Today is balmy, a highly pleasant 21F. Isn’t it amazing how perspective changes the weather? It’s the warm before some very cold weather. In fact, I keep looking at the forecast for new year’s eve. I first noticed it when it was predicted to be -18 overnight. Now the prediction is -22. I am keeping an eye on it, but I don’t think we are going to go out that night at this point. Better to stay home and make sure everyone and the house is safe.

We’ve been starting off our mornings like this:

Miss Butterfly and I managed to get some errands run yesterday afternoon, and again this morning. And we baked. Homemade pita bread yesterday and some lovely time and labor intensive cookies today. Miss Butterfly is really into putting puzzles together right now, so we also picked up a couple puzzles for her. And we went to the yarn shop, where I purchased enough koigu kpppm for “Legends of the Fall” sweater. I can’t wait! My color choices are on the orange side, much to Miss Butterfly’s irritation. But, I am still eager to spin at the moment and haven’t would the yarn and cast on yet.

I had Miss Butterfly take a few photos of the hitofude.

It’s large and long and comfy and quite frankly extremely warm. The kind of sweater one throws on around the house to stay warm in this cold and it REALLY works. It’s also nicely work appropriate with proper pants. I really could see me knitting this again.

Back when I first met Mr. Ink his old dog Coco was not wanting to go out in the cold. At 15 and arthritic, he decided he was super over it. I knit him some booties, and it changed his cold weather life. Mr. Ink would put those on, and old Coco would prance around and go for walks with them on.

After Lizzie had 24 hours of limping after a cold weather walk, I asked Mr. Ink if he still had them. He did, and was easily able to pull them out of his desk drawer. I put them on her, and she spent 10 minutes making snow angels before we could even go for a walk yesterday!

She loves those booties! If we ever lose any, I’ll make the next ones out of fluorescent yarn though, as these are hard to see, and she does tend to lose them off her feet and they aren’t easy to see once they are gone.

It’s been a pretty fantastic vacation so far. We’ve been busy but quite happily so. Keeping busy at those things which keeps us a family as well.