Don't Forget......................

It's now officially New Year's eve and do you know what that means? It means that today is your last chance to leave a comment on the post "December Sock Giveaway" for your chance to win a pair of women's hand cranked socks. Tomorrow I'll announce the winner.



Several of you have asked for more pictures of Doris (our antique sock machine), so here she is. For those of you who are new to our blog, I named her Doris (as in Day) because when she arrived from Canada, I just knew that she'd be able to really hum and sing once I figured out how to make socks! And boy can she crank 'em out!



You can see why we call them "hand cranked socks" because of this crank style wheel that I have to manually turn for each "round" of the socks.



This photo shows the sock beginning to take shape from underneath. Weights are required to keep the stitches from jumping off the needles.



And here's the finished socks that turned out wonderfully well and I might add, just sold in our Etsy shop this morning! I better start cranking some more today!



We've had a doozey of a storm go through here the last couple of days. Here's Rick trying out his new snow shovel. The winds have been so extreme that we've had our wind turbine shut down for 3 days. Just this morning my husband was able to turn it back on. When that happens, we really use up the diesel. Everything in our home runs off our 32 backup batteries and when they get low, the huge generator kicks on as the final backup system. Living off the grid on the side of a windy mountain certainly is life changing, but we feel it's in an extremely good way. Sure, there's disadvantages - like being responsible for your own power and water needs. But, with this being our 4th winter now up here, we're feeling more confident about all of this.

Today we'll run into town for supplies because tomorrow brings in another storm!

I want to wish you all a safe New Year's eve and may 2011 bring special blessings to you and your families.

I'll see you all tomorrow after I randomly draw one lucky name for our sock contest.

See you next year!