A Merry Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice everyone! DH and Girlfriend are off from work and school, respectively, for this and next week and we’ve been happily occupying ourselves with fun. Last night my knitting buddies came over for coffee, brownies and convivial knitting. Today my in-laws came over and my fabulous MIL took me and Girlfriend shopping. And when I say shopping, I mean shopping. Girlfriend was gifted with two dresses, tights and a beautiful winter coat from Hanna Andersson. I was gifted with a nice shirt and a Christmas pudding mold from Williams Sonoma (I could spent my life in there). And we both were treated to a lovely lunch. We had a wonderful girl time!

In other news of fun, my birthday party last weekend was great! Many friends and family attended, wine glasses were broken, pictures were knocked from walls, strings of lights fell. It was rockin’. I made a chocolate chip pound cake with chocolate buttercream frosting from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Whimsical Bakehouse, by Kaye Hansen and Liv Hansen, a mother and daughter team. This is one of the most amazing cake baking and decorating books I have ever seen. And the recipes are sooooo good. Yum. I also made a blueberry butter cake for those few crazy people who don’t like chocolate :). A wonderful time was had by all!

I have to admit that I was a bad mother and a bad citizen of the earth this week. I was getting sick and tired of my daughter’s walking sticks who lived in an aquarium thing with a kitchen towel over it. Every so often we put some blackberry leaves in there and sprayed them with water. Anyway, guess who ended up doing all the work for them? Yeah, me. And, I was getting stressed out that they were having a terrible existence, etc. I know they’re bugs–leave me alone. I worry. So, a couple of nights ago I thought I would put them and me out of our misery by putting them outside–figuring that they would freeze to death. I told Girlfriend I was “giving them some air,” which she thought was a fine idea. Well, as it turns out, I was giving them some air. The kitchen towel blew off and they all escaped onto the front porch and into the garden. Now, among other things, we have a walking stick living in the wreath on our door. It’s actually quite funny and cute, but I’m worried that I have somehow loosed a plague upon Seattle. Do walking sticks take over ecosystems? Ack.

I am busily finishing up knitting projects. I am determined to finish everything except for the Fiber Trends Peace shawl and the River Rapids socks from Sock Bug by the New Year. So far, I am making good progress. I finally blocked the Fiber Trends Field of Flowers shawl I finished two years ago, I finished and sewed Molly’s baby sweater from Anny Blatt #9, finished the Albhinn cowl from Knitty, and bought the buttons for Martha from Rowan. I also frogged the Snow Forest sweater from Rowan that I made when I was pregnant–which was huge on me pregnant and even more huge on me post-pregnancy. It’s been a source of disappointment to me ever since and so I frogged it and I plan to reknit it in a smaller size. I now need to sew the buttons on Martha and buy and sew the zipper into Saranac from Knitty. Pictures some day.

On a Bear update: he has been transferred to a rehab center where he is getting daily OT and PT. His speech is almost perfect (I saw him today and I didn’t really get any sense of speech difficulties). His left side is non-working so far, but he does have sensation–which is great and quite promising!! He mostly gets around via wheelchair, but he is practicing with a walker (which is unbelievably great since he doesn’t have the ability to move his left side). It turns out that he may have to have brain surgery after all, which is quite scary, so we still need people to send good get well vibes to him!