Whew! The end of NaBloPoMo!

I did it!  A post every day for the entire month, whether I thought I had anything to say or not.  I will admit it makes you mindful of what you're doing all day.  "Is this interesting?  Interesting enough to post about?  No?  Crap..."  And it does make me remember to take a camera with me wherever I go, in hopes that something will come along better to photograph than my foot.  (Oh, wait.  I did use a picture of my foot...)  (Nevermind)
What did I get for all those posts?  Nada.

Though I gave myself this fabulous Golden Piglet Award, which would be quite coveted if anybody knew about it.

He says he's related to some piglets that showed up at Sally's house the other day.

And now I'm laughing my butt off, because when I went to go get that link, I found that she's now got a tutorial posted. 
My next piglets are going to go a whole lot more smoothly.  What a difference knowing what I'm doing will make!!

Snail's trails

While I was poking around in my fabrics yesterday, looking for the red that was just here (dammit), I came across my snail's trail blocks.  I'd forgotten that I'd been considering them for next year's RSC, too.
I went back through my folders to find these pictures:

Scrappy versions and not scrappy versions.

And I found the photos I'd taken to do a tutorial.  I've probably been procrastinating on that long enough...

Okey dokey, then.  I'd best get on that.  This week will be perfect for it - I'm halfway through the month of posting daily for NaBloPoMo, but I'm starting to worry about running out of things to talk about...
Snails it is!

Yikes! November 1st means that it's now November!

Somehow my brain had missed that connection, until a friend said something about NaBloPoMo.  I've participated in years past, but hadn't given it a thought for this year.
Shall I?  Shall I not?
While I'm dithering (my other big hobby, right up there with knitting and quilting), I'll drop this post as a placeholder.
If I decide to go for it, this satisfies day one.
If I don't, no harm done.
Logic, it is my friend.

(dither dither dither)

No NoBloPoMo

For the first year since I started the blog, I'm not going to do NoBloPoMo.  I'm having trouble posting once a week - once a day is totally out of the question.  Though I will try to post a little more often.  The activity level of summer has tapered off, though we still have sheep, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits to tend. 
We butchered our original turkeys, selling one and putting the other two in the freezer, but someone gave us two pretty Bourbon Reds, which is a heritage breed..  They're not old enough to tell what sex they are yet (and after the loop one of our first turkeys threw us, we're not going to guess), but we're hoping for a male and a female so we can try raising some of our own.  With our luck, that won't happen, of course, but we can still hope.  The same person also gave us two young female rabbits.  Our sole surviving rabbit, Stiffler, is verrrrrry excited to have new girls in the neighborhood.  We put them in a cage next door to his, and he's been combing his hair and practicing his pickup lines ever since. 
Soon, Stiffler, soon...

Hey! It's December 1st!

Which means I made it through another NaBloPoMo alive...
I did have an early glitch,  which I fixed by posting twice on the same day later. 
So my stitch count came out okay, even though my gauge was off.

Ooops...

Totally forgot to post yesterday. Which means I blew NaBloPoMo in the first week.
*sigh*
I think I'll play a Get Out of Jail Free card, and ignore it.
Intention is nine tenths of the law, right?

Still knitting on the double-knit sock. It looks the same as the last photo, only longer, so I won't bother with another pic yet.
Will have to start making decisions about the heel soon. Short row? Flap and gusset? And patterning - the checkerboard or a stripe pattern? And then what about patterning on the sole?
I have the day off tomorrow and plan to do some sketching of options. As slowly as double-knitting progresses (since I'm knitting two stitches for every one, after all) I've got time to consider, yet.
All options are still open...

神聖的睾丸 ・ Shun-SHENG duh gao-WAHN

Because it IS Tuesday, after all.
I was going to save this one for later in the month - it's NaBloPoMo time again, after all - but who could resist a perfect combination of Tuesday and Nerdiness?
Go here to find out what I'm talking about.
Any other Browncoats out there?

Whew!

I made it through November with NaBloPoMo! (This is the last day, right? (mumble mumble 30 days hath September mumble mumble) Yes! It is!)
Whew!
We'll see how long the habit thing runs...

It's that time of year again...

