We All Survived!

Precious little in the way of any kind of crafting, except for a few unsuccessful attempts at drawing monster trucks, happened this past week.  We were babysitting these two while their parents rendezvoued  in Hong Kong over the weekend after Mommy's business trip. We were well occupied from Thursday evening until mid-Sunday when the other grandparents took over.  (Good thing!  We were pretty tired by then.)  Mama should be done with Customs and on her way home by now, and Daddy gets back this evening.  What an adventure it was for everyone!

Strawberries were a big hit, and we even managed to get everyone, including me, dressed and off to preschool on Friday.

We are back home now, and the cats are happier even though we made trips back to care for them.  Little Miss and Big Brother don't believe we have cats as the two of them are gone as soon as the kids set foot inside the house.  Even we don't know where they hide. As you ponder this mystery, I hope you all have a very Happy Halloween!

It's Getting Longer!

The scarf is almost twice as long as it was! With the exception of the game on this past Sunday, the Scoreboard Scarf is up to date! (Each game is separated by a grey row, the dark blue represents our score, and the green is our opponent's score. Each row = one point.) It's about time for more yarn!  I'm thinking there's way too much green, and I need to get crackin' as there's another game on Thursday and 50 rows to add before then.......

Here I am working away before the game turned "sour".  Dee asked for a photo of the cats, and you can see how excited they are by football.

Not only did I catch up on the scarf, I completed two Christmas stockings for our local Ronald McDonald house.  Each year our group makes over 80 stockings, so my contribution isn't much, but at least I do something.  Right in the middle of this project, my sewing machine started making horrible noises and quit stitching correctly.  I fiddled around with it, but it wasn't till DH watched my fiddling that it started behaving.  Guess that's what happens when you're confronted by an engineer!?

The other day when we looked out our bedroom window, we saw this wonder.  Spiders must be the ultimate lace makers!  It's more filled in now and reminds me of a lace doily.

We are going to be spending time this weekend with these two.  Don't you just love how they are concentrating?  

Hope everyone has a great week, too.  Happpy Stitching!

On the Needles and More

One of the projects on my needles is going to take a while to finish.  It's the Scoreboard Scarf where each row represents one point scored by one's favorite team and its weekly opponent.  Can you guess my team?  At the moment I am very behind......and hoping to catch up before the next game. Wish me luck!

Instead of spending all day knitting, on Wednesday my friend Becca and I went out to Carnation to visit the Tolt Yarn and Wool shop. What a lovely place!  Look at this photo Becca took! Isn't that a pretty and tempting display?  (Just what we all need for our fiber diets right?)

After a nice lunch, we headed over to the nearby  Remlinger Farm and found it all decorated for Fall!

Doesn't Becca take great pictures?

Back on the home front, a couple of my indoor plants are going crazy!  The goldfish plant is blooming like never before. It has lots of little "fish"!

The flowers do resemble tiny goldfish, don't they?

Then, just before we left for Chicago, my orchid surprised me with this thing.  It's a baby plant, a keiki, Dee told me.  Some day it'll be in its own pot which means I'll probably have two orchids that don't bloom....... LOL

Have a great weekend everyone, and don't forget to check out Patchwork Times to see what others are knitting!

The Best Laid Plans.........

Yesterday this little lady didn't feel good, so we spent the afternoon babysitting. Needless to say, I didn't get any stitching accomplished.  But then on the best of days, I do more knitting than stitching for some reason.

Here's a Chicago photo I forgot to post.  We found at least one other letter being used by the birds.  What kind of a bird lives in this nest do you think?

Have a good day, we are headed to the UW hospital to do our voluntering.

Home Again!

We are just about finished with the unpacking and laundry and almost back in our normal time zone after 10 busy days in Chicago.  The very first day we were there, Jill and I met Kathy for a fun lunch.  After that we were really busy with the kids, so busy we don't have many photos. I did get in a little knitting time though and finished my Undine socks without running out of either color of leftover yarn!

On Saturday, Michael was back home from his business trip, and we spent the afternoon at the Farm Heritage Festival in Wauconda. We had a good time looking at all the exhibits and watching the border collies herd sheep.  Michael and the kids rode their bikes almost all the way home on the wonderful trails that are sprinkled throughout this part of Illinois.

Sunday evening we only saw a tiny bit of the lunar eclipse before the skies clouded over.

Our stay just flew by: we helped out in kindergarten, watched swimming lessons, attended church, did a lot of carpooling and cooking as well as mending, stitching with Sophia, reading with Daniel and helping David with his 5th grade math homework.

Our flight home got off to a rocky start with an hour and a half of standing in the security line and another hour delay while a mechanical problem was fixed.  (It was, however, way more comfortable than the flight there where the seats were 10 inches apart!) It had been ages since we flew in clear skies during daylight, and Dick got some interesting photos out the window.

We think we spotted some forest fires.

There's  little bit of snow on what Dick believes is Glacier Peak.

Can you spot the Space Needle?  If you look really closely, you can also see the water tower that is down the block from our younger daughter's house!

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And here we are back home, and it's October first.  Where did this year go???  Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it? Check out Patchwork Times to see what others are knitting!

Done, Done, Done!

A couple more projects are off the needles just in time to be hand delivered. This matches up with a smaller version that was finished for Cousin Stella a while ago. The ruffles are a different color, and it has kitty buttons instead of a dog. Sure hope it fits!

Strangely my last several projects have involved the feather and fan stitch pattern.  I just finished this Nami cowl; the pattern came with a Bento Box kit from Jimmy Beans yarn.  It included 15 yards of 12 different Berroco yarns, and I liked the sample of Briza so much that I ordered enough for a sweater.  Hope to finish it in time for winter. (This one!) It intrigued me how the two ends fit perfectly together, and I've got my fingers crossed that it will go well with DD's winter coat. This pattern would be perfect for using up odds and ends of yarn, so I need to remember that!

Speaking of cowls, fall has definitely come to our part of the world.  Not only are there shorter days and all sorts of spiders everywhere, we are now finding giant toadstools that seem to appear over night. 

My little gnome approves.

And this tiny fairy left me a note saying, "Get going on those winter projects!"  I guess it IS time, isn't it?  Check out Patchwork Times to see what others are making.

It's Beginning to Feel Like Fall!

We are slowlly getting back into our fall routine.  Our choir sang for the first time since June, we've taked a few nice drives, and we've had fun with our local grandkids. After a recent rain, we drove out to see Snoqualmie Falls and were rewarded with a rainbow on the way home!

We walked a little ways down the trail, and I convinced Dick to let me take his picture. Isn't that an interesting log?

The little bit of rain gave way to a nice rainbow. Can you see it hiding in the clouds?

This weekend we walked with Max and Stella down to the Magnolia Farmer's Market. We bought some bread and peaches before stopping at the park nearby

They both had great fun on the equipment, especially this slide.

No trip to the playground is complete without playing in the sand and 

running through the tunnels.  After they were done playing, we trudged back home up some significent hills.  I hope they slept well that afternoon.  We were sure tired!

The day before we took a fun road trip to Port Gamble. It's such a pretty town, and it has a great yarn shop and a really nice quilt shop.  All of the buildings are well kept up, just like this one.

And for me,  car trips also mean knitting time.  The Multnomah shawl is done; it was so much fun to use this gradient yarn!

Hope your week was as nice as ours!