Long-awaited rain in the 'Ville

I don't know whether or not you've heard, but we've been having a fairly significant drought here in Tennessee. Or at least, we had been, until the past few days. Apparently, Mother Nature has decided to refill our reservoirs in the matter of five or so days. Dee-lightful.

Our week of wetness kicked off last Thursday, when we had a tornado watch and thunderstorm warnings. Though I don't think we actually had any tornadic activity touch down in the area, we had some really strong winds. When I drove to and from my Thursday babysitting job, I saw oodles yards strewn with fallen branches. And then when I returned home, I noticed this slight aberration in my own backyard:





Yeah, so apparently I'm not super-observant when leaving my house before coffee. Perhaps I oughtn't be driving a car. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, I feel fortunate that this tree didn't actually fall *on* anything, and I have some friends with chainsaws who have offered to help. Looks like I should be good on firewood for a while.

I bought a digital camera from another Nashvillian on eBay, so rather than having him ship it, I just went over and picked it up (about 10 minutes away). Hence my much-anticipated return to blogging! I have been meaning to get back into writing here, and several folks have actually requested that I do (for which I am extremely grateful), but I was having a hard time getting started without having illustrations to add veracity to my wild tales. That, and I'm just unfocused.

But I've been knitting up a storm, and as soon as the storming outside lets up, I'll be out in the late-day sun trying to capture that ideal dappled sunlight for some of my projects. I just happened into the perfect lighting by accident my first time out, and discovered after the fact that not all daylight is created equal. This is hardly news to you experienced photographers, but in this aspect of running oystergirlknits.com (as well as so many others), I am a complete novice.

Here is one of my accidental photographic masterpieces:



Just look at that . . . doesn't it make you feel like you're looking at an LL Bean catalog or something? Well, as I say, that was an accident. I had tried to take some others with the camera that Katie and Scott very generously loaned me, but they didn't quite work out as I'd hoped. Here's one for you to see by comparison:



Yes, it's an elf hat. You know, for Christmas.

Just haven't been able to catch that perfect lighting again . . . but now that I have a camera of my very own, I'm determined to persevere.

I did get a couple of photos tonight of a prototype in action--the very first OysterGirl doggy sweater. This is Eli, our Bible study mascot and just about the cutest canine you ever did see. His mama, Lydia, is a big Ole Miss fan.





Well, I guess that's it for tonight! I really am hoping to update the blog more frequently now that I have a camera. My friend Adrian does a great job of tying in her blog with her photography business, and I'll be trying to emulate what she's done. By which I mean copy her. By which I mean steal her ideas.

Thanks for reading! T-minus nine days until the official launch of the OysterGirlKnits.com webstore!