From Rain to Hope

In a total and shameless ploy to get ya’ll to buy me stuff, I give you the widget I just noticed on Amazon:

Cool, huh?

I’ve managed to edit a few of the photos I’ve been taking.  I didn’t get to the ones from Magnolia Gardens or ones I took earlier in the year at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens, but I did do a couple from Folly Beach the other day.

Folly Island

Graffiti and the Morris Island Lighthouse

I also editted a couple of random flower pictures. The first is from a few months ago, back in Alabama:

A little bit of home

The second is from some pretty flowers Loops bought for me.  Sadly it’s the only picture I got of the flowers because I waited to take pictures until they were past their prime.

The Gift

That’s it for now.  I know I didn’t have much to say.  Maybe next time.

What do these things have in common?  Nothing other than me and what I was up to yesterday.  I started off my day by driving out to Folly Beach.

Folly Beach

Unlike a lot of people, I wouldn’t step foot in the water and sitting in the sand holds no appeal for me.  I mostly go for the solitude and to commune with nature, if you will.  Luckily, there weren’t many people there yesterday.  I managed to get a good walk, take a few pictures, and collect a few shells.  It was nice.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay very long because it was HOT.  With the sun shining, it didn’t take long for me to feel like I was cooking so I headed home after an hour.

After I got home, I decided to tackle a problem on the third floor, which is my room, by the way.  It is home for all my craft stuff, my music, and books.

Book Addict

Did I mention it was a huge problem?  I have piles of books all over the floor.  I’m not sure how many there are, but I’m trying to organize them and figure it out.  Sadly, I don’t have bookshelves for them yet.  I need to get some soon.  As for the organizing, I’m just trying to sort them and catalog what I have.  I’ve decided to use weRead to catalog everything.  I’m not sure how much I like it, but it’s online so I’ll always have access and there may be improvements made to the site in the future.  Right now I’m up to 225 books.  I’m not finished taking inventory though.  The sad thing is that I’ve only been collecting books for a few years.  I used to hate to read, but at about the age of 25, I started up.  By the time I’m old, no telling how many books I’ll own!

Diagonal Stripe Scarf

Lastly, I started a scarf.  It’s the Diagonal Striped Scarf.  It’s a nice pattern, but I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing when I started it.  With all the stockinette stitch action, I really should’ve used something natural that would block, but I had some cheap acrylic and thought I’d use it.  The colors are pretty though and were selected with my sister in mind.  Hi Stacy!   I ended up binding off not long after the picture above was taken and I will test it to see if I can get the thing to lay flat.  If so, I will recast on and maybe make the bands of color thicker.  I haven’t decided yet.

This past weekend Lewis and I visited Magnolia Plantation and Garden.

Magnolia Gardens Bridge

We went early, but it was still very humid.  It took about 30 minutes for our cameras to adjust to the environment.  We decided to just tour the grounds and leave off the house tour.  The gardens were very nice and I got lots of flower pictures.  I have yet to process them, but hopefully some will turn out nicely.  There were several cute wooden bridges on the property.  Unfortunately, the one above was the only one that photographed decently.  All the others were over water that was covered in a very unattractive green scum.

In other news from the weekend, I finally finished the Chinese Wave Dishcloth.  It turned out nicely.

Chinese Waves Dishcloth is finally finished!

I love the different textures on the two sides!

That time of year has come again where every amateur photographer around gets to enter, in my opinion, the best photo contest around, The Everyman Photo Contest.  I’ve been entering since either 2004 or 2005.  I can’t remember exactly.  I’m happy to say that a photo or two has been noticed by some of the judges, although I’ve never come close to winning.  It’s cool though.  There are so many great amatuer photographers out there, it’s just an honor to get recognized at all.

For this year’s Everyman, I have submitted two photos.  The first:

Follow the Leader

This photo was taken on Tybee Island, GA on my honeymoon roadtrip.  It’s actually my favorite from the whole trip.  I battled gusting winds and freezing cold (OK, not technically, but it was cold!) to get this picture.

The second picture is actually from 2006 when I was visiting Wales and went to the National Botanic Gardens.  Oddly, it was extremely cold then too.  I’ve always loved this photo even though no one else has been that crazy about it.  I love the abstractness of it.

Under Attack

We’ll have to wait to see if any of the judges like the photos.  I believe the results won’t be out until December.