Odds and Ends (1)

Photos from the "To be posted" folder

Keely and I had fun shopping at Burkes Outlet and the Mighty Dollar in Russellville (KY), about a week ago. At Burkes, I successfully resisted buying a chicken. I like chicken knickknacks, but I am determined not to start a collection.

Burkes and the Mighty Dollar are in the same strip mall, next to the Russellville WalMart. They're the sort of stores that have an unpredictable, interesting and inexpensive inventory.

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Our landscape was colored with brown for several months due to the long drought this area suffered last summer. Now, around Christian County, winter wheat is greening many fields. I enjoy seeing the bright new growth!


This photo was taken at the intersection of Pilot Rock Road and Robinson Lane in Christian County, looking southeast toward Fairview.  

We've had a couple of nice rains and in fact, rain is falling at this very moment. It's been quite a wet and windy evening, but it's still 50 degrees. Tomorrow the temperatures will fall, and tomorrow night will be below freezing. Although our weather has been mostly mild so far, we did have some snow on Thanksgiving night.

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Two summers ago, I saw this pretty little clump of flowers in Land Between the Lakes near the Egner Ferry Bridge. It was growing a hundred feet from the lakeshore in a gravel-filled wash. The debris in the background suggests a high-water episode in the past.

You never know where you'll find a flower. If the soil is right for them to flourish, they bloom despite their humble surroundings.

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This photo is a year or two old, too. I came out to the kitchen one summer morning to make coffee, and found this large moth. Dennis had seen him resting on a white towel and put a glass jar over him so I could see him too.  That's a penny beside him. After I took the photo, I slid a piece of paper under him and carried him outside. I never did get to see him open his wings and fly.

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This is one of the interesting homes on South Main Street in Hopkinsville. This style is (I think) Mission Revival -- at least, the roofline and arched windows certainly are. (I'm not sure about the front porch!) Mission Revival was especially popular for the first few decades of the 1900s.

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This is another home on South Main Street in Hopkinsville. The photo is a little out of perspective because I tried to straighten it using a stretch-grid in Paintshop Pro.

After my treatment, the photo looks like it was taken from the air, instead of from the ground. I'm not sure that the chimneys and the front roof peak are that tall in real life, either.

Despite those flaws, if the porch railings were straight, the photo would probably look OK. I couldn't seem to get them in line without grossly stretching something else.

Nonetheless, it's a pretty house. The two-story gingerbread porch and the red front door give it personality. Without them, it would be a big, plain box.

(To be continued another day. More such photos wait.)

Yarn Store Adventure

Enchanted Yarn & Fiber in Russellville, KY

Saturday, I went over to Russellville (KY) with Keely, Taurus, and Isaac. It's only about 35 miles from here, but we don't go there very often. Keely was on a mission to find a yarn store she had heard about (Enchanted Yarn & Fiber), and the rest of us went along for the fresh air and change in scenery.

Keely started crocheting when she was seven years old. I showed her how to do a chain stitch. She mastered that quickly, so I showed her how to single crochet. From there, she branched out. I don't know how many scarves, hats, afghans, and baby blankets she has made since then, and I'll bet she doesn't either.

Several of the ladies at Keely's workplace are knitters, and Keely has learned to knit since she started working there. She started with socks, moved on to hats and gloves, and she's now working on a fancy, lacy, alpaca shawl that she is going to wear on her wedding day.

All this history is background to an understatement: Keely really likes knitting and crocheting and yarn. She was so happy to wander around the yarn shop and choose a skein of nice yarn for a future project. (Knitters and crocheters have stashes of yarn just like quilters have stashes of fabric.)

The proprietor of the shop said that she is planning to increase the "specialty yarns" she carries. I guess those would be yarns that are harder to find. I did see many beautiful and unusual yarns. I saw on several labels that the yarn was made of or contained silk, and one group of yarn was made of sugar cane.

I think that "fiber" refers to a raw material, and it becomes "yarn" after it's spun. In the fiber category, I saw some braids of dyed wool, and some bags of silk thread that had been ravelled from silk fabric. The instructions said that the silk threads could be spun to make silk yarn, or they could be spun with other fibers to achieve special effects.

When we were at the Fort Massac encampment earlier this fall, we saw some Leicester sheep, so I was interested to see this Leicester wool for sale. Leicester is said to be a favorite wool of hand-spinners because it has long fibers. (And, of course, Keely would like to learn to spin.)

I have a feeling that if I keep hanging around with my daughter, I'll be visiting this shop again. (And again and again.) I may have to revive my crocheting skills.