KNITTING WITHOUT DOG HAIR IS NOT AN OPTION

Warning: Picture heavy blog entry....

In a nutshell - a wonderful weekend. Even tho' it started out very terribly, with the ripping incident - and thank y'all for your kind words - it got better every day.

SATURDAY
Knitting, knitting, knitting - at home and at the nail salon. I made huge progress on Gale's Sonnet. I got back to where I ripped and am even further along now:

This picture is from last night. After taking the picture, I put a couple more hours in, and I am now at the second armhole. YAY for that.

SUNDAY
More knitting, but at Callaway Gardens for their eighth annual Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival. The day started with clouds and a little rain, but that did not keep Jane, Jen and me from driving to the beautiful gardens about an hour south of Atlanta. If you live around here and you haven't been, I can highly recommend a visit. You can even bring your dogs. They just can't go inside to visit the butterflies and sniff the flowers. But there are a lot of trails and a beach for the pooches to have fun, too.

First we went to visit the butterflies. You can look at the 100+ photos in my Flickr album - these are just some highlights:

The moth you never want in your house. From Wikipedia:

Atlas moths are the largest moths in the world in terms of total wing surface area (upwards of 65 square inches), and their wingspans are also among the largest, about 10-12 inches. Actually, in India, Atlas moths are cultivated for their silk in a non-commercial capacity; unlike that produced by the related Silkworm moth (Bombyx mori), Atlas moth silk is secreted as broken strands.

At least something good comes out of this moth for knitters. ;-)

After the visit to the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, we picnicked, and then went to see what was in the John A. Sibley Horticultural Center: This one-of-a-kind garden/greenhouse encompasses five acres of native and exotic plants within its tropical conservatory, rock wall garden, sculpture garden, fern grotto, main conservatory and outdoor garden. And of course, we all snapped away:

Then it was time for a Flying Disc Dog Demonstration. That was a lot of fun but way too short. The schedule said it would start at 3:30pm, but it was already underway when we got there. We got to see only two dogs, but they were awesome:

These dogs were extremely fast and knew a lot of tricks. They reminded me a lot of Hermione, except that playing frisbee is beneath her. Her favorite toy is a green racquetball. But when you take her to the dog park, she is as fast as lightning.

Then we waited for the last attraction of the day... And waited, and waited... This was the Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival after all, but because of the yucky weather - it was very windy - the evening Balloon Launch was cancelled. So, this is all we saw of a hot air balloon:

It was a long and wonderful day. I didn't get home until around 10pm. Good thing hubby didn't come with us. The dogs would probably have exploded after 13 hours without a potty break...

MONDAY
On Monday, I finally got down to the business of cleaning up my crafts room. Granted, the closet is stuffed with a lot of yarn that should be organized (but, hey, it is organized on Ravelry ;-) ...) and there are several boxes full of papers and patterns and crap that should be filed, but in general I am very pleased with the result:

Now I have a whole shelf for my knitting books and magazines, and one for notions and my spinning stash. And once the boxes are cleared out, I'll even have enough space to leave the spinning wheel out and accessible. Yay for that! Oh, and I'm sure you noticed that I have a cow or two...

I'm off to knit some more on the Sonnet. The last season of The Sopranos arrived from Amazon today, so I'll also have wonderful entertainment while knitting. :-) I can't wait to hear Tony say: "I told you my feelings, every day is a gift...It's just - does it have to be a pair of socks?" Sounds like he never received a pair of hand-knitted ones. ;-)