Welllll...these are nice little stories, but..... I'll never forget my ole' huntin' dawg, Blue. He was a purebred pointer. From the time he was jes' a pup, that dawg was a natch, ah mean, a complete natural. You cain't breed the kind of instink that thar' dawg had. We knew blue was speshul when he wuz only 9 weeks old. I had filled up the old claw-footed tub out back with water I boiled in the sun. It was reeeeeal hot that year. It was sooo hot we couldun cook eggs on the sidewalks cuz as soon as the egg hit the sidewalk, it'd incubate and the prettiest baby chick would spring out of the joke, er uh, yolk. Within a matter of seconds, we'd have a nice little roasted game chick (unless we waited too long, in which case, we had a pile of chick-shaped coals). ...that was the year my neighbor, Hootie, wanted to grill hamburgers he'd kept in the iceblock freezer. Now, Hootie didun have hisself a grill but it didun matter. He'd jes' flip them frozen patties up in the air with a spatula...and they'd come down well-done (minus the grill marks). Best hamburgers I ever ett, and it was a real Hoot too.... anyhow, I was layin' in the clawfoot tub, soakin up the water and the rays, holdin' my little pup, Blue. There was a sponge floatin' in the tub with me, an' I set Blue on it so I could scratch my back...Suddenly, little Blue went into the straightest point I'd ever seen a little hound dog do, right on top of the sponge...I looked up to whar' he wuz pointin', and shore enuff, there was a big struttin' daddy pheasant. Whenever the pheasant moved, Blue didun move a muscle but the sponge pivoted around like my ole' Swiss Boy Scout compass findin' the North Pole...like I said, he was all natch' pointer... Well, the next summer was even hotter...all our horses got cooked from the heat an' flopped right over dead, so this nice gentleman who always wrapped in white sheets (even around his head!) came into town and sold us some "heat-proof" horses...funniest lookin' horses I ever saw...they wuzunt swaybacks, they wuz what we called "bumpy-top horses"...Wassn't till my cuzzin Jimmie started smokin' them fancy factory-made city cigaretties that I realized them bumpy-tops were also called Cam-Ells. Well, paw had planted some corn seeds he bought from some shady out-of-town character. It didn't look or taste just right when we harvested it, so paw told me to hitch up the bumpy-tops to the wagon, and haul it into the city and see if some of them ole' city slicks would buy our "speshul-fancy corn"...(them folks was soooo dumb, we used to pluck the legs offa pond toads...and grab up pond snails...and rotten fish eggs...and haul em to the big city...We'd sell em as "speshul French cue-zeen" and them folks would give us but BIIIG Ben Franklins for all our pond dwellins, which happened to double as an outlet for our septic tank). Course, Blue was all growed-up by then. I loved to take him huntin' cuz of that natch-point he had in 'im. Well, we wuzz pullin' a full-load of that funny-corn, me & Blue, when suddenly, I heard sumpin' behind me that sounded like a Winchester rifle goin' off. I turned around to look, and lo and behold, it was the corn. It was poppin' into the biggest white snowflakes I dun' ever see'd. The bumpy-tops saw it and it was the end fer um. They wuzz heat-proof but they wuzun one bit cold-proof. They saw all that corn poppin' and thought it was snowin'. They all fell over and froze plumb to death. As if that warnt bad enuff, suddenly Blue commenced to barkin' & wailin' and jumped off the wagon. He ran & ran till I couldin' see him no more. I never did see that dawg again...*sniff*...best durned pointer I ever had though... Well, last year, I hitched up the buggy and went to see how maw & paw was doin. We wuzz drivin' down this lonely old road, way out in the sticks, till we couldun even see a road no more. I hate to tell ya this, cuzz I'm a natch compass myself, but we wuzz lost and off the road. I hitched up the horses to a nearby cigar-catalpie tree, and hopped down to take my bearin's. I walked over into a nearby meadow, licked my finger, and as I was holdin' it in the wind...I saw it. The SKELETON OF A DAWG, holdin' the most purrty point you ever saw...Now I'm not shure if it was the remains of my Blue, but I've seen stranger things, so mebbe it wuzz! Which reminds of the time my cuzzin Jimmy an' me wuzz campin' out under the stars in our hammocks. The mosquities wuzz but BIIIG that year. Suddenly, a whole swarm of them beasts dive-bombed Jimmy in his hammock. Now, they didun spear him (or he wouldun be here today to verify the veracity of this story), but them monster skeeters hit his hammock soooo hard, he spun around for nearly an hour. It took him a week to stop pukin' his guts out, he was so dizzy... We took to usin' them new-fangled sleepin' bags after that, to sleep under the Big-Man's star-spangled heavens. That ended too, though, cuzz of the hot summer. That heat spread into everything, includin' maw's homemade roadkill chili. We'd eaten a whole crock of it (the chili), and suddenly, you know whut it duzz. And boy did it!!! Suddenly, both our sleepin' bags was blown clear off of us by one of them chili-gas attacks. Jimmy's bag flew up sooo high, the army boys at Chuck Yeager Air Force Base picked it up on their radar gear, an' before you knew it, a bunch of f-16's wuzz shootin' down our sleepin' bags. After catchin' some of them green Martian boys, the army & air force wuzzun takin' no more chances...and that was the end of our sleepin' bags....*sigh*... I could tell you more uh my happenins, but my honey sezz she ain't got big enuff galoshes to walk through this room without gettin' her ruffled dress all soiled... but I hope you good gardenin' folks all enjoyed these here true stories of my childhood.... whoops, gotta go, she's pullin' on my leg now....

I almost always use the Lion Babysoft because there's a really easy pattern included on the back of the paper it's wrapped in that you only need 6 skeins to make. I first made it for my nephew and he loved the way it felt so much that he asked for a full size one for his bed when he turned 5. All the other babies I've made that afghan for really love it too. Another good one is Baby Coordinates (not sure who makes it). It's supersoft, especially after you wash it.

Heavier sock yarns are OK for boots but may make socks that are too thick for regular shoes and sneakers. Most wool sock yarns are made from superwash wool with nylon for strength and longer wear. There are some sock yarns that are not superwash and will felt if machine washed so I always check the label. If you want to splurge, Mountain Colors Bearfoot is heavenly soft and warm because it has mohair. There are also sock yarns with stretchy elastic built in (Trampoline, Regia Stretch, Lana Grossa Mega Boot, Cascade Fixation) that will make your socks fit better. Paton's Kroy is a good value in a wool sock yarn, comes in tons of colors and is available widely. There are some online sites with great prices on sock yarn (Elann, Knitpicks) and one devoted to sock yarn (Simplysockyarn).

I guess Godiva Chocolates are my favorite candy for the occasional chocolate fix. Sees Candy has gone way downhill too except for a few classic items. Their stores are full of candy bar type stuff and they got rid of Sugar Sticks!!!. Now, they still make them because they are still put in the boxes for holidays. But you can't buy them alone anymore. You have to buy a box of stuff you don't want to get 2 or 3 of them. I like Russell Stover candy at the drugstore. All my old favorites have been reformulated or changed. UNO bars are no longer much different from a Three Muskateer. Annabel took the middle layer of chocolate out the Rocky Road bar. Hershey's has recently change their chocolate Kiss formula also. Probably think we won't notice by introducing all the silly different varieties but people did. Even Lifesavers messed up their flavors. It will be just like what happened to hamburgers *sigh*. A whole generation of kids grew up on McD's so they think In and Out or Sonic are something special. LOL I still like Swedish Fish. But only the original red ones. The multi-colored ones are just wrong.