Yarn Along: January '21

 It's a new year, new month, and the first Wednesday.  Time for a Yarn Along post!!

Hoping to join with Ginny for the Yarn Along; I see that she doesn't have it posted on her site yet, so I will go ahead and link in later once hers is up.

There are some December projects to show, all of which were finished in time for Christmas, as well as some January knits all ready.

These socks went to Surprise for Christmas

The pattern is Branching on Ravelry.

I also made, but didn't get a picture of, a pair of Lego man mitts for Toad in the 6-9yr size.

Once the Christmas knits were wrapped up (pun intended, LOL), I made another dish cloth for myself using scrap cotton yarns.  This one is much prettier in real life.  It's the Copycat pattern that I made another scrap yarn dish cloth out of on last month's yarn along.

Right before Christmas, my Mom asked me if I would  to knit her a pair of socks, using yarn she'd bought for that purpose,hopefully in time for her birthday in February.  She dropped off the yarn to me, and I started them on Dec. 30th.  I am using the pattern Elevation, and making the leg the usual length rather than as a short sock.  I think it shows off the color changes of the yarn really well.  Currently, the first sock is knit through the heel turn and ready to pick up the gusset stitches.

Also in the above photo, you see a very purple dish cloth done in the Honeycomb pattern, as well as a light blue dish cloth that is using the Michigan pattern.  Both are using leftover cotton yarn.  I'm hoping to use up my stash of scrap cotton yarns this month.

Reading in December was squeezed in around work, holiday prep, and making presents. According to my reading log, I read the newest Sloan Krause mystery, Without a Brew, by Ellie Alexander, and that was it.  After waiting a long, long time to get my hands on this through the local library, I read it way too fast for the hectic time that is late December.  It was a 7-day checkout through the library so I had to churn through it and finish it on time.  Even so, I really enjoyed the story and can't wait for the next one in the series--which apparently is in the work but not due to be published until October 2021.

Your Kids Will Remember

 When my kids were little, DH and I tried really hard to live on just his income so that I could be home with the kids.  Sometimes this didn't work, and I would take a job for a while. But often, the cost of child care took the vast majority of my paycheck, and when DH would be traveling for his job and I not only needed a day time babysitter, but a second (typically teenaged) babysitter to pick up my kids from the normal babysitter before 6:00 p.m. so I didn't get charged exorbitant late fees for not getting there on time we questioned the sustainability of that system for our family.

So, for the most part, after DD2 was born, I was a stay at home mom. Money was tight.  We were creative.

One thing we did, several Christmases running, was to make homemade gifts for the kids to give to their teachers, both at school and at Sunday School.  If the kids could participate in the making, they did.  This was, afterall, their gift to their teacher(s).  It was cheaper than buying a token gift, and we didn't even have to leave home to find the right thing. 

Cookie in a jar mixes were quite popular back then (late 1990s- early 2000s), and I found a lot of them by searching online and through borrowing recipe books from the local library.  My kids would choose a recipe or two for that year, we would make sure the ingredients were in our pantry, and then they would get to work reading recipes, measuring ingredients and packing them in the jars in the correct order.  Then they would hand-write labels for the jars with instructions on how to make the cookies.  We even had a catchy name we'd put on the labels:  Four Kids in the Kitchen.

Years later, when I would run into my kids' former teachers who had been recipients of these gifts, they would mention how much they had appreciated the jar mixes (which they could make any time, not have to eat right away at Christmas), and what a unique gift it had been--obviously something the child had put time into.

Fast forward to Christmas 2020.  DS1 and his family arrived to our (pre-quarantined so we could safely pull it off) family Christmas gathering at this little place here with a box full of jars.  Each jar had a printed label on it, signed by K3, Toad, and Rascal.  Together with their dad, those three grandkids had made cookie in a jar mixes for DH & I, DS2, DD1 & Honorary Son, and DD2.

It was a touching gift for me, who was happy to see that DS1 had drawn on that part of his childhood and passed the experience on to his own kids.  And my other kids all had fun reminiscing about when they were little, making the jar mixes themselves, and whose hands fit into the mouth of the jars therefore making them the designated tamper when the ingredients threatened to not fit.

