We’re home!

We made it back from the cruise on Saturday and haven’t stopped running since.  My favorite part about coming home?  I get to wear my new favorite sweater!!

It’s yet another Central Park Hoodie! I can’t help myself, I just love this pattern! This one was made with some Araucania Nature Wool Chunky (that’s not really chunky at all) that I bought at a LYS as it was closing its doors to business. There are lots of mods listed below the picture of the back if you’re at all interested!

Pattern: Central Park Hoodie by Heather Lodinsky

Yarn: Araucania Nature Wool Chunky color #106–a nice emerald green, approx 7.3 skeins

Needles: US 9 for the entire thing… I didn’t use smaller needles for the ribbing.

Mods: Lots. I used heavier yarn and larger needles, so my gauge was off by a tiny bit (17.25 over 4″.) To accommodate, I worked the 36″ instruction. I knit the sleeves longer (about 20″) because I have monkey arms and broad shoulders. I only knit about 2″ of ribbing for the sleeves before starting the cables. Because of aforementioned body shape, I skipped the shoulder shaping and simply knit even until the armhole measured as the pattern specified and left the stitches live for a later 3-needle-bind-off. I knit the body as written until I would have knit a hood. At this point, I picked up stitches evenly around and ended up with 98 total from the front right up and around to the left front. On the first row, I decreased as such: p2, p2tog, *k2,p2* to last 4 sts, p2tog, p2. On the next round, I worked as such: k3, *p2,k2* to last 3, ending k3. I continued this ribbing for about 3″, then bound off and worked the button bands. When all was done and the sweater was blocked, I sewed in a 24″ zipper (I did have to remove a few teeth to end up with a 23″ total length zipper) and away I went! The collar stands up and out just enough to not bother my neck. When zipped, the sweater measures approx 39″ around.

I love it the most of all my sweaters to date and was happy to return to chilly Chicagoland so I could wear it again!

I’ll be back in a few days with pictures of our trip, but for now I’m off to enjoy the relative silence while a couple of the kiddos are at school!!

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CRUISE BOUND!

I got an email several weeks ago from Disney Cruise Lines… it said that kids sail free with paid parents.  I started thinking that I’m a parent and I have kids and maybe this could work to my advantage?!  I asked the hub to call Disney for the details while I put the kids to bed one night…  I figured it’d be so expensive that we’d never go and he was wasting his time on the phone.

Ha!  It turns out that when you have 3 kids and they sail free, it actually adds up to a good chunk of change saved!

We leave tomorrow for the Eastern Caribbean version of Disney’s cruise and CANNOT WAIT!!! We did the Western Caribbean Disney cruise once before with a work-related thing for the hubby… back when my oldest was 3.5 and my daughter was 4 months old…

(above is from 6 years ago when T was just over 3 years old!)

The kids will miss a week of school and for once, I couldn’t care less!  We take a pretty serious outlook on schooling, but right now while the kids are still really young, I figure we’ve got to take advantage of some things when the opportunity presents itself.  They will learn a lot about Columbus and his initial landing in the Virgin Islands and the different ownerships of the same islands and how those have impacted what you see there today.  It’s a great opportunity for them to SEE and learn things firsthand.

I mean, what if we get hit by a big green bus tomorrow?  Will we regret missing a week of preschool, kindergarten, and 3rd grade?

I think not.

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Happy Halloween, a day late and a dollar short

I only have a picture to share… I hope you all had great fun trick-or-treating and that your weather was warmer than ours last night!

I have to tell you that our neighbors just a few houses down are way cooler than we are!  The dad created a walk-through mini haunted house in his garage and my boys LOVED it!  He also gave us big parent types some tasty pumpkin martinis to take with us on our candy-seeking journey.  How awesome is that?!

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