A Wild Pixiemama visits!

 We had a visitor yesterday! Well technically we've been planning it for a little while, though I kind of half wonder if Tilmani actually noticed since he always forgets I write almost everything down on the calendar, which he never looks at in spite of it being on the wall at head height and huge.  Apparently he's not the only person in the universe who does this, but it is kind of funny.

 Anyway, PixieMama is a friend from college, who I pretty much haven't seen since her daughter was about Beans age. Her daughter is now... 12 I think? I'm probably getting that wrong.

 We've talked since then, just not gotten together, so we finally arranged for her to drop in on her way back from jumping through hoops in the Surrogacy Circus. ((She's getting ready to be a Surrogate mom for the second time, which is totally badass of her and you can check her out in my sidebar links under Adventures in Surrogacy.))

 But yeah, she visited and it was a blast! I spent far too much time apologizing, which for me is kind of normal but I'm working on it, we had take out pizza, and the kids thought she was AMAZING.
 She even put up with me yarn geeking. ((I did refrain from displaying the ENTIRE stash... just a significant chunk of it.)) and she picked some yarn she liked for a cowl that I'm going to make her. She picked out the "Hologram Moth" colorway from Sanguine Gryphon, and we found some cool sort of earthy browny-purpley-bronzy beads that actually look really good with it, since the yarn while mostly green has hints of a similar browny-purply-bronze. All in all great because I wasn't actually sure what to do with either, until we arrived at that project and they just sorta clicked. Sometimes going with your gut on craft stuff just works out.

PixieMama's future Cowl

 On an equally exciting note: Bean is now mobile, so batten down the hatches everyone! He's not officially crawling but he's scooting all over the place, and will occasionally pause and heft himself mostly into the crawl position, then decide that this is too frustrating and go back to scooting along. I'm watching him belly-scoot around and check out his brothers big plastic blocks, which is sorta funny, because MiniMonster is checking out Bean's play seat and spinning the rattles and mirrors, so basically they're both playing with each others toys. The grass is always greener and all that!

 PixieMama: the kids thought you were cooler than ice cream, and we'd love to see you any time!

Dark Water

This is the Holden Shawlette, ((look for the pattern on Ravelry)). I actually did this one some time back, but never got around to wetting it down and pinning it to block it into shape. So I did.

 It's pinned to one of our bathroom towels on top of an indoor-outdoor carpet in the basement that's there to keep feet from freezing if we dash downstairs to throw something in the laundry. The yarns are Blue Herons "Rayon Metallic" for the stockinette sections, and Dream in Color "Smooshy" for the lace.I originally wanted to do it all in the Rayon Metallic, but the skein had been turned into a gordian knot by impatient winding *cough* I'm looking at you Tilmani...*cough*...So I wasn't able to actually USE all of it. So I switched to some 'Dream in Color' I had around and created my first two color Holden Shawl. I'm actually working on a second one now, but it's for a friends daughter. It's still in the works but I've got a decent photo of it still on the needles anyway.  It's actually kind of wild how much more clear the stitch definition is on the green "Springtime" colorway from Knitpicks than it was with the Plum Paisley Smooshy.

Foo Dogs steaming up the Windows

It's brutally cold outside today, mostly because of the wind, though we've got some warnings that there might be an really intensive storm moving in? I'm not really sure if it will hit us or not though.

I'm back working on the Yvonne sweater. On the one hand I'm going through the balls of yarn fairly fast, on the other hand, I still have six left. Probably five before the end of the night. Really makes you boggle if you stop to think about the yardage involved. I mean thats a LOT of yarn.

We also actually have living room furniture now: An really handsome end table, a couch and a chair. The TV/entertainment equiptment is one of my husbands metal stands. I'm not sure if this one was from a bakery or if it was purchased from a closing clothing store, but it works well for the task. Down the road we'll have to contain the wires and stuff, but it's a good jumping off point, and it's nice to be able to sit in the Living room and look out the big bay window.

One of the other tasks planned is to replace or cover the destroyed wood on the bay window, which has taken quite a lot of damage over time. We have the stuff to do it, it just needs a little time.

Also one of the epic moments of the night was Mini Monster deciding to -growl- in his sleep. Not snore. GROWL. He was snoozing away and we suddenly hear: "errrrRRRRRRRRRRrrr." in an angry little voice. He was fine (we checked.) but it was comical as hell.