Happy Holidays!

Whether it's singing, or

Christmas lights,

this little guy wishes you the best holiday season yet!

 

Look What We Saw Yesterday!

We dropped off our daughter's family Christmas gifts yesterday just in time to see this beautiful rainbow.  It actually was a double rainbow for a few minutes! It was a winter solstice surprise.

 

A Birthday Finish and a Holiday Yard!

I love this mitts pattern called Love Bug Mittens and have made it several times. The yarn's

multicolored speckles don't show up really well in these photos though. 

This house is not too far away from our house and is always decorated during the holidays. This year it has even more decorations and is also lit up at night. Very fun!

Hope you are having a nice weekend. We just spent the afternoon at our church listening to Handel's Messiah, and the choir did a great job singing to a huge crowd!

A Finish, a Wreath, and Our Tiny Tree ~

I'm probably not the only one, but I've been knitting like crazy lately trying to finish quite a few projects!

I just finished this one last night. It's a little headband for our youngest granddaughter who has very long hair. I hope it will be helpful when she has her gymnastic competitions!

Our good friend Becca sent us this beautiful wreath recently.

Well, we decided to put these little lights on our tiny tree instead of on the wreath. The lights are so cool because they tune them on and off all by themselves and shine for 6 hours during whatever time period you wish!

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Happy Crafting as you work on holiday projects!

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A Finish and a Couple More Photos

I just finished these mittens today, and they are made with leftovers from the Alpine Bloom hat. Surprisingly, there's still enough yarn left on the 2 skeins to make some small hats!

Just a few more photos from the bomb cyclone damage; some places sustained even more damage than this one, and some houses were totally destroyed.

We saw these two fallen trees yesterday in Sammamish when we went to Pilates. Fortunately no houses were hit, but we heard from friends that some of their neighbors in the area weren't so lucky.  Once again we were reminded that we could have had more than just branches and pine cones to deal with. Our Pilates teacher was without power for 6 days!

Now back to work on one last Christmas project! Have a great weekend. 

 

A Finish and a Windstorm Update

 This is one of the most complicated multi-colored patterns I have ever done and took a while to finish. I made it extra difficult by using a light colored yarn where the pattern called for a dark color and vice versa. Did a bit of frogging also, but it is finished now!

We were lucky to only have lots of branches and pine cones  to pick up because some of our friends had whole trees down, some that hit houses and some that totally flattened them! Our power was only out for two days, but some folks had no heat or light for 7 or more days. Our youngest grand daughter used 20 of these pine cones for table decorations on Thanksgiving.

This was the biggest branch that fell into our backyard; it was entangled in those sword ferns, and I was surprised how long and heavy it was when I pulled it out. Dick cut it up before taking it to our compost pile.

A few days later we went for a hike in a nearby park and saw that it also had trees down...big ones as you can see below. 

Here's just a couple of pieces of a tree that fell in the park! Apparently it was blocking the trail and the ranger cut it into pieces. Below you can see part of the tree and others around it that also came down.

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The last time we walked in the park, this little stream didn't exist, so you can see that there was lots of rain as well as wind.  

Despite the storm, we had a very nice Thanksgiving at our daughter's house in a suburb of Seattle and learned that they only had leaves to pick up there.  We were so thankful that day that we were spared serious damage like some of our friends did. My friend Janie who lives in an area called Mirrormont, and she told me that 100 houses in that area were damaged, some no longer even livable!  Yes, we were extremely lucky!

A Bomb Cyclone and Two Finishes

As you may have heard on the new, the weather here has been a bit crazy. They called it a bomb cyclone. Our power was out for 2 days, and there are still areas that are out. So it's been chilly and extra dark lately.  However, I finally have a couple of finishes to share.

Jeck is the name of this pattern.  I matched them up pretty well, but I have no idea why they look like two different sizes.

I really love this pattern for mitts and have made it several times! It's called Love Bug Mitts.

That's all for now! We have our fingers crossed that the wind storm predicted for today won't cause so many outages and at least allow people, whose power still is out, to get their power back!  Happy Friday!

Our Crazy Trip!

During the long wait for our plane to leave Seattle, we got to see a beautiful rainbow. You can't tell from this photo, but it was really a double one!

We took a nice hike in a park directly across from our sister's new condo.

On the walk we saw lots of turtles. Can you see them on this log?

