Old Times and Other Stuff

When the kids were younger, we would have a family game night.  Sometimes it was just Katherine, Mama, and Papa (Patrick didn't really care for board games) and sometimes it was Patrick, Katherine, and Mama (Papa didn't really care for card games), and sometimes it was just Katherine and Mama (Katherine likes to beat me at Uno, which she does fairly consistently through the liberal use of Draw 4).

While everyone is home and in a celebratory mood we cracked out die Siedler Seafarer edition for an afternoon of discovery and piracy.  Die Siedler is a strategy-rich, rules-heavy game with lots of moving parts and can take a long time to play - think of Life or Monopoly but with more rules, lots of customization, and about one extra hour.  Patrick had to leave about halfway through the game to go visit with friends which he planned to do while he was in town.  Meanwhile, Papa came from behind for the win.

 

 

Having Christmas Eve fall on a Sunday creates certain challenges for us.  The biggest challenge is finding baguette on Friday since the favored bakery doesn't deliver on Saturday (or Sunday) and won't deliver on Christmas Day either.  Only one of the three major grocery stores here carry Stewart's Bakery products so I started there.  Nothing.  I hit grocery store #2 because they carry something that the others don't from my grocery list.  And the it was on to the only other place where I can get Stewart's bread - Healthy Living...our local health food store/organic grocery.  I went in and went straight for the place where our baguette is usually displayed and found nothing but rock hard stale options.  With one more slim option for any kind of reasonable (crunchy crust) baguette, I turned to leave the store.  As I was walking out the door to my car, I encountered these two gentlemen with that stack of baked goods...from Stewart's Bakery.  I asked them if they had any baguette on their cart and was greeted with an affirmative response.  "I'll be following you." was my reply.  I took every baguette they had (4) and now had enough to get us through Christmas Eve fondue and Christmas Day raclette.  I still stopped at a local bakery to see if they had any (they most often don't) and was surprised to see three on the counter.  I bought them all and went home.  Now we also had enough for snacking and lunches.  It only took four stops, but we're loaded with baguette now.

I finished my latest knitting project earlier in the week so today I pulled out some supplies to start a new project.  I have packed away most of my yarn "stash" so all I had to work with was the yarn the looked interesting to me back in October when I was packing the house in preparation for putting it on the market.  Now, in December, I can't remember what I thought I was going to knit with those choices.  I finally found a pattern that looked fun for which I had enough yarn and cast on.  It's a shawl that knits from the neck down but you'll have to wait until I'm finished to see what it's supposed to look like.  This is how far I got after dinner.

And in case you were curious about the project I finished, here it is.  It's a throw/blanket from a pattern that I really like.  It uses chunky yarn so it knits up pretty fast, and it's wool so it's pretty warm.  I've made this blanket pattern before and added a section to make it longer.  I definitely like the larger size.  Anyway, here's the blanket as written in the pattern.