Miss Rosebud is still hanging in there!!

Here is little Miss Rosebud looking so cute, will have to call her November Rose. Should I make her a little shelter when the cold weather arrives which they are saying is Monday, there is another little bud sitting beside her.
I knit and then felted some wool hats a bit ago but thought they needed some decoration on them, have been crocheting flowers to put on them but I think I need to get some finer yarn, trying to decide if these flowers are too large for the hats. I had bought some fancy buttons a while ago to use in the centers but now can not find them, I should have some multicolored silk roving tucked away some where, will maybe spin up a bit of that tomorrow and see how that works for flowers. I am trying to curb my imagination as I have been thinking of crocheting small butterflies.....maybe some little lady bug buttons....to put with the flowers.....think anyone would wear them?? a few of the hats are quite large so should toss them back in the washing machine to shrink them a bit more.
Tomorrow is the last day of the market, fingerless mitts are all sold and have one pair of socks left. Am almost finished the order for the five pair of socks and then have an order for five pair of fingerless mitts. Have two more Christmas markets before Christmas so will hopefully get something knit for them. Have a couple of neat items to knit after Christmas when it slows down a bit, am excited to start them!! Off to knit a bit on a sock and then off to bed............after I change all the clocks....better not forget to do that!!

Still Knitting.......with Help!!

Finished a couple more pair of wristwarmers and started on another pair of socks....is really hard with my knitting partner.....every time I knit a stitch I lift her with my arm. Hard on the shoulder. But am slowly making progress. Tomorrow R.H. will go get the tent set up and everything ready for Friday morning. Weather has been so nice the last few days, we are hoping the wind stays away, last year it was warm but the wind was so bad they could not set anything up on the Thursday, people that did get their tents up came back in the morning and everything had blown away so hoping it is not a rerun this year. Well have put down the knitting needles for the night and off to bed, up early tomorrow and reskein some yarn I washed and get everything tagged and packed to go

Does this mean we are skipping winter this year??

Well here I am again, just can not seem to get my blog updated regularly, could this be a senior problem or just too much going on. when I looked out the window the other day I noticed my rose bush who said good-bye, see you in the spring and popped out rose hips all of a sudden has a couple of rose buds, just read in the local paper that the crocus's have come out.....does this mean spring is on the way and we are not having winter this year, sounds good to me. Weather has been sunny and warm the last few days, still have a few flowers struggling along giving some color out there.
What have I been doing??.....knitting...what else, can not seem to get caught up, just had a lady phone ordering five more pair of alpaca socks and I have an order for at least five pair of wristwarmers before Christmas. The Christmas markets start this weekend and I do not have much to put on the tables as I sold all summer at the farmers markets, thank goodness friend Gabie and daughter M.J. will have items to fill the table. Better get a couple of dye pots going today so yarn will be dry enough for the market and get the carder going for some more roving. When I hear people complaining they are bored and have nothing to do am tempted to hand them some knitting needles and some yarn. Also have been trying to get a website up and going, always running into road blocks, next time I have a question on how to do something I will have to remind them to answer in language understandable by a senior citizen. This website is really using up brain cells fast I tell you, had a ahha moment a few minutes ago on a couple things I was having problems with and fixed it up, will get there eventually. Have to get some fibre pictures on this blog next time, keep forgetting to take pictures.

The Sun is out!!

After many days of rain and fog and yes even a day of snow we have had sun and the temps into the double digits. Thought I would run out and do a sun dance then quickly changed my mind....what if I stumble and accidentally do a rain dance.....Wonder if the weather would stay nice long enough to put some stain on the back deck. We have had such a long wet spring and summer if we can call it summer, maybe now we will get our summer. Usually I do not sell my knitted items and yarn at the market over the summer, I spend the time getting stock ready for the Christmas markets but this year RH decided maybe if he had some of my knitted items and yarn on his table it would draw more people.....well it did and I have sold all of my things I had knitted plus he is coming home with all these orders, so that is what I have been doing steady, knitting...knitting...and I have warned him not to say I will knit anymore gloves for anyone!! he came home and said that this man had lost a finger in an accident and could I make him a pair of gloves......so I made him the pair of gloves but.....RH came home and said the guy said he had asked for two pair of gloves at the time....so have been knitting the other pair and it is not going smoothly to say the least, it is black yarn and I am doing most of my knitting at night these days, thought I was going great and almost finished the other night but when I started the last finger.....not enough stitches....so put it down carefully (was tempted to take the scissors to it) and went to bed. Had a look at it in the morning and found the dropped stitches so rip...rip...now it is done except for working in the ends but I will tell the world...I am not even knitting another pair. Have not been able to keep up with the wristwarmers and do not mind knitting them. Finally spun up some of the llama roving I had processed at the mill, had it blended with merino wool and one batch has bamboo mixed with it and the other has soy silk, while I was spinning it I kept thinking that it did not feel that soft, am used to mixing merino and reg silk with my llama, but when I plyed it it turned out beautifully, have knit a pair of wristwarmers out of the llama-merino-soysilk and love them. Have to spin another bobbin and get it plyed and see how the llama-merino-bamboo turns out. Did not take any pictures as yet, think about it as I am working with the fibre but never get it done. Have an order for a small pair of lady's mitts...notice I am saying mitts and not gloves...out of alpaca and I have to spin the yarn first, then yesterday RH came home with an order for two pair of socks. How am I going to get anything knit for the Christmas markets, hopefully the girls I share a table with have been working hard this summer.
Well better get outside while the sun is out, I run on solar power and my batteries are almost dead, have to get the carrots and potatoes out of the ground as soon as it is dry enough. The frost we had did not do my sunflowers in so hope they can finish blooming, the little birds will love the seeds this winter. Love the little song birds, the baby bluebirds came up to play in the rock garden but then had a couple big hawks arrive and decide they were going to live on the back deck, screaming and flying around the house, scared off all the songbirds and poor Sheba, one of the resident housecats who only ventures out to the front flowerbed terrified to go out at all. Now after the snow and rain we had a few weeks ago have not seen them around and hopefully they have moved on.