We got to see our nephew's newly renovated 100 year old house and our great niece's team win a soccer game.

Enroute to Illinois to see our older daughter's family, we visited several interesting state parks and saw a dinosaur at the Wisconsin Dells! 

We saw lots of Canadian geese at the little lake by our favorite motel.

And we got to see the progress on the dam that feeds the lake in our daughter's neighborhood and spent more time with her dogs than our grandkids because we had COVID.  Thankfully they have a nice porch, so we were able to visit outside.

All in all, despite the challenges, we had a nice visit and are now completely healthy! And I got to do lots of knitting.....

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Have a great week!

 

 

How Did It Get To Be November So Soon?

Thanks for your kind comments the other day! We took our most recent October walk on Thursday when it wasn't raining here. One of our favorite places to walk is Coulon Beach, a waterfront park in nearby Renton, Washington.  

You can probably guess why these statues were dressed this way then, but they usually change their outfits every holiday, and some days aren't wearing anything!

A huge flock of black ducks was swimming in the lake.  There must have been over one hundred of them!  I'm not sure though what kind of ducks these are; does anyone recognize them?

We always see lots of Canadian geese there, but this time a few of them were sleeping on the path and didn't even flinch when we walked past them.

There were a lot more cormorants also; they are such interesting birds!

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Have a nice November! I'm working on a bunch of unfinished projects. How come I am so much better at starting than finishing them?!

Happy Almost Halloween! And an Update.

You may be wondering where I've been. Well September has been a weird and a bit challenging month. Well, early in the month my Afib, which had been under control for a couple of years, reappeared and then we had a crazy trip to the Midwest which ended up with us coming home with COVID-19 despite having had the most recent vaccine. It took a while for both of us to get our energy back, and I am scheduled for Cardioversion on Friday and hope it works.  Despite all the craziness, I have finished quite a few projects!

I made these booties for our choir director's new baby and this little unicorn for the baby's big sister.  I included the Fancy Nancy and the Quest for the Unicorn book also.

I also made these two hats which will be donated to a local charity that provides lots of help to families with children, including babies through middle schoolers.

And I made these two pairs of socks. I am making the top pair again in a plain color and changing the pattern to include another heart.  The second pattern includes a short row sock, but I used the same heel as the first sock.

I need to get ready to have lunch with a friend but will post some more photos soon. Have a fun Halloween!

  

Clicking Those Needles!

I've been busy lately finishing some projects for once! The dishcloth is part of a housewarming gift. As you can see, it's a simple stitch pattern with a 4 stitch/row border. 

I love this glove pattern and finished these before starting another pair. The pattern is easier to see with a plain color.

It takes a bit of time to make one of these Ronald McDonald Christmas stockings, but it's done now in just time for the October deadline.

This yarn was a fun surprise and big enough to make a baby hat with 1 skein and a tiny leftover. I love the stitch pattern, too.

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OK, now back to work! It's not raining anymore, and time to take a walk. Have a good day!

Finally a Post! I've Been busy!

I've been busy finishing some projects including this pair of socks. The pattern is called Hopscotch Socks and requires a certain skein of yarn.  It's called Zesty Sock by Universal Yarns and comes in several different color combinations.

My quilt group makes Christmas stockings as well as quilts for the Ronald McDonald House in Seattle. I was busy finishing this one and am about to start on another one as they need to be done by October.

I won't tell you when I started this sweater, but it's finally finished and been delivered to our oldest daughter for her birthday which was yesterday! It's a fairly challenging pattern, and the yarn I used was kind of splitty. But it's done, finally!

And I just finished this pair of socks last night. It's a fun pattern called Shell Yeah and a great way to use up leftover yarn. I will do it again.

Since I finished a project and it wasn't raining, we decided to take a walk in our nearby canyon.  Here's what we saw at a house on the way there. 

Don't you wonder how it stays up there?

This is one of the entrances to the trail that starts on either side of the main road into a nearby development.  Squibbs Creek flows along the trail, but the stream is pretty shallow now. There's another entrance at the end of the trail which is the way we headed. The trail is wide and well maintained and is a very nice walk in the woods.

On the way back home, we had to stop and take a photo of this pretty dahlia.

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Well, that's it for now; gotta get back to my next project, a dishcloth, that needs to be finished soon.  Have a great weekend!