My Best Friend's a Dork

God Bless us, Everyone.

"Merry Christmas", courtesy of the chocolate card Jess got from her Braille teacher.

Christmas knitting and an early gift.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday.

I have promised you some finished objects.

This is one of Jess' Christmas gifts. Shhh...Don't tell.

The Powerpuff Girls. Crocheted bodies, knitted hair and dresses. Hopefully she'll really like them.

A couple of her teachers will be getting Calorimetry for Christmas. I made a few out of some leftover Malabrigo in "Glazed Carrot".

Her OT will get a Pretty Thing In a Funky shade of Koigu.

Christmas has come early to the Vaughan house. At least, my Christmas. Nate and Jess decided that this year I needed to get a really awesome gift.

 

I think my Ashford Traveller fits that category.

Where's erin??

She's sleeping, or has been for the majority of the time she has been away.  Sorry, facebook has put me in the habit of referring to myself in the third-person.

So, why all the sleeping? It seems Jess is due to have a little brother or sister,  (Don't say both! I don't think I could handle two at a time!) by Mid-June.

Today I am able to function without any narcoleptic tendencies, so I am out and about. Hopefully, knitting will resume. I need to get caught up for Christmas.

Running Behind

Are you really surprised?

Mojo Jojo appeared at my house On Halloween. "He" won best costume at the party we attended. (I have a feeling that had more to do with Mojo's secret identity though.)

I would put a picture of him up, but I cannot fond my cable to upload from my camera. Hopefully a picture will appear here later this week.

I wasn't up for carving pumpkins, so we made paper Jack O' Lanterns, with fake candles. Happy Halloween, late as usual.

random thoughts

So, it's that time of year again, where much goes on, but so much of it in secret. Yes, there is some Christmas knitting, but I cannot show you most of it, yet.

There are preperations for what I affectionately call, "Natefest". Nate's birthday and all his relatives that are able to come visit for his birthday, do. That's coming up this weekend, into next week.

Jess' Mojo Jojo costume is slowly coming along, mostly because I am not enthusiastic about making it.

Jess' bedroom is still not done. There are some large items still in her bedroom that I need removed before that can progress.

I've been working on lots of little projects, but I really want another big project to work on, although, I cannot seem to pick one. Nothing in particular calls to me.

I have been MIA at my local knitting meet-ups. Crazy schedules, and fall allergies have taken their toll. Once our new neighbors have moved in, things should calm down some. I miss my knitting peeps.

St Louis Trip Friday -Carma Style

Yes, I do realize this was 3 weeks ago but I'm going with the better late than never theory... don't ruin it for me. 

After leaving erin's amazingly fantastic house (seriously, it's a historical treasure trove) we started on our way to St Louis. I'm sure erin was concerned how long it was going to take us since I had to make a potty stop before we even got on the highway... 4-ish miles from her house. And, yes, I did go before we left her house. 

Anyway, Bert (the trip mascot lovingly knit by erin) had his first car ride in Engrid.

He seemed pleased propped up there with the Buddhas and made a fantastic car companion. 

Although he was a little concerned at first....

Were we being stalked through the flatlands of Southern IL? 

No, alas, it was erin. The downside of the trip was that we had to schlep into St. Louis separately to prevent me from having to drive 2 hours, one way, in the wrong direction on Sunday to take her home. Not a huge deal really but it would have made things a touch more easy if we were both in the same car when we did our creative tour of St. Louis ("Do you have any idea where we are?" "Nope, you?" "Nope, K call you back").

We did finally make it to our hotel... The Moonrise (check out erin's link... I'm no good with the linky stuff... be thankful I'm posting m'kay?)

After getting settled into our room we headed for the Cubs/ Cards game. As erin has mentioned I am a Cubs fan... She is a fan of anyone playing the Cubs. My favorite line from the night??? When the extremely packed Metro pulled up to take us to the game jam packed FULL of red shirts, erin says to me, "You're gonna get mugged" :) Thankfully the people of St Louis (and Cardinals Fans) not nearly as scary as I thought they were going to be. We made it to the game in one piece, albeit a little late. Eh, that's why baseball has at least 9 innings. 