Introducing: Faline

 Our fourth grandchild, and second granddaughter, was born in mid-November. For a variety of reasons, including deer hunting season, some complications DD1 had during labor, and after giving birth (which included sepsis and an emergency hospital stay only 6 days after being released from the hospital postpartum), and of course the craziness that is pre-Christmas, I am finally just now getting this post written.

When DD1 announced, in April, that she was approximately two months pregnant, we were ecstatic.  This daughter has always wanted to have a family of her own.  In her late teens, she was told that she has PCOS and might not be able to conceive/carry a baby to term.  So, nearly two years after she and Honorary Son were married, to be expecting a baby of their own was wonderful!  I had some trepidation about the viability of the pregnancy, given DD1's gynecological pronouncement some seven years earlier, but thankfully everything in that department developed normally, and DD1 is now the mother of a healthy baby girl.

Early on, when DH heard that there would be a new grandbaby with a due date of firearm deer hunting season, he insisted that no matter what DD1 and Honorary Son chose as a name, if it was a boy DH was going to call him Buck.

As you read above, baby is a girl, so Buck isn't happening here.  At least not this time around.  I, however, have chosen to give her the blog moniker of Faline, who in the movies is the name of Bambi's doe friend.  Interestingly enough, when I look up the origin of the name Faline, it means 'like a cat', which to me is hilarious as Honorary Son and DD1 have two cats all ready, whom they both spoil and adore.  So it's sort of ironic that in this space, I'm going to refer to their daughter as Faline.  So far, she's very cat-like in that when she isn't eating, she spends much of her time sleeping.

Anyway, Faline is growing well.  She looks very much like DD1 did as a newborn, and we are all absolutely in love with her.

Before Faline was born, DD1 asked me if I still had the baptism gown that DD1 herself had worn for her own baptism.  Being that my mom had made the gown, at my request when DS1 was a newborn, and I had used it for all four of my children to be baptized in, I of course had saved it.  I was thrilled at the idea of my granddaughter also being baptized in that gown.

As you can see, it's nothing fancy. Simple, white batiste fabric that is both gauzy and durable.  Pin-tucks on the front bodice, with a small ribbon bow and lace sewn on the hem.  There is also a plain white slip (also made of batiste) that goes underneath the gown. Traditional, for babies of either gender.  Being that it's been worn by babies in two generations, I guess it is now a family heirloom.

Yarn Along: December

 I am joining with Ginny for the final Yarn Along of 2020.  Can you believe we made it to December?!?

The baby sweater I was knitting last month is finished, with exception of blocking and sewing on the buttons.  I have some buttons that will work size-wise, but I'm not in love with them.  Which is why it's not totally completed yet.  I need to get out and do some button shopping.  Or online and do some button shopping ASAP, considering shipping is taking a while this year.

My orange hat I use for deer hunting had gotten stretched out and didn't fit well anymore, so I found some blaze orange yarn from Jimmy Beans and made myself a new one.  The yarn is wool, and I love how warm and cozy it keeps me, for the most part (40 mph wind gusts off the field being the exception to toasty warm ears).  The pattern I used was Christina which has mock cables made with yarn overs and k2tog or ssk.  I'm thinking the wind gust air leakage is because of the yarn overs; my only regret is that I didn't use a pattern with real cables.

More small projects I have been knitting are some dish cloths.  Many of my dish cloths in the kitchen seem to have bitten the dust in recent months, leaving me with less than a week's worth.  I dug out my bag of scrap cotton yarn (from making dish cloths in previous years) and have been piecing together color combinations.  The finished sage green one is the pattern Honeycomb dish cloth, and the one on the needles is Copycat dish cloth.  

I also began a pair of socks, intended as a Christmas present for Surprise, although I may end up finishing them next year and keeping them for myself.  Long story, possibly a future blog post, maybe not, we'll see how things turn out.  The pattern for those is Branching socks, the yarn is some Knit Picks Stroll Gradient yarn I've had for a while, the color is discontinued, but I think was called Star Dust.

