Well, I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We went up to Sparks, Nevada with my parents. They don't celebrate the holiday, so we didn't do anything special. That doesn't really matter since we ate the food I brought up there and we just really wanted to be together anyway. They live in the Bay Area and picked us up on the way. Great! I didn't have to drive and I got a lot of knitting done. From my house, the drive was lovely. We were traveling on 80 East. Snow on one side of the car, and beatiful greenery on the other, all with clear blue skies. I'm almost finished with the back of DJ's Down Under sweater. The pattern works up pretty quickly

on size 10 needles, and I've only got 2 1/2 more balls to go with the Forbes Forrest scarf. Did you notice the major error I made with it in it's last post? I'd never knitted a chart before and instead of going from right to left from left to right I was only going from left to right. So, although I was doing the stiches correctly, they weren't looking right. I know now and I'm pleased with the outcome. I can't wait to block it so that I can get rid of that nasty curl. For DJs sweater I used Bernat Softee in Grey Heather. I'll have to go get more yarn since, while knitting, I decided to make it about 4 1/2 inches longer than the pattern called for. The instructions stated to start shaping the armhole after 12 1/2 inches and I knew that this just would not do. We prefer longer tops. I knitted a lot of the sweater on the long ride home. What should have taken 1 1/2 hours took about 6 becuse of the snow. We even had to get chains. This is the main reason I rarely go up there even though I live so close.

Today, we'll be making a pine cone candle holder. You can see HP doing what she did all weekend long, look for pine cones. To my knowledge, she'd never seen one before Thursday, and was quite facinated that someone would leave something so cool lying around. The kids seem happy when we're on our way home, but things get a little testy from being in the car for so long. We're going to South Lake Tahoe next month, and I think we'll catch the bus.

Sometimes you just have to step back.

I had to take a break from my on-the-side sweater. I took too long of a break the last time and when I came back, I made the sleeves too big. I've been having a problem with the sleeves since day one since they never have really worked up according to the pattern. The pattern says increase on each side of each row 10 times and then on each side of every other row 8 times. To me, this says that I should be finished increasing after 26 rows. The end result should leave you with 86 stiches. Problem is, I get to 86 stiches after about 15 rows. So, I decided to try to work this issue into the pattern. It might have worked if I'd tried to make the size small sleeve and not the large. For now, I just have sweater body that fits great and two sleeves that leave room for about 3 times as much floddle as I actually have. I'll get you a pic later.

But for now, in order to cool myself off from this small disaster, I started on a gift for my brother that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I finally found a pattern that was suitable for him in the book Scarf Style. It's the pattern Forbes Forrest. Since I'm trying to bust some of my stash too, I have to make it in two different colors. My brother chose moss green and leaf green (I spoke to my mom and she said green is all he can think of nowadays, so it makes sence that he would choose these colors), with the darker green on each end of the 61" scarf. It's coming out good so far, but my knitting inexperience left out the fact that it's not so cool to mix colors for any project who's right side is the purl side. Oh well, this error should only be noticed slightly to the very nosy individual who examines the piece close enought to notice these two rows. Hope you like it so far big bro!