End of the week catch up

 I meant to write on Wednesday. Really, I did. This week ... it's been something. 

Between the weather, faffing about, and some work stuff that has been going on, I am a mildly tired girl. 

On the bright side it's Friday. Or, should I say "Fri-yay!" Ha!

Wednesday I completed a project that's been going on for around two years.  Can you even guess what it is? 

Dancing Stars!

Holy Hannah! When I hung it up on the clothes line to take a photo, I stepped back and took it in. It was a moment where I was a bit gobsmacked that *I* -- me -- made this. 

I am pretty sure I know what kind of batting I want for it. I still have to figure out the yardage for the backing and the binding.  Oh, yeah, and the color. I'm thinking I'm going to go with a black binding, to help those colors pop. Anyone have any suggestions for the quilting? I'm debating on tying or just going with cross hatch. I've never tied a quilt before. 

What else ... earlier this week my hubby and I installed a new fancy radio in his truck. I don't have any photos.  Now he can connect his phone to the radio and have all the fun apple play things that I have in my car, including a much bigger screen for his back up cam. We learned just how easy-ish it is to swap out the factory radio for something aftermarket.  If we had only known that 25-some years ago. When I was younger I had the impression that swapping out the radio was some mysterious thing that you had to be specially trained in on, or something. 

The weather has been all over the place this week. We've had sun, clouds, wind and rain with thunder.  It made it a wee bit hard to get out to the garden and record a garden update, but I eventually got it done. Look for a video on my Youtube channel this weekend. 

I did a bit more crafting. The last time I was at Michael's I saw butterfly charms and thought "Those would make pretty needle minders.  

So that's what I did! 

While I had the fancy expensive (not really) E6000 stuff out I also finally made some magnetic needle threaders that I've been wanting to make for *ages*. 

My friend Patty sent me a little care package a while back. In it she included this cute needle threader

and I was so inspired by it that I wanted to make some and that way I have them all over my crafting spaces and maybe even in my project bags. 

In other crafting news ... I have almost all my organizing done.  I spent some time moving my yarn around and trying to find a spot for everything that was on my yarn shelf before I decided it was a mess and something needed to be done. 

It's SO much better.  I'm not completely done. I may move some of those totes to a different spot.  My hubby and I were talking about it this evening.  He felt it was important I had my work space freed up.  I thought I'd just be shoving those totes around. Ha! He gave me a few ideas. 

I need to expand the storage I have for my DMC floss, too.  I have a few containers that I can add to my two towers of floss.  

The thing with "airing the stash," so to speak, is that you also get a fresh impression of just how much stuff you have. Along with seeing some things you may have forgotten you had **whistles innocently** I'm definitely set for Aida fabric.  Now that I'm feeling more confident about dying fabric I've definitely got enough materials to start with ... 

Speaking of dyeing, I'm thinking of some bare sock weight yarn that I think I have. If I have it, I bet it's sitting in the closet of the craft room. Yay, more sock yarn. Ha ha ha ha, heh, heh, *groans* oh boy. 🤭

I tell ya, I have stuff squirreled away all over the place. 

Work. Well, when isn't there something going on with my work, right? I love my job. I've been there for more than 22 years. However, there's stuff going on that is not in my control.  It's just ... frustrating. We've had this cloud hanging over us for years and years.  Longer than I care to admit, really. As I told someone this week, you can't really explain my company, you have to experience it. Really, the structure of the organization is definitely one of a kind. When I do try to explain it some are like "huh?" and "Wow."

So, if you would be so kind, please send some positive vibes and prayers my way. 

On the health front, I'm still feeling pretty good.  I've been taking it easy when I can, and pushing myself when I feel I can. Yay! I've been walking out to check the game cams each morning and I can walk out there and back without feeling very much discomfort. It's a win I'm happy to have. 

Why am I checking game cams? Well, hunting season is just a few months away. 

