The trekking XL socks. I'll add the color number when I track it down. This was fun yarn to knit with, however to get the right gauge I had to use US000 needles! Just to get 8 stitches per inch. Criminy, I need to work on tightening up my knitting!

I use the Priscilla Gibson-Roberts (PGR) short row heel technique. Alison has just posted an excellent explanation/tutorial on the technique. I've tried a couple different short row heels and this one is definitely my favorite.

Saturday was the first day of the season for one of the local farmer's markets. Coincidentally, I was looking out for a cherry tomato plant to put in a container alongside my basil and snapdragons.

Friday night, at the grocery store, I picked up this sad sample of a cherry tomato plant.

It's kind of the Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree of tomato plants.

But, the next day, at the farmer's market, I found this plant.

It's a beauty. The two plants sit in containers right next to each other. I'm hoping that they will compete to see which can produce the most tomatos! And, it will be interesting to see which plant produces the tastier tomatos.

My Dad and me. 1966.

My Dad, my brother David and me. 1968.

My Dad and me. 2002. (He looks like he's mad in this picture, but he's not. This is about a year after he had a serious stroke that almost took his life. Part of his face was affected by the stroke.)

I love this picture of my Dad. Throughout his life he has always the most pure and wonderful sense of humor. He tells the best stories - stories that we ask him to tell even though we've heard them hundreds of times. He taught me to always be good, honest and true. And he demonstrates these qualities everyday of his life.

I love my Dad.

So, I've been spending a lot of time with my new friend WW. WW has been a good friend and we are accomplishing many wonderful things together.

I couldn't help but laugh and appreciate this guy's common sense approach to weight loss and maintenance. The No S Diet.

I've had many of the same thoughts that he shares about the agonizing details and unrealistic expectations of the *popular* diets. No carrots? Right. So many people have become obese because they binge on carrots?!

What's especially funny is that he even has an exercise program to use in conjunction with the diet.

I'll say it for you. Enough with the dog pictures! How about some knitting? Yeah, yeah. Be patient. Eventually I'll have something to show. This picture was meant to capture the cute blanket that I bought at TJMaxx the other day and inspired my slightly modified blog template. Yawn.

Here is some fascinating news. White Christians want an apology from Howard Dean. He had the nerve to call them White Christians. Whatever.

I love this picture of Katy. In the heat we've been having, I've got to believe that being completely soaked with water is the best way to survive it!

I haven't been knitting or spinning too much. My schedule is tight and I've been falling into bed, reading for about 15 minutes and then off to sleep. Since most of my knitting gets done around bedtime, not much is being accomplished on that front.

But, I do have some fiber related information to share. I've been asked a couple of times about who my favorite ebay vendors are. I've got a mix of people that I frequent on ebay. Some I like because I do actually buy fiber from them. Others are sources of color inspiration. There are alot of really talented spinners on line these days and their productivity, experimentation and sense of color are always fun to discover.

So, here are some links:
bizyhands :: beautiful yarns, great colors.
To Dye For Handspun Yarn and Fiber :: Color Inspiration
Dream Come True Farm :: Lots of fiber related items. At their booth in Rhinebeck, I saw many of their yarns in person. Beautiful stuff.
dudleyspinner :: Rovings dyed with bright, intense and interesting colors.
Pollywogs :: I don't think I've ever bought anything from this vendor, but they carry hand dyed rovings and fibers.
Ravenheart Treasures :: Pretty fibers and yarns
Woolieacres :: hand-dyed roving
ewesful :: pretty rovings and yarn. I love the colors.
Search Ebay :: most of these vendors, I found by using this search string. I like to run the search to find new vendors or those I've missed because they didn't have any auctions going at the time. There's alot of beautiful fiber out there!
Handspun Luxury Yarn Webring :: this a non-ebay link, but it's a ring of sites that sell handspun yarn.

While searching for local farmer's markets, I noticed that Local Harvest has a list of Craft and Textile products. There are some very nice looking natural rovings and yarns available.

A late spring vacation in the hills of upstate New York. The doggies accompanied me to a beautiful 70 acre property. The house, land and lake that I rented was surrounded by 600 acres that is owned by someone from out of state who rents it for hunting in the fall. It was very peaceful.

The pond was at the top of the property. The view in the picture above is from the lake, looking down towards the house and barn. A little bit of trivia that I learned from the local guy who takes care of the house...it used to be a sheep farm!

Our days were spent kicking back by the pond, hiking the local hills and getting lots of sleep.

While up in NY, I took Katy to another herding seminar. The lady teaching the seminar was extremely patient with dear Katy. She also had a dry sense of humor and politely mentioned to Katy that, "it's hard to look innocent with wool in your mouth!" It's becoming apparent that Katy is not so interested in herding the sheep, but more interested in harassing the sheep. She actually got bopped in the head by one of the rams! Fortunately, both Katy and the ram have hard heads and both walked away without injury.