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Month: October 2008

Still Picture Perfect

 

The first weekend of this month, it was once again time to leave the city & journey to the Indiana Dunes for a weekend of scrappin’ & more. Within a week or so of returning from the weekend last year, we coordinated calendars among the group and picked our fall 2008 weekend. When I started a new purse calendar in January, this was one of the first entries in it.

 

On Friday morning, after picking up coffee & loading up the car Jen & I headed out of town, across the Skyway bridge and into Michigan City to begin our weekend away. After a quick spin through Meijer’s we grabbed a quick lunch at Culvers (yum – pumpkin shakes!) & actually met up with most of the other gals there at the counter. At noon we were unlocking the doors to the cottage & immediately unloading our cars and setting up our individual work spaces. While I have lots of recent pictures to yet get into albums, my goal for the weekend was stepping back in time to do an album of my senior year of high school. Several years ago, while home in the Ville I found a “high school specific” album at a local scrapbook store so I picked it up & put it away for “one day.” It didn’t take me long to get my table set up & start walking through my senior year in pictures, letters, programs, dried flowers & more.

On Saturday afternoon, I took a break from scrappin’ and headed up the Red Arrow Highway to my favorite winery – since I was so close & didn’t know if I’d make it back over there before the holidays I wanted to pick up some wine from Round Barn. One of the gals came along with me & we had a lovely time enjoying the scenery & tasting several delicious options. Heading back down the highway, we stopped at a roadside fruit stand & I picked up a basket of apples for applesauce & more.

As sunset approached on Saturday, several of us walked down to the beach. We had picked up some bubbly at Round Barn & planned a sunset toast. It was a beautiful day to see the sunset from the beach. In fact, the weather was so clear that you could actually see the Chicago skyline across the lake from us.

Saturday Sunset

By the time my car was repacked with our gear on Sunday afternoon, I had finished about 80% of my album and also had enjoyed some knitting & reading moments. We each had different “goals” for the weekend and as the weekend ended, we all agreed that they had been met. As is tradition, we have already reserved our weekend for next fall’s retreat!

Starting (Sock) Lineup

Throughout knitting blogs, October is better known as Socktoberfest – Lolly has been rallying knitters to a month of all things socks for several years. In 2006, socks still hadn’t clicked with me. Last year, I was working on my MTM Socks during the month. This year, even with other socks on the needles, I will be working on for a new pair of socks this month.

Last fall, I bought 2 skeins of Lorna’s Laces in the Cubby Bear colorway and added them to my stash. What a fun way to combine being a knitter and a Cubs’ fan! As the Cubs season unfolded this year, I thought that if they made it to the playoffs, I would bring out the yarn as a playoff knitting project. So, since the Chicago Cubs are the 2008 NL Central Champs and will be playing in October, it seems only appropriate to have my Cubby Socks be my Socktoberfest project.

I was wondering how the colorway would knit up so on Friday evening I started with one pattern and it appears to be a winner. This is my second time knitting up the Forward and Back pattern (rav only) – I still need to blog about the first pair, will do so sometime during Socktoberfest. So, the pattern was indeed a winner & I just kept going with it over the weekend. I’m just about ready to start the heel on sock #1.

Go Cubs!

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