Where did summer go?

Summer seems to have zipped by this year. After our long, snowy, cold winter last year and cold spring, I'm not cheering for cold weather to arrive. It was frosty again this morning.

Our garden didn't do so well this year. A cold, wet spring, followed by a very hot summer with periods of drought were very hard on some plants. The only thing that did well was the peppers. Hubby planted about 24 pepper plants this year. No one wanted the extras and he didn't have the heart to kill them. We've had sweet and hot peppers coming out our ears. I froze peppers, cooked with peppers, roasted peppers, dried peppers, and gave them away to anyone who would take them. LOL! The tomatoes didn't ripen until very late even for us, there weren't a lot of them and, oddly enough, there were no green tomatoes to pick before the first frost hit.

Hubby bought me an iPhone as a birthday present. Much better than the range hood he was talking about getting me. LOL! It's a very handy device to have. I'm still learning my way around it.

In August I went to Michigan Fiber Festival and to Stitches Midwest in Chicago on back-to-back weekends. I have so much stash that I didn't buy much yarn or fiber. I had a lot of fun at both events. The bad news is that on the bus trip to Chicago, my iPhone stopped working. It wasn't even a month old! Turns out the SIM card died and had to be replaced. Took me a visit to the Apple Store and the AT&T store to get it fixed the next day.

In mid-September I injured my right wrist in a freak accident. When pulling blue jeans out of the washing machine, they came loose unexpectedly and I banged my right wrist hard on the door rim. OUCH! I bruised it good but didn't break anything. But it also has resulted in tendonitis in that wrist. :-( It's getting slowly better but it sure has put a crimp in my knitting, crocheting, or spinning for almost 2 months now. Knitting is easier but crocheting still puts too much movement in that wrist. I have 2 crochet projects I would like to work on but not until this heals more.

In September, hubby and I again went to A Wool Gathering in Ohio. It's a very nice fiber festival. Even more vendors than last year and the weather was much cooler. Shopping was much more pleasant than during 2010's heat wave. I purchased 2 fleeces from a vendor for a friend of mine. Both looked like really nice fleeces but turned out not-so-nice. This cream colored Shetland (pictured) looks great but turned out to be be full of scurf. Not something you could see until the fleece was washed. This is a spinner's nightmare as these sticky skin cells are almost impossible to remove from the fiber. Dealing with this vendor has been a nightmare.

The end of September I tagged along with hubby to Bloomington, Indiana for a work conference for two and a half days. The drive south was very colorful. I visited the two local yarn shops while I was there and a fleece farm. The weather was much warmer than home which was a real plus.

Hubby went to Philadelphia in October for a conference. I could have tagged along and seriously considered it. We talked about driving out on the weekend before his conference and stopping at Rhinebeck (New York Sheep & Wool) before going on to Philly. Round trip it would have taken about 10 days. Much as I would like to go to Rhinebeck, spending 4-5 days on my own in a city as big as Philadelphia while hubby was in classes didn't sound like fun to me. I had gotten a taste of what this would be like when I tagged along with hubby to Bloomington in September. I was on my own all day while he was in class. Then there was an evening reception we attended. I met a lot of his colleagues and put faces to the names I've heard him talk about. I'm not computer illiterate by any means but I really felt like a fish out of water with these high level computer guys. They clearly didn't know what to say to me either. (And not another spouse in sight either. Sigh.) After a minute or two their conversation would drift back to work and computerese. I finally convinced hubby that I really didn't want to go. I dropped him off at the airport and stayed home with the kitties. :-)

Currently I have two projects in testing--a crocheted scarf and a knitted shawl. Hopefully, my wrist will get back to normal soon so that I can work on more of the ideas I have for new projects.

And if you're wondering about the bathroom project, it's still not complete. The walls have been painted and the door has been hung. That's it. :-(