The Blimp, And I Do Mean Goodyear

Imagine a quiet Saturday evening here at Chez Knit. The day is almost done. The sun is going down. Peace and quiet reigns.

And then there is a noise.

It starts out slow and sort of hum like. Then gradually gets louder and louder and right over the house.

HHBL: Man that plane sure sounds like it is flying low and over our house.

Me: Yes it does, and sounds pretty…..Hey WAIT A MINUTE! 

I run to the windows and look out, totally freaking Max out with my over exuberance and interest. 

Holy COW!!! Where is my camera! I have to have my camera! Dang it I don’t have the 85mm on it!! I will just have to make do.

Holy Schlomoly Andy it is the Goodyear Blimp!! Just slowly floating by on the breeze.

Right over our house. 


These photos were taken with my dinky little stock lens 18-55mm so that tells you how close this thing really was. And LOUD.


Max the Magnificent was totally freaked out by the entire experience. He didn’t know what it was but he knew he had to bark at it and run around in the yard to keep it away.

YOU MAY NOT COME IN MY YARD!!! DON’T YOU LAND IN MY YARD!!! I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BUT YOU BETTER NOT COME IN MY YARD!!!!

Sorry for the less than stellar picture. Chalk it up to low light, standard lens and the fact that I was laughing.


But all too soon the blimp drifted away from the house and on to wherever it was going. Perhaps back home since it is docked in Akron and that isn’t too far away.


Good bye Mr. Blimp.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy evidently.

It’s Her BIRTHDAY!!!!

Today is March 11th. And that means it is TMO’s birthday.

She is 24!!!!!!

How can this be????

It seems like just yesterday she looked like this…..

Oh man she is going to kill me. But you know, I have to speak and show truth. And believe me when I say that she came out making the world aware of her presence.

Ahhhhh, that is better.

I might have mentioned that she was a tad early. Three weeks to be exact. She was anxious to greet the world. But I was anxious that she would not arrive before we had the driveway back in.

Driveway?

Yes, you see when I was fecund with TMO and Cartoon Girl was about 14.5 months old the town that we lived in decided that they were going to dig up everyone’s perfectly FINE septic systems and put in a sewer. And they got to our driveway right about the time it looked like I had a boulder stuffed under my shirt. Oh was the excavation crew nervous. They had a schedule that they had to keep. But they knew that “my baby moment” was fast approaching. And so, on the day that they actually had to dig up the end of the driveway, thereby rendering said driveway unusable for a 24 hour period, there came a knock on the door.

It was the excavation crew foreman. He came to thank me for the cookies I had waddled out to give them yesterday and to tell me that they had a plan. They had been discussing it for a day or two. IF I needed to go anywhere, like say the hospital, they had cleaned out one of the trucks and they would take me right to the emergency room door and they would be careful too. Just let them know if I needed anything and they would be johnny on the spot.

My heart just broke with pleasure.

I didn’t need to ask them to do that. But a mere 24 hours after putting the driveway back into working order…….TMO made her appearance. At 2am.

And she has been out in front every since.

Happy Birthday MooMoo Meister Petunia. I am so glad that I didn’t have to go to the hospital in an excavation truck in order to have you.

23rd Birthday

22nd Birthday

 

7 Quick Takes (Vol 157)

Yes, it is that time again. Friday at Chez Knit. Where I blather on wax eloquent about the small events of my week that I cannot manage to stretch into an entire blog post no matter how I try. You can thank me later.

Remember, when you are done mulling over my thoughtful and erudite musings be sure to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers jumping ship, over to Conversion Diary to see what is happening.

Bring on the BLATHER!

1.
It is hard to believe but LaurenLeap and I are beginning to think and talk and plan the 2012 garden. I am sure that we will be growing some of the old favorites like tomatoes, beans, sunflowers, lettuce, spinach, beets, basil, zucchini and other old favorites.

The new members of the garden this year will be potatoes. Can I tell you how excited about the thought of home grown new potatoes with butter and a bit of salt.

Oh be still my beating heart.

Be prepared for multitudinous posts on the garden. I am itching to get some dirt under my fingernails.

2.
The walk this morning started out in the beautiful sunshine. Fabulous sunrise. Not windy. Birdies singing.

Within 30 minutes the sun was gone, the wind had arrived, and it was snowing like a blizzard.

Ridiculous. I don’t know whether to be warm or cold.

Happy or shaking my fist at the weather and yelling imprecations.

I have the amazing ability to whine about anything!

3.
Dot if you are reading this look away. You don’t want to know what I do when I go out on a photo shoot for you.

No, don’t worry it isn’t anything bad. I am a professional after all. I just have this “photo” obsession habit. I do this only for myself. NO ONE ever sees these pictures……..

I take a picture of myself taking a picture of myself.

