Little bit o' this, little bit o' that

Blogging had to go further down the list than I had originally anticipated this week, but now it just means I have a lot to share with you today. Scooter went on vacation as of this past Monday, so today is his last day of it, until closer to Christmas when he will take another week. We made no concrete plans so we could be flexible and in his words, "just do nothing if that's what we want to do". Being retired, I went with whatever he wanted, since I pretty much get to do whatever I want on a daily basis now. The only thing we really wanted to do was make a trip to visit my in-laws (I adore those people!) in Idaho, but after watching the weather reports at the beginning of the week, we had to put it on hold. My SUV is four wheel drive, but very often, the roads are completely shut down coming back over Donner Summit and we didn't want to risk Scooter not being able to get back into his office this Monday. Forecasters are saying anywhere from 2-4 FEET of snow up the hill. When that much snow hits all at once, it usually means that is when Scooter has to really step up his game to make sure the trains can get through the passes, no matter where he happens to be. So, we did the staycation thing and have had an awesome week!!!

For quite some time now, we have been wanting to do a makeover in our sunroom. Clean and rearrange things, and make it more energy efficient. The sunroom was added onto our house over 10 years ago, and we aren't real sure how much heating and a/c we are conserving since it's pretty much glass on three sides. Scooter surprised me the other night while I was at my knit night. When I got home, he had washed the windows, put some heavy duty plastic over the windows, cleaned the blinds and hung them back up. It's great!!! We don't like closing that room off from the rest of the house, because we use it all the time year round. We can already tell a difference in the temperature, and now I want to get rid of some miscellaneous pieces of furniture, etc., and replace it with some wicker and nice rugs. That was a real accomplishment for the week. We are loving it so far!

We have also enjoyed dinner and lunches out with some other retired friends of ours, and spent time with my kids and their families. In between, I have encouraged Scooter to spend as much time as he wanted with his gun club, and he has had a fantastic time!! While he was at the range with a friend of ours yesterday, I took the opportunity to drop by my niece's house. She only lives about three blocks over from me, so we had a very nice visit. She works out of her home, so I don't like to disturb her much during the week, but it's always fun seeing her and her three boys. Her youngest son asked me to knit him a sweater...wow!!!! He's seven and is the cutest little guy with mega personality! I will have to see what I can do after Christmas..maybe I can get by with knitting him a hat for Christmas? When her middle son was born, I had just begun knitting again after a brief hiatus, and I knitted him a little cardigan. It was also when self-striping yarn was becoming high fashion in the yarn world and I remember being so fascinated with it. I know it was a Sirdar pattern I used, as well as Sirdar Snuggly yarn, but I can't remember the name of the pattern (or number as Sirdar likes to do) I used. If I find it though, I will definitely give proper credit to Sirdar. My niece still has it hanging in her little boy's bedroom closet, all nice and clean after nearly 9 years! She let me take pictures of it, so here it is:

The pattern has set in sleeves and I was very surprised to see that I hadn't done such a bad job of finishing. It looks bigger here than what it really is; I think I made a 3-6 month size. I loved knitting it!!!

After the visit with my niece and her family, I continued on to my friend's house (the wife of the friend Scooter was at the range with). I wanted to deliver the baby ensemble I knitted for her to give to her soon to be born great nephew. I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Grayson will have a complete outfit...cardigan, hat, socks, and mitts. The cardigan is a neck down raglan by Diane Soucy of Knitting Pure and Simple. The hat is called Welcome to the World Newborn Hat, the socks are North Country Cotton Baby Socks, and the mitts are Baby Mittens by Malin Nilsson. I have all of these linked on my project page on Ravelry, but if you aren't on Ravelry (you should be!) and would like more information, leave me a comment and I will get it to you. I used Plymouth Encore Colorspun Worsted for the cardi, and hat, and Plymouth Dreambaby DK for the socks and mitts. I'm so glad I was able to get both yarns in the same colorway! Oh, and all but the cardi are free patterns!


I think I will wrap this up for now. We are expecting a pretty good rainy cold front to come in today and I'd like to get a walk in with Maggie before that happens. I do have more knitting to show you though, and some more news, so I will try to get back here before too long again. I hope y'all have a wonderful, warm weekend!!!