Phew! I think I finally got this post up and running!

 

I know, I always have an excuse for being late so this time I'm blaming the ultra, ultra (did I mention ultra), crawling speed of our WiFi here at the campsite and second I'll blame Blogger for letting me know that "Oops, it looks like you're out of your 1GB storage (for my pics in Picasa), please go to our website and buy some more"! Great! Like I want to buy anything !?

After a lot of googling and research I found out that if I signed up for a (free) Google Plus account I had a lot more storage so that's what I ended up doing.

 

Anywho, I'm back!

Let's see, what happened in the mean time? Oh, I guess 'Fall' sort of happened, even here in sunny Arizona!

It's definitely getting cooler, especially at night, which brought out some nice fall colours along the path that weaves around the campsite where I walk Sadie every day:

 

 

 

 

 

It's very dry though. So far we have not seen any rain here and if you look closely at the soil you see things like this:

 

 

 

 

 

Amazing, the resilience of these desert plants!

 

 

We had a Thanksgiving potluck     at the campground for all workers and guests together.

My job was to decorate the rec room and set up the tables and James oversaw the food sign-up list.

The owners provided the Turkey and the rest was brought in by the rest of us. As usual at these type of get-together's we ended up with an enormous amount of food!

We had a great turnout, about 40 people, and in the end we were all stuffed, as you should be at Thanksgiving!

 

Guess who forgot to bring a camera?

 

So, no pictures of that event but I did take some of our own Thanksgiving. We had lobster (hey, it was on sale!) and left over pumpkin pie from the potluck. Easy!

Merlin ate way too much and had to sleep it off....  
(I can't believe I ate the whole thing)...

 

 

 

Off course we also watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Or actually I just have it running in the background (too many bands/noise) but I need to see the Big Guy arrive at the end before I'll allow myself to gear up for Christmas!

 

                                                  The one and only...!

 

 

Instead of watching the Eukanuba dog show afterwards we went golfing that afternoon. 

I guess I've not mentioned yet that James found a payed job, did I?

Well, he went out looking for work one day at around 9am and was back at 10.30, looking all smug and saying something like: "Hey hon, is there any coffee left, and oh.... by the way, I have a job at this golf course and we can play unlimited free golf "!

Needles to say he's really good at talking himself into (almost)anything!

This is the golf course he works at, in maintenance by the way, called Desert Lakes. It's only 5 minutes from us. How convenient!

 

 

 

In my free time from cleaning the restrooms (piece of cake) and cleaning some rental units (Lots of "elbow-grease") I've been working on my hand picked cotton!

This is so much fun!

In the pics below you can see on the top left the cotton fiber that comes from one 'boll'. The dark smudges are seeds. One boll can hold as many as 26!  The bottom left shows one such seed with the cotton that's attached to it and the picture on the right shows each seed after I fluffed up the cotton with a little hand brush. (I use a small dog brush for that)

 

 

Than I spun it straight 'from the seed' as this is called. How about that? I made my own cotton yarn! Isn't that the coolest thing you ever saw?
I know, to each his own, but come on...it is quite amazing, no..?

 

 

                                    This is what's left. A slightly fuzzy seed.

If I use hand cards (big brushes) I can also make some rollags (made from cotton they're called 'puni's') and spin from those but I didn't make a picture of them so I'll safe that for next time.

OK, what's left for this time around are some pictures of the amazing sunsets we have around here and one of the moon in 'Moon River'.......

 

(Nope, no photo shopping any of these colours!)

                     (I see.. a bad... moon... rising........)