Not a whole lot of reading has gone on since the last Yarn Along. I read two books, one of which was the one I picked to take to the deer stand with me (I typically bring a book out to help me sit still and quiet; it has to be a book small enough to fit into my hunting bag, and not have a crinkly or shiny cover).

The hunting book this season was Snow Country by Kristin Neva.  While the story line was kind of predictable, I did enjoy this book because it is set in an area of Michigan that I am very familiar with and it was fun to recognize real places in the fictionalized towns.

The other book was Among the Wicked by Linda Castillo.  I love her Kate Burkholder series of books and absolutely devoured this one.

Yarn Along: November

 It's Yarn Along time again.  I am joining with Ginny this afternoon to show off what I've been knitting and reading lately.

First, a big finish to this year's big project: my Hue Shift afghan!  It is totally and completely done.  I am loving it.

A second finish is the pair of short socks I cast on while on vacation in early October.  I really liked the colors in this yarn, but I'm not sure if I can handle the mismatched-ness.  I might be a little too Type A for that.

Once those two projects were finished, I began working on my Knitting For Christmas list.  First, a balaclava for K3 that she requested (reminding me of the one I'd made Toad in 2018, she told me she needed a 'warm hat' in blues).  And then I made one for Rascal, because K3 had told me that he could use one too.  

That brought me to the next item on the Christmas knits list: a baby sweater for the new grandbaby (who is due any day now).  I am making that in a nice pale yellow, as DD1 requested gender neutral colors for as much newborn to 9 months stuff as possible so that it's reusable for any future babies regardless of gender.  The pattern I'm using is called Viola and Sebastian (any She's the Man fans here? Both of my daughters love that movie.) and I am doing 'Sebastian'--the cabled pattern--in size 3-6 months.

In the photo, you can see my current read, another Ellie Alexander mystery titled A Crime of Passion Fruit.  I've only just started it, but expect to like it just as much as her other mysteries I've read.

Other books I read recently are Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids by Tobin Buhk, which was interesting but not very captivating; and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson, which I absolutely loved and highly recommend.

K3 and I Foray Into Clothing Design

In August, DD1, DD2, K3 and I took a trip to Shipshewana.  My daughters and I like to go once every year or two, mainly as a quiet getaway and to do some shopping.  Our favorite places are the Amish grocery E&S Sales, Yoder's Meat, and Lolly's Fabrics.  We visit pretty much all the shops, and the flea market too, but those are our can't miss favorites.

This year, we invited K3 to go along.  The thought process was that now that she's 8, she might enjoy seeing all the horses and buggies, plus it would be a special girl trip that she didn't have to include her brothers in.  We also thought she would love digging through all the fat quarters of fabric in the wooden boat at Lolly's.

Yep, she loved it.  She did get a little bored waiting for her aunts and I to look at fabric (I was shopping for a few future gift projects), so I told her that if she wanted to pick out some fabric, I would make her a nightgown or something out of it.  Well, after that it was hard to drag her out of the store!

Turned out that she wanted a skirt, not a nightgown.  Which was fine, as I've made skirts and dresses in the past, when my girls were little.

Not only did she want a skirt, she wanted it made out of many fabrics, not just one.  The girl had an armload of fat quarters that she had chosen out of Lolly's boat.  Way, way, more fabric than it would take to make a skirt the size of an eight year old.  I talked her into paring her choices down to eight fabrics.  Which I let her take to the counter and pay for, and carry in her very own shopping bag.

She liked that very much.  

In late August, we sat down together and I asked her what kind of skirt she had in mind with all those eight different fabrics.  Vertical stripes? Horizontal tiers?

Patchwork.  That's what she wanted.  Squares sewn together patchwork style.

Okay, that I could do.  It would be loud, but heck, she's eight.

But wait, that's not all she had in mind! The squares couldn't be random.  I had to sew them together in rows that would make diagonal stripes when they were a skirt.

And, she wanted a high-low style.  Knee length in front, brushing the ground at her heels.

I sketched as she talked.  Mainly so that I made sure I understood what she envisioned.  It was apparent that she had given this custom skirt a lot of thought, and I wanted to get it right.

