All kinds of fun

I took the last few days off to go to Ohio and help my mom out for a bit (she had surgery so she only has the use of one hand right now). Among my duties:

• chauffeuring (lots and lots)
• cooking for us to eat immediately, as well as cooking things and freezing them for her to eat later
• chopping/shredding/grating to make cooking easier with one hand after I leave
  
• trash collecting around the house
• hair washing
• moving large items
• etc.

It seemed to be helpful for her...though the time went by really fast!

Here's one thing we saw on our foray to the local Whole Foods:

I have never seen ostrich eggs in the store before. It was tempting, but we had no clue what we'd do with them, so we moved along.

I also went to visit my dad for a few hours. My 13-year-old stepsister was painting a window for Halloween at the local Caribou Coffee, so we hung out there for a while....I got some knitting done (which subsequently was ripped out...sigh). The finished window:

Pretty impressive, eh? A ghost dressed up as a pumpkin and a pumpkin dressed up as a ghost. :)

I also snapped a photo of this hanging from a tree on my dad's street:

It's very blurry because I had to crop the heck out of it in order to be able to see what the subject of the photo is. A mini-pumpkin with a jack-o-lantern face and bat wings. I thought this was so cute.

I do need to mention that I went to 3 yarn stores in Ohio and didn't buy anything. Behold my awesome willpower.

And I did actually get some progress made on my long-suffering Grasshopper socks:

Pretty good progress, especially considering I had to rip and re-do the heel 4 times. I'm about 8 rows from starting the cuff. And then I have a whole other one of these to do. :( I love the result but am hating the knitting - much like Bayerische. But I have to get through the STR club socks because I signed up for next year :) Hopefully that wasn't a bad idea, but I did love the first installment and the others look like they'll be OK to knit too.

Some yarn for Christmas knitting:


Blue Sky Organic Undyed Cotton in Nut


Blue Sky Organic Undyed Cotton in Bone

And I leave you with the best yarn score of all...the latest installment of the STR club:

Part of the Raven series - Lenore. This photo is a little dark, but the yarn is black with red and purple in it. I LOVE it. And the pattern, but I didn't take a photo of the pattern.