Saturday, May 31, 2008

Traditional Memorial Day

Click to Mix and Solve

Our grandmothers called it Decoration Day. This was the day we went out into their gardens and plucked every single bloom there, put them into wet newspapers in the car and drove to the local cemetery to "decorate" the graves of those gone before us.

To my grandmothers this was not a day for parades and picnics, but a day for honoring all the dead! They would lecture us on how this one was related to us or what this person did for the community.

I remember at Lake Valley, NM the "chinaman's grave"! It was outside the cemetery proper. Meaning it was outside the barbed wire fence keeping the cattle out of the cemetery. This gentleman had a cafe in Hillsboro for a long time. If I remember right he had one in the town of Lake Valley before half the town burned down and he moved to Hillsboro to the north.

The gate to the cemetery looked very similar to the one in the jigzone puzzle. The sky was always that blue, and usually that cloudless.

A very good "Decoration Day" to all of you!

Friday, May 30, 2008

Goat Events!

Granddaughter got her goats day before yesterday. The gentleman who raises these goats sells them on contract to 4-H members for $1 each with the understanding and signed contract that if they make the county sale at the fair they will pay him $200 for the prize winning goat. She got three of them.

My dogs have seen llamas, crias, cows, calves, sheep and lambs and even lambs in the house! But they have never seen anything that looks and smells like the goat kids. They wanted to bark at them! When the dogs barked at the goats, the goats jumped over the four foot high pen we had them in. Three goats can go three different directions really fast! Lambs just run in a bunch!! Crias and their llama mamas stomp back at the dogs.

So we had the new goat chase on yesterday morning!! We tied a poly tarp over the goat pen so maybe we could keep them in for a few days until Evalyn and the kids got well acquainted. The kids need to learn what the feed bucket sounds like!.

Goats gathered back up and put back in the barn in the pen, we fixed lunch. Trini who lives in the bunkhouse called and asked why the goats were standing at the yard gate and where was Evalyn?? The kids had found a small enough space to crawl out from under the tarp.

This morning the goats got their first baths!! That was most interesting. They didn't like the cold water! They didn't want to stand still! Evalyn ended up having to tie the feet of each of the goats to bathe it. Then she wanted to do the dogs!!

We will get pictures of the goats tomorrow!

Monday, May 26, 2008

new audio book: No Idle Hands

Knitting Out Loud Announces Release of No Idle Hands


Stockton Springs, Maine, April 7, 2008: Publisher Kathy Goldner announced today the release of Knitting Out Loud's sixth audiobook No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne L. Macdonald, read by Kymberly Dakin.
Quoting from diaries, letters and personal reminiscence, No Idle Hands traces the social history of knitting in the United States beginning with the Colonial period. Included are stories of women who risked their lives to bring hand-knit socks and clothing to freezing soldiers at Valley Forge, women who knit in covered wagons traveling West, women who knit socks for freed slaves after the Civil War, and shell-shocked men who used knitting to save their sanity in hospitals during both World Wars.


"This is an exciting book," says Kathy Goldner, "a social history full of first-hand accounts of women, and sometimes men, knitting through very intense periods of our history. It's inspiring, and Kymberly Dakin does a superb job of bringing the stories to life."

Author Anne L. Macdonald, former head of the History Department at the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., also wrote Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America (1994) and Perrot: The Story of a Library (2006).

Narrator Kymberly Dakin won the 2006 Audie Award for her narration of Alice Munro's Runaway. She narrated KOL's Knitting Memories.

No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne L. Macdonald read by Kymberly Dakin. Abridged, 4 CDs, 4 hours 46 minutes, $29.95.
ISBN 978-0-9796073-3-2

For review copies or more information contact Kathy Goldner at info@knittingoutloud.com or toll-free 1-877-567-3950.

This spring Knitting Out Loud will release KnitKnit: Profiles + Projects From Knitting's NewWave by Sabrina Gschwandtner read by the author, and Knitting Lessons: Tales From the Knitting Path by Lela Nargi read by Julia Olson.

Knitting Out Loud's previous five audiobooks are America Knits by Melanie Falick read by Christine Marshall, The Art of Fair Isle Knitting by Ann Feitelson read by Melissa Hughes, The History of Hand Knitting by Richard Rutt read by Melissa Hughes, Knitting Memories: Reflections on the Knitter's Life edited by Lela Nargi read by Kymberly Dakin and Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook by Debbie Stoller read by the author.

Knitting Out Loud is an audiobook company specializing in knitting literature: knitting essays, interviews and histories of knitting. KOL audiobooks are available online at http:..www.knittingoutloud.com http://www.interweave.com/books http://www.amazon.com and http://www.audible.com. They are available at local yarn shops and bookstores and through Playaway. KOL audiobooks are distributed by Interweave Press.

For more information contact:

Kathy Goldner, Publisher
Knitting Out Loud
111 Middle Street
Stockton Springs, Maine 04981
Toll-free 1-877-567-3950

Monday, May 12, 2008

I like JigZone puzzles

Click to Mix and Solve

this is a really cool website. You can even upload your own pictures and make them into jigsaw puzzles here.