Eye Camel Friday(or Oliver takes in the local sites)

Hi, everyone!
I've guess I've been silent this week. I suppose it is because I've been busy trying to exercise for about an hour or more everyday and all that and trying to get myself into some kind of schedule. I didn't do any kind of knitting or making of anything this week-sorry,

BUT, I did plant my garden (along with my mom), and planted most of the flowers that I had hoped to plant around my house. I still have a couple of containers to fill and I would like to rework a section of a perennial garden area that we have, but that means lots of hoeing and planting and buying more seeds and plants and that will have to wait until I have some money in my bank account. (my, my I do enjoy run-on sentences. My old high school English teacher would be shocked. (totally unrelated tidbit-I see her on occasion and she can still make me think about the fact that I don't use proper grammar-I mean I did very well in her class and everything, but I know how to be a good little student when I have to be and then I promptly forget everything anyone taught me))

Yesterday, Oliver the Camel and I walked to the little bandstand park we have across the street from the gallery for a little break.

Here is Oliver enjoying the park swing as the scent of the lilacs behind him waft through the breeze.

And a close-up of Oliver enjoying himself.

We enjoyed the view for a while and took a couple of pictures!


The Railroad tracks behind the bandstand (whenever we have events at the bandstand, we have a couple interruptions from the trains)

Pillars

Bandstand Railing

Hmmm . . . looking at these pictures makes me excited for Summer. We have a bunch of fun activities at this little park. There is always Dairy/Berry Day when we have root beer floats and strawberry sundaes served (fresh strawberries from local growers-my favorite!) and music from the Mid-Minnesota Concert Band. Then we have a brat feed or two with proceeds going toward fireworks for our town festival on Labor Day Weekend. We also have a street dance (where very few people actually dance- mostly just mill around chatting with friends listening to the live music) on Labor Day Weekend.
Some people may find my little town a bit hokey, but I really enjoyed growing up here and living here, still.

Well, I hope you all enjoy your weekend- I hope to be spending mine outside! (probably not knitting, though-bad, bad knit blogger)

white stuff from the sky

Well, I am a happy person because it is snowing outside. At this very moment there are white flakes falling outside of the gallery windows. I took a few pictures earlier when it was snowing a little less.

We also has a large storm last weekend so there was already snow on the ground. The snow last weekend fell during the Home and Garden Show in Hutchinson. It was great! (the crowds weren't that big at the show, but there were a good many hardy Minnesotans who decided to show up just to get out) We ended up getting about 12-15 inches around here.

I don't know what other people think (well, actually, I do-many people do not like large snow storms), but I enjoy snow. I enjoy the times when we get so much snow that things get canceled and we get to stay home and make cookies and watch movies and things like that. I enjoy the fact that we can be "forced" into sitting down, relaxing, and spending time with family.

(here's me on my soap box-you can just skip to the next picture if you like) I feel bad that there are people out there that get annoyed when the snowplows aren't out there in the middle of a storm plowing. Now, I understand the folks that are emergency personnel and need to get to the hospital and those kind of things could get tired of the snow, but the people I tend to hear complain about these things are usually are the ones who are truly able to take a day off.

We live in a rural area and I like it. I like the fact that there are times when our gravel road gets giant frost heaves or there are huge soft spots that not very many people can get through. It makes people think of different ways to get around. We only live a mile out of town and I remember a few times when my mom put on her cross-country skis to go work after a snow storm had come through.

The snowplows pile the snow from the roads on this side of town across the street from the gallery.

Looking in the other direction is my red truck and the bandstand where we have a couple concerts in the summer.
(It all has much more snow covering it now.)

I'm Still Here!

I've had a busy and sleep inducing week. I've seen a lot of people have been having icy and snowy weather-we've been coooold and sunny with no snow. I'm getting a bit worried for our farmers (which, I guess, includes me and my husband). We had a droughtish thing here last fall and then it rained for a while in September and October, but then we haven't had much moisture since then. I would say that we have only had about 7-9 total inches of snow so far this year. (I might be wrong by a few inches) We normally have at least 3 times that amount-I think. I have an idea our ground is going to look really dry come spring. I don't know what farmers around here will do because almost no one has any irrigation equipment because we usually have plenty of rain and snow to get us by. Well, I guess we will just have to hope for some fairly large amounts of rain this spring. Okay, so there was my local weather report for all of you-wasn't it exciting?

