Knitted in the recommended yarn: Noro Kochoran in Colour #1. The Kochoran is a wool/silk/angora blend and knits to a lovely soft fabric. It does not, however, have much memory so the rib is quite loose. No idea why I'm pulling such a silly face!
It took one day of knitting and will be ideal for my trip East!
The pattern is the Hourglass Sweater from Joelle Hoverson' 'Last Minute Knitted Gifts'. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy in the Gothic Rose colourway. It's a 100% superwash merino. I bought 4 skeins online but ran out of wool just below the neckline. I bought an additional skein from Purlescence Yarns - I took the sweater in to match, but even so, the match is not great.
Hopefully they will be a suitable moth deterrent now my source of italian moth repellers is drying up!
He really does have neat stitches. Finlay of course had to join in and so Adam showed him how to do blanket stitch. Finlay had some help with his sewing but Adam sewed all his dinosaur himself.
and like his mother - he has pride in his own creations...
Here is Finlay's dinosaur. We didnt add the eyes and mouths yet because the boys couldnt decide how they should be.
The dinosaurs turned out really well, didn't take too long to make, and they have both become snuggly bedtime pillows.
An irresistable package of tissues with hamsters.
And the inevitable Hello Kitty item. I bought this to hang in my car but the string is too short. I had a Hello Kitty dangly thing in my first car (The Singer Chamois Sport with the brown fur head-lining) and I guess I feel that the current minivan needs more of the sprit of brown fake fur!
There was of course more than this...I came away with a huge bag of stuff for $21. Finlay had $3 to spend and bought a set to make balloon animals and a bubble gun for Adam.
..or Tigger?
I don't think Ned will care!
...hail! The boys had not seen it before and we really interested that it was like little ice cubes.
I'm reading Jeremy Clarkson's And another thing * in which he highlights the ability of the British to talk about the weather. He claims no other country can rival this level of interest in weather. I need to strongly disagree (with this and many other of Jeremy's positions...which is of course the point of reading the book!). Anyway - my point is that Jeremy has clearly never spent much time in California and experienced the media frenzy that weather can generate here. It's especially remarkable in that California weather is nothing if not predictable - this storm was forecast all through the previous week.
* Worryingly my father also recieved this book for Christmas...
I also knocked up a pair of manly mittens for Nigel using some Cascade 220 that I had in stock (!). I had planned to put a red stripe around them, and even took the red wool to Northstar to do it - but somehow the grey mittens were just so mesmerizing that I knitted the entire thing before remembering my red stripe.
Adam did a couple of days of ski school and consolidated his skiing style. He is working on parallel turns and can execute them well on the more gentle slopes.
We had a great day skiing with Adam while Finlay did a 3rd day of lessons. We skied all over the mountain from the top of Mount Pluto back to the village. We really don't have to wait for Adam these days!
Finlay's lessons have really paid off - he was able to ski back to the village without help after the first day:
On our last day we all went skiing together. The boys here in the gondola.
We really had a great time together. It's the first time that we have truly skied all together. Finlay was keen to tell everyone that he skied down Loggers Loop without holding anyone's poles.
The boys were great together; Adam looking after Finlay, and trying to lay down a good set of tracks for F to follow. The follower sometimes wants to go faster though!
Of course what they both really wanted to do was go on the Terrain Parks...but we just watched instead! I believe it's only a matter of time until I'm watching my sons hurtle over these ramps and jumps!
