Fall Back

I absolutely love this day when Daylight Savings Time comes to an end and with an abrupt shift we are confronted with the reality of seasonal change. I love that extra hour, I love the retreat to a heavier proportion of recreation indoors. It calls out for afternoons of simmering stews and evenings of magazine reading, knitting and cups of heavily sugared (or alcohol-ed) teas and coffees. Those of you in Indiana will soon become accustomed to it and many of you will love it also...

Cool Blogger Gadget
I was wanting to add a particular enhancement to my blog that I see on WordPress and TypePad blogs all the time so I was browsing Blogger's help page. Didn't find what I wanted but I did come across Blogger Play which plays a stream of photos as they are uploaded to various blogs. I decided to watch for a while to see why anyone would find that useful/interesting and within ten photos, up came this lovely shot:

I recognized this right away as the front view of Adare "Manor", the castle-turned-luxuryl inn where Rob and I spent the last four nights of our honeymoon in Ireland. In fact, when I flipped back to show Rob, he said---hey, is that you sitting on the front steps because we have a very similar photo he took....nice. It is a beautiful place to stay and we really enjoyed it. Huge grounds with lots of old, old buildings, a gorgeous little town in walking distance where we purchased lots of cool art glass and some of our first Christmas ornaments....

Don't look for Blogger Play here anytime soon, but its worth a few minutes over at the Help page.

The Mini-Maniacs
Today was the last day of post-season play for the girls' soccer team. It was a doozy of championship match and I must say that the other team was outplayed the entire game. With two minutes left, the score was 2 - 1 and the opposing team got really lucky twice in rapid succession with killer wide shots while our little goalie was scrambling back into position...that's all it takes...we finished the season a strong second and the girls are nowhere near as disappointed as most of the parents. I'm really proud of how the girls have really come together as a team, of how much more understanding they have of the game and how they've really comitted themselves to playing hard every time they take the field. I love to watch them play.

I always take my knitting...
so some time back, I noticed another Mom sitting and doing some needlework...she was working on a really beautiful antique sampler reproduction in linen and cotton. I was flabbergasted; I've never met anyone other than my sisters and myself who really got into that. So of course we've compared notes and projects and planned an outing to check out a great group of shops together, among them, a cool yarn shop as well as a quilting place. I might need to stop by Gringotts for a little loot.

So today finds me about this close to completing Daniel's Varsity Sweater. I'm shaping the neck and armhole of the final front panel then its a matter of seaming it and putting the letter on. It is SO cool!

I've volunteered to do some content editing over at Ravelry so today I came across some really great hat patterns I'd forgotten about and I think I may make a whole passel of funky hats for me and the girls here pretty quick. They involve a lot of color stranding which I've not really done before so...that means I should extend myself and take it on. But I was also reminded of the little doll patterns I bought last year and they are soooooooo cute and I really should do that. And then there's this cool sweater/jacket I want to do for Milo, and the sweater I have going for Anna, and the socks for someone, and other socks for a couple of other someones,not to mention the sweaters for Haley and Lolly plus the other stuff.

I gotta go!