I think John Fogerty should have given Lodi more of a chance. We had an awesome time there this weekend at the Lodi Wine and Chocolate Weekend. I have to admit that we've passed the exit for Lodi while traveling up Interstate 5 probably a hundred times, and we've never thought to stop there, but it's a great town with cute shops and interesting-sounding restaurants. After an afternoon of tasting wine at some wonderful wineries and indulging in decadent treats like "Pigs in the Mud," chocolate dipped linguica sausage, you'd think we wouldn't have been interested in eating a real meal at the end of the day. Being the troopers that we are, however, we persevered and had a delicious meal at the Dancing Fox in downtown Lodi. It was just about a perfect day with good friends and perfect weather too!
To add to our fun, Lodi is only about 40 minutes from Davis, where our daughter attends school, so we ditched our friends who are more devoted wine fans than we are and had planned for a second day of wine tasting, and drove up to see Paige.
We missed the local Davis farmer's market, which is held on Saturdays, but, no surprise, there were still plenty of things to keep us occupied, including a little "peddler's fair," in the park with a couple of yarn booths. I bought some alpaca yarn at this little booth which lured me by displaying this darling, purple platypus!
I was happy to see that Paige was wearing her headband that I sent her last week. She even said she'd like another one. Yay! An excuse to knit a simple project again! Russ and I went for a little run in the afternoon, and then finished our day by dining at the Yeti Restaurant, which serves Indian and Nepalese food. It was really good and not too expensive. Still, I'm thinking that maybe it's time to go on a financial and food diet for the next couple of months!
I live in a very peaceful neighborhood. When we first moved into our house eighteen years ago, there were lots of kids around, so it makes sense that it's very quiet new since all of those kids, including mine, have grown up and "flown the coup." Last year, a young couple moved in a couple of houses down from us. They got to work on their house right away, updating, and working in the yard on weekends, so, of course, I instantly liked them since I approve of hard workers. Last Christmas they gave us some delicious homemade jam for Christmas, and I told them thank you, but never recipricated. OK, so this is a little embarrassing. They had a baby this fall, and I had never even noticed that our cute, little neighbor girl was pregnant. I am pretty sure that they had a girl, since I've seen little hints of pink when I've seen them unloading the baby from the car, etc. So, I knit a little hat for that, little anonymous baby this week. It even has hearts on it for Valentine's Day. I'm pretty sure it's too big for a fairly young baby, but, oh well. I even thought of trying to shrink it a little, but it's super wash wool, so shrinking, unfortunately, isn't going to work. It's all good though. Someday, this cap will fit our little neighbor baby, who I hope is a girl, or, at least, a boy who doesn't mind a wearing a feminine little cap.
I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day really although I loved trading Valentines when I was a little girl in school. My mom always got me supplies, and I would make them out of red construction paper and paper doilies. My mom wasn't big on candy, but my Valentines were very popular because I would stick red lollypops through each one. I still like the "crafty" side of Valentine's Day, and I've been knitting little hearts as decorations for the last couple of years. I have a couple of patterns I like, but my main pattern has been the free Love Heart pattern from Jackie Z's Craft's blog. It's an easy pattern to adjust, so I've made big and small hearts with it and felted and unfelted ones. She calls for using five needles altogether, but I like using three.
I've been knitting my hearts with my new Knitter's Pride Dreamz needles. I'm pretty partial to Brittany knitting needles, but I really like these, and they aren't very expensive. They're colored-coded too, which I love since I can never tell my size 0 needles from my size 1s. I think the size 2s are going to be my favorite though since they're pink!
We live in the southern end of Central California, and we do have chilly weather during the winter months, foggy and often freezing at night; on the other hand, it's not freezing cold past eight or nine in the morning usually, so Paige is having a little "weather" shock going to school in Davis, which gets a little colder than we do. She uses her bike to get to classes, but I'm pretty sure her dad gave her a pair of bicycling gloves that should keep her hands toasty on her commute. Still, I decided to knit her a pair of fingerless gloves this week, thinking it would help take the edge off the cold. I'm sending her a little care package tomorrow, which includes the cupcake mitlets, a catnip toy for her cat, her Women's Health Magazine, and a new ATM card that she had to have sent to us since they wouldn't send it to her college address. Maybe if I add a little candy, it will be a more exciting little gift, but I'm sure she'll be happy to see that ATM, considering she lost hers over a week ago, so she hasn't been able to access any cash to do her laundry .
This was a fun and easy pattern to knit although I still managed to have troubles with it. The original pattern has a pretty narrow ribbing section and quite a few repeats of the pattern before starting the thumb gusset. I knit one "mittlet," and decided that it was just too big and clumsy. I went back and made the ribbing longer, and I'm happy with my adjustments now.
