Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Solitary walk

It is winter break for most central New York school systems, so Aidan has the entire week off from school. He has been having a great time playing with friends, but today he is at Beaver Lake Nature Center's day camp. Last year when he went to winter day camp, he played in snow caves, cut ice from the lake and snowshoed. Not today! With temperatures well above freezing and only scant patches of snow on the ground, some other kind of fun will be in order.

After I dropped him off at 9 am, I decided to stay at the nature center and walk, rather than return to the village for my walk. When I walk around the village, I take my iPod and listen to the various podcasts that I download. But since I was away from traffic, I choose to forgo the iPod and just listen to the outdoor sounds. I walked two different trails, Deep Woods and Pine Meadow, for a total of 1.6 miles. I met several other solitary walkers but for the most part, it was just me and the creatures. Woodpeckers were hammering on trees (for what at this time of year?), squirrels and chipmunks were running around, chickadees were chattering and the crows, as usual, were in a royal snit about something. I enjoyed the fresh smell of the outdoors, the crispness of the air and my own thoughts.

It was a lovely way to start the day and a nice change of scenery.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Baby gift

Another coworker of James is having a baby soon, so I knit a little hat:


Who says that babies can only wear pastel colors? I really like the combo of purple and greens in this hat and since I don't know the gender of the baby, I thought it would work well for either a girl or a boy. I knit the hat out of Claudia Hand Painted Yarn in fingering weight, and the pattern is Swirl Hat by Mandie Harrington. It is an easy little hat to make, but the swirling rib pattern is interesting, particularly when knit with hand painted yarn.

We will pair the hat with a copy of Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell's Catch the Moon book and CD, which was our favorite CD from when Aidan was a baby. Truthfully, the three of us still like the songs and play the CD fairly often. Have a listen:



We have given many of these CDs as gifts over the years; I don't know what we will do if we can't buy them anymore!