The Samsung WB250F

It's a 'Smart Camera.' Let's hope it's not smarter than I am!

 I think Adam got tired of my old camera, which was held together with a purple rubberband from a bunch of broccoli, would not ever focus on something close-up, and would regularly "flash" when I'd commanded it not to, which ran out the exhausted AA batteries I had to charge too often.

 So without telling me, he ordered a new camera, and it arrived today. Actually, Adam was tracking it, and he went to the P.O. and said, "Hand it over, people." So they did.
I promptly went outside in the rain and took pictures of things close-up.

 And then a little closer up. I've never been able to do this before. Look at the water! Amazing!

 Little mum blossoms:

 Water droplets on fern fronds. Oh, I hope you don't get weary of close-up photos, because I might need to do this a lot for a few months!

 You can see the veins in the dead leaves :)

 And the glisten on the pumpkin!

 Here's that plant whose name I know not.

 Close-up ...

 And closer ...

 Close-up ... my hand was shaking a little, probably with excitement ...

 And closer up. Pine cones look a bit like wood, don't they? I suppose that makes sense.

 Here's a lovely sea shell I found this summer, whose pattern I could never show you. Now I can!

 Brush strokes from Julia's oil painting ~

Well, that's enough for now. Thanks for humoring me! Perhaps I'll name this camera since I think we'll be very good friends. How 'bout Sammy?

Pumpkins for Mags

Dear Mags, who is from Ireland, does not have the bliss of Pumpkin Autumn Frenzy that we experience here in the States. So, to satisfy her Pumpkin Longing, here are a few pictures I lifted from Pinterest. I hope this helps, Mags!

 Pumpkins for the picking!

 The frost is on the pumpkin :)

 Nestled in the grass,

 Itty bitty pumpkins ~

 Foggy Pumpkin Morning

The 24-Hour Drop

Our high today should be 86º. It's hot, sunny, and a bit muggy outside, although a breeze keeps real stickiness at bay. However ... the forecast for this afternoon is rain, and more rain, and tomorrow's high? 69º!! What a drop!
During a morning doggie walk, I collected leaves, red, yellow, brown.

 My large fern continues, a lush green.

 I bought a new plastic autumn platter at the Dollar Tree - what a deal! We eat lots of apples these days, on our diet. Adam has now lost 43 pounds since June 1. I've lost 6 pounds in the past couple of weeks.

 Beau, alert by the front door. He loves going outside. What doggie doesn't?

 I failed to share these two pics last week -- the pink sky. We get this ethereal combination of pale gray/blue and bright baby pink fairly often.

 Reflections in Pink ~

Does anybody know which wooly creature this is? We have many of them this year. This fellow has chosen my mum as his spot. I hope he doesn't eat it!

 That mum's color is very like this yarn -- Vanna's Choice, color "Brick." I'm using it to make Julia a scarf/smitten set.

 I found this gold yarn (well, it's really thread, it's so thin) at Hobby Lobby. It holds quite a bit -- 429 yds., for $5. It's too thin to use on its own, but it makes a perfect accent yarn when combined with another yarn. Gold is a warm accent, so ...

 I'm incorporating it into Julia's scarf. She really likes it. There's just a hint of pattern in there, every few rows, and the gold is every 3rd row, I think. All double crochet.

We're crocheting our way into autumn, and hopefully tomorrow's temperature shift will put us in the mood :)

Catching Up

Sorry for the blogging absence -- much busyness here. It's been a good homeschooling week with lots of fun biology work at the microscope, and a test accomplished, an essay on Homer's Odyssey written, grammar accomplished, and Ancient Egyptian history read. On Monday, Julia and I painted. I only paint to keep her company and because I find it relaxing. After looking at Pom Pom's adorable banner photo, I decided to paint a squirrel house in the woods.

One lady squirrel is dropping by and giving a basket of acorn muffins to her neighbor-lady squirrel, who has not yet taken her tail out of curlers. She is in disarray.

Several years ago, a dear friend gave me lots of fabulous yarn. I do mean lots. There was one very-wild skein that I had no clue how to use! It has a rather tribal look:

It's very cool; it's just not the kind of thing you can make a hat out of, y'know? When you draw the yarn out though, it's much tamer:

And even so, yarn like that -- thin, with regular bumps of interest -- is hard to knit/crochet with. So at last I paired it with a nice boring yarn in a complementary color. I think many marriages work that way, yes? Wild Person + Sedate Person + Some Common Strain = Success!

Well, I'll know about "success" when it sells, but here's what I turned up with. I think it looks fallish. It's an infinity scarf. I like that touch of "wild" on the side.

Yesterday I went with two friends to our local thrift store. One friend is elderly, has lost much weight, and needed new clothing. The store had just put out all their fall clothes, and lo! they were lovely. I wasn't there to shop for myself, but I found three much-needed sweaters. This one is very soft and elegant (hard to tell in the photo) and from Liz Claiborne.

This one's a dark, heather gray, made by Cabela's. It has a hood and a pair of pockets in the front.

And this lovely Lands End sweater zips down the front. They are in great shape, and cost me $4 each.

