I guess this means summer is here

According to several projections for today

Updated: 9:05 AM CDT on July 11, 2008
Temperature 75°F
Humidity 83%
Dew Point 70°F


Forecast as of 7:18 am CDT on July 11, 2008
Rest of Today
Mostly sunny. Slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. South winds 10 to 20 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 20 percent. Highest heat index readings 95 to 100 in the afternoon

I think it will be an excellent day to stay indoors. Fortunatelly, my car has air-condintioning since I have a few errands to run. I think Hubband is going golfing today with a friend (silly boys).

Stuff to do very, very soon.

Hubband and I went to see a movie tonight. A seriously excellent movie at that. If you haven't seen it, go now. Well, OK, if it is done showing for the night where you are, you can wait until tomorrow (it is midnight here, after all). Don't wait too long, you wouldn't want to miss it. Besides, you might need to see it again on the big screen while you can. I wonder who I can get to go with me in the next few days?

Sleeve progress, Part 2

The sleeves are finally done. (Really, I promise, 17.5", unstretched. Yeah, I know, they are still on the needles, but I did say "unstretched".) I have decided I am not very crazy about two circulars, mostly because it makes reading and knitting difficult since I had to stop more often than I prefer. Well, that and keeping track of which needle I pick up. I think I might work on the Magic Loop method instead sometime. (Not that I had a needle the right size and length this time around....) But, on the big plus side, both sleeves are done! Now on to starting the body; that will go a lot faster I am sure.
Well, I might not be able to start right now, it looks like we may be having to making a trip to the basement in a little bit. Oh well, it is the first one for our area this year. I think I will skip trying to get you a green sky picture. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to give you big hail ones later.

Imagine my surprise

when I logged onto WoW today and noticed that Miss Oribel was the "Spotlight of the Week"! Seriously, I was rather taken aback over it. I told her, but she doesn't really seem to care too much, one way or the other. (Well, with that aside, on to the WoW post I was planning.)
The other day the very fast moving spot of orange went dashing out the the door and off the deck as soon as the door opened. She hadn't been anywhere close to the door before it started to open, I am certain. Once she was off the deck she did slow down; there are sunny, warm bricks to roll around on, after all. She tends to stay on the move for a while after leaving the deck, but so far hasn't felt a very big need to go far. She has noticed that if she goes under the deck, she can't be reached, so that tends to be a favorite hang out.
Sooner or later she will wander out to check out the yard. (I am willing to let her be out as long as someone is there to watch her and make sure she doesn't go too far afield.) The bird bath seems to be rather high on her "I Really Need to See This" list.

 

I wasn't quite fast enough with the camera to catch her sniffing the edge, but was able to catch her right after. I really think if she could figure out how to drink out of this, she would. I am waiting for the day she jumps up to look closer.

 

Once she had the bath checked out, she was moving on to hang out under the bird feeder in hopes of some other excitement. She did manage to hold very still right under it until a bird had forgotten she was there and was happily eating a snack. Just before she was able to do something about that, the world's best babysitter had to make fuss and tell us, "Oribel is off the deck! She is loose in the yard! Are you paying attention here?" Needless to say, when a Basset whines about a free cat, the birds fly off and the cat is disappointed. Good thing she didn't really realize it was Sadie's fault she lost out on her chance to have an excuse to jump up into the air.

Current sleeve progress

I still have plenty of time to lengthen these today, but took advantage of the sun coming out from behind the clouds and drying up some rain. Now to fix dinner and knit, not necessarily in that order.

Tour Food (again)

In honor of the Tour de France and a BBQ with friends, I made my "French Potato Salad" that I posted about last year during the Tour. (Repeat of last year's picture as well as the link to the recipe. Seriously, how many pictures of potato salad do you think I need?) Now I am off to work on some sleeves and then take their picture.......

Unseen blob of black

is busily growing over here at Casa Coffee Yarn. Seriously, I promise it is. I have just been busy knitting and not taking pictures before dark and just didn't feel like staging one in the house. I have started with the sleeves, and am doing both of them at the same time on two circular needles. I will say that really isn't my preferred method of knitting, but I figure it really will go faster in the long run, and they will the same size with no real trouble. Plus they will both be done at the same time. I have 8.5" of them done and they only need to be about twice that, so I figure they can easily be done by tomorrow night. I promise to get a picture in daylight tomorrow. (With any luck the owner of this sweater will be allowed to look at progress pictures over the next few weeks. I might need to ask a question or two about design issues after all. Hint. Hint.)

