Thanksgiving!

I totally forgot to bring my camera... but don't worry, Harland's mom always makes sure someone is taking pictures.

Here is a picture of the people who sat at the kids table. I think the youngest is Teresa (23) and the oldest might be me (29). Anyway you look at it - it's a pretty old average for a kids table.

In the back row (left to right) is Eric, Hubby, Eric, Kyle, Jed(?) in the front (left to right) Teresa, Me, Serena, Eugenia, and CoGene.

So that is that. They're all good people.

Well gotta run to eat dinner.

I have been knitting, I swear

Okay so I have not posted in forever, but it isn't because I haven't been knitting.
Here are some of my recently finished objects!! They are all Holiday presents and it is taking me all my energy not to tell you who each one belongs to, but I am trying to actually keep a surprise or two this season.

Here is a hat, It is really navy blue but you know how it is when there is a flash.
It kinda looks like the ribbing is messed up at the top, but that was just me not lying it flat before shooting the photo.

Here is a picture of a scarf. I folded it, in case you are wondering. It's knit in bias, so it looks pretty cool and diagionally when unfolded.

Here are my pride and joy - mittens. They took a long time and the thumbs were intimidating but I finally finished them yesterday. The top one is folded back (it is not really pointy). They do not entirely match up (stupid self striping yarn not being the same length each time) but they are pretty close. I can hardly wait for Christmas to be over to make myself a pair.


And I finished a quilt wall hanging that I started in Auburn when I took quilting lessons.

Honey, did this shrink?

So one little fact you may or may not already know about Harland and I - is that Harland does most of the laundry. I don't know where my hatred of doing laundry began, but it is pretty present in my heart. So Harland throws the laundry in the washer and the dryer and then I come out of the woodwork to fold. Every once and a while I wish I was the one who did the laundry.

This is one of those cases.

So I have completed ONE pair of hand knit socks. I have one sock for Susan that is lonely for a partner, I have another sock that was started and abandoned because I messed it up and do not have the heart to unravel it. So I have, or um, had one pair of orange socks.

Then I hear these words "Honey, did this shrink?" as my delightful husband was holding up an bright orange piece of wool...


Yes, Harland that shrunk. He is now the wiser that I did not knit socks out of cotton as he for whatever reason thought (even though he does indeed remember me hand washing my socks in the sink a few weeks ago). So rest in peace my dear socks.

Also, I made homemade pretzels from Rebecca's recipe that her parents used to make them for use from. YUM!!


Also - we have two great new plants. The little one's name is Silverstar and the other one's name is Salazaar. When I have time and energy I'll explain why - but it is almost bed time.

Two things...

number 1 - go out and vote tomorrow, do it!!

number 2 - Sometimes I like public transit for what you overhear, today there were kids on my commute home (why anyone would want to take kids traveling around DC at RUSH HOUR is beyond me) but when we got to Ballston station the one girl said to her Mom "Boston, you mean we're all the way in Massachusetts?"

too cute.

Much better when I was on a bus in Camp Casey when a soldier said "Yeah I like to lick my wife's eyeball (yes, he said eyeball) when I'm (beep)ing her, although you can't do it too many times or they'll try and divorce you." (I would hope so!!)

Yeah, kids are a lot cuter than drunk infantry GIs. Most of the time.

Great Falls

Hi, we went for a nice walk at Great Falls NP today. It's a nice walk, pretty flat with a few rocks to climb on. Also if you are an actual rock climber with the ropes and the shoes and such there are places to participate in that as well. It was a fairly nice day, it reached 60 today so it wasn't so bad in the woods, out of the wind.

Great Falls is a really interesting area. George Washington decided the river would make a great transportation route, and so they built a canal around the falls. There are some ruins of a town called Matildaville that you can also see. I (of course) took my camera and took lots of pictures. If you are interested in visiting Great Falls, Here is a link to the official site

Here are some pictures from the falls. They were quite impressive, especially since it rained yesterday and Friday. If you click on the first picture you can see a guy sitting on a rock on the left side of the picture to give you a better idea of scale. It doesn't look as big in these pictures.





This is a picture looking down the river away from the falls. You can still see the water churning form going over the falls. I like the way the river curves.



While walking up to the dam we saw a blue heron. Some walker-bys said they saw it catch a frog.


Here is a picture of the canal lock

tent!!

Yay, we are now proud owners of a tent!!!!
We tried it out today in our tiny living room.
Here's proof:


Anyway, I love our tent. It is rather roomy for a 2 person tent. I need to fix my side bars and make this blog more hiker friendly since it is now a hiking AND knitting blog. When I do, I will include these two websites: Big Agnes which is who makes the parkview tent and Gear for adventure who are the people we bought it from.

Anyway, we have one tiny 5 inch pole leftover and we can't figure out what it is for. Anyone know? All the other poles have these bungee cords in them so practically the tent puts itself up. The rain fly was a little harder to figure out (not pictured above) but we got it....

Harland is retying all the knots on our tent that hold the stake cables on to the tent. I guess the bowlines they had on there are not as good as the half hitch stopper knot Harland tied. I personally remember none of the knots i learned in Girl Scouts. Time to hit the library!

Happy Friday y'all.

ZOO!

Okay this doesn't have anything to do with hiking or knitting, but maybe if you stretch the definition of "hike" you could squeeze it in... We went to the Nat'l Zoo yesterday with Harland's sister, Teresa. We didn't go until 4:30pm so we could only see the outside exhibits, but here are a few of the animals we saw. It was getting dark, so some of my pictures didn't come out well.