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.