NaBloPoMo!
Though I don't join (not a joiner, me), I do the work. This will be my third year of self-flagellation posting daily for the month of November.
So, I'll open with a Madman progress report. He's now had two PT sessions (the first was only 48 hours after the surgery, which seemed awfully soon to me...) and is doing well. He's gone from crutches to furniture-walking (and how I adore that term!) to walking unaided. Well, hobbling unaided, but the progress is clearly visible. With his eye firmly on the prize, he's keeping up with the deer talk in the area - who's seen deer, and where, and how they were behaving. Hunting season is one powerful carrot on a stick.
Frankly, I'll just be glad when he's healed enough to carry big sacks of animal feed again. Apparently, the sight of a 100-lb woman staggering up a hill with a 50-lb sack of grain is either amusing or guilt-inducing, depending on whether you're a sheep or Madman. (Those little fuzzlumps thought I couldn't hear them tittering behind their hooves...) I'd been watching the feed level in the galvanized can we use for storage falling lower and lower, but had been hoping that Madman would be back up to par before the time came to refill it. I tried talking the sheep into going on reduced rations to stretch out the feed, but they didn't think it was fair for them to have to go on a diet just because the female member of the staff was too lazy to carry a piddling little 50-lb bag up a steep hill.
*sigh*
It's amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it.

OMG - it's almost November...

Part of me is thinking I should be limbering up for NaBloPoMo by posting more frequently. The other part is thinking I should be squirrelling away post ideas for NaBloPoMo, so why waste them now.
Dither dither dither.
You can pick me out in any crowd - I'm the one in the corner arguing with myself...

Woohoo!

Made it through another NaBloPoMo! I did have that one day where I forgot to post, but posted twice the next day, so I think it's all good.
I don't know how Norma does it...

I hope to get some sheep pictures on Thursday. I want to do some comparison shots so you can see how much their fleeces have grown since last spring.
And I just plain like taking pictures of sheep.

Ummmm.... Uh Oh

I sat bolt upright in bed at about 3 o'clock this morning. "Gah! Did I remember to post last night?!?"
Apparently not.
We had company - friends we hadn't seen in years. They came for supper and stayed overnight, and we had a blast. Talking and laughing, telling stories, playing remember-the-time. The guys have known each other since dirt was young, we ladies were folded in over the years. It was a thoroughly lovely evening, and I sort of forgot about the blog.
Is there a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for NaBloPoMo?

November 1st. Is it NaBloPoMo?

I'm three-quarters of the way through the second bobbin of the Merino-Tencel. Here's a look at bobbin one:The second batch of roving seems to have longer runs of the teal - not that I'm objecting. I'm dying of curiosity to see what it will look like plyed.
I've been working on the gray/black scarf, as well. I won't bother with a photo - it looks just like the last pic I put up, only about twice as long.

We've been wrapping up the garden. Madman dug the rest of the carrots, and has been rototilling diligently, getting ready to put it to bed for the winter.
Tonight for supper was the last of the swiss chard, which unbelievably was still growing, despite cold, snow, wind, and rain. Served up with baked potatoes, and a nice slab of mooseloaf.
Only in Vermont.

Whew! I did it!

I've never been so glad to see the end of November! When I started this NaBloPoMo madness, I was sure I would finish. (I'm way too stubborn to do otherwise...) I knew I would struggle for topics, and I knew there would be a junk post or two, just to keep it rolling.
I learned a few things. Not every post has to be worthy of carving in stone. It's okay not to have a picture. It's okay to just write about something that only I am likely to be interested in. And, it's way a lot easier to have something to write about BEFORE you sit down to the keyboard...
Will I keep posting every day? Not on your Nellie.
Will I post more often than I used to? A resounding yes to that one! (See lessons learned, above.) Part of the fun, of course, is that I've acquired a few readers - and that makes it look a lot less like I'm talking to myself. I love to see comments - let me repeat that - I LOVE to see comments! (Hint, hint...) Feedback is such a joy.

And because I am a masochist want to prove that Selbuvotter can't kick my ass and get away with it, I started another pair of gloves:


This time I'll actually follow the pattern (Annemor #10) - well, except for the part where I'm reversing the light/dark sequence. The background color is a pine green, the pattern color is "Green Tea Heather" - you know, Color D that I didn't care for.
Looks like chartreuse to me...

.

If I can think of anything for this post, I'll only have 10 to go...

When I decided to start a blog, I procrastinated for about 2 years before I actually got around to it. As a matter of fact, I thought I should name it "procrastiknitter", but it turned out someone was already using that name. (Clearly she didn't deserve it, since she hadn't procrastinated nearly long enough to be entitled to it... i.e. longer than me.)
My original intent was to post once or twice a week, maybe more often if the mood struck. Instead, I sometimes let weeks go by without a post. It wasn't that there was nothing to post about - I'd often think "oh, what great blog fodder!" over the course of the week, but wouldn't get around to actually planting my butt in the chair and making something of it.
When I signed myself for NaBloPoMo, I was hoping it would be enough of a kick in the aforementioned butt to get me in the habit of seeing bloggable and blogging.

I sure wish I had taken some notes between January and October...

The thrummed mittens are currently in time-out. I've knit the thumbs, but they don't match. I have no idea which one I screwed up... This, of course, is the only part of the pattern that all I had to do was follow it as written. *sigh*