by looking at my angelic face you would think i don’t get into much trouble. mom says trouble is now my middle name. bella trouble robinson. has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

last night i chewed up one of mommy’s socks. she caught me in the act and tooked it away from me. i tried to get it back.

she yelled at me and told me NO!

i didn’t learn much of a lesson cuz this morning i did something even worse. i was only out of sight for a few minutes, but somehow i got dad’s almost-finished-except-for-the-thumb mitten off the stand. look what i did.

mommy was REALLLLLLLLLY mad. i didn’t get spanked or anything, but boy did she yell BAD GIRL BELLA. her face was all red and funny. i knew i had done something wrong but i didn’t know what.

oh dear.

Postscript from Bella’s Mom: Seriously, does anybody have any suggestion on how to fix this mitten? My rescue skills are not the best!

mom says i’m naughty, but really, who could resist a moving string?

yum, yarn spaghetti! ciao bella! wait ... oh well. mom just told me that even though it sounds like “chow” (as in puppy chow) it doesn’t mean eat. i learn something new every day.

i like it when mom knits. i’m not too sure about whether or not she appreciates all the help i give her though.

Becky awarded me this lovely award the other day and I am just now getting around to posting about it.

Thank you Becky! I will get it posted in my side bar soon. I don’t know how to make it appear there myself! The rules say I am supposed to pass it along to five other bloggers. Most of the blogs I read don’t display awards so I am not going to participate in the same way. Instead I will just tell you my five top favorite blogs. In no particular order they are:
1. I would return the favor to Becky but she already has one.
2. Reya
3. Letty
4. Susan
5. Paula

I have many others I enjoy as well, but these are the ones I will always read first. If your name is there and you’d like the award, please help yourself!

Our cheese making class on Sunday was just wonderful! We really enjoyed it. But more on that later. What’s that? Did I take photos? Of course I took photos! What a silly question!

I’ve been knitting almost every day now after taking the summer off. I have three projects going at the moment. I just finished one of Rick’s fingerless mitts (except for the thumb and finishing),

I am working on this drop stitch ribbon scarf (a gift perhaps?)

and trying to add a few rows to my Three Button Sassy Shawl each day. I got this pattern in my email yesterday and it’s calling to me. One can never have too many fingerless gloves/mittens. The pattern looks fun and interesting.

I have many more things to blog about this week so I’ll probably be posting every day. Check back for updates! Plus, there is something very special in the works for this weekend. Something exciting is arriving all the way from Bozeman, Montana.

Please get out there and VOTE today!! I’ll be there standing in line this afternoon waiting to cast mine and then I am going to hide under the covers until they count all the votes and we finally know who our next President will be. Depending on the outcome I may be moving to Canada!

uhm, not me. The plastered one I mean. Although I do like my wine ... No, I was speaking of the weather we had on Saturday. Really windy and nearly two inches of rain. The leaves at times rained down like wet confetti and stuck to the windows, deck—you name it—driven there by the wind and the rain. It toppled my mums. The tree tops swayed alarmingly to and fro and I had visions of a power outage. But none occurred.

Here is my shadow (in baggy robe) trying to get some of the leaves decoupaged onto the deck from this morning.

I didn’t really mean to get myself in the shot, it just happened that way.

Today was the last farmer’s market in Warwick for the season. boohoo. We hadn’t been in several weeks and were surprised (and extremely pleased) to see a few new vendors. Mainly the mushroom vendor (hurray!) whose farm is not far away and hopefully will continue to sell their wares straight from their farm. We left our email just in case they follow through on this. She had Hen-of-the-Woods, oyster, lobster, creminis, white portabellos, and king oysters. Tomorrow we will be making a mushroom risotto from the Hen-of-the-Woods that we bought and the kings.

The other vendor had this ...

... and this that made its way home with me. Hey, I couldn’t resist local alpaca (spun with bamboo) now could I? Soft and squishy, this will make a nice scarf.