Knitting update

You may remember a while back I made myself a pair of toe-up socks. As it happened, Hubband really, really liked the yarn, the stripes, and all around how the socks turned out. So I had told him I would see if I could find some similar yarn to make him a pair (he said if I could find the same yarn in browns it would be extra great). I found exactly what he wanted and thus his anniversary socks were destined. I finished them up this week and he is over the moon about them.



Fortunately, our socks seem to like each other and are looking forward to hanging out.




You may remember that last year I participated in the Tour de France Knit-A-Long as a Yellow Jersey rider; aka, the general category. (Well maybe not so much on the remembering, especially if you weren't hanging out here at Casa Coffee Yarn last July.) I am doing it again this year, but this time I am going for the Green. This is what the TdF KAL web site says about it

Green Jersey – also known as a Sprinter. You are choosing a project of average skill for yourself BUT you plan to speed knit and finish it before the end of the Tour. This category is all about the race against the clock.

I will be knitting a Wonderful Wallaby for my sprint over the next three weeks. So don't be surprised to see a blob of black growing furiously over here.

If she would just cooperate

Update 3:30 PM: I realized I forgot to mention Whiskers On Wednesday, though I am hoping you all knew that was what this post is.....

Oribel usually feels very left out when the dogs get to go out on the deck and she is stuck in the house. We have told her that if she would be well behaved and stay on the deck she could come out too. (That kind of paying attention and following "the rules" hasn't worked out very well on her part.) DTE and I have put her harness on her a couple of times in the last week , just so she could wear it around the house and get used to it. Well, putting it on her required the administration of kitty treats, but we did finally get it on. The other night I put it on her and we tied a piece of rope to it (I couldn't find the leash, but the rope turned out to be better anyway.)
At first Oribel was a bit distracted by the rope and completely forgot to go out the open door.

 

But then she ventured out

 

and was distracted by the piece of rope that kept following her.

 

It kept following her everywhere she went,

 

it didn't seem to care if there were pots (or dogs) on the deck,

 

which wound up being a big surprise to her every time she turned around to discover it, once again.

 

Even when she tried to tell it "What for"

 

it followed her around the yard.

 

She got really tired of the stupid rope that wouldn't leave her alone by the time she was trying to get to the bird feeder. The rope did allow her to stand up and look into the bird bath just before this fight, which she won out wiggled out of her harness. Of course, then she had to go back inside the house.

Once upon a time

I started a blog to share stuff with folks, people that I thought would be mostly my family. Stuff like pictures of flowers and birds in our yard, our pets, and other such stuff.
Hmm, just realized that I am not sure I ever did post that picture of the Pileated Woodpecker...... Well, just in case, here you go.

 

Well, I realized I have been rather lax in the whole pictures of flowers and such in the yard lately. I do have some, so this is going to be a bit very heavy on the pictures of stuff about the yard. (No knitting today for those of you that have been around since the beginning and had no idea where this was headed. For what it is worth, neither did I.)
This is some kind of cool iris bush-thing that grows on the hill near the road (but this was taken before we had mowed a lot of the grass around it down).

 

There is also some coreopsis up there that will be blooming soon, as well as the daffodils that have already come and gone. Someday we hope to have the whole hillside covered in flowers.





(This is that iris up close.)

 

This is one of the Clematis that grows on our front trellis. We also have a dark purple on that I think will be blooming in the next day or so. I am thinking about adding another one in there with them (I need to decide it there is enough room).

 

This is a different kind of iris and it is against the front part of the house, along with the Bleeding Heart.

 

We have gophers in several different areas of our lawn, including through the rhubarb, which is also very close to the garden.

 

(Oddly enough it is also by and through the area of the yard the dogs are in. Apparently the dogs don't seem to care or notice the gophers in their space.)

 

We have also had a few interesting moths about today. This one was hanging out in the office upstairs,

 

and this very cool looking one was on the screen door to the deck.(Hubband says it has escaped from some one's nightmare.)

 

While I was knitting, whoops, we aren't talking about knitting today hanging out on the deck today, I heard these funny minor cracking noises but couldn't really see anything happening. Then there was a very large crack, but this time there was definitely something to see that had happened.
On a perfectly clear and sunny day, it seems that this tree had just gotten tired of being upright and needed to have a lie down. I wonder if it realizes it has made a permanent decision?

Good thing no one was down in the "lower forty" with the lawn mower today. I am not sure how they would get out. Looks like we will need to borrow a chain saw and cut up some firewood. Maybe there is a relationship between the woodpeckers and the tree falling down (not that it was a small tree).