I bet you thought I was going to title this one "Smoke!" or "I survived the great smoke-out of '26!"
Nope, I thought I'd try to be a bit unpredictable and *not* talk about the wildfires right away in this post.
*ahem*
It was another one of those weeks which flew by, and I was left a bit perplexed by this when Friday evening rolled around. How? The week was fairly quiet, thanks to it being an off week at work, and staying in the house, mostly, to avoid the smoke from the wild fires that are burning up by the border.
Monday was publishing day, which went smashingly well. Tuesday through Thursday went by in a blink. I did a lot of spinning for Tour de Fleece, and touched my crochet projects a bit. I even recorded a garden journal video ... Wednesday morning, I believe it was.
Can I just say that when I realized Wednesday was the 15th I was shocked. SHOCKED that the month was officially half over.
This summer is speeding by and it's certainly not going the way I thought it would. Nothing bad, I should clarify. It's just that I thought I'd have more time to do things, read books, watch interesting movies ... And here the summer is practically over.
"No it's not," you might be saying. I always feel like summer is on the downslope once Independence Day rolls around. Usually my focus is on the garden and enjoying the fruits of my labors, and think how there is not enough time to do all the things because the garden is producing so much.
I've been a bit brooding about this. If I'm using the word correctly. So I decided to take a break from some things this weekend. Mainly crafting and I cut back on the interwebs.
I tried a new television program, and I read a book.
The television show was Ride or Die, on Amazon. I like it well enough, I suppose. It's one of those programs where I don't know how they could do a second season if they manage to wrap all things up by the end of the first season.
The book I read was "The Wedding People". I enjoyed it. I started it on Saturday and finished it Sunday evening.
On Friday I decided to try and find a map showing the path the smoke was going. A few friends who live in Virginia posted on social media that the smoke had reached their state. I was surprised to read this.
It took me a bit of doing to find a map that showed a broader picture of the country affected.
That same day I pulled up Watch Duty, to see all the current wild fires in the country.
So depressing to see how many wildfires were marked on the map.
And then to see how close the border wildfires are to my area.
Friday evening a storm rolled through and helped with the smoke.
Saturday we made the trek to town, for shopping and I got to see what things look like since the smoke hit the area.
For the most part, the smoke is gone. Thankfully. There's still a bit of something, and you can definitely see it on Saturday when you were headed towards Duluth.
Smoke off in the distance.
On the High Bridge
Overlooking Lake Superior.
Around midday we went for a bike ride to one of our usual spots. No issues with biking.
There was maybe one boat out on the water.
I picked my first official harvest of raspberries.
Oh, now that I think about it, I should start freezing the berries as they ripen (as long as the birds don't get them first) and when I have enough, make a small batch of raspberry jam. Oh, yum!
I couldn't break away from the crafting totally. I did knit a few rounds on my vanilla sock.
For all the talk I do about being a blogger, I sure am slacking in that department lately.
I meant to write last week. Seriously, I did!
I have no idea what happened to last week. It was one of those weeks that just *flew* by.
So this post is in part to remind all you groovy cats that I'm still here. I've just been busy. With everything and nothing.
On the work front we were headed towards a publishing day.
I had a doctor appointment. I got some good news. Yay!
I did a whole bunch of crafting. A lot of it on the secret stitching I'm working on. ... I thought I'd record a flosstube this week. The timing just never worked out.
I decided to just let it be an "off" week. If that makes sense. Just go with the flow and not have any structure.
A few highlights from the week:
On Tuesday we used our new fancy pressure washer to work on power washing the house. And by "we" I mean my husband did the work, and I kept him company.
Hmmm maybe I should have taken an "after" photo, too.
Wednesday was my doctor's appointment. After the appointment I cruised over real quick to the mart of Wal (Ha!)
I picked up something that my hubby has been wanting for a while. So it is sort of an early birthday present.
The boys brought it in to the house, and I started putting it together. Another part of the birthday gift.
I'm sure it took me less than an hour to pull together.
A lot of boxes and packaging. The directions were pretty good.
Voila!
To say it's been a hit would be an understatement.
Friday I seasoned it and we've used it every day since.
If any one has any tips please share them. Thanks!
Friday evening, after a chat with a fellow crafty friend, I decided it was time to *finally* make the sock project bag I've been wanting to make.
I decided to follow a tutorial by Woolenvine and cut out the fabric.