I love how the path into the back 20 looks. To me it is so inviting.

The trail in the woods. Hard to believe that in a few months all that green will be changing to fall colors. 

Really, it feels like summer started not that long ago and the Fourth of July was just last week.  We are heading to August in like a week. 

With August just around the corner the school supplies have started hitting the stores. 

The last time I was at Walmart, I was kind of bumming around and went around the school supplies aisle. 

I saw this: 

... and was hit with memories of when my son was just starting his school years. He wanted *all* the Mario things. He still loves Mario. Is it weird that I miss buying school supplies? He's been out of school two years now. 

Sometimes I think I need to write notes for stuff I want to write about on the blog. I could have swore there was more stuff I wanted to blather about ... Can I remember? No. 

I'm still continuing the trend of "taking it easy" this month.  I don't think I've really touched my knitting this week.  I've knit a little bit on my Red Panda cross stitch and my Christmas ornament piece. 

Weather is supposed to be nice this weekend. We'll be fishing in the a.m. Which, if I want to fish with some of my own ties, I need to get this blog published so I can go work on a few. 

Have a great weekend, dear readers! I appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read my blog. 😃

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. 

September, I hardly knew you

 I'm in awe that tomorrow is October 1. Seriously. 

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur. 

Let's see if I can try to recall the highlights.  This blog will probably be photo heavy, and not of the important stuff. Doh. 

My hubby tagged out like 10 minutes in to bow opener weekend. We kicked it in to gear processing the deer and got it all ground into ground venison and sausage. 

Meanwhile ... I'm still going out and waiting for my dream buck to come cruising through.  

Well, any buck, really. I've been putting in hours but nothing is walking through.  The buck I have my eye on is not on a set schedule, and doing whatever he wants. 

There have been a ton of squirrels, crows, blue jays ... raccoons. 

The porcupine comes through at night and I even saw a skunk run through at 3 a.m., according to the game cam. Oh yeah, and the bear ... there's at least once bear cruising through.  

It's good knitting time, though.  I take advantage of it when I can. If it's too chilly I don't knit. 

The sock is looking pretty good, yeah? 

I had a neat experience over the weekend. A quail showed up and graced me with it's patience. 

The first day of fall was celebrated with a fire in the wood stove. First fire of the season.  There was a fire that night and the night after.  Then it's been warm enough that none were necessary.  

The garden is slowly getting ripped out and I'm preserving what I can: Tomatoes and peppers.  Everything else I'm pulling out I've been using right away, like green beans in soup. 

Today I was out there ripping up pepper plants and I had to stop and stare at the marigolds that took hold in their little spot of the garden and are thriving. Sorry, I don't have a photo.  I didn't have my phone with me while I was out there.  Can you believe that? 

I did get a video of some bumble bees earlier this week.

Spent some time in the greenhouse, cleaning it out a bit and kind of prepping it for late fall. 

Aren't those coleus gorgeous?  I bought a few succulents, to go with the succulent my husband rescued and brought home to me.

On the sunny days when I'm feeling chilled, until it starts staying cold, I can go sit out in the greenhouse and soak in the rays and the solar heat.  The plants, however, have only a short time before I must bring in the plants I want to keep. Last year the first really cool overnight temp was Oct. 9. Brrr. 

Here's some photos I took when I was out in the woods.  Enjoy! 

The woods are calling

 This past week has flown by.  There was a big push at work this week, too.  One of my coworkers is going on vacation and we are a small office, and we need to work ahead.  All is good though. 

In short, I was a busy girl this week.  Working hard at the work-for-pay, like always.  Cruising along with stuff at home, trying to get all the things taken care of. So I don't have to think about anything more than I have to this weekend. 

What's so special about this weekend? 

Yup, bow opener. I'm looking for redemption! Remember how last season ended?  I wrote about it back in January. 

This will be occupying my time, thoughts and attention for next several hours, days, weeks (?) until I get my harvest. 

