Finds and close to finished

We came up on Thursday and the Fisherman stopped at one of his favorite fishing holes to see how The Shasta River was doing.  The smell of the Scotch Broom drew me in.  We decided to pick some and when we drew up to the cabin the blue flowers were blooming, and perfect so I added them.

I started knitting Thursday night on a baby sweater,  it is a gift for a grandmother to give to her first grand-daughter.  She has 6 grandsons and this will be the first girl.  When they were changing residences we bought a loveseat, lamp, and some other goodies from their sale.  This pattern is one of my favorite easies.  It is made with Caron SImply Soft yarn this is my go to yarn for people who I don't know well and it is wash and wear, no worries.  I will probably make a hat and bunny slippers to go with it.

The color doesn't show as well as I would like in this picture, but the yarn is soft pink and the multi is a pink ombre.  I don't know if I like the combination as well as I would like, but it looks better now at this point.

I always snort when I say this is a 5 hour sweater.  It is from Ravelry and it is the 

Five hour baby boy sweater.  It is a great pattern and I can play with it.  It takes more than 5 hours, at least I think it does.  I knit Continental and I a pretty fast.  But then I have never just sat and knit on it for 5 hours.  So who knows.  The pattern book underneath was from a local Thrift store.  There are some great ones in the area and I have some goodies I have been picking up.  I think I mentioned the bread maker that had only been used a few times and works marvelously.  If we run out of bread I can make some.  I pre-bagged my measured out flour and have the other ingredients on hand, so easy and it does all the work.  

This is my favorite find.  It is a milk glass footed bowl and was a bargain.  I love milk glass and I was excited by this find.  The basket I will show another day, it was also from a thrift store and will be perfect with yarn in it.  

This little rocker was from the same store, it was too cute to pass up.  The pound puppy was found in a box in the garage, so I brought it along.

The bottle of wine was marvelous, we had it with our Friday night dinner.  I was looking for a wine that didn't give the Fisherman a headache.  I was at Trader Joe's on Greenback in Citrus Heights and ran into the Sommelier, they have now.  She is a wonderful lady who had just started there.  We got in a discussion and I was telling her about the Fisherman and she recommended 9 different wines in my price point of 5 to 6 dollars.  I was going to bring them all up and we decided to leave some at home.  She told me to take pictures of the wine I liked from the choices so I could buy them again.  This was just yummy.  Will buy it again.

Finished object (finally)

Here are 2 photos of my granddaughter in her finished sweater.  I finally sewed in all the ends from the stripes and put on the buttons.  The yarn is from Cascade it is a washable wool blend and great to work with.  The white looking base came from a local thrift store and was a real bargain.  The pink/purple/multi yarn was also Cascade from my local yarn shop, Babetta's.  Babetta helped me pick out the yarn to use for the mix.  I was worried there wouldn't be enough yarn as I had no true pattern I was following and no idea of how much I would need.  The pattern is an amalgam of 3 patterns.  It is a top down raglan with added button bands and hood.  I felt the white based yarn was too much white to stand alone and wanted to add color.  I used the whole skein of the multi yarn.  Of course it is too big, somehow when you go from 18 months size to a size 2 the patterns make a large leap in size, but she is definitely still growing so that isn't a problem And my model is only available every 8-10 weeks or so, so it is a guesstimate.  I finished it the day before we left to come home.

On Sunday grandson came to spend part of the day.  In the background you can see everything from the trip.  It still isn't gone yet, as some is going back with us tomorrow.  He loves his rocking horse and his cowboy hat.  I was very fortunate to find the old timey wooden rocking horse at a garage sale.  It is solid and wonderfully made by somebodies grandmother.  Who would almost be a great great grandmother to my grandson.  When I bought it I didn't even have a hint of grandchildren and I was mocked by my husband and my children for getting it.  Ha jokes on you!  It is painted wonderfully and it rocks great.  The cowboy hat sits on the horses head and when grandson comes he always goes for a ride wearing his hat.  He loves hats and anytime I come across a different one we pick it up.  

Well by for now, off to get better organized for tomorrow morning.

Sunset Views

On Thursday evening when we got to the cabin from Seattle, it had been storming off and on, some places got rain and some did not.  I took these photos from the deck as the sun was getting ready to set.  They are in the order of early to late.

It was very interesting to see the changes.  Friday there was fairly cool, very pleasant and on Saturday it was still cool for our 4 hour drive home.  It is nice to be home, we will be going back up on Tuesday.  So I will have more things to show and tell.