Hot!! Hot Day!!

It was hot today, I think the hottest day this summer.....I think it is summer now...hard to tell as we have had more cool days then hot days, so went out and gave all the plants a drink and then we waited until we got enough shade on the north side of the garage so we could get the dog run up....yup finally have a proper dog run, after all these years of my complaining we have a dog run. RH phoned from the city the other day and said he found a dog run on sale...should he get it.....well....yes!! So that is what we did today with the resident dog supervising. Wonder if he realizes that it is for him.
Tried to fix the mistake in the fingerless mitts I was knitting but finally had to pull all out and start over....that is what I get for sleep knitting. Have a good three inches knit and so far so good, should be able to finish them tomorrow. Then the dye pots have got to come out as most of my dyed yarn sold at the market on Sat. Well off to bed, the thing I love about living up here in the hills is no matter how hot it is during the day it always cools down at night.

I am back...hopefully!!

Have to get back to blogging, where has the time gone and I can say that the snow has disappeared and things have been growing, slowly but getting there. We have a couple of warm days and then we are back to cool and rainy. so excited to see pods forming on the peas in the garden and had our first salad of fresh lettuce. Just love the colors of the lettuce....hate to pick it. Am so glad to have the raised beds as the weeds have just gone crazy with all the rain we have had, I think I should have a machete to whack a path to my garden every morning.
We have listed our place for sale so all we have been doing is finishing up everything around the house and yard and now it is clean...clean...just in case someone wants to come and look at it. I just finish vacuuming and the cats have a tussle and there go the fur balls rolling around. Have been having health issues, had a bad reaction to some medication which brought the arthritis out full force so I can barely get around some days so other then trying to keep the dust out of the house and the weeds out of the garden have not accomplished much in the fibre department, but have to get the dye pots out and get busy, RH has hooked up a stove in the garage so I can dye out there, it will be so great as the burners are farther apart then the burners on my cooktop in the house so I can put two of my big pots on at once. Am just on my way out to get my sorting table up and get some llama and alpaca fibre sorted. Got the fibre back from the mill, they spun the black alpaca into yarn but said the llama I sent was a bit too long for them to spin so sent it back in roving, have almost got one bobbin spun up of the roving, can not wait to get another bobbin spun and get it plyed. In knitting I have a few pair of slipper sox knit and have been busy knitting wrist warmers out of llama, was supposed to have another pair finished for RH to take to the market this morning but eyes and fingers gave out last night, noticed a mistake way back and did not have the energy to fix it so just went to bed. The days of working all night are long gone. Have been enjoying my flowers, the iris I thought the mice had done in for me year before last appeared and made up for the lost year, my pink rose had died back as the snow appeared in Oct. last year while it was blooming so it is not that tall this year but has really been blooming. Well I better get out and give all my plants a drink before they think I have forgotten them, going to be a beautiful warm day today so better get out and enjoy it.

I Think it is Finally Spring!!

I think it is spring as we have had a couple of nice days...oh no...did I actually say that!! Probably tomorrow will be another snow day!! I went to the greenhouse today and picked up some plants for in my pots for on the railing and some fillers for my pots of geraniums, I am hoping that the geraniums can finally go out, but we did have a couple of thunder storms with a bit of rain, hail and wind. Thank-goodness it was just the edge of it. Good news is the garden is coming up, slow but is coming, no mouse damage so far, hoping I did most of them in, although a few little trees were chewed on during the winter. A little apple tree that I started from a apple seed and had got to be four feet high last year and I was so excited as it has grown almost two feet a year....has died to the ground...:(..good news is it is coming back. If the rodents do not do damage and the deer that was in the garden last year does not come back and the hail does not get it.....I should have a good garden. I wish I had not written that last sentence....it makes me wonder....why did I plant a garden if I have all these strikes against me?? Because I do not give up..I will have a garden!! yes I will!!
Not too much on the fibre front, we have our place listed for sale so that means cleaning and sorting etc etc, I really have too much stuff I tell you, no one needs that much stuff, so doing that plus gardening and helping with the shearing...which still is not finished because of the weather. I had to send my entry's in for the fleece show without knowing whose fleece it will be, the longer we leave the shearing of the llamas the more trash will be in them, not a happy thought. Still have not taken any pictures of the fibre I had processed at the mill, have to make a note to do that. When RH left the big tractor down by the garden I said you should not have done that as next time you want to use it the birds will have made a nest in it and sure enough when he went to move it days later this is what he found, thank goodness the bird had just finished laying the eggs so had not been sitting on them. So he took the nest out and gave it to me, it was so beautiful with four little eggs, I really wanted to keep the nest as you can see they had put a bit of llama fibre in it but did not want to bring it in the house as who knows what could be in it so I left the nest outside and brought the eggs in, I will coat the eggs with a clear varnish and hope I can save them. The next morning I remembered something I had read about saving a nest.....I think I have it right.....they had said to put the nest (without the eggs in it) in the oven at a low temp. for a bit and then it would be safe to keep in the house, if there were any bugs in it they would be gone. So I went outside to find the nest and it was gone...either the wind blew it away...or I could dream that the little birds came back and took it piece by piece...and made a new nest somewhere safe. I am going to believe they recycled their nest. it is after midnight and I think the computer is telling me it wants to go to bed as it is doing weird things with my text, have to keep going back and fixing it.