On the knitting end of things-I got my yarn in the mail and have been working on the Myrtle Leaf Shawl!!!! I have only finished a couple of repeats, but I am pretty excited about it. (38 repeats and a border to go!) I am a bit of a slow knitter. Especially because I am knitting it on bamboo needles. Now I am normally a metal lover and I would like to be knitting with metal with lace, but since Dan and I will be going to Israel at the end of March and I am not positive if I will be done before we go on the plane, I figure that I should be sure that on an overseas trip, I don't get my needles taken away. I could just switch to the bamboo needles when we go over there, but I am afraid that my gauge will be way off.

I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures of the shawl yet, but my dad has his digital camera with him right now, so I will leave you with a pretty picture I took last fall. Have a good weekend!

Baby-it's cold outside . . .

I am so a Minnesotan-I have spent at least three different posts talking about the weather. Now this isn't at all scientific and I 'm just saying it, but I'm pretty sure it is true :0)
Do you know what the most watched portion of the news is in Minnesota? Weather. Do you want to know what, I am betting, is being talked about at this very moment at the little cafe across the street from me? Weather. Do you want to know what people were talking about at church yesterday? It wasn't the Super Bowl-it was the weather- okay, maybe some people talked about the Super Bowl, but I didn't happen to talk to them.
So if it is sooooo cold outside why am I not knitting a giant woolly blanket? because that sounds like a lot of work. I am working on a little something for one of my nieces though. Now, probably none of you will approve of what I am making and I may even hear a few laughs and guffahs, but I am making her a poncho-yes, I said it- it is a poncho make out of an acrylic boulcé yarn that is going to have a fun fur border. I will not apologize for this. She is 8 years old. She is a girl. She is going to love it.
Well, anyway you guys-stay warm and have a good week!
I was going to finish this for Christmas, but I was very busy trying to finish the Print o' the Wave for my sister-in-law (which didn't get finished until a week after Christmas and got sent last week-she got it by the way and absolutely loved it. Thank you Eunny!!! for such a beautiful pattern.) Don't worry-I ended up getting my niece a beautiful book called The Flower Man that she really liked-such beautiful artwork. Anyway, I am just about finished with the poncho and I think I will be able to get it in the mail by the end of the week for a little Valentine's gift.

Happy Friday

Here are our cats Norman and Barney-they don't get caught doing this very often.

I've not been doing a whole lot today. Tomorrow I have a bunch of people coming over to the house for a little party, so I have to clean stuff when I get home.
As it has gotten quite cold here in Minnesota and around the rest of the country I thought you might enjoy a photo of summer weather. This was taken at a Father's Day picnic my husband and I had at our house for both of our dads.

Beauty with the nieces and nephews on the fence

Hanging out in the Window

Well, my little teeny-tiny sweaters were hanging out in the front window
today catching a few rays.

You all know that I live in Minnesota, right? And of course you believe that Minnesota is a vast and frozen wasteland where it is never warm ever-including summer and all that.(which truly is not that case we get our share of 90-100 degree days with plenty of humidity to go around as well) Okay, so today, JANUARY 26TH!!!, it was nearly 40 degrees outside. What little snow we have gotten this year is nearly gone. Get this though-tomorrow and the rest of this weekend it will be down to 0 at different times of the day. I've lived here all of my life-I'm used to wild swings in temperature, but we've been on a roller coaster this year. Let me tell you-I like snow-I like to ski-I like being forced to stay at home because the weather is too dangerous to be outside on occasion. 0 degrees is not conducive to snow and neither is 40, but somewhere in the middle works great for snow. (I'm not a meteorologist (I'm sure I am boring you, so go ahead and just look at the pictures while I finish this mini rant), but I believe that when temperatures get really low the moisture is sucked out of the air, so that no precipitation can come down even if there was a giant snow storm coming overhead it would skip us and move itself below us or around us or whatever. Then, obviously, when temperatures are above freezing-it doesn't snow.)

I still must say that today was a beautiful day with the sun shining and warm-so the teeny-tiny sweaters got a big kick out of hanging out in the window!

And with their friend the headless/toga clothed lady. She has a very sad story. She's not really supposed to be headless (come think of it the Greek and Roman sculptures really aren't supposed to be headless either-and she's based off of one of them-they had very similar things happen to them to make them headless as a matter of fact-hmmm) This young lady used to spend her days outside the gallery in the great out of doors. (In the winter she was given a nice warm hat and scarf) Sadly, one day this past summer young vandals came in the middle of the night and broke off her head. They did much other damage around town that same night and have since been caught and convicted. We can at least be thankful that they didn't throw her head through anyone's window :0)
Have a good weekend everyone!