Fat Tuesday

The beads are flying and the huricanes are flowing. In New Orleans silly not here.

Our gator is sporting his beads on the mantle today. I see rum drinks being made after dinner as well(a Mai Tai perhaps?).

I loved the Fiber Trends clog pattern so much I made another pair as a gift.

Michaels had Patons for $4 last week so I picked some up. I made the "plain join" this time for the bottoms and liked it better than the "bumper join" on my first pair. My husband likes mine so much he picked out his own colors over the weekend and really wants me to start and finish them before I head out of town for a couple of weeks.

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

Another Learning Experience

We ventured into Chicago yesterday to visit the Garfield Conservatory. Where else in Chicago are you going to experience t-shirt wearing weather in February?

I want to go back on an ordinary day NEVER again on the Chocolate Fest weekend. Picture thousands of people waiting in line after line for a SINGLE chocolate covered coffee bean. Yes, this sounds crazy and it was. It had listed on the website 12 chocolate companies. There may have been 6 and not all had "tastings". We waited about an hour in one line with the hope of more chocolate tastings. Here we were greated by Godiva, Blommers, Fannie Mae, Moonstruck, and Whole Foods. Godiva gave out a piece of a chocolate covered pretzel that tasted like it came out of a bulk foods bin at your local grocery store. Moonstruck and Blommers gave out 2 wafers of milk and dark chocolate. The Whole Foods samples were so bad the kids and husband spit them out. We did really enjoy the plants and trees though. There were lots of volunteers offering info on everything food related. It was really neat to see banana, coconut, and palm trees without leaving Chicago.

I finished my fair-isle hat last night.

Normally I'm a "tight" knitter and when I knit up my gauge swatch I didn't think I was capable of knitting loosely. I was so worried about "puckering" that it ended up a bit big. But I'm still happy with the way it turned out and I hope to knit up a scarf this week that will complete the set.

A new project

I started a new project this morning. My first attempt at fair-isle, the center square hat from Knitty.com.

So far, it's not too bad. The black yarn is Andean Silk from knit picks and the green yarn is cascade 220. Hopefully I can finish it up by Monday when we head to the lakefront to take in this year's Chicago Auto Show.

It's cold!!

What's the weather like here? Really cold doesn't even come close to what the temperature is and here's the scene out my window today..

We have a handy dandy weather station in our backyard and it's been reading negative temperatures for the past 3 days.

What I'm looking forward to..

My husband said he'd go with me to the chocolate fest at the Garfield Park Conservatory this weekend. Cool, a place we haven't been to yet and free chocolate samples. I love Chicago!!

There's always next year.

It's almost here

The Super Bowl is tomorrow. Yes, I'm a bit exited. Like a kid on Christmas eve exited! I can't wait for tomorrow to come. I've already looked at Chicago's celebratory plans for Tuesday when they win.
Yesterday's Spanish phrase for the day was Hace un tiempo horrible. (The weather is horrible.) You could say that again. The next few days we're expecting below zero lows and the highs below 10. See, my going to Miami plan would have felt fabulous.

Are you crazy?

Why yes, yes I am. I booked a train trip yesterday for the kids and I to visit Grandma and Grandpa. It's a 2600 mile round trip extravaganza aboard the Texas Eagle. This is the third year my Dad has journeyed down to his birthplace, Corpus Christi,Texas to spend almost 4 months escaping the Midwestern Winters. He's wanted us to come visit for the past two years but I kept putting it off using the "kid's are in school" excuse each year. Seeing that I couldn't use that excuse this year the kids really wanted to go. I would love to spend time with my Dad too but Texas isn't on the top of my travel destination list. The three of us can travel for what it would cost for one person's airfare so train travel is the affordable alternative.

The following is for the kid's amusement as they have been asking how many more days till we leave about a hundred times today! I love my kids dearly but sometimes my patience runs out before the day does.