These came home the day after the wedding. Somehow on the way back from returning the tables and chairs we rented for the shindig, there was a detour to the bunny shop. cripes almighty. Yes, they ARE cute. Yes, they ARE soft. Yes, their noses DO wiggle ever so perfectly. But they POOP. a LOT. And they are NOT coming into my house. It gets freaking cold in Kansas, so the boys and Jeff had better damn well figure something out. Maybe they can set up a little heater system. NOT. COMING. INTO. MY. HOUSE. Not gonna happen. Their names are Lion and Midnight. Beth wanted something cute and the boys wanted something fierce. We girls figured out we could call the brown one Dandylion, Lion for short, and the boys are no wiser. These aren't even the kind you can spin wool from.
Ah, airport knitting. I got about 3 inches done on the current Chickami. I'm using Frog Tree silk & cotton I bought at MisKnits in a dark navy. It should be gorgeous. THANK GOD for thick wool socks. After hauling butt carrying a heavy backpack and bag to try to make it to an earlier flight and fly standby (the ticket counter woman told me there was plenty of room) in heels, my toes were getting a bit sore. After learning that they'd actually overbooked the damn flight by 11, I had two hours to wander through the airport to the very other side of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, and my baby toes were screaming. SO, what does a knitter do? Pulls out the pair of nice medium weight socks that rock socks knit up tightly so there's good squoosh factor, put them on and ditch the heels. Yes, I wandered through the airport at a leisurely pace in my comfy socks with no shoes. Damn I love knitted socks. They're better than a super hero's cape.
Minneapolis, yes. As a perk to the new job, I get to go there about 5 times a year. It's just been one week each month for April, May, June and probably July. Then it backs off to October and again in January. Minneapolis is freaking COLD most of the year. I don't know how those people do it, but more power to them. The best part? They have a TON of knitting shops. My current plan is to hit 2 or 3 each time I go to town. I should be good for the next 5 years and then can branch off into the St. Paul side. I went to a neat place called the Yarn Cafe, where they have FOOD and YARN and lots of tables to sit at. Oh, and diet coke. DAMN you gotta love that. They are also open evenings, so I had a fun time roaming around and sitting and knitting for a while one evening. A few hours beore my flight, I stopped by Skeins, a shop in Minnetonka. I can't seem to find a website for them, but they had really nice yarn and a ton of books. I behaved myself and spent less than $100 on yarn and patterns this trip. I was told of a neat knitting group that meets on Thusday nights, but can't remember where for the life of me. I'll call Skeins next time I'm in town and find out. I love sitting and knitting with new groups when I travel.
More knitting on the farm. Got back to KC Friday night, took off for the farm on Saturday morning for the day. THIS time I was prepared. I brought more bug spray than you would think humanly possible. I had the extremely toxic high deet stuff for spraying the top of our ballcaps, shoes and ends of jeans. The mildly toxic mid-deet stuff for clothing and bellies. The barely-deet and mostly picarin stuff for arms, legs and necks, etc. Also sunscreen. I was a spraying fiend-momma. I also reapplied often. Some of the locals were talking about how it's a bad year for ticks. EVERY year is a bad year for ticks for me, but they were right. We went hiking across a bunch of land Jeff is wanting to buy (this one is quite pretty without the whole rat-poop-filled broken down farmhouse with mold damage and animals in the basement.) It's just land. And ticks. And ponds, creeks, forests, pastures and ticks. I pulled off at least 5 from Jeff's clothes. Nature boy doesn't BELIEVE in bug spray. Yeah. I'm a believer. Our only come-apart was on the way home, Elizabeth had one biggie just starting to nibble on her belly. She survived that trauma and when we got home I did a MAJOR tick looking-over and we came out clean. Jeff came home the next day and I pulled more off him. OF COURSE he drove my truck, so every time I get in there I think of the ticks he brought home and probably laid thousands of tick babies just waiting to pounce on me when I drive to work each morning. No, I don't have a problem or anything. Hey, surviving my "wow, my freckles are moving.....wait, those aren't freckles.....holy FUXX they're EATING ME!" situation last year deserves a mild freakout now and then.
Came downstairs this afternoon thinking "those girls sure are being quiet on this playdate" usually a sign of trouble around here. The scene melted my heart. Junior weavers. Yarn everywhere. Our back porch rocks.
The one thing I decided (besides we're absolutely buying stock in a bug spray company) whenever we do move out to our farm to be (years from now, don't worry) is that I really REALLY don't want my own animals. I've got no problem with a farm dog or two and some cats (OUTDOOR farm cats). Those are ok. I've got a problem with having to take care of them every freaking day. And the poop, OH GOD the poop. You've got to DO something with it. Yes, the image of me spinning yarn from my animals and then knitting into amazing hats and sweaters to keep us warm in our later years will have to NOT include fiber from my own animals. I'm going to make friends with people that have animals, help them during shearing time, and then the poop is not my responsibility. Yes. I have issues. I'm ok with that.
PS, I promise to post more than twice a month so these things don't take an hour and a half to read. Sorry!
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