth it. 

This is the first year I've really shared the work load of loading the cut wood, splitting and stacking. I hate stacking.  I over think it when it's time for placing the wood in the round piles.  My husband doesn't mind it and he's pretty quick at it.  So we've got a system.  Cut and load wood in the trailer. Haul it to where we are stacking, and I split it.  Depending on where we are in the stacking cycle, I either help or I fill in the center.  It might sound convoluted while I'm explaining it, but it works.  We are tearing through the wood pile pretty quickly.  That may slow down now that the weather is starting to misbehave. 

One neat thing about splitting wood is seeing the interesting textures in the wood grains. 

This must be where a limb was.  I don't think I've ever seen such tight curling in the grain. 

This makes me think of staples of sheep's wool. 

This is the most recent wood pile we are working on.  I took the day off work yesterday and spent the morning splitting wood. 

A few weeks ago I took this video of myself.  Partly to get used to recording myself.  Which seems like a weird thing, all around.  BUUUUUTTTT ... if I'm going to get really comfortable making craft vlogs I figure I need to do what I can to get a good video presence, right? 

I also made the video on the off chance that it will help encourage someone who needs a bit of a nudge and a "Hey, you *can* do this," if "stinking thinking" might be holding them back from something they want to do, but were afraid to try. 

Fun things ... my son and his girlfriend carved pumpkins.  They turned out cute. 

After a few people sent me links to chickens carving pumpkins I decided to let my girls have a try at it.  It did not go as expected. Success in the end, however. Not to mention all the fun they had once they decided they were going to do it. 

There is something about seeing a toothless jack-o-lantern.

Yeah, those girls ... they sure know how to have fun and hold late night parties. Ha!

Last week I had a work thing to go to.  I wasn't really feeling it this go round, unfortunately for all those around me.  I was quiet and didn't speak much. 

I left the house around 6 a.m. and this is what it looked like most of the way. 

The sunrise was pretty.  I didn't dare try to take a photo. 

Thank goodness for knitting during the downtimes. 

Yup, that's my Bly Cardigan. I'm making slow progress. 

Let's see ... what else ... Oh yeah, the snow I alluded to in the title.  The weather people in my area are telling us we could have a snowy Halloween. As long as there isn't a Halloween blizzard like there was decades ago. 

I'm not really ready for the snow.  Am I ever fully ready?  No ... I keep thinking of things I should take care of and get done, out and about.  I've been watching videos of a gal who is living off grid in a camper up in Nova Scotia. The auto-played videos are of her dealing with the winter and I think it's sort of getting me ready for the idea of snow. One night one of her videos was of a snow storm and my hubby and I think it affected us subconsciously because we made a fire in the wood stove and then was too warm for the rest of the night. 

One of my Christmas cactus' started blooming.  Maybe it is a Thanksgiving cactus? 

Today I set it in front of the door and some of the babies came to the front door and one looked way too interested in it. 

Well, at the risk of making the blog entry *too* photo dense I suppose I better stop now.  I'm cautiously optimistic I will make a crafting vlog/floss tube this week.  I need to sit down and write some show notes because I have no idea what's going on. 

Oh, but I will leave you with this tidbit. Speaking of crafts and hobbies. 

Oh yeah.  One other thing.  If you look to the right side of the blog you will see you can now sign up to have blog posts sent to your inbox.  I used to have something on the blogher network, or something. Then it shut down and I've been keeping my eyes open for something to replace it.  Looks like blog posts get sent to you the next day.  If you don't mind the delay it works great.