Nearly better.

And, my goodness, did this take a long time. It's been quite a while since I've gotten by backside kicked by sickness and after this, well, I'm hoping it's much longer before it happens again.

I did, however, put the time spent recuperating to good use. I finished Maris' leggings last night and then decided she needed a cute little hat to match and the hat must have a cute little flower to go with it. Soooo......I cast on for more knitting.

Here's where I was this morning before breakfast:


Let's hope I finish this by Saturday. The girl needs her hat.

Not a lot I can do.

I'm trying to recover from this ick, I really am, but it's taking far longer than I wish. Ah, well, what's a person to do. I had a date with the couch and a blanket on Tuesday and spent the whole day drinking tea and reading The Gathering Storm, which is the newest book from the Wheel of Time series. My mother picked up the first book nearly 20 years ago, but didn't like it so she gave it to my oldest son to read. He loved it and suggested I read it. Since then we've anxiously awaited the release of each new volume as they've come out and we devour them in no time. We love the story. I remember when Aric was going overseas for the military and I had just bought Crown of Thorns. He wanted to take it with him, but I assured him I would ship it the moment I finished reading it. As he's leaving the house to go back to base, I jokingly asked him if he had taken the book and he assured me he hadn't. In fact, he pointed to the coffee table and said, "see, it's right there." Great! Yeah, no, he had taken the dust jacket off the book and slipped it over another so when I sat down to read I was not too pleasantly surprised to find a book I had already read. Aric? He thought it was hilarious. That's like us though....to fight over who gets to read the books first. For this last book, I bought it for his birthday, which is on the 19th. Guess who got the better of whom this time since he's now getting a 'used' book for a gift. Yep, I read the whole thing, all 780 pages before I'm giving it to him. I think that's pretty funny.

The rest of my evenings this week have been spent working on Maris' birthday present. I'm much further along than this and I only realized last night that the first burgundy stripe has a mistake. I accidently knit 2 consecutive rows instead of knitting and then purling so I have an extra row in there. Huh! Think she'll notice if I don't say anything? I'm not telling and I'm not taking it out. Maris is an accessory kind of girl so I know she'll love them. She's turning 4 and already has 'her style' going on. Good for her.



I'm hoping I feel better long before I get them completed because it's taking a long time to get through this project. The directions say you can do it in a weekend. Well, not me. I'm not a fast knitter and I could only finish that soon if my weekends were 8 days long. Here's to completing many rows this weekend and to feeling much better by Monday.

Wandering Son Update

Those of you who have been around for a while will know two things about me. 1. that my son, Alex,  lives in Taiwan and 2. we are a family of storytellers for as far back as I can remember. Here's my latest email from Alex that covers both areas. I just had to post this. He cracks me up!

It's Halloween Week in Taiwan. The cuteness of Asia babies is intensified even further and we get to play fun games and parade from class to class bellowing "TRICK OR TREAT! SMELL MY FEET!" ad infinitum.


For this year, my two main activities are 1) an impromptu first-person story about accidentally knocking on my neighborhood witch's door and, to my dismay, having her demand a birthday cake or my fingers. After delivering the birthday cake she begins to cry and admits that the source of her vileness is the misfortune of having her birthday fall on Halloween and hence everyone always forgetting to tell her Happy Birthday.

2) I colored about 50 orange ping pong balls to look like "witch eyeballs" and then carried them around in an orange pumpkin trash can. Kids throw the balls in the trash can for sugary prizes. It went over very well on Wednesday and Thursday and I was hoping for the same success this evening. Unfortunately, we never had the opportunity to play...

To transport the game from school to school, I put the trash can full of ping pong balls between my legs on my scooter. We have a bit of a weather system coming in this weekend and it was quite windy outside. As I accelerated at a green light a big gust came in and blew the trash can off of my scooter. The top dislodged and my fifty hand-colored witch eyeballs spilled out and began blowing around an intersection full of cars and scooters. Not even just rolling, the gust was actually taking the balls up into the air! I had ten minutes to get to work and unfortunately could only observe the hilarity of this situation for a minute or two before speeding off to work with a tinge of guilt for littering.

LOVEMYLIFE!
ALEX

Little Bit of Done!

I've made several cotton dishcloths that will be part of Christmas packages for my siblings. I like the cloths because they're easy to make and hold up to a great deal of abuse. Personally, I don't really care for them as dishcloths, but I do like them for scrubbing walls and floors around the house. This morning, I finished my last one and I think it's my favorite as far as simplicity, but also for the looks factor. I love the stripe right through the middle. I found the pattern here.

You'll have to forgive the quality of the picture (it was early this morning), and the fact that it's not complete in the picture (I did finish it), aaaand the fact that it's upside down (did I mention it was early this morning?)

Please don't leave!

It's too soon! I'm not ready for Autumn to leave me. I haven't made pumpkin pie, I haven't raked up all the leaves, my eyes haven't seen enough of the glorious colors, I haven't walked in the woods enough, I haven't done this.....I haven't done that....I haven't.....

The bittersweet never made it into the vase on my kitchen windowsill.

So many berries dried on the vines.

Leaves are still accumulating on the bridges...

although a few have been captured in the birdbath.

The water is still flowing freely through the culvert. I know because I hung my head over the end to see. See?

The woods are keeping watch for me....

with the help of cat tails who peer over the top of dried grasses and shrubs. They're holding on to Autumn as long as they can, but the woods and I fear it is to no avail. Winter, bless her blustery heart, is on her way. (Please don't tell Autumn, but I actually l.o.v.e. Winter as well.)

But, really, it's too soon for Autumn to leave me.

Still weekending.

When the out-of-doors draws at me, begs me to come play in the woods, I don't resist. I'm happiest in the woods and on the water, and I simply must spend as much time as possible experiencing all this wonderful world has to offer. That's how we ended up on the road again just before sunrise. I knew of a beautiful nature preserve that I was hoping would allow us to paddle on the lake, but the sign clearly said, "No Boating". Scrooges. Fine, we'll just hike the trails around the lake. It was cold, make no mistake about that, but the cold is no deterrent when the woods are alive with color.

Interesting, the frost has begun to melt on the boardwalk except where there are shadows.

I know you wish you were there with us. Go ahead, you can admit it.

What a pretty carpet to walk on.

Told you it was cold out. I noticed the frost outlines as soon as we got out of the truck.

Close-up of frost on the railings of the boardwalk. I was so excited because I finally figured out how to use the manual focus on my camera. To think I've been trying to use the limited macro setting to do this same thing, and without success, I might add.

What would an early morning walk be like without a bit of reflection?

Pretty isn't it?

My favorite time of the year.

It was very early morning, but not the sunrise paddle that was planned because someone was a bit lazy and didn't get out of bed in time. The decision to sleep in was regretted on the drive down to the lake as the rising sun suddenly appeared perfectly framed atop a farm as it cleared the thick fog. Sleep is definitely overrated when you can experience nature at it's most beautiful. Unfortunately, Brent took the pictures of the sunrise and I don't have them here to post.

Still, this was the view when we launched.




At times the fog was thick and swirling across the water and then a slight breeze would kick up and the fog would clear enough to provide us with these beautiful visions.
.



We played around in the smaller pond for a bit before meandering our way back up the creek and into the big lake.




Oh, it turned out to be a lovely morning for a paddle. Quiet, crisp air, beautiful sounds from wildlife.

I might have learned my lesson about not sleeping in when I could be paddling rivers and lakes. Silly me.