Welcome to the Knitosphere: Weekend of Thanks

What a busy few days this has been. Thursday I headed south to see the in-laws for Thanksgiving. My nearly two-year-old niece and my sister-in-law's foster children, ages six and eight were with us for the occasion, and I have to say that there is nothing like a bunch of kids to invigorate a holiday function. the kids kept us up and playing, whether at the Wii (even Grampy got in on the action) or out in the backyard with a baseball. Some examples of the cuteness:

Every time the 6 year old caught the ball he'd fall on the ground, forcing the 2 year old into fits of giggles. The eight year old was an ace at the wii and annihilated most of us. Thank goodness that she wanted to take a break from beating our socks off to join me in playing a little dress up with my mother in law's fancy gloves. I love that unbeknownst to her, the 2 year old flashed the sign for "I Love You" in the picture above. How very fitting for a day of family togetherness. And yes, I did manage to slip in a shot of our cute ~~kid~~ pooch Brisco Fancypants.
Friday I got to meet up with a couple of friends who live near the in-laws and do some knitting. Well actually Lara and I knitted while Guy and Jesse played with Photoshop and sent us on a second honeymoon to Niagara Falls - see how I'm cheerily punching him because he has a beer and I don't:

This was the first time that Lara and I got together to knit. She'd been telling me that she's a baby knitter and that there was no way that she'd be able to make something without a pattern. I completely disregarded what she said and coached her along as she designed her very own mitts. See Lara, you ain't no baby knitter anymore! They turned out great, and I'm thinking I might need to knit me a pair of those.

Friday night we decided to head north to our friends cabin for the rest of the weekend. Up there it's normally cold and snowy by now, but instead it stayed in the 60s. Bad for my friend, an avid snowmobiler (or if you're like some Alaskans, snow machiner) but good for me, 'cause I got to spend hours sitting on the deck knitting and drinking coffee/wine/beer. Here's the view of the lake just a short stroll from the cabin and me knitting on the porch, wearing in the hat and mitts that steph sent me for the knit knack hat exchange.

If you're wondering about the grin, it's due to the fact that the cabled sweater pattern that I am working on finally clicked. I had started this, my first human sized sweater, back in August and pretty much haven't touched it since early September. This weekend I decided that come hell or high water, I would make some progress on this damn thing. As I was knitting along I just couldn't see where this is going even though I had the picture and was following the pattern correctly. Finally, I put down my knitting, pulled out the pattern, and re-read it from start to finish. There it was, at the start of the pattern: top down construction. Ah-ha! I flipped my work over and finally it all made sense. Talk about a "duh" moment! I was able to make some headway after that.

We got home mid day today with enough of the day left to deck the halls. I let Guy and Mike take care of the lights, with their little assistant Brisco, sporting his 2007 Christmas sweater, Buster. Brag alert: For those of you on Ravelry, our little Brisco's picture is on the pattern page for both that sweater and his 2008 Cables & Bits Christmas sweater. You better believe I'll be shooting for a trifecta next year.