To Gift or to Keep?

I finished these colorful Fingerless Mittens last night. I haven't decided yet wether I'm keeping them for myself (I'm tempted) or if I'll wrap them up and give them to some well deserving soul for Christmas. I followed (more or less) the pattern for Easy Lace Fingerless Mittens by Kathleen Taylor. This was the first time I have ever worked with Noro yarn, I made my debut with Silk Garden Lite. Beautiful colors! Normally I like things to be symmetrical and orderly, but I rather like how the colors turned out on these mittens, similar but not identical. I see more projects made from Noro in my future!

California Snow Day!

Yesterday it started to feel like Christmas and today it was as if I was back in Sweden! This is what it looked like outside this morning:

 

Winter in the Vineyard and on the way to school

 

... and I it is supposed to be even colder tonight! We have covered what we can and brought some frost sensitive plants inside. Nevertheless we will probably lose some plants to Jack Frost.

Making Christmas

Today was a a day preparing for Christmas. We strung the lights on our tall (17 feet) but slightly tilted tree and hung all the ornaments. Beautiful! Conrad and I also did some Christmas baking and we had ham for dinner. Can you believe how quickly the holidays are approaching? With the house smelling of gingerbread it actually is starting to feel like Christmas. Of course I also managed to squeeze in some Christmas  gift knitting (shhh!) time and Kajsa and I even visited Yarn Dogs so she could pick out yarn for a pair of fingerless gloves for herself.

Christmas Knitting Continued

I've been busy working on Lars' Christmas Afghan (Exquisite by Carole Prior - in Big Book of Quick Knit Afghans) since Thanksgiving and now it is finished! It is a great feeling of accomplishment, I have never knitted anything this large before. I highly recommend big needles and double yarn for a boost of your self confidence. 

I also completed a quick and bulky cowl in some leftover Patons Divine yarn I had around the house and I managed to squeeze in a few squares on my Sock Yarn Blankie (Shelly Kang sock yarn blanket) . 

What have I done other than knit? Well, not much other than take care of a sick child and a sick husband. Today Phil is home from work with bronchitis and Conrad has been home sick (one day of vomiting, fever and a cough the other days) from school this whole week. We did manage to attend Unplugged, the LGHS talent show. Kajsa was one of the master of ceremonies and she also performed one number herself - Bridge over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkel. She sang it beautifully!

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!




















We had a nice family get-together at our house on Thursday and the kids (cousins) got a lot of fun playtime together. After the big turkey meal some, courtesy of Tryptophan, squeezed in the traditional postprandial Thanksgiving nap while the rest of us were visiting and catching up since the last get-together.

One thing that we all did together was write the Nelson Thanksgiving Story. This story writing has become somewhat of a tradition that the kids (and adults) look forward to every year. This year's story featured Lars the Cooking Wiz, Gobbles the Turkey (alias Fred) and some space turkeys.

Sick Day

Today Conrad has a little bit of a cough and since everybody is so worried about the swine flu  he get to spend the day at home with mom even though he really isn't that sick (no fever). We try to make the most of this rainy and gray day. I really should be cleaning the house in preparation for Thanksgiving, but Conrad keeps distracting me with more interesting (and important) projects.

Conrad was in th mood to bake something so I suggested he bake some muffins for our Thanksgiving meal. We looked through our muffin recipe book and didn't find anything we wanted to make that we had all ingredients for so we improvised and made some Cornmeal dried fruit muffins. Conrad says they turned out "fruitylicious"!

Conrad also spent some time working on his spinning. He doesn't have the patience to stay with it for very long at each sitting put he keeps going back to it. I think he will probably finish his first skein of yarn in time for Christmas.

While Conrad worked on this forest diorama I sorted through some piles of accumulated papers. In one of the piles I found a photo that my very good friend Kerstin had sent me a couple of years ago. We hadn't spoken for several years so I decided to call her up. It was so much fun talking with her and catching up. She sounded just like she did back when we both were biology students at Lund's University.

Tuesday Night Library Knitting Group

Tuesday nights are the one night a week when my family knows that Mom gets to take the evening off (not that I don't take other times off, but Tuesdays are on everybody's schedule) and do something she enjoys. KNIT! And to boot I get to knit with a group of fun and interesting ladies who also realizes how much fun and how relaxing knitting is. Some weeks when life gets really hectic, the two hours at the library is the only time I have to knit. Another big bonus is how great these gals are at encouraging, admiring and praise each other's work. Nobody appreciates a knitted item like a knitter!

Tonight the group looked like this, it varies slightly every week, but we have grown to be a good size group. The "Miss You" sign is for a group member who hasn't been able to come for some time, we took the picture for her.