Once we had a design, I had to figure out how to bring it to reality.  This was the first time I've ever made clothing without using a pattern created by someone else. Took me most of a month (the garden was going hot and heavy, so I really didn't have a lot of time to contemplate skirt making), but finally the light bulb in my head went off, and I knew exactly how to do it.  All I needed to do, since this was going to be a skirt with a simple elastic waistband, was make two rectangles of fabric that were big enough to be loose fitting around her legs.  Then mark the center front at the correct length based on measurements I took of K3, as well as mark the center back to the right length, and connect those marks with a curved line (around the sides).  Sew the skirt together at the side seams, make and sew a waistband onto the skirt fabric, thread elastic through the waist, hem the skirt, and be done.  

All the cutting and stitching of the patchwork took a few more weeks of spare time, and I realized after it was together that I should have made a lining so that the underside of the patchwork with all it's seams wouldn't be visible on the low part.  To do a correct lining, I would have to take the elastic back out of the waist and make a second skirt, also sewn to the existing waistband.  Which I not only didn't want to do, but didn't have enough fabric left for.  So I cheated and sewed in a liner (of one color fabric) on just the inside back of the skirt where you might be able to see when it's being worn.

But the skirt is finally completed and ready for K3 to wear.

Rocky Mountain Getaway

 At the beginning of this month, DH and I went away for about a week, on a vacation that was supposed to happen in 2019.  We'd talked about it nearly two years ago, and DH was going to book it, but then he didn't (cuz he forgot, repeatedly, being during the period of time when his job ate his life. . . ) and when he finally looked into it summer 2019, the place we wanted to go had no vacancies for the time period we wanted to go in--Fall, (not ski season, not spring, not summer).

When he told me the trip wasn't happening last year, the news didn't go over well. Honestly, I was crushed.  I'd all ready been repeatedly crushed by DH's job eating his (and consequently, my) life in 2019.  It was really, really difficult to treat my destroyed dream of a much anticipated break our inability to go there as a minor blip in the road of life.

So, when DH checked into it late this Spring and found that there were openings for this Fall (thank you, Covid!! and people freaking out about Covid/travel!), we jumped at the chance.  Booked our room and our flight immediately, and put it on the calendar in big black non-erasable letters. And thanks to  the fact that because of Covid DH is working remotely for the next fairly indefinite future (at least until next summer, his employer says), having an uninterrupted week of vacation actually happened.  Hallelujah!

At a time when Michigan weather was turning grey and wet and chilly, it was absolutely revitalizing to jet off to Colorado with it's blue, blue, blue sunny skies. I cannot tell you how refreshed and energetic I felt after just a few days.  I think my batteries got fully recharged.

not clouds: white smoke from a distant wildfire

The main point of this trip was not to sight-see around the Rocky Mountains.  It was to return to one particular place we'd been back in 2016, when DH took me to Colorado the first time to show me some of the places he goes when he's on test trips (for work) at altitude.  Our destination was Breckenridge, and the plan was to HIKE.  Specifically, to hike the Peaks Trail that runs between Breckenridge and Frisco.  I wanted to hike that trail. All 8 miles of it.  In 2016, we'd done about a mile, then turned around and went back, due to storm clouds rolling in. This time, I wanted to hike the entire thing, no matter what.  I may have become a little fanatical about it.

I'll cut right to the chase and say that WE DID IT!!  We took a couple days of short hikes to acclimate to altitude, and worked into it.  The third day we were in Breckenridge, we packed a backpack with water, sandwich wraps for lunch, as well as a multitude of snacks containing both protein and carbs, and hit the trail at 9:00 a.m.  Face it, we're middle aged and both of us are overweight.  We wanted to have as many daylight hours as possible to hike this trail because we weren't going to stop until we reached the Frisco end of it.  Well, we anticipated that we'd make lots of rest stops, but we weren't going to call it a day until we'd reached the Frisco.

