This past weekend, I flew down to Atlanta to visit Branden. I left on Friday, and I got back last night. It was a good weekend, but it was far too short.

I had hoped to get some knitting done on the plane, but somehow it just didn’t happen. Instead, I tumbled headlong into a book and didn’t re-emerge until the plane was landing. We didn’t do too much; went to the Farmer’s Market, met some of Branden’s new friends, went to the aquarium, and mostly just spent some time together. All in all, a good couple of days.

Unfortunately, fate has decreed that the coming back should be rough in more than one regard. The flight was easy, but just after I got to the airport, I noticed this:


My e-reader was packed next to my knitpicks needle case, and the case has a snap on it. Apparently at some point the snap focused the pressure in my bag on a single point on the screen, and now my reader is no more. Guess that’ll teach me to read too much and ignore my knitting.

This morning, I stopped to spin for a few minutes on my way out the door. This (combined with me leaving for work for the day) must have ignited the fury of a jealous feline in the household, because I came home to this, laid out across the livingroom rug:

It’s a bad picture of a rather torn-up roving. It’s not utterly destroyed, but it certainly won’t be as pleasant to spin now, and doesn’t encourage me to feel glad that I am now home to be with said cat.

On a more positive note, the weather has cooled down dramatically since I left, and it was downright beautiful outside today. The garden is doing well, and is still flooding us with produce. I picked about 5 pounds of tomatoes today (it was the second harvest of the day, as my neighbor had already been out to the garden and gotten her share). Most of them got chopped up for canning.

That entire saucepan became 2 quarts of crushed tomatoes, and one quart of juice. It’s amazing how much they shrink when heated. Since I needed to get the canner out for the tomatoes anyway, I also canned up the 5 quarts of pickles that are my response to our enthusiastic cucumber plant (second batch this summer). We will not have a pickle shortage this year.

And that leaves me with these:

Which is a mostly manageable amount of tomatoes for eating, if you ignore the fact that there will probably be just as many tomorrow. I will never underestimate the fertility of a midwest garden again!

So I’m back, vegetable spoilage has been averted, and the temperature has dropped enough that it is reasonable to continue fibery pursuits. Now I just need to hide them from the vengeful cat…