A Visit

Once a year my dear friend Jill comes to my neck of the woods for work, and this year she came a day early to spend a little bit of time with us last weekend.

We had a lovely time. I picked her up at the airport on Saturday morning (she made it here in spite of our terrible weather). On the way home we went to Amazing Yarns. This is a lovely shop. It's built inside the house of one of the owners in the Emerald Hills part of Redwood City, and it's a beautiful area. The shop was open in spite of the fact that she had no power, which made it a little bit dark but not as bad as you would think, because the building has lots of skylights. We admired lots of yarn, and I was sorely tempted by some Mountain Colors wool to make the Koolhaas Hat, but I decided to wait until I had a chance to thoroughly inspect my stash for possibilities.

We had hoped to go into San Francisco that afternoon but the wind, rain, and hail (yes, hail) made us opt for a quiet afternoon at home instead. And a quiet afternoon we did have. Punkin decided she wanted to make a quilt for her doll, so we worked on that together for a while. Here's the layout we decided on:


It's her first quilting project (and only her second sewing project) and she's already got almost half the blocks sewn together - by hand!

and here are Punkin and Jill working on their projects on the sofa (made possible by Buddy's afternoon nap)


We exchanged Christmas presents. The kids and the Italian got some great toys, and I got this!


I had almost bought one for myself after reading Rachael'spost about them, but decided not to. I love it!

And what's the backdrop for the abacus bracelet?


I promised a progress shot, I just didn't realize I would be almost finished by the time I got around to photographing it! This is the Seraphim Shawlthat I am making for my mother out of Malabrigo Lace. It is wonderfully soft, and almost finished - I am binding off. I hope to get it washed and blocked today, but don't know if that will really happen.

I'm excited to finish this, I hope my mother will enjoy it. Her birthday is in early February, but I'm going to go ahead and send it as soon as it's finished and photographed.

I'm also excited to work on something else - maybe I'll finish Wrapped in Tradition, or the Italian's socks, or Buddy's sweater...

We had a lovely rest of the weekend. On Sunday afternoon we went to Artfibers, a lovely shop with beautiful yarns, and I didn't buy anything. After that we met up with some friends and walked around in Chinatown and North Beach (that's San Francisco!) and then had a great dinner. Great weekend!

It was good to have a great weekend, because the Italian has been away this week and it's a long slog doing the solo parenting thing. Especially since I decided to do some sleep training and Buddy didn't fall asleep until 11:15 tonight...

Wish me luck for tomorrow!