New Hobby, Maybe...

 Hi there! Uh huh, my bloggin' is sporadic at best, but anyways we've been offline again and will be for awhile. Meantime....I've kinda taken up quilting - in the most rudimentary manner, of course. I'm using what scraps I have on hand for the most part and winging my way to a small, baby-sized quilt.

 Not perfect, but it's workin'.

 All the squares are 2in. which is way to small to start with, but I usually do things the hard way. Sigh. More on this later.

 This is the wildlife viewing point at the Hiwassee Refuge.

 After hearing about the Sandhill Cranes over at Chipmunknits Goodman and I decided to take a roadtrip and get a look at them ourselves. (My camera wouldn't take a great pic so I'm in the market for a new one.)

 The black bird in the pic is an Asian Crane. Nobody knows how it got to the refuge, but lots of folks are flocking to see it.

 After viewing the birds we followed signs to a memorial to the Cherokee Removal.

 Oh, what a sad, sad memorial. It's really hard to understand how that happened.

Hopefully it's a reminder, like the ones we see about the Holocaust, to never forget so we don't make the same mistakes again.
Hope your having a great New Year!

The Frugal Bugle, Pt. 1

Hello from the foothills!

I'm concerned about wasting anything that I could use for another purpose. And I'm really concerned about paying the high dollars for cleaners that aren't even safe for us to breathe or handle. So, I've done some research and found homemade cleaners are actually easy to make. A few months back I read about a homemade cleaner that could be made with white vinegar and thinly pared orange peels. I love the scent of orange oil so I gave it a try.

I've put the peels of 5 or 6 oranges in this quart jar with enough vinegar to cover them well and set it aside to steep for 2-3 weeks. It starts to smell very nice after just 1 week.

The idea for this cleaner is from the blogger at Just Like My Nan Made.

When the cleaner is ready pour it into a spray bottle and spritz it onto a dust cloth or mop as you clean.

October Medley

Hope you're havin' a great fall, y'all! The weather has been really nice here in the foothills for a couple of months now. As a matter-o'-fact all our plants are doing better than back in the summer. This pineapple sage in my herb bed has gone wild. It's the first time I've grown this plant, and it really does smell like pineapples, but a tea made from it is reminiscent of weeds, for sure....bleah

These are my newest gal chickens. At the time I took this picture they were shyin' away from a li'l commotion in the chicken coop....

A swarm of three-band Italian honey bees showed up one afternoon and stayed around for several hours. There was a queen bee in the center there attached to the roof of the coop, and her subjects and were following wherever she decided to take up residence. They were gone by evening and nobody got stung so no harm. We've kept bees before so we weren't too surprised by them.

I knew when I ran across this pattern that I'd be makin' one for Goodman. He says it's toasty warm and will make workin' around the place warmer in the winter. The hat is Wool-Ease in avocado, and the beard is a strand of  gray Wool-Ease and a strand of eyelash fun fur.

These flower and leaf washcloths were loads of fun to knit...reminds me of all the flower power stuff back in the '70s. ;)

The blue potholder I showed you a few posts back was so much fun I had to make another one.

I'll leave you with a picture from our fall garden - brussel sprouts. I think I like fall gardening way better than summer. The bugs aren't nearly as thick and neither are the weeds.

See you in a week or two or three or four, y'all - the Good Lord willin'. :)