I'm set for the winter! Seriously, you Northerners, in our neck of the woods, a good sweater will serve for the winter, and one can go several winters in a row without needing a real coat.
Well, that's the update. More busyness ahead. I'll see you when I see you!

Raising Houses!

What gets more attention in a neighborhood than anything else?
Somebody building a house.
Over in the mountains, when a new neighbor started building, we were constantly touring the building site, trying to figure out their floor plan.
One loop road in our neighborhood has three new homes going up. I call this one the blue house. It's nice enough, not huge, raised a little to keep it out of hurricane flooding. But I've never understood why someone would put the garage, the ugliest part of the house, front and center. Hmm.

I call this one the pretty house. They razed the existing home and built this one a tad higher. But it's a pretty shape and fits nicely into the landscape. They left existing trees and gave a gentle curve to the drive.

And this, I call the monstrosity. It's a muddy mess. Hopefully when they finish and put in some shrubbery and (maybe?) a few trees, it will help. I bet the elevation of this home is at least twelve feet above the home that was there previously.

Of course, I'm not bold enough to go tromping around inside these homes uninvited! But I bike by them several times a week to keep tabs on the progress.
Here are some other homes. These sailboats are "on the hard," i.e., out of the water. Some are being painted or repaired. However, some boat owners put their boats on the hard for years, and live in them during that time. Can you imagine? They have these handy stairwells they can push up against the boat, stepping up and down. One local fellow's been living in his boat at a local boatyard for going on three years, up on stilts.

These boats hail from California, New England, overseas, Texas, even some spots in the upper Midwest. Here you see Swept Away and Snow Goose. I'd be nervous living on a boat up on those spindly legs, but Adam says they're much more secure there during a hurricane, than in the water.

Those Purple Smittens

I made a pair of smittens this week for a friend. She said she likes purple and orange. Well, I don't keep much orange yarn; I loathe orange. But purple? I can do purple. I started the first smitten. I made a solid purple with 3 rows of chain/DC alternating, to allow for some sprucing up later. I put a row of orange/purple eyelash yarn along the wrist opening.

What she wanted in a smitten was enclosed fingers. So I did that. I winged it, while Adam and I watched a Buster Keaton movie (black/white and silent) called The General. I think Buster gave me inspiration because this was a slight nightmare to design, never having done it before and wanting it to come out lovely. Here's the first one:

On the second smitten I decided to document the design. Here's the unadorned smitten, a simple DC tube with the three aforementioned rows.

For the fingers, I quickly realized I needed a base of stitches running in between the fingers, upon which to place the dividers. I decided to make these base stitches from slip stitches (around the edge) and chains (between the fingers). So, when I'd gotten the smitten tall enough that I wanted to begin the dividers, I started a fresh row 'round, in slip stitches, until I just passed the index finger.

Then I left the outer edge, did 3 chain stitches, and immediately connected to the opposite side of the smitten with a slip stitch, thus enclosing the index finger.

In the photo below, the index finger opening is on the right. I first worked my way around the bottom right, crossed the "great divide" up to the top, worked my way in slip stitches across the top center, then crossed back down using chain stitches, and have stopped there, where those chains attach again to the bottom. Here, I have openings for the three largest fingers.

And then I worked one more "bridge" with chains, and enclosed all four fingers. Tada! The smitten is still too short, obviously, and I now need to work a row of DC all around all fingers, in every spot.

Well, that's tricky, and while Buster was rescuing his lady-love from the Yankees, somehow I meandered around that finger-edge, snaking my way around until nearly all the edges were finished. Here, I begin this row of DC, near the pinky, I think.

These photos, however, are from the second smitten, completed without Buster Keaton's assistance, and I struggled a bit more. Fundamentally, you should DC as much of it as you can in one long snaky run, until you are prevented from proceeding by a wall. Then you should unwind a goodly amount of yarn (a couple of yards would be too much), and cut it off. This will allow you to pull your yarn through openings and finish off the small portions that can't be reached otherwise. In the photo below, you can see in the bottom center of the smitten, a small section that would have to be reached with yarn pulled through. This is not difficult. You just pull it through, use a neighborly bit of yarn to help form a loop from the loose yarn, and DC a few stitches. Proceed doing this until you've built your DC wall around all the finger openings.

Done With That! I decided to use a different, fuzzy, interesting purple yarn to fill in those chain/DC rows. I'm sure it would have been easier to incorporate this yarn as I made the smitten, but then that would have been easy, right? Haha! Anywho, I decided to attach the yarn on the seam, and basically chain around twice, using slip stitches both below and above each "post" I ran into. It gave it a seamless, full look that would not have been achieved if I'd simply worked this yarn in before, in DC. When I say I chained around twice, I mean that I chained the entire way around the smitten, and when I got back to the original spot, I did it again, right next to (or above, on the smitten) the first chaining.

Here are the finished smittens. I added another row of eyelash below the top edge. My friend likes to cook a lot, and I know she doesn't want eyelashes in her food :)

 I hope she likes them. These are sturdy, serious smittens, and that touch of orange is just in time for Halloween!