knitting a sock!

I am knitting my first pair of socks! Here is a picture!!

So far it is going ok.... the ribbed part is the ankle, and now I am working on the heel (ie the hard part!) We will see how it goes.... I've never done socks before and I am learning from a book. Hopefully i can make the second one look like the first. :O)

This is a picture of our rattle snake's rattler.... ewwww.... the penny and mint are for proportion, and they make a smiley face! Anyhow, our neighbor's dog got bit by another rattle snake last night.... So now I really don't like going out in the yard. I think this is a funny picture.

Here is Daniel right after he killed it.... and there it is, on the ground. (Please excuse the mess.... our yard is a work in progress.....)

Anyway I am excited that I know how to post pictures now! This is us at buffalo wild wings for a cowboys/bills football game last week with Kyle and Sarah- Notice the bills jerseys, and remember that we live in Texas.... everyone loved to hate us that night...

Ok that's enough pictures for now. Well, I have my first cello student this week! I am so excited! He is supposed to come on wednesday... we will see how it goes. Nothing else very exciting is going on. Oh, wait, I am taking a belly dancing class! That's exciting. My neighbor teaches it, every tuesday night. It is a lot of fun, just a few people in the class. I like it. I think sarah (above) may come with me tomorrow.

Well..... I mentioned our goats before, and so I think I should write a little about them and why we have them. We are trying to the best of our ability to achieve some food independence, and so, we got 2 miniature goats (pygmy goats -at full size they are knee-high) so we could have a fresh supply of milk (and learn to make butter, ice cream, cream, goat's milk soap, etc...). Well, before they milk they have to be bred and ahve a baby of course, and so we are waiting until they are ready to breed..... until then, no milk, just goats in the backyard. We also have 3 rabbits for breeding and eating. We have one pregnant rabbit, and so after she has her babies and they grow up, we will have fresh clean meat- we will know where it came from. I am so excited! Not to kill rabbits, of course, (I don't even want to be home when daniel does that) but to have acess to good meat. I can barely bring myself to buy meat at the grocery store, much less eat it. When I eat beef from the grocery I am really sick for at least a day or 2. It's awful. And of course, having access to our own food means we are lessening our dependence on foreign oil and the agricultural/food industry (which, may I say, is horribly corrupted) and that is something I am happy about. At first it was very hard for me to accept that yes, our backyard looks like a farm, and yes, we are different than all our neighbors. But I feel good about it now, because it is something positive we are doing for our lives-- taking charge of our own food source. We also have a garden (2 tomatoes so far) but it's not the greatest... it's only our 2nd one, and the first was a flop. It's mostly tomato plants, one corn plant, some raddishes. There is one other plant but we don't remember what it is... a carrot, maybe? Anyway, to complete our plan we want to get 2 egg-laying chickens, for fresh eggs. That's a substantial amount of food coming from our back yard. I can't wait to get the chickens. (We also want to get chickens to raise for eating (you get a different breed for that) and we have done that in our yard before, so really that isn't so daunting. BUT we haven't done that yet.... there is enough going on right now, and if there are more rattle snakes I suppose our chickens would be picked off pretty quickly.) ANYHOW, I could practically type a book about all the details of what we are doing, but I will refrain. If you have any questions I would love to answer them!