Saturday, once the weather got warm out, I went back in to the house and sewed the bag together.
I only thought about taking a photo when I was making the wristlet band.
It took me a little bit longer than I hoped to sew it together. I made a couple of rookie mistakes and had to undo a bit of work, before redoing it.
Overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I haven't made a bag like this in many, many years. Close to 10, maybe.
I promptly grabbed some sock yarn and cast on a new vanilla sock.
Okay, so it's hot out there, right? It's hot all over. My area is not used to really warm temperatures, because we are next to the world's largest air condition, which is known to everyone as Lake Superior.
I noticed on my camera roll that I was saving screenshots from various days showing what the current temperatures were.
Tuesday, 10:57 a.m. - 74 degrees F, with a real feel of 87 degrees
Tuesday, 1:32 p.m. - 80 degrees F, with a real feel of 94 degrees
There were more, but I won't keep boring you.
We had some pretty warm temperatures this weekend. Each day last week was gradually getting warmer and warmer to what the local weather people were calling a heat dome.
"A “heat dome” high-pressure system will keep the Northland hot, humid, and dry Sunday night and Monday. Low temperatures will remain in the 70s, with highs in the 90s. Feel like temperatures will be in the triple digits. A west breeze will not help in keeping us cool, and it will also keep fire weather dangers very high and extreme."
So yeah, it's getting hot out there. No. It is hot out there. Tomorrow is supposed to hit a high of 98. Who knows what the real feel will be like. The humidity is doing it's part to make it feel like a gross armpit out there.
Today I brought Feffer in to the house, after making sure the girls (chickens) had plenty of fresh water.
Sweet little Feffer.
This is him settling down into the sweet spot of where the fan was blowing across my lap/
He was a sweet boy while we was in the house. Though there was one time where I had to corral him while I went and took care of the evening meal.
Oh the thumps I heard! Even though he was right in the cross breeze of a fan and was just fine.
When I was done with what I was doing, I picked him up and set him back on my lap. He was so happy. He was bopping around and crawling all over me. At one point he climbed up to the back of my chair.
He sat up there like a little potentate who was surveying his kingdom.
When I sat back down, he came over by me and immediately tickled me with his whiskers, before crawling back down to settle in my lap.
He's such a good bun.
More than likely he'll be back in the house tomorrow.
So that's a "quick" little update on what's going on with me. I'm hoping to be more productive this week. With the heat how it is, we shall see.
A few photos from this evening, when I went out to tuck the girls in.
Once upon a time I subscribed to The Perpetual Page-Turner blog and she had a post titled "If we were having coffee together." I thought to myself "What a clever idea." This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share. She still has a blog. Amazing!
So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me.
If we were having coffee ... I'd ask, in all seriousness, what the heck happened to June? I feel like all I did was blink and here we are at the start of July.
I think I know what caused it. I took a lot of vacation time in June. The work schedule was conducive to it, and my hubby was able to take time off for similar reasons. So we had nearly two weeks of free time to do what our little hearts desired.
All in all, June has been a pretty nice month.
I was looking through my phone's camera and realized I didn't take as many photos as I thought I did. Also, I was pretty boring this month, when I get right down to it. 😆 I puttered in the garden, I knit, I cross stitched. I fretted about the weather and if we were ever going to get rain. (Spoiler alert: It did. Then it turned humid and gross for a while)
If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that after 25 days (I was told) I got my beloved Rav back. Oh my gosh, I missed having *my* vehicle so much.
I got the call earlier this week letting me know that the parts arrived and the techs were working on it. Then about an hour later I received a call lettting me know everything was done and I could come get it.
I went up to the dealership the next morning, signed the necessary papers and very happily gave them the keys to the loaner.
I was so excited to see my Rav that I didn't even ask where it was parked.
I meandered around the parking lot a bit before spotting her.
If I could have, I would have run over there.
Instead, I clicked my fob and unlocked the vehicle, to make sure it was mine.
Then I opened the door, slide into the seat, relished the familiarity I felt, and sighed contentedly.
A quick selfie was taken and sent to my husband, with the message "Did you hear that sigh of contentment?"
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you that I had a very nice birthday. It was quiet on the day, and I sort of reveled in it.
Jessica over at Lumistitch gave me a copy of her "Cherries" chart, and gave me three copies for a giveaway. I decided it would be perfect for a SAL. I started a cross stitch stitch-along/start-along for my birthday.
