Goodbye November

I'm not exactly sure what to say about my latest knitting project…I ran out of wool before the second slipper was done. Upon felting them in the washer, they fell out of the pillow case and stretched out a few more sizes than the original, un-felted size. But true to their word, they were a 48-hour project,  only taking about 2 hours to knit each slipper and ready to wear by day three after half a dozen felting "baths" in attempts to get the right size. I really needed slippers in the worst way after my favorite pair of woven grass slippers (top-10 best thrift store finds!), broke open on the bottom and strew about dry grass all across the living room, not to mention that temperatures are now consistently below 0 degrees. So, here they are- kind of a sad pair of extra large, funky slippers but warm and functional. Just the way I like 'em!

It's no secret that I'm a pretty big dork about the Christmas/Solstice holiday season. Decorations will be made and harvested as much I can fit into window sills, shelves and any little crevice. I started listening to old-time Christmas music today while beginning the lengthy endeavor of gift-making for our ever-growing extended family, and I'm scouting out the land for the right tree, soon to be cut and lovingly decorated as soon as possible.  And, to top off our holiday weekend, we got another road kill deer! It was not actually the ideal experience as we witnessed this massive buck run into the road and hit by a car passing us just a couple hundred feet up the road from us. Their car was totaled and deer flew across the highway into a nearby field.  I imagine this was incredibly traumatic for the two ladies in the car as they were quite stunned and shaking when we finally reached their car. It appeared that the deer died instantly. It's never easy to see roadkill, but to witness the accident…it's intense and sad.

In a blur, Shaun and I got the women, their weekending gear in the back of our pick-up, hauled the deer onto our already fully-loaded trailer of firewood, and dropped them off fifteen miles down the road at the nearest cellphone reception spot. Later that evening, Shaun was able to salvage a bit of meat, a beautiful hide and well, there's a head on our wood stove…it seems like there is always a head on our stove this time of year. You should see our skull collection…