It wasn't nearly as bad as DH thought it would be, he later confessed to me.  The longest we'd hiked this year so far had been 4 miles, and that had been tough for him.  He'd kind of been dreading the Peaks Trail, but also kind of wanted to master it. We did do it the easy way, from Breck to Frisco, which has more downhill portions than if you hike it from Frisco to Breckenridge.  With rest stops, as well as a stop for lunch (ham, aged cheddar cheese, lettuce, red pepper and onion in a spinach wrap, YUM), the trail took us 5 hours and 10 minutes start to finish.

That was the longest one-day hike we did.  And we're not exactly sure what the true length of the trail is.  One sign says 8 miles, another says 10, along the way there are signs that say Breck 3mi Frisco 5mi as well as Breck 4mi Frisco 6mi. Interesting math out there in the wilderness. Whatever length it was, it was a very nice hike, with lots of changes of scenery, and I could easily add over a dozen more pictures that I took along the way.

The other days we did shorter hikes, basically whatever area struck our fancy.  We did some hiking just outside of town and basically on the ski hills of Breckenridge.  That was where we saw a collective total of 5 moose in one day, three of which were bulls, and two of whom wanted to walk on the trail we were currently on.  When you confront a moose on the trail, you backtrack and yield the trail to the moose!

moose, beside the trail we'd intended to follow

Seeing--and hearing, the bulls were bellowing--moose was exciting. I'll say that it makes your heart race when you come around a corner to find a moose only 10 yards away from you! I did not expect to have close encounters of the moose kind.

We also hiked to see a few waterfalls and lakes.  The first ones we thought would be easy, as the trail was rated 'moderate', the same as the Peaks Trail we'd mastered earlier in the week, and it was only 1.3 miles to the waterfall plus another 0.4 miles to the lake.

Um, it was not easy.  It wasn't even moderate in some (alot of) parts. I think it was miscategorized on our list of trails.  Or a sadist rated it as moderate.  It was the longest 1.7 miles I've hiked in my life.  In fact, the round trip (so, 3.4 miles?) took us only 40 minutes shorter than the 8+ miles of the Peaks Trail.  The terrain was interesting, and when was over, we were glad we'd hiked it. But truly, it was grueling. We thought about quitting a few times, and each time we met up with hikers older than us coming back from the end of the trail who told us seeing the lake would be worth it.  How could we quit when 70 & 80 year olds had made it to the lake??

When the sign points up, you go UP!

It seemed like the trail was pretty much one unending trip up.  Up over big rocks, up through winding forest trail, up across a fallen log that was the bridge to get over a creek, up up up until you were above the tree line.  Then, you reached the waterfall.  And if you wanted to continue to the lake, you went up even more!  But the lake was quite a sight when we reached it.  Elevation there was over 12,000 feet.

Like our elders said, we were glad we'd soldiered on and made it to the far end of the trail.  

A much easier lake and waterfall hike followed the next day.  We first drove to the end of the road where you could park and walk along the top of a dam.  It was incredibly windy (and cold!) on the dam, so we quickly walked across that, then meandered down another trail that was a less direct path back to where we'd parked.  In our absence, a mama goat and her kid had decided that the parking area was a great place to lick for minerals.

So we had close encounters of the mountain goat kind that day.

We waited for access to our vehicle, then drove back down the road to another parking area, where you could walk down to the lower lake below the dam.  Some more hiking commenced as we explored that area and tried to figure out if there was a way to cross the lake to get to a trail we could see on the other side.

 

Without getting our feet wet, there wasn't.  And neither of us particularly cared for the idea of having wet feet.  So it was back to the car, and down the road in search of the head of the trail we wanted to explore on the other side of the lake.

We did find it; not a road but more of a trail marked for foot and orv traffic.  The sign had a picture of a Jeep on it, and as DH said, "we're driving a Jeep" (a crossover of a Jeep, but still a Jeep), so he turned off onto that path and drove until he came to a turnout for parking.  

From there, we followed the path on foot until we came to a large waterfall. It was a great place to sit and have some lunch, so we did.

I am really glad we were able to get away and go hiking in Colorado, even if it was a year later than we'd intended.  It was such a great trip, especially in light of all the craziness and unpredictability that has been 2020. I think that we are now mentally ready to handle whatever the remainder of this year brings our way.