It's been a busy and expensive summer. Our brush with the tornado brought with it a fair amount of uproar, none of which was covered under any insurance whatsoever. Of course, our expenses and inconvenience are NOTHING when compared to the folks around here who are out of their homes for months and months to come, and are just beginning to haggle with contractors and insurance companies, etc. But our own little uproar has kept us busy.

Mr. Kathie decided this was the time to invest in a shiny new chainsaw, and he has been pecking away at chopping up the big oak tree.


Lucky him--being retired, his work schedule is governed by when the weather is cool. Looks like we'll be well-supplied with firewood for this coming winter.


Next week, we'll have a few new trees planted--an oak to replace the big one we lost, and several red maples for the back yard. Meanwhile, the view of our front yard is much changed. Next to the spindly little mulberry tree in the foreground there used to be a huge oak. And may again be some day, albeit not in my lifetime.


Some friends and I have begun meeting to sew every other week and this is just about all the sewing I've done since the Mineral Point retreat in May. There is a quilt top nearly finished and I'll get it photographed once it's done.

One new accomplishment is knitting socks on two circular needles. Yay! A friend offered to teach me how to do this, but the teaching amounted to "cast on the stitches, split them between two circular needles, and you'll figure it out."

It wasn't quite as easy as that. I got totally confused about knitting the foot gusset in May, while visiting my daughter in Washington, D.C. After a frantic email exchange, the intrepid Jenny from Knitch sent elegantly concise instructions, and the rest of the sock was a piece of cake. I owe her a large quantity of chocolate.



This sock is also one of my first departures from the plain ribbed sock. I like ribbed socks; they FIT, and that's key. But they get a bit boring.


This is still a rib, and so has some stretch--it's K2P2 for several rows, then a row with a twist stitch, then several rows of P2K2.


After a couple repeats, I discarded the row counter and the sock became Mindless. This pattern is in my go-to sock book Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch, and I will definitely knit it again.

Sock #2 is already cast on and on its way.