This is the very last day of August and it's freezing cold. As soon as my bare feet hit the floor at 6 a.m. I noticed that the wood floor against my surprised feet was rather chilly. My legs were cold. My arms were cold. Why? Where were these goose bumps coming from? The thermometer just outside our kitchen window reported 48 degrees. Forty-eight degrees!!?? This is August, right? Today's predicted high? 74. What's up?

I can remember past Augusts when we got down on our knees and prayed for rain to fall on our dried-to-a-crisp crunchy brown grass. Augusts so hot and dry that we once again realized why we always looked forward to fall's cooler temperatures, and please autumn, hurry and come; winter wasn't looking so bad either.

June was our hottest month this year. Can you believe it? We've had so much rain in July and August that our gardens are doing strange and weird things. Tomatoes, usually so abundant that we have to get creative about what to do with them, are not producing much. This year Arkansas tomatoes have been hit with some type of blight that has caused the leaves and stems to sort of do a wilt-melt-turn black kind of thing. Now everyone is being kind of selfish about giving away tomatoes, including my MIL. She's usually begging me to take some so she can free up her refrigerator.

Yesterday we decided to just go ahead and take down our little above-ground pool. Now watch it turn hotter than hot in September. Anyway, it just felt kind of sad to put away the pool. It's like we're waving good-bye to yet another summer, and I love summer soooo much. *Note: Cleaning the pool is an all day job that requires a lot of down-and-dirty work, so this was no minor chore. Some people leave their pools up all winter. Can't imagine how fabulously filthy it would be by next season. YUCK!




Let me introduce Miss Alice Ivy. She's our newest (unexpected) member of the family. Obviously, she's a border collie mix -- mostly border collie. We found her huddled under my husband's pickup truck, shivering and scared. If PupDog hadn't been bark, bark, barking at her, we might not have noticed. You could actually feel her ribs, that's how thin she was. And she was filthy dirty. Strangely enough, she let me coax her from beneath the truck, pick her up and take her inside. Eventually, I decided to take my chances on being bitten and give her a bath. That's when I discovered why she smelled like rotten meat. I thought her tail was just tucked under her, you know, like dogs do when they are scared or unsure about something? Nope. Her tail was not tucked under her. It was barely hanging on. It looked like raw meat. THEN I actually saw something fall off. A maggot. A MAGGOT! Although our vet doesn't have a 24 hour clinic, he did agree to meet us at his office and take a look at the situation. It didn't take him long to tell us, as we knew deep down inside, "you do know that that tail is going to have to come off, right?"

Many $$$$$$$ and several weeks later: We have a very happy, very energetic, very clean little dog. She's our new little happy walker. PupDog doesn't walk. He lumbers, and not very far at any given stretch. Alice, on the other hand, loves to walk. The longer the walk, the better. She also loves to ride in a car to the point that when we have to leave without her, she's crestfallen. And she's housebroken now, although it took a bit of work a few soiled puppy pads and many doggie treats for her to get the idea.

It took a bit for PupDog to warm up to her, but it's like he's been given new life by her energy. Well, to be honest, so have we.

Now, what to do with the person who treated this precious little creature so badly? Any suggestions?

This is called a smitten, or at least that is what the person who entered it at the fair called her project.

Well... I'm definitely smitten with the smitten. And yes, that is my hand (above) modeling the smitten. The cool thing about very small-town county fairs is that everything is just out there for you to pick up and feel of and in my case, try on. No one was guarding or watching out for thieves like they do in bigger venues like regional fairs or state fairs where everything is protected behind glass or being carefully watched by volunteers. This is exactly how I found all the knit/crochet projects, carefully placed on shelves with purple (grand prize), blue (first place), red (second place) or white (third place) ribbons and a tag with the name of the person who entered it.
I've already found instructions on how to make these things. And if you want to click on the YouTube link, here it is, except on YouTube they are called fingerless mittens. Whatever. Smitten is a much better name. These are going to be easy, but after doing some searching, I've found you can knit very intricate lacy fingerless gloves that include fingerless thumb gussets. Naturally, they have much more complicated patterns, which call for things like front and back purl stitches. The good news is, I found YouTube has all kinds of instructional videos on how to do these complicated stitches. For now I think I will just start out with the beginner pattern.

Courtrooms are notoriously cold, cold, cold. Morgue cold. And when my fingers get cold, I find it hard to work. I'm hoping these smittens will provide me some rad relief.

• Jessie Nell and I are ready to get started. Her job is to give her approval of my yarn choice then to bat it around until she wears herself out then curl up beside me and purr. AWWW!

Check out the tiny quilting stitches.

• I am posting this picture especially for Marleen (Stitching by the Lake). I could not believe this quilt did not get a grand prize ribbon. You can not believe the tiny, tiny, tiny stitches of quilting on this thing. And just look how cute. I wonder what lucky child gets this for a present?

• This picture of Tiny Town's county fair/carnival has nothing to do with knitting, but it does impress upon me that OUR regional and county fairs are coming late next month. If I want to enter anything, I better get started. Dwain's already got some of his canned food entries ready. He says he's also going to enter a hat he's planning to make. Hum...
  

A knitting class. That's what I need. Otherwise I'm going to knit only socks for the rest of my life. Not that there is anything wrong with knitting socks. I mean, they are warm and functional and pulled together with mad and silly colors. The fact that I learned to knit socks at all is pretty amazing, in and of itself. But now that I've mastered socks 101, I want to learn to knit a really pretty shawl or a baby sweater. And believe me, some of the finished patterns I've seen are worn by the red carpet types. They are not your grandma's woolly-woolly stuff. They are gorgeous and lacy and lovely.

I want to take real knitting classes. And I want the classes to be cozy and warm and understanding toward people like me who do not understand things like knitting markers and row counters and circular needles and blocking pins and and stitch holders. Or abbreviations like P3 tog, (K,P,K) or K1, PSSO. And what in the world is strand knitting or twisted stitches? And I want the classes to be available when I can come -- which is ususally never with my crazy schedule.

You have no idea how long it took me to figure out what a basic garter stitch was.

The thing is, I really, really want to knit. So I went to Wal-Mart and purchased a little booklet called, I Can't Believe I'm Knitting. The problem is, just like with every other knitting book I've found, following a pattern means having to constantly find the page with all the abbreviations and their meanings; symbols and terms and their meanings. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Well, I guess if all else fails and I can't find any warm fuzzy knitting classes that fit my wierd work schedule (if any exist in the first place, around here in our little bitty town), there is always You Tube. Or my mother-in-law who only knows how to do grandma woolly-woolly kniting, not that there is anything wrong with that. I mean, after all, she did give me an entire attic full of old knitting needles and yarn the likes of which you can not find in the stores anymore).

Until then, I guess I'll just start on another sock and watch a You Tube knitting video to get inspired to try something new. Sigh!