I also bought a bunch of veggies that I plan to cook a stew with in a few days when the weather is supposed to be really cold. We’ll miss the Sunday market in Warwick until it returns next Spring.

Today we also dismantled the poolside cabana. We flicked off all the little spideys hoping to make it their forever home from the screens and curtains, hung the curtains on the line to completely dry, and folded them up to store away until next year. The cabana frame still stands as it’s bolted down.

In doing so, we discovered this cool caterpillar. It was about 4 to 5 inches long and to me looks like a piece of tinsel off a Christmas Tree. It’s body sparkled so! I have no clue what Mother Nature has in store for someone who hasn’t blossomed into a butterfly at this late stage of the season. I ran my fingers down its porcupine back. This one has some natural defense going on for sure. I’m not sure the photo really captured its glitz.

That was my day today. And by the way, what you see in my blog is my real life. Not some made-up existence (which is blog fodder for another day). I’ve been working on a blog entry for days now about our wonderful hike that we took a week ago, but it’s slow going. I have so many photos that I am wondering if anyone is going to want to wade through it. But, this blog is really about me. For me. About my life. It’s my way to keep a diary (but a public one) of my life. If you choose to read and enjoy, welcome. But this is really for me. Me me me! (Thanks to all who read!)

I’ll close now with the view out my kitchen window. Who could want for anything more?

UPDATE: Thanks to Gretel who suggested the caterpillar was a moth! It is! A quick Google search came up with a Giant Leopard Moth! Follow this link to see. Here’s another photo I took blown up a bit. You can see the tiny red bands peeping through and bristles much better.

Pardon me. I seem to have a blogging malaise this week. Every time I sit down to blog nothing comes of it. I do have things to blog about, just no voice. Ever feel that way? Maybe if I sit here and write things down it will help to jump start myself.

I’ve been having this feeling lately that I am at a turning point. About to do something great and wonderful but I don’t yet know what that is. Something creative. Something with photography? Go out and get myself a job? I don’t know what it is. Just this nagging feeling running around inside my head. I feel I should be doing something but I’m too lazy to figure out what. On the cusp.

Kind of like our weather which is vacillating between summer and fall. Yesterday it was in the 70s; last week in the 50s and lower 60s. The trees are turning, but seemingly in slow motion. I am still mowing the grass which continues to grow. The cicadas that have been quiet for the past month (and I presumed them dead and gone) have started up again singing their scratchy songs. It’s strange. This weather spell we are in with sunny-blue-sky-days and warmth is admittedly gorgeous, but I am so longing for cool, crisp days. It’s time.

I’ve gotten back to knitting after not really being in the mood for it throughout the summer. I finished my sister’s Maine Mitts and have been working along on my Three Button Sassy Shawl. I’ve knitted 38 of the 54 inches so far. It’s mindless work, straight stockinette, but I’d like to be able to wear it before the weather turns too cold. I would like to start this, but since I have never tried intarsia before I feel it might be too much for me to take on. See what I mean? Excuses!

I’ve also been feeling the void of my parents lately. My mother’s death last year still haunts me. And I haven’t dreamt about my father in years, yet now almost every night when I dream they are both there. In my dream. Together. If I dream about them,  I usually dream about one or the other, but not both at the same time. Instead of making me feel closer to them I find it very unsettling and it stays with me throughout the day. My father was kind of a psychic and always able to read me, so is he trying to tell me something?

Normally a good walk in the woods would help to clear my mind and get my thoughts back into some semblance of order again. But after coming home from just such a walk the other day and finding tiny little ticks (deer ticks, the kind that carry Lymes disease) crawling on my neck I vowed to stay out of the woods for awhile. Maybe I should just douse myself in bug repellent and go for it anyway.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten all that off my mind maybe I can get back to normal blogging again. I still have our wonderful mushroom foraging adventure to share with you. And the dragging on ABC-Along which I seem to be having so much trouble with. Everyone else is on “T” while I am still struggling with “P”.

Thanks for listening.