Shorter Days and Less Light!

 This is a shawl that I finished quickly using worsted weight yarn.  I think it certainly looks like Fall.  I like the feel of it, and the weight.  It is perfect for just a little something to throw over one's shoulder.  I put it on my website. 

 The top mushrooms in a cluster were kinda pretty for brown mushrooms.  So after I started to get the photo, I realized that there is a very "dead fishy" smell coming from it.  The bottom layer had begun to decay, and was gelatous.  It was very stinky.  I love the texture of the second mushroom.  It is beige and off white.  Perfect winter colors.

These are Gulf Frittilary butterflies stopping for a visit.  With our little cold front, they had to move on.  I have noticed more caterpillars this year, and it will be interesting to see what they will be when it is warmer weather again.

I have had a visit from my friend OSM from California.  She is very ill, and is trying to care for herself.  I wish she wasn't doing all the things she is doing, but it is her journey.  She made an appointment with a local dermatologist to check out her basal cell spot on her nose.  It has become a long process.  So thankfully, her visits are short.  She is aware that my tolerance is low for longer visits.

Our knitting group had a fun little party at LK's new house on Sunday.  There were about nine of us, I think, and CJE and I left before more came.  I am so happy that she was able to find this cute little house and set down some roots. 

Patty has had pancreatitis again, but not as severe as the first time.  She keeps finding something dead in the woods behind the house.  I did not recognize anything that she threw up except for bones.   Right now she is driving me insane because she wants out and she wants to go to the woods. 

We had a brief little cold spell with a little bit of rain.  It is a taste of what we are heading for.  I just wish we could get more rain.  We had two days of just damp, drizzly, light misty, wet and cold.  I made a pot of chili and hunkered down.  I don't want to go out and I don't need anything but my little shelter and yarn. 

I am now working on my winter sweater.  I am on Plan B.  Plan A was going very well.  I had perhaps 3-4 inches knitted, and I knew in my heart that I was never going to wear it.  I could never get gauge.  I kept doing the math as I kept on knitting.  I finally stopped knitting and put it aside.  I got one sock finished of my pair, and then decided I needed to rework the math and replan the sweater.  So now I am going to make a bottom-up sweater with stranded colorwork on the yoke.  I am very pleased because it is on gauge exactly as it should be.  I am doing a 2/2 ribbing, and it is supposed to be three inches before the increase and body is begun.  It seems the ribbing is never going to get to 3 inches.  I am only at 2 right now.  I am seriously thinking that 2.5 is fine.  You know- I am anxious to get going on the stockinette of the body.  I know stockinette is boring, so I try to do it as fast as I can.

While I have been escorting my friend to her doctor's appointments, I am knitting on my sock and I am about halfway on the ankle/cuff of the number 2 sockie.  It is coming along well.  It is my plain old sock pattern that is in my head.  The wool is very soft and squishy, and I think they are going to be some of warmest and comfortable.  I just hope the wool is not too soft that it wears out quickly.

I entered three pieces in the fiber show at the Ozark Folkways shop.  The fiber show is this weekend, and I get to see everyone's pieces displayed.  Last year CJE won Best in Show.  She did not get back from Indonesia in time to enter anything this year. 

I am spinning some really pretty pink Coopworth mixed with another roving mix of wool, mohair, and bamboo.  The Coopworth was gummy, and was really hard to spin.  So I finished up my one bobbin of it, and now I am plying it.  I am then going to wash it and see how it feels after it is soaked and blocked.  If it is still gummy, I am not going to be happy.  This is the first time I have had a problem with anything I have bought from a vendor that I know has quality stuff.  I think she would take back what I have left and replace it with something else.  But I want to try working with it first.

So nothing else new or exciting.  I did have one day of major cleaning and rearranging furniture.  I knew that soon I would be closing up the house for winter, and I just needed to do it before then.  It was a little bit scary moving the bed and finding a lot of spider webs attached to the legs of the bed.  This has been the summer of spiders and bugs.  The termite inspector told me they have had a lot of calls this summer, and that this summer was perfect weather for spiders.  Great!  Thank goodness most of them are shy.

Well, back to spinning.  I need to get this done before the weekend.  I will see the vendor at the show, and I want to know for sure that it will clean up nice.  I have a good book on audio that is from the library.  So here we be.

Have a good rest of the week.