Green Day

Hope everyone has recovered from the festivities of Wednesday. I, for one, am really wishing that Daylight Savings hadn't happened til this weekend. Oh well, it's now light out when I leave work - which is crazy, and I'm still getting used to it.

Back to St. Patty's, as is now the tradition, I met up with the Clan D and we headed off to Mass at the Cathedral. Then to the Galleria for lunch, where we were dismayed by the now mostly empty food court, that did not serve any food that Miss Kaylee would eat, so we went off again to the pizza place right next to the Cathedral (weird scary looking green cheese pizza was avoided, thankfully). And then I ran off to get a coffee during the toddler potty break, and then we set up camp at 13th and Superior and waited. And waited. The parade was nearly 30 minutes late this year, I blame the dignitaries - you know, the people up at the front with the sashes that you never know the purpose of, but heaven forbid if they don't get to march.

Anyway, there was a goofy moment when the blimp blocked out the sun (we were blessed with a gorgeous day again this year) and everyone kinda gasped, but all was well and the blimp moved on.
Here's the mini parade of Irish princesses:
Kaylee was unwilling to don the sunglasses or crown for photos, which was weird, but it's best not to argue with a 3 yo on a hectic day. So we saw some pipe bands:
And the police, didn't take a picture of the fire fighters -
it's amazing how many of them can get the day off to march in the parade compared to the number of cops.

Kaylee's St. Pat's day present - keeping step with the pipe band from the IA.
Can't even tell you how happy I am with the way it turned out, note the curly hair - that's the best part. Kaylee was excited that she got a sucker - not much candy throwing in the part of the parade that we saw, which is always disappointing to a toddler, not to mention most of it got thrown towards the pre-school that was set up across the street from us.
Note the hand knit fair-isle tam that was too big when I made it for her 2 years ago, and is still slightly too big.

And Kathleen didn't quite know what to make of all the nonsense, and mostly wondered why we couldn't just go home so she could take a nap in peace.
And the float from the East Side IA was very good this year:
Note what granny is doing next to the turf fire. Prolonging stereotypes - that's what.

For a moment, Kaylee got into the fun of it all,
but only for a moment, it was back off as soon as the picture was taken and she could see it on the camera screen.

And then Chris was back and we were off, so the rest of these pics are what I managed to Kinnear on the walk:
Some good stuff we missed. Oh well, had to get to the next party.

Photos from the club are not the greatest, I couldn't get a setting on my camera to take decent shots with the goofy lighting. Oh well, you'll get the general idea of madness and mayhem.
Then, back at the house, I attempted to get some good pictures of the doll with Kaylee, who at first was an unwilling subject. So I put the doll with Kathleen.
And lo and behold, all of a sudden, someone became photogenic.
And in fact, insisted that I take 3 pictures of her with her new doll.
Slightly bossy, but she makes up for it in cuteness. And lest you think that I left her sister out of the gift department,
Kathleen got some lovely little green booties, which she's probably already grown out of. Such is life. Hope everyone had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day! I know I did.

No name post

I'm not feeling clever enough for a title for this post today. We'll see where this goes, it might end up a bit random. I blame Daylight Savings Time.

Knitting. We'll start there. Here's the state of the shawl I started last week, Laminaria. I haven't touched it since last Wednesday.
Isn't it pretty? Why haven't I been knitting on the pretty? Because I'm goofy. I volunteered to test knit a pattern over on Ravelry. A fingerless mitten pattern, and one has to be done by this Thursday.
Because I love deadline knitting. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad, except that there's another deadline. Wednesday. St. Patrick's Day. And I have stuff to get done for then too.
Like a little Irish dancer dolly for Kaylee. The photo was taken yesterday, she now has an arm and a dress. The orangey-red is for her hair, wait til you see how that turns out. This is the pattern I'm using. It's going well, except that the appendages are a bit tricky to work.

Saturday was Spin-In day at knitting pal Paula's house. So much fun. I forgot to take my camera with me, so no photos of all the fun. I'm such a bad blogger. But I got a whole bunch of spinning done.
And none of it on my wheel. What?! I know crazy. But I really wanted to work on something really super pretty, and my limited experience with batts (the way that the fiber is prepared/presented) meant that I pulled out the spindles. That's a pic of the spun fiber against the second batt, so I'm halfway done. I'm definitely going to ply on the wheel (thank goodness!).
It's a lot thinner than I had expected it to be, but the fiber dictates, don't fight it. So I need to wind off the singles and get going on that second batt. Woohoo. Note the pretty sparkles. This fiber was bought more than a year ago, from an amazing Etsy seller, ArtemisArtemis, and the spindles are both from the spindle and fiber club from Zebisis Designs, also on Etsy. Have I mentioned how much I adore Etsy?

Yesterday, the fam came out for dinner and a visit. Here's photographic evidence of how big the kiddos are getting, note that Aubrey is starting to show curls - poor thing.