I'm Back!

Back to reality.  *sigh*  Last week was exactly what I needed.  It was cold, colder than

anyone anticipated, and so windy that the leaves were flying by the window sideways.  Luckily I took along my winter coat, hat, and mitts AND warm clothes.  I wore it all, fuzzy leggings, flannel dresses, waffle-weave shirts, hand-knit wool socks (mismatched, of course) and all.  Yesterday I drove through rain, sleet, snow, a whiteout, sleet, and rain--all within 80 miles.  Fortunately the roads were warm enough that the snow only stuck to the grass and the roads just got wet.  The people I felt the sorriest for (not that I didn't feel sorry for myself driving in horizontal snow in October) were the brave souls running the Fall 50 mile race from Gills Rock to Sturgeon Bay.  Ack.  The poor devils.  For the first 10-15 miles the runners were intermittently on the shoulder of the roads and they looked bedraggled, frozen, and determined.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if a portion of them got pneumonia.  Oh, and I wasn't thinking and drove over the tallest bridge over the river on my way home, the bridge that's high enough for freighters to pass under, and was hit by a wind gust and nearly pushed into the guardrail.  Good thing it occurred to me as I drove up onto the thing that I needed to be aware and have my hands firmly on the wheel just in case.  Don't worry, I wouldn't have gone over but my car would have been thoroughly crunched being driven into the concrete by the wind.

This morning's sky pinked up nicely and the sun tried its best to peek out between clouds all day.




I spent an hour this afternoon uprooting all of the annuals that were thriving when I left and had been killed by frost before I got home.  There's nothing more cheerful that driving up to your house on a cloudy, windy, rainy day to find a row of pots sporting blackened and dead coleus.  Welcome home!  Cleaning out the pots and moving them against the house let the mums shine.  Now that a bunch of them are blooming I think the purple ones look fine.  I'd still rather have had the bronze and cranberry ones instead but flowers are flowers.

Look at what I found in back when I was cutting the dead and dying fern fronds, bleeding hearts, and peonies.  It's a honeysuckle flower or cluster of flowers.  There's one dark red snapdragon flower out there too.  Party on, flowers!  The best part of driving all of the leaves and plants to the yard waste was that I also trimmed back the mints so that they could hunker down between the bales and the timbers so my car smells great, minty and earthy.  Mmm.



Yesterday I didn't hurry home.  I realized as I was loading the car that for the first time in... forever I didn't have to be home so even though the weather was rainy, sleety, snowy, and just plain rotten I doodled around from village to village along the bay shore, from store to store.  I stopped for some good olive oil and fig balsamic vinegar at Curt's Oilerie in Fish Creek and went across the parking lot to the Peninsula Bookman for a copy of LaVyrle Spencer's one Door County title, Bitter Sweet.  (that's for you, cda)  Then I went down a few blocks to Beach People and Lake People.  In the last store I overheard the lady say that there was an alpaca store around the corner so I had to investigate (of course, I did).  It's from a farm (ranch?) in Luxemburg which is about 20 miles north of Green Bay.  Never heard of it.  Most of the wares in the tiny store were garments, socks, etc. made from their fleece by Peruvian knitters but they did have a few baskets of yarn.  So I bought some (you knew I would, right?), but only these 2 skeins.  I thought I'd knit a white hat and use the burgundy as an accent color.  I feel I've matured because I gave thought to what I'd make before I just snatched the stuff up.  Progress.

I did waaaaay more writing than knitting last week but I did manage about an inch of sock, I cast on the first gray Appleseed Mitt (but stopped when I got to the part that needs thinking about), and last night I cast on a second Appleseed Coaster.






I did a line edit of the manuscript on Monday and then worked on a couple new scenes the rest of the week.  Not as much as I'd hoped but I like all of the words I managed to pin to the paper.  I'm happy.

I didn't write a prompt last night.  I was tired and just unpacked, watched TV, ate the wrong things for supper, and went to bed.  I'll write tomorrow, I promise.
--Barbara