Summer!

There is something about this time of year that precludes my regular fiber like activities, weaving and spinning and knitting. (already a vast field!)  It can take several forms, like putting the garden in, or traveling to see family, or fun fridays for the kids at church, or new goats being born and needing that extra watchful eye that the adults don't need.  It can also take the form of what I like to call tangents like that tatted cap I posted about last week, on Farmstead Studio.  It is too hot to knit, you know and the tatting just slips right in my purse!  No extra bag to carry!

This week however there has been a new bud on the rose bush.  Some friends of ours are up at the Elkmont Camping Ground, in the Smokey Mountains, for the week and they invited us to come up for the day on Wednesday.  It was a perfect day, we sat and chatted by the campfire, we took a walk, we ate a great campfire meal, and before you know it, we are hunting a tent to join them for a Saturday overnight!  I totally did not expect that!

My family camped all the time, husbands did not!  I had mentioned it a couple of times but it never went anywhere.  I have great memories of a western USA camping tour that ended up at the family reunion in Texas, and  Summers spent camping on the bluff above a beach in California with cousins.  If all goes well, I think I might be able to start building some new memories of camping with kids and grandkids in the Great Smokey Mountains.  It is about as far away from my house now as the beach was from my family home then.

Here are the local grandkids enjoying a "swimming lesson" with Papa.   Grandson is really progressing, taking breaths as he swims, and he loves to glide, and scare his mama half to death.  Granddaughter is trying hard on her freestyle form.  This is their version of a Super Huge Cannonball at the end of the lesson.

It has captured their personalities so perfectly!  I wish all the grandkids were local, though I might have to get in the water myself if they were, right now I am an extra pair of eyes!

Until next time, be a Happy Camper, Tina