pink flamingos (or is it -oes?)

and i guess i dont care enough to look up the plural of flamingo. here's Zylie clutching one of the softer treasures from my pink flamingo collection...

the guest bathroom is my shrine to the pink flamingo and is adorned with the pink bird!!...pictures, funny looking bobbily ones, tiles, candle holders, caricature types and this one plush beauty. I've found Zylie in the past standing on the counter and reaching for this particular treasure on the top shelf, so when she very sweetly asked if she could please hold "that fagingo", i just couldn't refuse. and to help distract her later from an impending melt-down i suggested that she should take the bird home with her and bring it back next trip. what she doesn't know is that it would hardly be missed here and she can keep it if she bonds with it!

Zylie and Kate were here for the family faux thanksgiving dinner on saturday. Chris and Alex were both sick so didn't make the trip down. and dome central was rockin'!
i think we ended up with about 20 relatives and their friends/spouses. i fixed a ham and salad, both of which were taken care of before anyone arrived... which is a good thing... Dinah and Jonica needed space for creating their greens and feta dish (which was deeelightful) and Jen and Maggie had a huge salad to put together, so the kitchen was buzzin' and ended up (as usual) being the main gathering place. wish i'd taken some pics so i'd have recent family photos to take to Crete. seems people are always interested in seeing family and home surroundings. i got quite a few good ones of the grapes to show our wine-making friends in Vamos! so, why have tgiving in october? well... we won't be back til late night nov. 23, Dinah can't come down, Bud and Lynda will be in Idaho... so it seemed like a grand idea. and, oh baby, was i wiped out on sunday! tho i did need to revive myself for the sunday activities... 3 friends came out to pick grapes with Jim, then crush them... and of course needed refreshment afterward... and i needed to do a hostessy things with wine and cheese and bread and olives. it was tasty. the nap afterward was pretty good, too.

time is getting short before leaving for Italy and Crete, and i feel pretty well organized. hope i'm still feeling that way monday a.m..

we won't have an internet connection at our house this time, so i'll just keep a journal and post it on the travel blog when we return. we have a couple of things sort of planned... Jim wants to hike the Samaria Gorge, which is a long rocky ravine which goes from the north of the island to the southern coast. we also want to spend a couple of days in Rethymnon. there are a couple of museums there that we missed last fall, plus the old town section has lots more to see than we got to. other than that, we hope to go to a raki making party in Vamos again and maybe attend some Greek cooking classes. and visit with friends!! and sit on the Liakota Cafe balcony on a sunny afternoon, sipping raki and admiring the view of the White Mountains. and checking around to find out how we can buy a small house there. we were told that only citizens of an EU country are allowed to purchase property in an EU country. there MUST be a way around this! and who knows what else... will just have to wait and see.

for receiving and sending email, we'll go to the next village where there is an internet cafe.

grape harvest

Jim has been harvesting his grapes for the past week or so. The weather has been really conducive to ripening them and he managed to keep the deer from beating him to the harvest by surrounding the rows with netting. And the other big pest... well,
smaller in size... the yellow jackets went for the bait in the traps and many many got in there and couldn't get out! He also found and eliminated several big nests!! so he has lots of grapes this year for lots of wine. Ryan and Sonia will be back from their trip and available to take care of the fermenting chores.... cause baby, we're outa here in 8 days! so.. here's Jim's harvesting his grapes:

and a closer view of the grapes... i think these are merlot. He got the muscat and gewurtz. off earlier in the week.

grape plants along the driveway as you approach the house:

and our dome home. can't see it real well with all the leaves still on the pear tree, but at the rate the leaves are falling, it won't be long before the house is more visible.

yarn!

Shocking, i know, but i actually took photos of yarn and also a project in progress! I spun up some of the fiber that i bought from Dicentra at OFFF, and even though the color in the photo isn't quite correct, i do love how this fiber looks spun up!


and this is probably the kiss of death for this cardigan in progress, but i'll take that chance. (if it does end up lanquishing in the unfinished corner, it will be in good company) The yarn is from 2 different dye batches, and had enough in common that i thought they would work together.. and i do think i like the combination. I'm making a side-to-side cardigan, just below waist length (i think...), with a scoop neck. this is a close-up of the back:


and this is the R front in progress:


The other current project hasn't come out well in photos yet. Still working on that, including actually reading the camera user guide... yep, if all else fails, just read the manual, dummy! Lynne sent me a little bundle of delicious fiber she had dyed which she said had my name on it! it's merino, silk and angora in soft shades of iris, old gold, goldy green, soft sage, and i want to use it in the cuff of socks in some kind of fairisle pattern. So, the challenge is finding suitable fiber in my stash and get it spun before we leave on the 16th for Italy and Crete. I haven't been inspired to knit socks in a long time, and this will be a great take-along project! The timing is good for stash diving, because i've been trying to go thru it all before i leave to be sure everything is in bags and protected from pests.
So, as soon as I can get the camera adjusted so that the colors look more true, there will be pictures of this project!