Now, I am not THAT into sports but I LOVE me some baseball. It is particularly interesting to note that for most of my life I have lived in states with no professional baseball programs (Indiana and Iowa). I can really get behind going to a baseball game and I can't thank erin enough for putting up with the Cubs with me (I think it helped they lost).

Bert enjoyed the game too. 

erin and I both knit a titch at the game but no one thought to immortalize that on film, or you know digital stuff. Evidently the weekend before (or sometime earlier that week?) there was a StitchNPitch at Busch Stadium which, I think, softened the crowd to a coupla knitters in their midst. Hey, they made their peace with a Cubs fan... knitters were a piece of cake. 

I would like it noted that the gentleman sitting next to me did tell me that I was the nicest Cubs fan he had ever met. What can I say? I live in Iowa... we're  (mostly) nice folk. 

I think being there with this one probably helped things too...

Won't You be my Neighbor?

Welcome neighbors!



Nate's lil' brother is moving in next door.  We're terribly excited. Nate's trying to figure out how and where to cut a trail through the woods for a direct route. Lil' brother and his wife just might want to reconsider this. I mean, would you want to live next to us?

So, Jesse's been asking me to make her some Powerpuff Girl dolls. So far I've put her off. What she doesn't know is I am making them for her in secret. so far, I have a very angry looking Blossom. As soon as I get the other two done, I'll post a picture.

In the meantime, I have to work on a Mojo Jojo costume.

Another year...

...another opportunity for me to completely forget about the blogoversary. Thank you Teena in Toronto for pointing it out to me. I forget every year. 4 years ago yesterday. a drink may be in order.

Saturday and Sunday in St. Louis (erin)

Saturday, we slept late, and checked out the Delmar Loop. Lots of vintage shopping, boutiques, and great little restaurants.

Carma found some great things in Tag, and I bought some things in Ziezo. We shopped Phoenix Rising, and bought mustaches at the Avalon Exchange, to resurrect an old joke.(Some of you might remember the picture from the old blog.)  Of course after the drinks, we forgot about the mustaches. Speaking of, Carma, do happen to have mine? I cannot find it anywhere.

That afternoon there was a hot air balloon race, so we headed up the the rooftop bar in the hotel, and had a great time, until the tall folk showed up.

But, we did meet the owner of the hotel, he and his companion were delightful. So about three hours later, (We had been joking saying we went up for a drink and three hours later stumbled back to our room, until we realized that it had actually been three hours.) 

We then jumped on the Metro link to head back out to the mall to eat at PF Chang's. This is where we learned that I can drink, and still use chopsticks.

Sunday, we again slept late in our insanely comfortable, but very tall beds, checked out, ate at Blueberry Hill, checked out a few more shops, including Knitty Couture, and then we went our separate ways home.

I leave you with a picture of our beds. The comment was made that one looks like it exploded, while the other one looks barely slept in. I leave it to you to guess which bed was mine and which was Carma's.

St. Louis: Friday, as told by erin.

So, St. Louis was a blast. I think Carma has more pictures than I do, or at least has ones that fill in the gaps of what I do not have.

After some creative navigating on our part, we first headed for the St. Louis Galleria, to take care of a few things on our to do list, and kill time before check-in at the hotel.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a L'Occitane. I encourage you to check out their story, being a parent of a low-visioned child.

I cannot say enough about our hotel, the Moonrise. I loved it. The rooms, the staff, the location, the rooftop bar, all of it was wonderful.Even Bert, our trip mascot liked it.

We were late to the game, but really when Carma and I are together, we are rarely on time for anything. It was a great game, tied up in the 9th, and won when Matt Holliday hit a home-run, and the stadium erupted.

(The above photo taken while the cubs were still ahead. Note the smile on the Cubs fan face.)

Then, there was the adventure of how to get back to our room. We had taken the Metro-link to the stadium, and failed to realize the crush of humanity we'd meet after the game.

The picture does not even come close to truly representing how many people were waiting to board the Metro link. After a bit more creative navigating, we found a far less crowded station and headed for our room.

Carma, have I left anything out?