Last Day at Baby Girl's

There she is enjoying a day in the sun (very rare in the Seattle area.)  She loves her babies and playing with them.  Her imagination is very good for a 2.5 year old.

She is doing some play acting here, telling the Fisherman about her activity.

I had hoped to finish the POLE sweater but have run out of time.  I had to check out all my old haunts.  We lived here for 9 years and I know a lot of places to get in trouble.  One of my favorites is a Ben Franklin store, which has yarn, crafts, fabrics and way more ideas than I can even consider.  I always go to see what kind of yarn they have that I must have.  This time though I didn't have anything to catch my eye, not even sock yarn.  I did find some fabric though,  it is a black ground with assorted fish on it.  Years ago they had something similar and I used it to trim Christmas stockings for our son and the Fisherman.  I got 2 yards and it was an extravagance, but I have enough to do some pillow covers and use the extra to trim things.  It will be fun to figure out how to use it.  I also went to 2 Value Villages (a thrift store) and was very tempted by some things but didn't find what I wanted.  Another thrift store and nothing there, but they were all quick stops.  Traffic here is worse than when we lived here.  I complain about Sacramento, that is a piece of cake.  

Baby girl is enjoying her at-home day and so are we, I am doing all the mundane things to get ready to head out in the morning back to the Cabin at the Lake and a day, at least of relaxation before we head home.  

Baby Girl

We are here on the eastside of Seattle, taking care of our darling, adorable granddaughter, who I call "Bubbles."  She is so much fun and and busy, busy.  She is 2 years and 5 months.  Her Mom and Dad are off on a junket to look at Austin, Texas.  So we have 5 days to cherish and spoil our little girl.

"Bubbles" and the Fisherman are watching PBS on the IPad, which she is very proficient on.

This was at nap time yesterday, I think we wore her out. 

                                         
And here she is playing Peek a Boo.  We are having  good time with her.

I made the poor Fisherman go down 5 flights  of stairs, to take this photo.  There were actually a pair and they were fishing together.  I accidentally named this one PLY.  It is so much fun to see them on the water,

We are here at the Cabin for one night.  Tomorrow we are off to meet a videographer  for the Fisherman's project and then on to Seattle area.  Long day.  It is 8 hours to Seattle from here.  The reward at the end is my beautiful baby  girl.  I will definitely be posting pictures of her.  Too sweet 2.5 yrs old.  Talking up a storm, Terrible twos  and everything else that goes with it.

Headed Home

Well we are back home for 4 days and then will be on the road again.  As we were getting ready to leave the cabin and cleaning up the Fisherman told me that the Pelican was in window view, we had already packed the camera so I used my phone, the picture is not that great, but you can get a general idea.

Blurry picture of the Pelican

On the way home we stopped to pick up a vehicle we had left with DD and SIL and spent some time with my darling 3 plus years grandson.  He is adorable, sweet, funny and cute.  We always love spending time with him.

He is always smiling and really is a joy to be with,  he will be 4 in August and is very tall, people think he is 6.

Wow, we did it.  There is still quite a bit of stuff at the home place, but we did get everything here at the Cabin that we needed.  Nothing broke, The Fisherman didn't leave anything littering any roadways on the way here.  The fun part was on the drive up, the winds were 20 to 25 miles per hour.  It was unreal.  We kept checking not a thing budged.  I was very proud of him.

 The picture above is a watercolor that Yetzirah did for me, she lives in the general area of the Cabin and is also a knitter.  She originally lived near the home place, and belonged to the same knitting group I belonged to and I follow her blog.   When we were thinking of finding a place I contacted her and we made a connection it was great.  We plan on doing things together when I am at the Cabin.  Knitting, shopping in neat little shops, hitting up the thrift stores, knitting and talking, talking, talking.

The first morning here I was looking out the bedroom window at this very large white water bird.  At first I thought it was a swan, until it turned it's body and I saw it was a Pelican.  There are numerous places here where the Pelicans migrate to and this lake is one of them.  So far I have only seen one, I keep looking and hoping for more.  I really want to take a photo of one.  They are fascinating funny birds.

This is the yarn that I brought to work on here this summer.  It is in a King size pillow bag and it is stuffed.  It is all my favorite acrylic yarn to play with.  Some is worsted weight and some it DK.  With this yarn I hope to create some hat patterns.  There is some yarn in there I plan on making a baby sweater with, probably The Five Hour Baby pattern.  I love working with the pattern it is so effortless.    I haven't unpacked the yarn yet but that will be this afternoons treat.  So I am off to unpack.