Once again the drive north for Thanksgiving proved to be a boon for my knitting. I finished the Graham hat for Rascal before we headed back to the warmer South. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn, and had no way of getting to a store that might even have had a replacement (and didn’t know if the yarn had been discontinued in the interim). So I truncated the pattern and it does just fit him, but I will have to repeat with a larger skein from my stash before next winter. That’s okay; my goal is to have a surplus of hats because there are times when cousins or friends are visiting and it actually snows or gets cold around here and we end up needing every last one of them.

So here we have the Graham hat. HA! I just noticed my hand on his shoulder. Typical Mom action–hold still so I can get this picture for posterity!!!

The next day I cast on a hat for Sunshine. Princess got a furry pink hat from a cousin’s no longer needed stash and she’s the one who usually wears the hood of her coat anyway, so the hat I had in mind for her wasn’t immediately necessary. Miss M and Posey both have hats already thanks to Target on Black Friday (going north is my cue to add to the emergency hat and gloves stash since around here gloves disappear like odd socks). But my dear Sunshine couldn’t fit into the hat I bought her–too small–so she gets the next from my needles. I chose the Aston pattern from my Ravelry queue. The yarn has been sitting in my stash ever since my nesting-induced yarn raid on Hobby Lobby in August 2011, days before Miss M arrived. I’m pleased to be finally using it!!

Oh, that’s our official Advent wreath. Toddler proof.  And a teaser for our family Christmas picture!

Here’s the yarn up close and personal.

As for reading, I finally took the recommendation of my sister, a best friend, and a cousin and picked up a Georgette Heyer novel. It helped that my sister had Frederica sitting on her side table and as we were staying with my sister, I had a bit of time in the evenings to indulge. I had finished Lady Susan by Jane Austen just before we left so the name “Frederica” was fresh in my mind. Originally I picked it up wondering, as Heyer is supposed to be the next best thing to Austen, if she had chosen Frederica as a sequel to Lady Susan but fortunately it wasn’t. I don’t really like some of the Austen sequels I’ve come across. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first foray into the world of Heyer. It was a perfect bit of light reading.

And now I’m craving more. Any Heyer fans out there with suggestions?