I need a serious intervention.

Or maybe I should just title this special, personal project

Self Portrait in 40 Bathrooms

4.
I follow too many blogs.

There, I have said it.

Every day I sit down and think I will get through all the blogs that I need/want to read and every day it is the same thing

BLOGTSUNAMI!

Recently I did go through and unsubscribe to blogs that hadn’t been updated in more than 4 months. I felt tremendous guilt but I did it any ways. Of course that didn’t help all that much because it isn’t the blogs that DON’T post that fill up my feeder. It is the blogs that do post that are overwhelming me.

And yet I cannot unsubscribe.

Because I want to read all of them.

What if I unsubscribe and then I want to resubscribe and I cannot find them again?? What if they write the most awesome, life changing post and I miss it?? What if, for once, I might have a chance of winning a give away and that is lost??

Sigh.

5.
We all know that I cling to my gray hair like the government clings to the Chevy Volt. With tenacity. Without thought or reason.

But it is another matter entirely when it comes to gray hair in the old eyebrows.

NoNoNoNoNoNo!

Gray hair in the eyebrows makes me think of Andy Rooney.

Or worse yet….Gandalf!

And so those I pluck with great fierceness and vigor.

So far I hold back the tide but I am not sure what I will do when the gray hair to brown hair ratio tips to more gray.

Do they make a Grecian Formula just for eyebrows?

6.
I have absolutely nothing to say for number 6.

Nothing

Nada

Zippo

I lead a boring existence.

Moving on.

7.
And now, as has become my Friday custom, a few pictures from the ipod. I always think that I will put them into some kind of collage but then I couldn’t give commentary and I know you would be sad about that.

For those of you who are knitters you will understand this. I have a ball winder but no swift. Necessity is the mother of invention. Thank goodness for large cans of pumpkin.

These are my best friend for winter walking. Yak Trax. They are rock solid on ice and a bit of snow. I knew you were wondering.

We walked in a skiff of snow on Monday. This paw print was HUGE. At first we were all, “Is that a BEAR print?” But it isn’t because black bears, surprisingly, have 5 toes. I think it was from a large coyote…..I hope.

I would like to go inside Alpha.

Sunrise this morning over the lake.

Of course, since I have been so diligent to take my ipod with me on the morning walks I haven’t seen the beaver again. But hope springs eternal.

Even At An Early Age….

Even at the early age of 6, Cartoon Girl was exhibiting her love of illustration.

I believe that the shorts that she has on were the ones that I made that had dinosaurs all over them.

A remarkable likeness if I do say so myself.

March is a Tad Psychotic

You just never know what you are going to get in March when it comes to weather here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio.

Such confusion.

Rain – thunder – lightening – 65F – wind – 22F – snow – sun – clouds – hail.

These are all the things that we have experienced since March arrived and it is only 7 days in.

On Sunday it was like a blizzard.

My poor daffodils don’t know whether to keep growing or to pack it up and move to a warmer climate.

The Autumn Joy from last year at least looks like it is happy with it’s snow cap.

And the deer! Oh the deer. It is just about time for the new babies to be born so the expectant mommas have given the old cloven hoof to the two year olds to shoo them out of the nest.

Notice that the four footed pains in my arse deer are not eating the daffodils. Nope, not a bit. That is because they don’t like them.

But it doesn’t seem to stop them from grazing on anything else that comes within their greedy little venison lips.

Alpha did you say deer? I love deer. I love to bark at them. I love to chase them. I will protect you. The deer are bad. Where are the deer? You said deer. I love deer.

These pictures were taken on Sunday.

But today? Today I see blue sky and the temperature is 65F.

And then by Friday it will be back into the 30’s. And then it is supposed to go up into the 50’s.

My weather needs serious psychological help.

Shelob Lives In My Basement

I might have mentioned before that Chez Knit is situated in the woods.

Boy howdy did we know it Friday night when the wind was hurricane force and making the trees groan and creak in protest.

The woods bring with them some unwanted things.

Mice would be the first thing that comes to mind.

And then of course there are the various varmints that we see.

Mommy is that raccoon in a cage? Did they let the raccoon out of the cage?

Look away honey! Look away.

And just as a point of order here. Once we had trapped the raccoon we had no other choice but to send him on to that big garbage dump in the sky. We have a big problem with rabies in this area, and many raccoons carry the disease. Once trapped they must be destroyed. I had no problem complying with that law.

And of course there are always these marauders from the woods lovely woodland creatures.

Who me? Yes I am lovely. I am a buck did you notice? I have antler buds. I will grow up to propagate with my harem and we will make babies and bring joy. Aren’t you glad. Do you happen to have some more hosta? I am very hungry.

But the things that I hate the most. The creatures that fill me with loathing and the desire to run away to the safest corner of my house.

Are……….

