Arizona

Was warm!
Normally when it comes time to come home after being away for a week or two, I'm ready; I miss my kids, I miss my bed, I miss my life. This time I was torn between wanting to come home, to freeze, or stay there and stay warm! What settled it for me? I missed my Joy!
Don't get me wrong, I love my kids and I missed both of them, but I've known them for 18 and 20 years respectively, and the new has kinda worn off. They just don't do anything cute anymore, ya know?

We spent most of the week spending time with Derek's Dad, with a few trips into Tucson. I went to Grandma's Spinning Wheel, Unique Designs by Kathy, and the Tucson Yarn Company. Derek paid visits to two cigar shops, and on the final trip to town, we went to see Harry Potter, the Deathly Hallows, Pt 1. Kinda wish we'd waited, its going to be a long year waiting for the second half. It is a very good movie!

Here are a few shots uploaded from my camera to Facebook while I was gone, the first is an area between Florance, Catalina and Picacho Peak that is all for sale. I'm sure it will all get developed soon, although it would be great to get a piece of land here to settle on. Derek and I have been thinking about where we're going to go after he retires, its a ways down the road but its fun to think about.
We went to the town of Tombstone, and to be honest (maybe it was the wrong time of year?), it wasn't all that. There are a lot of shops, more restaurants in two square blocks than seems necessary, a stage coach that sits in the middle of the road (those horses look so bored, don't they?) and goes for the occasional trip-d-trip around the block, a trolley car (I think it would have been fun but Derek didn't want to ride it), and the gun fight at the OK Corral every day at 2PM and every half hour after that. We didn't go to the OK Corral, they wanted $10 per person, and we decided we'd seen it enough times already in the movie.
We wandered around, then went and had lunch at Big Nose Kate's (Kate was Doc Holliday's 'girl friend'). Then we left.
But I'm bringing the cart before the horse as they say... Before you actually get to Tombstone, you have to drive past Boothill.
Boothill is where the three boys that died at the OK Corral are buried, along with many other people of the day, and a few since that have either died in or around Tombstone, or had a deep connection to the town. One grave contains ashes of a man that someone sent to the cemetery, marked C.O.D. Then there's George, above, poor guy unknowingly bought a stolen horse and was hanged for his efforts. And another; "Here lies Lester Moore - four slugs from a .44, no Les no more". I have more pictures and will share them later, just too lazy right now to down load them from my camera :)

On the way home we stopped in Pahrump to visit and have dinner with my brother David and his wife Lisa. They met us at Ohjah's Japanese Steakhouse and Hibachi Grill. So fun!
After much good food and more good visiting, Derek and I set out for home, which at this point was about 5.5 hours away. I had been trying to talk Derek into staying over somewhere because I knew it had been snowing at home all day Sunday and half the night before. To get home we have to go over a pass (Austin Summit) that sits at about 7900 feet; thats about 3500 feet higher than Battle Mountain. This pass is always treacherous in the winter time so I was worried. But he was driving.
We got through the Smokey Valley OK, not very much snow there but as soon as we hit the pass things got dicey. From there Battle Mountain is about 110 miles north. Three hours later we drove into Battle Mountain. A very edge of your seat drive.

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Ok, this isn't a hint... unless you want to take it that way :)
This is to enter a drawing at Knitpics.com, if you're on the mailing list, you got the ad too!

Off to Warm Climes!

Woke up this morning to a bright clear day, still some snow on the ground; the temperatures probably wont get higher than the low 50s during the day again until March.
Yesterday morning was cold and blustery, degenerating into a blizzard by 2pm. About 10 minutes later, I couldn't see the other side of my driveway from the front door.

This picture probably belongs in the 'Firsts' post, as this is Joy's first snow :)

Can you say 'cat'? How bout 'fat cat'? This is Spaz. We went to Arizona in 2003 after Derek's Mom passed and while there found this kitten someone had dumped at Derek's Dad's house. We had to bring him home (Gail doesn't like cats, and Derek's brother thinks they are good sport). So Spaz is an AZ transplant who eats lizards and squirels in the summer, gets slim and trim, then fattens up for the winter to enormous proportions. I swear he gains at least 10 pounds as the weather gets colder. I'm pretty sure he outweighs Joy.
We're headed back to Arizona tomorrow, be back around the 20th. See you all then!

And THIS is why I have sheep...

Even the really, really dumb ones.

These two sheep are the scariest sheep I have. They are actually the scariest sheep I have ever had! When we have to catch Gracie (the gray ewe) for whatever reason, if we have to go any distance with her, like to the garage/barn, we have to put her in the trailer and haul her over. Why? Because three steps out of the gate, or sometimes before we get to the gate, she decides that we're going to slit her throat and so throws her considerable weight to the ground and wont budge. She will lay there until we heave her up bodily and make her stand. Babs isn't quite that bad, we can usually get about 10 steps out of her before she gives up.
We sheared them yesterday, I feel a little bad about Gracie's head, but not bad enough to try to fix it, we left it a bit ragged. After fighting her for an hour and a half on the shearing stand I was just done. Babs walked out of her coat; after we took off all the wool it was way too big for her.

So why do I keep them?


Yeah.

Firsts

Who knew? Ok, so I guess someone must have known, cause someone wrote books on it, but I didn't know. Now I do!
Socks two at a time are a blast! I bought the book, Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks a few weeks ago, thinking it would be kinda fun to get two socks done at once. I haven't done very many socks because it always seems hard to start/finish the second one. This is right up my alley! These are for Derek for Christmas. Only one mistake so far! I waffled a little when I started them last night, I wasn't sure it would be wise to start a new method on a Christmas present, but once I got started it was cake! This is another first for me; first time I've used something besides handspun since I started spinning 6 years ago.
My first lacy hat! The gray hat was my real first hat, but this one is my first pattern with a 'pattern' to it, the first with cables!


This pattern is from 'Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences', but beware! There are many corrections at Storey Publishing to the patterns in this book, something I wasn't aware of when I started the hat, the knowing of which would have saved me a few gray hairs! Everything went great until I got to the decrease for the crown. A particular stitch sequence said 'slip 2tog kwise, K2, p2sso'. K, so someone with experience may already see the problem, but I didn't until I had already tried to 'fix it' and got three rows away before I realized that I couldn't. And of course, and of course after I'd frogged it at least three times. I finally frogged back to the last row before the decrease, counted my stitches, went to the lap top and looked it up. It hadn't occurred to me before that moment that these people that write/edit/publish these books don't have someone or several someones to test the patterns! Something else I know now.

And how can I post so soon after Halloween without a picture of my favorite spook on her first Halloween? Well, elephant...