Hmmmmm

What could possibly be so interesting about a stereo speaker?


We had a little bit of excitement here in the desert yesterday. The weather stripping broke away on part of the front security door, and a lizard somehow got under the door (with or without help from the cats we'll never know). All I do know is that when I went out to investigate some strange noises I found the Queen B chasing a lizard around the family room.

Poor little thing probably noticed the hole in the bottom of the speaker and remembered in his scared little primal brain that if you go into a little hole a big predator can't follow -- so he did.

I put the speaker outside for a couple of hours, during which time the lizard found his way out and returned from whence he came -- probably to tell all of his friends to avoid our house at all costs.

Sorry I've been absent from the blog for so long. We were stay-cating. And I promised Mom pictures of our day trips (everyone wish Mom well -- she's having surgery on her hand as I type this), so there will probably be some image-heavy posts coming up. And there's even some knitting to report on.

I didn't take the camera along for our first day trip: apple and other stuff picking at Apple Annie's in Willcox. I did, however, take some pics of the results once we got home.

A whole lot of apples. Granny Smiths mostly 'cuz that's what they had. These aren't the most pretty apples, but they're nice and tart and will (did) make wonderful treats.

Japanese pears. You know, the ones that are a couple of bucks a piece in the store? Well, they're significantly cheaper when you pick them yourself. The smaller apples are golden delicious which we also picked (the red apples are Galas we bought at the store). Some of them were truly tiny:


But it wasn't just apples. Oh no, Apple Annie's also has pick-your-own fields of vegetables:

Chili peppers, eggplants, red, green, and yellow bell peppers, tomatoes. The yellow squash and zucchini had already been put in the fridge before I took this picture.

Where is it all now? Much of it has been eaten, but there are a whole lot of veggies in the freezer. We also have some apple cake and apple muffins in the freezer, along with a few pies worth of apples ready to be pulled out and thawed. We made two apple crisps as a treat for a class we're taking and an apple pie for one of M's co-worker's birthdays. Oh, and there's about 2 gallons of apple butter in the freezer (soooo easy to make in the Crock Pot). Phew!

So, that was Sunday and Monday of vacation (Sunday for pickin', Monday for puttin' up). Stay tuned for reports on the rest of the week.

But now for some knitting news. I finished the lace scarf:
Pattern: Rhea Lace Stole by Kirsten Hipsky for Valley Yarns
Yarn: Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk Hand-dyed in a test color that isn't in the line
Needle: Addi Turbo #5 32" circular (started on another needle I can't talk about)
Mods: Original pattern is for a stole, but I didn't have a complete hank of the yarn, so I did half the repeats on the end pieces and picked up an appropriately reduced number of stitches for the body.

I really like it. Not exactly sure what's going to happen to it since it's probably a little warm for Tucson, but we'll see.

And remember this:
Well, it's out of hibernation since it's now cool enough to believe that winter will come eventually. I've got about 3" done on the second side.