Feels more like summer

It was a gorgeous day today. Mid 70's for temps, the lawnmowers are going next door, and it just seems more like summer than it did during the actual summer. The only thing that lets you know fall is here are the flies hanging around the doors and windows. Pesty things.

I'm still knitting on the Upstairs Shawl. I'm anxious to see it when it's blocked so I've been trying to push and do as much as possible each day. There are 2 hours of Grey's on tonight though so I'm afraid there won't be much knitting then! I can't watch that and count at the same time. I'll just knit during the commercials....

I need to mow again too. The grass here is the longest of all the neighbors. The apple tree is the main reason I haven't mowed lately. Wonderful apples for applesauce and pies and crisps but they fall on the ground. It has been raining apples. And I've been lazy and haven't done anything about it so they've laid there for days now. My new plan is to rake them all up and get rid of the ones on the ground. They are soft and full of ants and squirrel teeth marks anyway and then I'll get the ladder out and pick everything off the tree and be done with it. They'll keep for awhile if they aren't all bruised from falling on the ground. I canned a few pint jars of applesauce last year and should really do the same again. Someone told me to freeze the applesauce instead of canning it. I might try that. I freeze pies. Can't be much different.

Reading

I've done a bit of reading this summer. I've mostly been knitting but have read a book or two.



I won a book on Goodreads.com. It was "The Neurology of Angels" by Krista Tibbs. It was an okay book that deals with the politics of developing new drugs for little known diseases. It did give some interesting suggestions on how to go about changing the way that is handled. It is a story type book that follows 3 families.



I've now read "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell. I'd heard so many good things about it and the movie that I had to find out. I'm not so impressed. It had a whiny tone to it until the very end but by then I'd decided that I didn't like the book. I finished it just to say I'd read it.



On my to-read list is "Made in the USA" by Billie Letts. I talked about this book before but I still haven't read it. It is "marinating" on the book rack.



I've also got "The Plague of Doves" by Louise Erdrich. She grew up in North Dakota and I've read a book or two of her's before. I read the 1st page of this one while I stood in the bookstore and was instantly hooked. It sounds like it could be rather dark read but I find her books to stretch your mind and make you think of things differently. We'll see if this one is the same.



It's a rainy, cool, grey day that would be perfect for reading but I've got things to do at work and will be going tomorrow with 1st DDIL to her (maybe) last dr appointment before the delivery. She's due the end of this week. Gramma again soon! :)

It's a learning process.....

So I've learned a few things while knitting on this shawl. The main one is that I really should have been alternating every couple rows between 2 skeins of yarn. It has some pooling issues and it's really a bit disappointing. But if I can pass it off as something that you want....more to myself than the recipient....maybe it'll work.

This picture is miserable colorwise, but shows the swirliness (if it isn't a word, it should be) of the colors.





This is a better picture as far as the colors go but is out of focus. The camera & I aren't friends today. The color is a bit darker and more bricky but this is pretty close.

The other thing I've got to learn about is how much things grow when blocked. This is supposed to have only 1 repeat left and the pattern says it'll be 55" when it's blocked and done. I don't think so. I can't imagine that it will grow that much. It's 31" right now and I've done 9 repeats. At the rate I'm going it'll be about 34.5" when I'm done. That means it'll have to stretch 20.5". In my book, that's a lot. But like I say it's a learning process.

Actually I don't think 55" is long enough to start with so I'll be doing more repeats anyway. Also I had planned on doing one of these for each DDIL. By the looks of this one I might be "giving" it to myself and starting another one for one of the DDILs and something else for the other one. I don't think I could handle doing 3 of these in a row. o.O

Tomorrow is a break from knitting. Not that I really want a break but am required to work at our church's fall fundraising dinner. Pork roast, mashed potatoes, really excellent gravy, corn, cole slaw and a huge assortment of desserts. I'm roasting 2 of the roasts. Lipton's onion soup mix and a roasting bag for a few hours.

I'm also on to make coffee. I don't drink coffee and the gal I'm on with to make the coffee doesn't either. So how do you think that will turn out?? Two non coffee drinkers making the coffee in a Scandinavian/German community that loves it's coffee. Uff. (Yes, I'm Norwegian. I just don't drink the stuff!) If I could get canned from a job it would be the coffee making at the church dinner. They never can anyone though!

