Back from vacation

So, I hope everyone had a nice holiday. We went to Gatlinburg



We went whitewater rafting - the little one is now large enough to do class 3 rapids. No pictures of that (duh).
We hiked the Alum Cave Trail. That's 6400+ ft and 10+ miles round trip. We have one tough 9 year old.
That night we rode the gondola up the hill so my husband and I could live our childhood dream of riding theAlpine slide.





At the top there were other things to do, such air gun shooting at Zeke's shack and even an iceskating rink:






So the next day we went to Clingman's Dome:






And after that, because we're old and our knees and feet can only deal with so much hiking we went to the best amusement park in TN.



One of my readers is laughing me right now - you know who you are, satellite-dish-gazebo-TN-native - but it was a ton of fun. And the little one's first roller coasters.
Not happy unless we're over doing it, we rounded off our day at Hill Billy Golf:





Mini golf is always fun. More so with disused farm equpiment.
Random wrap up, our hotel:

From the top floor

View out our balcony

Some kid

The pool at the hotel (big hit with the kids)

In TN you can apparently travel north and south at the same time.

Needs buttons

But it has buttons, you say?  Did a bad job of lining them up and am not convinced I like them, so we'll see.
I like it, though.
Have a nice long weekend, everyone.

Getting close to done with my boring sweater

I"ll take a picture later tonight.  I've also started a shawl, which has 4 whole rows done, not good camera fodder.

So, random thought.
It seems to me that there's a turn of phrase, more prevalent down south, where people refer to their or another's significant other as "my Mary" or "his Mary".  I found this was bothering me on some minor level and I wondered why.  I think it's as a northerner, I would never presume to own every aspect of another person, even a spouse.  My husband, my mom, my son, all have existences of their own, independent of every connection to me, so I would only call them mine by role, not mine in synecdochical whole.  I find doing so sort of weirdly presumptuous.

Okay, back to knitting,like I said, random.

Soccer is over for the year

And yikes was it hot this weekend. Anyway, it's been a while since I posted soccer pictures, so here's our kid with his amazing hippy hair:

Working on this boring sweater

Rosa Rugosa - I love the pattern but it's not great copy for blogging:




But I have a pattern now for a shawl to make out of some lovely Malibrigo sock a nice person gave me for my birthday. The pattern was also a gift - yay. That will be nice to take pictures of. And make.
We have a couple big doings this weekend - our final soccer tournament of this year and LA Noir to play.
Oh, if you live in Atlanta and are looking for a yummy lunch, try Local Three - Todd Mussman and friends. Yes, we took a day off today.

New yarn and stuff

More news at 11...

So very tired

It's been a long week.
So I took Indy out to the back porch before dinner. He's a good kitty - pretty patient.















I hope to finish those lined mittens this weekend so I can move on.
Have nice weekend, everyone.

Knitting at practice

And listening to Jane Eyre. How bad can life be? I really like these mittens. Entrelac is fun but just as you get sick of it, you're done and move on to straight knitting. The lining will keep the embroidery from snagging. They're a labor of love. I think I'll write this one up with some mix and match colorways - one idea is a fawn grey with cherry branches and pale pink lining ....