SPIDERS!!!!!!!!!

Look Teddy, Mr. Spider.

And in particular I hate these gigantic ones that seem to crop up in my basement in droves.

Ask HHBL how I reacted upon finding a bunch of them stationed at various points along the baseboards. It wasn’t pretty I can tell you. And it might have involved the waving of arms and the stomping of feet and a bit of screaming, the employment of the shop vac and perhaps a word or two that cannot be shared here as this is a family blog.

I’m just sayin’

This spider happens to be dead. If he wasn’t you can bet your bottom arachnid dollar that I wouldn’t have been laying on the floor up close and personal just to take a picture.

There are some things that are beyond even me.

I mean look at it! Look at those little beady death filled eyes. Please try to ignore the cat hair that still seems to be a permanent part of the carpeting and just look at the eyes. They are evil and filled with malice.

I hate spiders.

7 Quick Takes (Vol 156)

Well it is that time of the week again. That special time when I gather together all the random threads of my random life and throw them at you in one big gooey mess.

You can thank me later.

You know the routine. When you have fully untangled my blather you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my rapidly deteriorating weather, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else has been doing.

Let us blather together

1.
Good golly we have had wild weather this week. And that just shows you how boring my week has been that I am leading off with the weather. Actually, if you read my blog post earlier in the week you know that our area has had anything but a boring week.

We had sun and almost 60F on Tuesday. Then it was RAIN and hail and wind and thunder and lightning on Wednesday. And then yesterday it was all clouds and wind and snow flurries.

And then it is supposed to be back to 60F today. Plus by late afternoon there will be big wind and thunder again.

And then tomorrow and into Sunday…snow.

My toes don’t know whether to be cold or not.

2.
From now on I am going to take my camera or my ipod with me when I walk at the lake. Had a total photographer “fail” on Monday because I had no camera of any kind with me on the walk and there, just in the water by the side of the lake, happily munching on something was one of the beavers.

And me with no camera.

DOPE SLAP!

Of course, now I will never see the thing again.

But I will be prepared just in case.

3.
Do you ever have a day where you just can’t “stick” with anything.

Yesterday was my day.

I had a boat load of business stuff that needed to get done. I had photos to edit. I had website stuff to deal with. I had a blog post to write. Emails to return. I had….

LIFE to deal with.

It just wasn’t going to happen.

So after a certain point in the day when I had started and stopped and started and stopped various projects and had spent time just sitting blankly in front of the computer I gave up and went and read.

Finished two books.

So I guess I did do something yesterday. Just not what I had thought.

And hopefully I am back on track. These things usually only last a day or so.

4.
This is my latest knitting finished object. It was part of a KAL (knit-a-long) that I participated in. I wish that you could see all the finished ones as, even though we were all using the same pattern, they all came out unique.

Traveling Woman

I love knitting lace. LoveLoveLove.

I want to cast on another one right now.

5.
A few ipod pictures from the week. Because I am filling time and space.

That picture of the raccoon going into his house. You can’t really see it very well but I can tell you that it was the biggest raccoon that I have ever seen. And I live in the woods so I have seen my share of raccoons. We were walking along and all of a sudden Sandy (walking buddy) stops and say, “Oh my gosh, look at the size of that raccoon!” He was literally hugging the tree, upside down, just watching us. After a bit he squeezed, and I do mean squeezed, into his hole, looked out at us and said something distinctly off color in raccoonese.

6.
I was going to have a blog post this week about making your own Corned Beef from scratch. But that has been put off until a later date as I have to order an ingredient that I cannot find locally. Prague Powder #1 also known as “Insta Cure #1” is the ingredient that gives Corned Beef that reddish color that we all know. You don’t have to have it, it does change the flavor a bit but you can do without it. I have made Corned Beef from scratch before and didn’t use it. However the corned beef is more of an off putting gray color without it. Tastes great, looks bad. So I will order some and then do the corning and blog post.

You would have thought I could find a local supplier of this stuff but nope.

7.
It took all I had this week not to buy a Canon 1.8F 50mm lens.

All I had in will power.

I bring it up every day on Amazon. I look at it. I study it. I think about the pictures I want to take with it.

This is how bad it got at one point. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to find Prague Powder #1 locally (see #6) and was going to have to order it from Amazon. $2.99 worth of product for which they would then charge be $8 in shipping. And then I had a bright idea….

Hey I know what I will do. I will order the 50mm lens that I want so much and that will put me over the limit for free shipping and so they won’t charge me shipping on the Prague Powder.

Yes over the limit for free shipping by about $100.

When I told HHBL about my plan he just sat there and looked at me.

WHAT!!! It was a sound plan….sort of…..

I am just pathetic in my eagerness to push the “add to cart” button. And I am willing to talk myself into anything.

But I didn’t push the button.

Yet.