December 31, 2020 – Happy New Year’s Eve!!

An update for the end of 2020!

First, the hubs sweater! It was NOT done by Christmas, sigh…..BUT it’s only missing one sleeve 😊 maybe by tomorrow? I really like the way it turned out. I actually made a mistake on the shawl collar but it like the way it turned out – it lays down quite nicely. The pattern called for an i-cord bind off to finish the front bands and I LOVE the way it looks! I may try to do this bind off in the future whether it calls for it or not! It definitely needs blocking though.

 

We don’t have much room so we have to be choosy in our decorations. I did love our wreath and our sweet little Charlie Brown tree 😊. It shows off our ornaments really well. When we moved into our fifth wheel, I decided to only bring ornaments that were from our past vacations and would then have room to add more ornaments from our travels. On our tree is our very first vacation ornament from Block Island, Rhode Island and our more recent one from Wyoming. The hubs got me a fun present this year – the Knitters Mug Gift from Mountain Colors located in Corvallis, MT. It is a hand-painted DK blank in blues, a memory of the huckleberries we enjoyed when we were in Montana last year, a gorgeous handmade mug and a pattern called the Missoula Cowl! I can’t wait to get started – the only thing holding me up is the sweater for my loving hubs…as I told him, I’m not usually monogamous in my knitting but have been with this sweater!

   

Christmas and many holidays change after children grow up. It takes some of the magic away when you don’t have little children running into your bedroom Christmas morning yelling at you to get up and go see what Santa brought. But this time of the year is still special, a celebration of Christ’s birth and deserves to keep some magic in it. We watched many holiday films, baked cookies, drove around and looked at lights and continued our Christmas Eve traditions of eating hors d’oeuvres for dinner (ok, maybe it’s just junk food), going to church (virtually) and watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas, The Grinch and Elf before going to bed. It was a good Christmas!

The lights in downtown Loveland and Fort Collins were so pretty! As we drove down College Street in Fort Collins, I felt completely surrounded by twinkling lights. We also drove through the Colorado Youth Outdoors Winter Wonderland held as a fundraiser every year.

 

 

I am enjoying finding simple pleasures on my walks with the dogs. We have a large flock of Canada geese that hang out on our lake here at the KOA. One day after a snow, I noticed the prints in the snow on the frozen lake. As I looked closer they reminded me of seeing geese tracks on cartoons! If you zoom in on the picture, it gives you a great view.

Another morning I had an early appointment and was sitting in the truck waiting for the frost to melt on the windows. Beautiful ice crystals had formed on the windshield – they look like snowflakes!

 

We decided to take a drive up highway 14 into the mountains along where the Cameron Peak fires had been this fall. It was something we’d planned for a while but with the fires and then snow, just hadn’t gotten around to it. The burned trees were sad to see but some of the structures that had been destroyed were much worse. Even surrounding that area though were views and beauty that couldn’t be ignored.

 

 

To round out our holiday season, we had the chance to meet with our oldest and his wife. They were visiting family in Denver, so we met half way in Longmont. There were many outdoor parks to choose from and the weather was great for hanging outside. It was a little extra something special to see them again so close to our visit at Thanksgiving! When we left, I though a quick little visit to the Longmont Yarn Shoppe would be just the thing! They were open and had very careful COVID browsing rules in place (which I greatly appreciated). After going straight to the back to wash my hands before exploring, I walked out with some Adriafil Knitcol yarn for a pair of mittens. Can’t wait to start on those – oh yeah, after the sweater.