We went up to my sister's house in Illinois (hi Karen!) and that entailed a TON of preparation. It was our first major trip with two kids and they both handled it better than I thought they would. I've got such good kids! We started up on Tuesday evening and made it about 4½ hours up the road to a hotel. None of us slept well since we were all too tired and in a strange place, but we made it up to my sister's by about 3:00 on Wednesday. We made reeeaaaallly bad time due to a number of factors, but we did get there. And, we got a really good up-close look at the St. Louis Arch as we drove by on that frontage road. No, we didn't mean to be there. ;-)
Thursday we went to one of Karen's knitting friend's house and had a great Thanksgiving meal! Karen and I made two apple pies (delicious!!) and yam balls (which were good--but her layered yams are much better) that morning so we were tired by the time evening came around. After we ate the kids played and the rest of us sat around and gabbed and knitted. Well, the men sat around and the women knitted. ;-)
Friday Greg (my wonderful husband) replaced the door that goes from Karen's family room to the garage with a 2-hour door, which also involved widening the opening. It'll now be possible to get furniture through that door which should greatly simplify things when she moves. Then Karen and Greg put insulation on the hot water pipes in the crawl space which made a HUGE difference in the length of time it takes to get hot water to her half-bath. We got back on the road at about 2:15 on Saturday afternoon, after Ryan had his nap and Greg and Karen finished up a few things. We made excellent time home and got to our house just after midnight. That included a one-hour stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner, which was delicious.
One of the projects I took along was a Christmas present for someone (and I'm not saying who or posting a pic until after Christmas) and I managed to finish it today. More details later.
Now I just have to finish about
I'm almost done with Greg's Christmas stocking, which I'm trying to copy from a stocking my mom made for me when I was very young. It's not too bad--I managed to match the cream and red she used, although the green is a little darker. I'm going to redo the top band with his name on it because I relaxed a bit too much on the colorwork. I was worried about being too tight on it, which I what I usually do, but went a bit overboard. I've tried pulling on various things but it's such a jumble back there that I think it'll be easier to just redo it. Then I need to do Gillian's stocking and Ryan's stocking. I figure that they do have back-up stockings from last year, which were just pre-printed things we stitched up, so we can use those if I don't manage to get them done.
And tonight I picked up my Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl again and did four more rows! That's about 45 minutes at this point, so I'm not doing too badly. It's the first project I've done where there's something to do on the purl rows, too, so it's not as easy to catch mistakes as I'm used to. So now I'm up to row 87, woo hoo!
I haven't been feeling well (headache, sinuses bothering me, nauseau, etc) so I had a little (two hours but with tons of interruptions) nap today. Poor Greg had this when we got home, and I remember he crawled into bed and stayed there for a while on Sunday, poor guy. On the upside, it doesn't seem to last very long. I missed knitting night tonight, and I didn't go to my Sew and Sews meeting last night (quilting group), but hopefully I'll kick this thing and start feeling like I want to leave the house again other than to take Gillian to school and pick her up. Whine whine whine. At least it's a minor thing that should pass quickly. I have too much knitting and cleaning to do to be ill for long! :-)
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