Fast week...

I'll tell you what...time needs to slow down just a tad! September flew by, and now October is following suit! What's the hurry??

Last week was a blur of good things. My mom and step-dad were in town for a week, and while I didn't get to spend nearly as much time with my mom as I'd have liked, it was nice to get to visit with them here for a change (instead of us going to Florida).

Sadly, I took very few photos from my mom's visit. This is one of them. Mom, Ralph and Emma.

Last weekend was also the local Apple & Arts Festival, which Kevin and the kids always take part in (I go up for a few hours and walk around...they do the work!).

The shingle mill, where Kevin (on the right) spends most of his time at the festival.

Amid the visiting and the fall festivities, I tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy with regard to our school work, the gym and our fencing/climbing days, though everything got modified to accommodate the extra activities. One thing that was a constant throughout, though, was the knitting. I am working away on my socks, both the Zombies and the Mystery Socks for the Soctoberfest KAL. Also making some progress on the girlie's sweater, but mostly it's the socks that have my attention right now.

Lest I bore you with any more chatter, how about some pictures? (And warning -- there will be another picture of the mystery sock in this bunch, so don't look at the last photo if you don't want to see it!)

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #1: apples. Half of this bag has already been cooked and used in a pie. Yum.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #2: freshly ground grains; in the jars there is whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour and cornmeal. I love using this stuff! So fresh and good! It all needs to be kept refrigerated or frozen since there are no preservatives in any of it, thus I put some in the jars and some in vacuum packages to use over time.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #3: I usually don't purchase much in the line of the "arts" that are offered at these festivals anymore, both because I don't really need any more crap in my life and also because most of it is pretty country-themed, and I am not much of a country-themed person at this point in my life. Pottery, however, always calls to me. I found these buttons at the only pottery vendor at the festival...they're kind of quirky. Bigger than buttons I'd usually buy, but I thought they'd be neat to use one at a time for buttoned neck warmers or something. More than that and they'd get pretty heavy.

The Zombie lives and is coming along quite nicely! It's actually a couple more inches up the leg at this point. And look! I turned my first toe-up heel...

A gusset heel, it was very easy to do. I ended up with a little gap at the top of each heel where I rejoined the stitches in the round to the instep, but I think I know how to avoid that on the second sock. I'll just stitch these up to close them when I'm done.

And finally...the mystery sock. Clue #2 finished on the first one...

What a crazy-pretty sock this is turning out to be! It looks even lovelier from the side view, but both of those that I look on the sock blocker turned out blurry. Will try again later.

Oh, and though I have no pictures of the evening (or at least none that turned out well on my cell phone), my friend Angela and I spent a very loud night last Saturday at the Social Distortion concert, which was awesome. Totally love their music. (I will say, though, either I'm getting old, the acoustics of the Ches-a-rena leave something to be desired, or the people working the sound for the two opening bands were on crack because it was painfully loud at points, like I thought my ear drums might explode -- and that's saying something, live music lover that I am, the louder the better. But not so much in this case.)

Lastly...our VoaT photoblog is focusing on the theme "Small" this week. Tomorrow is the last day for it, as a new theme will start on Sunday. Stop by and visit! :)