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.
Yarn: My own handspun corriedale, purchased from paradise fibers
Colors: Grey
Needle size: U.S. 6 (4 m.m.) and U.S 7 (4.5 mm)
The pattern wasn't as easy to interpret and understand as I would have liked. I knit about 6 inches and then realized I misunderstood the instructions and I ripped out and wound the yarn back up into a ball.
Last week was a bit of a tough recovery from a three-day weekend. I enjoy the long weekends but they can be tough when it's time to go back to work
I thought Monday was Sunday, and Wednesday was Friday. You know the drill.
Because of all this discombobulation I didn't touch a lot of my crafty projects.
I did, however, touch the garden.
Oh, that sounds a bit obscene. Doh!
The garden is winding down and I've started pulling out plants. The first thing to go was the collard greens that I did not mean to plant. They were mislabeled seeds.
I also pulled out some tomato plans that were not going to have any more tomatose, along with a few zucchini plants.
I took a quick break and admired the grape vine that is now growing across the top of the garden fence.
Yup, that's all milkweed. I have a nice little patch of it growing for the butterflies. I didn't see many butterflies this year.
View of the garden from the table I have out there.
This particular day I was feeling a bit moody about the state of the garden, and went to an online garden group and whined about it. Then apologized for whining. The majority of the people who responded said they felt the same about their own gardens this year.
This was definitely a tough year for the gardeners.
Stock flowers? So far only one plant bloomed. I do know this is a cool weather annual.
Some of the fruits of the labor.
Looks like I will indeed get my salsa this year.
This, however, was for a small batch of spaghetti sauce.
No gazpacho, though. I was a bit bummed when I realized there would be no gazpacho this year. My coworker introduced me to it and I can't get enough of it when I realize I have enough tomatoes to make a batch.
This past weekend I completed what ended up being a longer than it should have been project. Staining the trinket boxes.
I held off on staining the boxes due to the weather. I thought the stain and poly would take way too long to dry if I did it when it was raining.
Boxes are now all done and ready to be finished off with any cross stitch I choose to top them with.
This past weekend I was a bit productive with the crafty stuff. I don't have pictures of everything, however.
The heel was turned on my second passenger princess sock.
DMC in called for Colors: 931,799,902,356,221,3688,347,152,340,415,318,535,3865,320,169,930,501
I'm not going to lie, this sampler has got most of my cross stitch attention since the start of the month.
This week feels like it is zooming by, despite only being Wednesday. Then I looked at the date and realized it was Sept. 11.
Sept. 11, you guys.
Not only is it the anniversary of 9/11, it feels like we are reaching the middle of the month in record time.
And yes, I do still remember where I was when I first heard about the plane flying in to the first tower. I was in the drive thru at the bank, before work. I was listening to The Bob and Tom show and Kristy Lee broke the news that the plane crashed into the tower and no one knew if it was an accident or intentional, or a big plane or a small one.
I've been under the weather since Saturday. I've been dosing myself with herbals teas and rest (when I can). Crossing my fingers whatever I have abates by the time Saturday morning rolls around.