Here's a photo of my start.
It's a fun, quick stitch and sort of potato-chip-y and I don't really want to stop working on it. My friend Milka is already done with it!
My husband made me my traditional birthday steak dinner. Yum!
If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about Amazon Prime Days and how we managed to mostly abstain from shopping. Almost.
We decided to order a pressure washer. It arrived on this past Friday. Oh. My. Gosh. It is a beast!
The first project we used it for was to power wash the deck so we could re-stain the deck and rearrange the furniture a little bit.
After power washing the deck. I cleaned so much old stain and grime off the deck.
The next morning we stained. But first ... we opened the can of stain I bought and immediately declared it wasn't the right one. Bah! So it meant a trip to Menard's so we could exchange and get the right color.
With the correct color in hand, we went back home and started the project.
Looks great, right? We decided it was maybe a little *too* red, so we we got another color and used that for a second coating.
We are so happy with the end results. And this new set up.
I took this photo right after it rained.
If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about some of the other crafting I've been doing.
I worked a little bit on my Porcupine Island shawl.
It's slow and steady progress on this shawl. Despite how careful I'm being, I'm winding up with extra stitches. It's so weird.
Squares for the Battenberg blanket have been worked on.
I haven't touch my Battenberg blanket, or my Maeve crochet square project in ages. I'm trying to get those projects back in to the rotation.
If we were having coffee ... I'd give a sneak peek at the garden.
Oh! I just remembered something. We have caterpillars on the milkweed. At least we did this past weekend. I haven't checked to see if they are still there. And all the photos we took are on my hubby's phone. Shoot!
If we were having coffee ... I'd mentioned that it's the Fourth of July holiday this weekend. I've been enjoying seeing all the patriotic stuff I've been seeing on social media. Am I doing anything special this weekend? I'm really not sure. It depends on the weather. We've had some rain this week. More rain is in the forecast.
Okay, well, I guess that is it for now. It's been quietish around the homestead. I've been in my own little world probably more often than I care to admit. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of stuff to write about, too.
Thanks so much for reading my nonsense. I appreciate it. ☺️❤️
This past week was vacation for me and my husband. How does that work into selfies? Well, I'll get to that. Eventually.
The universe decided to give me a few things to stress and fret about before I went on vacation, too.
My son had an encounter with a bear. Yes. Early morning, as he was driving to work. He braked for deer that ran out in front of him, and before he knew it *BAM* a young-ish bear came slamming into his car. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much damage as you'd think. He's fine, the car's fine. The bear ran off.
After he called me and told me what happned, I drove out to where he was, to check things out and make sure he was okay. Then, on the way back home my car gave a message that was not good. Turns out there's a recall for that particular issue, and the part is back-ordered nationally. Lovely. I managed to find a dealership that had an appointment relatively soon. My car is currently "at the spa," I guess you'd call it, though I think if she was at a real spa, she'd have been taken care of already and be back in my driveway. I have a loaner vehicle for now. You'd think I'd be happy with a 2025 Toyota Tacoma. I am not. I'm so spoiled and use to *my* vehicle and everything is so different on this loaner.
Anywho ...
On Friday, May 29, I cast on a new sock.
I took this photo as we were driving out to the lake for some late evening fishing. By the end of the workday that day, I was D-O-N-E. Weekend, here I come!
I caught my first bass of the season. I did not keep it.
We did bring home some fish. When we got home the girls immediately circled my husband. They knew what he was about to do, and they love getting tidbits. I tried taking photos and videos.
They were hanging around him, waiting not-so-patiently.
We have one hen who is a bit more demanding then the others. She kept circling around and looking in the buckets.
Going to the other side, in case he was hiding something on the other side.
Time to go check the other side.
Staring at him until he makes the right choice and tosses them a few things.
Seriously, look at that stink eye!
Sunday was quiet. We did more fishing and I caught a really nice bass.
I was pretty proud of it, so I asked for my photo to be taken.
I was so proud of it, in fact, that I dared to touch the fish with no gloves. Yup, a pretty big deal.
Sunday I started putting in the rest of the garden. Or was that Saturday? At this point I don't remember.
The important thing is, I got the garden in! I had a lot of help, too.
"Oooo!" I bet you are thinking, "does that mean you have a garden journal?" I do not. Yet. Crazy, right? I had all of last week to film and I didn't. I wasn't ready, if that makes sense. Plus, the weather was a bit uncooperative on the days I thought I might shoot b-roll.
