I thought I would feature a toy in the shop that expresses me playing with wood and wool this week.  I must confess that Norway and/or Iceland are on my travel bucket list.  Part of it is my love of troll folklore.  The documentary Troll Hunter from a few years back- brilliant!

My troll Rollo is quite the nice troll- he loves to hang out under bridges, along bridges, and near beautiful creek beds watching the leaves fall.  He wants to share bits of nature with you in his hands.  Sometimes it gets chilly on his walks so I made him a little wool cloak.

Not sure I can still talk my boys into going on troll walks like we use to do, but they are excited for the fall season!

Find Rollo the nature sharing troll in the shop.  And for your knitting pleasure you should check out the Troll Hat pattern- too cute!

This little fella that has been residing on my dining room table for a couple weeks has become my end of the summer mascot this weekend.  I could not resist this little broken porcelain pig salt and pepper shaker when my husband and I went to a flea market in a barn a couple weeks ago.  It was crisp fall morning at the end of the summer and a couple had a vintage market/flea market in their barn.  They had shelves of junk treasures that they had found in their back woods and field.  For some reason he spoke to me- broken ear and all!  Maybe it is because I can remember finding treasures like this as a kid when we would discover an old farmstead dump.  I was happy to hand over two shiny quarters for this fella!


Our local fall music festival is also this weekend and we enjoy heading down to the park the whole weekend and hearing some great tunes and having some good eats.  Favorites so far this year where Devil Makes Three- for bands and for eats was some local pulled pork that was the result of a whole hog roast.  I do eat meat and try to source it out as ethically and locally as possible.  Yesterday I loved seeing an interaction between a mom and daughter where the little girl was very curious about the hog and wanted to look at it more and had some questions.  The mom took her right up and they looked at it more and then she asked questions in her mind like "where did the eyes go"?  Reminding folks where their food comes from was accomplished this weekend by this local spot- kudos!


Lastly another reason this little broken pig I rescued- shall we call him Boone spoke to me was how proud I was of Silas and his 4-H project of country cured ham that he took to the fair this summer.  His first time and he was one of the top 40 out of about 250 that went onto the Boone County Ham auction.  A local farmer bid on his ham.  His eyes grew wide when he saw how much his ham raised. He decided he wants to do two hams this next year!  I was bummed to not get to eat his first ham but really excited about the skill he learned and the accomplishment.  Boone County has a strong tradition in country cured hams and we were proud to represent!



Off for the rest of the day to take in some more roots, more blues, and most likely a little more pig too!

As summer has handed the baton off to fall I am hoping to wrangle the boys into playing this new dice game the I got for us.  We played it once this summer and they were not impressed- maybe it is because I was so thrilled with the aspect of wool that is an element of play!  Even with homemade mama-friendly peach crisp they could not be swayed to play more than one game.  But I have a couple tricks up my sleeve yet to "encourage" some family game time with this one!


It is called Catan, and it full disclosure yes I did simply purchase this one because I noticed that one of the dice had sheep!  It has a feel between Yahtzee and Minecraft in a sort of primitive way- without the creepers of course!

So I have been patiently waiting and plan to spring it on them post soccer season with hot cups of tea and some other treat that will win over their hearts!  Seriously- sheep dice, yep I am a sucker!