Really Corny

No seriously - this post is all about corn! When Logan got home this afternoon we picked as much corn that was ready from the garden. There are still some ears that aren't ready yet but we had a ton that we picked!


After picking, we went ahead and sat down to shuck it all - if I don't do stuff when I am thinking about it, I tend to forget to do it - or I have to be on a roll and want to do a lot at once.


Doesn't Logan look like a regular farmer in this picture?

The horses love when we shuck corn because they get all of the shucks and silks and will about eat until they are sick! By the way - those are fly masks on their faces and yes they can see through them - we laugh that they look like Robo-horses.


Logan found this 'double ear' while shucking.


We ended up getting 35 ears this go-around and there is still some on the stalks! Now comes the fun part (not really) of cutting it off the ears to freeze. We have found that it freezes better than it cans - it stays crisp. Speaking of, I am being summoned to help wash and cut!

"V" for Victory!

Finally, today I finished all of the knitting on the Brea Bag! I am getting to the point where I am exhausted with it and just want it to be a purse already, dang it! I finished the gusset earlier - that piece took the longest by far - not because it was difficult - it was just moss stitch - but because it was so repetitive and ended up being over 2 feet long all measured out! Yikes! I then tackled the awful task of the reverse-single crochet along the top which I have ripped out and done over and over and over - never to my liking. Finally instead of using the recommended 2 strands of yarn held together, I used one and ended up being semi-satisfied with it - enough to LET IT GO anyway! All that I have left to do is (1) sew pieces together, (2) wait for handle to come in the mail* and attach (3) find a button and fabric for the lining (4) attach said lining and button

*Sidenote on the handle - I am not usually one to follow a pattern exactly but this one just seemed right. The pattern gave the website for the handle they used and I ended up ordering the same one. I couldn't find anything I liked around here or in fabric/craft stores so I went for this one - I neat braided leather. I can't wait for it to come in!

Oh - another side note on fabric. I probably would have picked out fabric by now but WALMART STOPPED SELLING FABRIC! I knew a lot of them were stopping a year or so ago and I figured ours was safe because it was still there. Low-and-behold I came back from the beach last week and they were WIPED OUT. I am majorly miffed about this - now I have to drive about 30 minutes to find fabric. Not saying I am a hardcore sewer but some of my projects need fabric. Grr!

Enough ranting - it's dinner time and I am hungry, so here's a sneak-peak at the finished pieces of the Brea.

Monday Already?

Wow - where did my weekend go? It flies when you stay busy I guess! My weekend was packed full but I had so much fun! My high school friend Kim came up from Tennessee to visit (you might remember her from my visit to R-ville and the knitting class) and we definitely didn't sit still very long!

She got here Friday afternoon and when Logan got home from work, we all packed up our things and went camping at Comer's Rock/Hale Lake campground not too far from us in the Jefferson Nat'l Forest. It was soooo nice and peaceful until a group of I would say about 15 people all stuffed themselves into one campground above us and decided that the whole campground wanted to listen to them blare country music from their mini-van and listen to their psycho kids scream all night. You could definitely tell the next morning it was a campground full of grumpy campers...all except for the rowdy group of course who woke up at about 6:00 with their howler-monkey-sounding kid. Can you tell I am still a bit grumpy about the whole situation? A rant for a minute - people that are totally oblivious to other people around them.

Saturday after hiking around that morning and then coming home, we ate lunch and changed into bathing suits and headed down to the river. Our goal was for Logan to drop us off and Kim and I float down the river in our inner-tubes and Logan and his dad were going to canoe up the river and meet us then float back down to where they started with the canoe...Let's just say it didn't exactly work out that way. First, our drop off was way farther away from the canoe put-in than we though. Second, the river was NOT moving - we floated and floated and didn't get very far! After 3 hour of floating Logan finally tracked us down and helped us out about 5 minutes before it started to storm! What luck!

Our goal after that was to head to the New River Valley Fair and watch the bull riding and barrel racing but it didn't work out that way. Kim and I were exhausted from paddling down the river and being out in the sun so long plus it was raining pretty hard so we stayed in and Kim and I knit and watched movies.

It was a super fun visit and I wish I had pictures but we were so busy I didn't have any time to take any!!

Catching up to today, I got to wake up early this morning to meet our farrier to have Daisy reshod. While we were at the beach, she threw a shoe so it was time to get her a new set! Other than that, I have been working on laundry and searching for new knitting patterns to start on after I finish my Brea Bag - which I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! The gusset is over halfway done and hopefully will be finished this week!

To leave everyone today, I was searching online for knitting patterns and can't believe how many *weird* things there are to knit out there! I found most of these on www.knittingpatterncentral.com. Let's just say some people have WAY too much time on their hands and must really be hard up for knitting! Here are just a few that I found that made me laugh -

A knit digestive track

A fu-Manchu mustache

And knit toilet paper - hope it doesn't get confused with the regular t.p.!

Too Funny!

I have laughed over this literally all day. I LOVE the Muppets and hope you enjoy this as much as I have. Tomorrow's Friday!

Cookin' with Cables!

I had all of the intentions of finishing my Brea Bag I had started knitting. I finished the front (back?) while at the beach and started on the gusset that connects the 2 parts together. The front and back went really fast but now the gusset is pretty repetitive which after all of the fun cables, has become a little boring. Hopefully I will finish most of it tonight - I am getting together with a friend to do a little knitting and chatting. After I finish that, all I have to do is trim the top with crochet (blech!) and add a button, handle, and lining. HOPEFULLY that will go fast once I get to that point!

So just for fun yesterday, I cast on a neat coffee mug cozie/hand warmer (I think it looks like a coffee mug sweater) and it was such a fun knit that I just about finished it all yesterday and did finish it this morning! I have fallen in love with knitting cables! I used to think they were really difficult and too much trouble but I can't explain enough how easy it is once you figure out which stitches to slip and hold them - not at all hard!

Anyway, here's the mug cozie - the first picture is darker - doesn't show the yarn colors accurately - to show the cabling. The last 2 are the cozie on the mug. The only hard part about it was finding a mug to fit it - it takes a pretty big and tall mug to make it fit right and the handle has to be wide enough for your had to fit due to it being the handwarmer part. If I make any of these for gifts, I will definitely take them to the store to fit them on mugs!




If you are interested in the pattern, it's free and you can find it here:
http://aproudusafwife.blogspot.com/2007/11/cabled-coffee-and-hand-warmer.html

Hopefully tomorrow I will be a little closer to finishing my handbag!