Wish me luck! 

Weekend happenings

 Right now I think I'm *way* more exciting during the weekend. 

If you can call cleaning a car exciting. 

At least once a year I clean my hubby's vehicle. It's either a birthday gift or Father's Day gift to him. 

It usually doesn't last too long, given the line of work he's in.  But, for at least a few days, he can ride in a clean, sawdust-free car. 

That's what I spent Saturday afternoon doing.  By the time I was done, I was tired and was glistening just a wee bit. 

Then I was able to come in to the house to a tasty supper: smoked ribs.  Yum! 

We haven't had ribs in forever so this was a treat!

Bet you can't guess what I did after that. 

If you guessed that I settled into my chair and crossed stitched for most of the evening, you'd be correct. 

Other "fun" things on Saturday included working on my Princess Passenger sock while we went to town and picked up supplies for the week.

I also went out to the garden and heard all the bees buzzing while I pondered what plants and weeds to rip out. I ended up ripping out very few.  The bees seem to really enjoy the violas, so I left most of them, despite them looking a bit ratty. 

We also looked for a "new" spot to set up for hunting. We are going back to the beginning, so to speak, and put the game cam out where we used to hunt, to see if any critters were still traveling through. 

I was also entertained by the hummingbirds and the young hens.  A few of the "babies" of the flock figured out how to get on top of the open air coop and they were hanging out up there. 

Oh yeah, I made a batch of "Cozy Autumn Wild Rice Soup," which turned out really good.

Sunday the weather switched and it was humid out.  We checked the game cam and saw critters moving through so we spent a few hours out in the back 20 setting up a blind.  

By the time we were pretty much done with the set up, I was done with the day. Temps were in the upper 80s and so flipping humid.  I was going in slow motion, and felt itchy, moist and uncomfortable. We sweat off the bug spray and the mosquitoes found us irresistible. 

I may have been a wee bit cranky, too. 

After going in the house and cooling off in the air conditioning it was decided to stay in for the rest of the day. 

 Sunday afternoon I finished off a bobbin I was spinning and had a ply party. 

I'm not bothering to count yardage yet.  

When I have a decent amount plied up I'll give it all a soak and start counting yardage.  Plying took longer than I thought it would. 

Then, while watching "Columbo" with my man, I worked on the "One Piece" cross stitch. 

Over 300 stitches. 

Monday morning started off with a mild bang. My husband was taking the truck to work and the battery was dead ... stupid battery. 

It was moist out again. The grass was soaking wet and the air was like you were walking through a mist. 

There was a frog hanging out on my window this morning.  Fun! 

Work was kind of chaotic and made worse by all the alerts and notifications I was getting via emails, texts and such.  I ended up putting everything on silent for an hour. Then I was stressing because I couldn't find an article I thought I had laid out on a page last week. ... Turns out I hadn't. Ugh ...  It felt like such a Monday. 

I was pretty happy to punch out at the end of the day. 

My son *begged* for a specific soup to be made. He's feeling poorly and I guess only mom's hamburger soup will heal all that ails. 

For "real" supper, though, I smoked pork chops. 

Ooo, they turned out good.  There are no leftovers. 

It has the makings of being a busy week. Tonite there is chance of thunderstorms going through.  This doesn't surprise me because it's SO miserable outside. I feel really bad for the hens. They are panting and looking miserable. I made sure they had plenty of water and their favorite spot to be when it's hot out is under the deck. They appear to me moving slow today, too. When I saw the rooster coming out of the woods with one of the hens I realized I haven't had any good chicken stories.  Pity.  I haven't been outside enough.  Cause, you know, the weather this summer. 

Next weekend is Labor Day weekend.  Where did the summer go? I feel like I say that almost every year now. I'm looking forward to the long weekend.  And then, just maybe, the weather will behave until the snow flies. I have accepted the change in the seasons now, even though we are having season-appropriate weather.