Flooded street, flowers & Noro scarf

A few days ago it rained. Really hard. Really fast.

Today we have a busy bee on Autumn Joy.

Joe Pye Weed.

I loves zinnias!

And a few more zinnias.

Veronica, Joe Pye, zinnia, geranium.

The Noro scarf was happy to pose with the cotoneaster bush.

And then the begonias.

The yarn is Noro 246 & 239 alternated every 2 rows. Size 7 needles. k1p1 ribbing. It's been washed but is a bit scratchy so it's going into a nice soak in some hair conditioner. And then it's going to the Red Scarf Project. And the scarves don't have to be red....just gender neutral!

Click on any picture to embiggen.

Peaceful afternoon

I rode along on the combine for a couple hours this afternoon. It was very calm and peaceful.

Then I walked back to the car on the prairie trail. Sunny & warm with a good breeze. I love being outside. Look at those wide open spaces.

It is soybean fields on either side of the trail.






This is a closeup of the soybean plants.












And here are some pods.











Living in the country is the best.

A little more harvest info and some knitting too

This is the machinery that does the swathing. I thought we were all done swathing but the fields aren't ripening evenly this year. Some parts are dead, dry and ready to go but there are also green areas that have to be swathed so they can dry out. So....this is a tractor and pull type swather. There are also self propelled swathers and we have an ancient one that is used for opening up the fields but this is the outfit that does the bulk of the swathing.






The reel goes around to push the grain towards the sickle or cutter bar and there is a belt that moves the cut grain to the opening that you can see in the center back of the swather. If you click I think the pics will embiggen. And then the grain lays in such nice windrows in the field. My dad always told me when I was out in a swathed field, "Don't step on the swath." If you need to walk out into the field you need to step over the swathes so that if it rains the rain doesn't accumulate in the hole left by your footstep. Sometimes it's pretty hard to step over a swath....they can be very wide.




And now for the knitting. This is a sock, (well obviously! or maybe not so obviously....it could be a mitten), in Dream in Color Smooshy, colorway Pansy Golitely. And also in the picture are my new Harmony needles. I like them. They are very pointy and seem to be making the knitting go faster.

And this, of course, is a Noro scarf. I'm fascinated by the color changes and the soothing sameness of the K1P1 and am happy to say that I learned how to bring a 2nd color along the edge.

The colors aren't really me though and I don't think they are really anyone in the family either. Well, maybe 2nd DS. But I'm hoping that our church's Ladies' Aid group will need something for fund raising and I'll probably donate it to that. If it had been red and washable it could have gone to Norma's red scarf project!

Barley Harvest

This is the view of combining from the end of the field. The closer combine is unloading into the grain cart. The combine that is further away is ready to unload also and he has put his auger out so the grain cart operator knows to come unload him. When they are done unloading, the auger is put back against the side of the combine just by moving a switch.







Here is the view from inside the combine from the passenger seat. At our farm barley usually gets swathed and the combine has a pick up header to pick up the swathes. Swathing is done so that the grain dries out and speeds up the start of harvest. The down side of swathing is rain. Those swathes can get really wet and stay that way for a long time if we get a rainy fall. Our grain is raised to be seed to be processed in our seed plant and rain will damage the color and quality of the seed. If it is wet long enough it will actually sprout in the swath and that ruins it for anything except maybe livestock feed.




This is the unloading process. They usually try to unload "on the go". That is unloading while still combining. They used to stop at the trucks to unload which made everything take much longer but now that they have a grain cart they can unload while still moving and it speeds up the whole harvest.







It takes some practice to learn how to be just the right distance from the combine and the right distance in front of it and the right speed so everything lines up just right and the grain goes in the cart and not on the ground!








The grain cart then goes to the edge of the field where the trucks are parked and unloads into them. The trucks then go to one of our bin sites and unloads into a bin for storage until harvest is done and they are ready to start cleaning the grain for seed.

It is a bit hard to see but there is dust in most all of these pictures. Barley dust is the itchiest stuff around. If you get into barley dust don't rub your eyes or scratch yourself. That will make it just that much more miserable. Ask me how I know!!