So, it's still on the to-do list to record a garden journal.
Well, I had to work Monday. It was publishing day and work life revolves around that. At least for now it does. (If you know, you know)
Once the day was done I was SO out of there. I signed off, closed everything up and set everything to DND.
Woo hoo, vacation!
The weather was nice, for the most part.
The grass and leaves burst out and now everything is so GREEN. Deer are everywhere.
We even spotted the first fawns of the year.
Over the course of the week we spent a lot of time on the water. We hit a few different areas this year.
One of the usual spots.
Loons have been hanging around the lake. They decided my husband was safe and got pretty close to his kayak. Close enough to get decent photos, anyway.
A new-to-us spot. We've driven past it for years and always see other people fishing there.
Not as much current as we thought there would be. It was a beautiful, quiet morning.
Then we ran into a male Karen at this spot, which sort of spoiled the spot for us. Basically, he thought he owned the entire river. He soon found out that he can't try and throw his weight around without people matching energies.
A different body of water. This made for a lovely morning of fishing, too.
Hardly anyone else on the water. It was like we had the whole lake to ourselves.
On Friday, June 5, I posted update on my vanilla sock to my instagram. Look how much I got done in a week!
This was mainly when I was passenger when we were going somewhere.
In one week I managed to knit the leg of a sock. When I knit my socks on two circs, I definitely *zoom* through the project.
At some point during the week I went out to the she shed and pulled floss for two more cross stitch projects I'll be starting this month.
Wait, make that three more cross stitch projects. What's a few more projects, right? I just need to live forever. 🤣
Friday we brought my car to the dealership to have it diagnosed and see what, if anything, needed to be done. That ended up being a long day and I'm still sort of bitter and sus about how some things shook down. (Is that even a phrase?) Basically something happened and it was too weird of a coincidence to have happened when it did. That's about all I'm going to say on that. The people working at the dealership were very nice.
I brought my cross stitch with me to work on, and asked my husband to take a photo of me. Which felt really weird asking for. But, if I don't start asking for this, I'm never going to have action photos of me, right? 🤷♀️
I was the only person in the lounge who wasn't staring at their phone.
This past weekend we went for a bike ride. Which, now that I think about it, we only went out for one bike ride.
Oh and it was a doozy, of sorts.
I packed a picnic lunch and loaded up the basket.
The road we usually ride on to go to a nearby lake has some work being done to it. A large chunk of the road has been torn up and is gravel. No biggie. The part that was a doozy was when I left the gravel and my bike tire hit the edge of the asphalt. The bump was enough to make my phone bounce out of the phone carrier, fly up in the air and come smashing down on the asphalt. I was stunned to see my phone go flipping up in the air. The phone holder is the style where you pull it open, put your phone in, and let the hold draw back in and hold your phone. I guess if you hit something hard enough, the bottom drops out, so to speak, and it's enough to let the phone pop loose. Then when the spring brings the bottom back up, it was enough force to fling my phone up about 6 feet in the air. The screen protector on my phone is cracked, but otherwise fine.
The rest of the bike ride was uneventful.
We enjoyed our picnic lunch. You like my fancy storage containers?
I didn't feel comfortable taking photos of the water because people were down there. Instead, I took photos of the trees.
One more thing from Sunday. This heifer was spotted trying to figure out how to get in to the garden and eat all the tasty plants.
He saw my husband and causally sauntered off. We spotted him in the front yard, staring longingly at the garden. Today was back to work. Work was quiet and I was able to catch up on most things.
This evening I started a new cross stitch project, before sitting down to work on this blog post.
Hmmm, what could this be?
Okay, to bring it back to the selfies. ...
I'm not much on taking selfies. I'm trying to get more comfortable in my own skin, so to speak. Making flosstube videos helps.
One day when we were out on the water (I'm thinking it was early in the week) I thought I'd try taking a selfie while I was out on the water. No sunglasses and the sun was sort of in my eyes.
Very owly-looking, right? I have that resting face, if you know what I'm referring to.
I remembered seeing or reading somewhere that if you struggle with taking photos, to imagine you are looking at your husband or someone you love, and your features will soften. Or something.
Well, my husband was right there, so I looked over at him and felt my face break out in to a smile.
Maybe not the prettiest selfie. I think you can definitely see the love I have for him in my smile.
