Seasons Change

I'm not ready for it but it is happening anyway. Over the weekend the Engineer wanted to play outside. When he asked if he could shovel snow how could I say no? There were actually more leaves in the driveway than show, but he had his own hap hazard fun anyway:
He made a slushy pile of leaves at the bottom on the back stoop steps. And another right in the middle of daddy's side of the driveway. Thank you, son.

That was a few days ago. The snow is gone now, if only for a while. It was gone long enough for me to try one more time to gather fresh parsley to add to the crab croquettes I mixed up for last night's dinner. Under the entrapped leaves there were still a few good looking sprigs of parsley large enough to harvest. I have frozen some baggies of parsley to use in the winter , but the fresh is so much nicer.

After knitting the scarf I wrote about on Monday, I began a sweater for the Engineer. I jockeyed his position in my queue partly because he is smaller and I'm following a simple pattern, therefore his projects are faster. So far the front, back and shoulders are done. Hopefully I can knock out the sleeves this week and finish the neckline and seaming during the Brown's game on Sunday. I figured I could get this done rather quickly and keep busy while I stall and stall and stall some more before casting on for a more complex sweater for the Artist. The sweater I make for her will require my adjusting an adult pattern down to her size. I am not confident, so I plan to make lots of gauge swatches and use tons of lifelines and hope not to need too many of them.

As Christmas decorations are going up all around us, I still have my autumn decor bucking the trend. This is my favorite piece. It hangs inside the vestibule door in the living room. The advent box is still up in the attic, but I still hope transition our home from thanksgiving to advent before Sunday morning.

We are going to have our largest group of guests ever this Christmas, so Rick and I have already decided to use our doesn't-smell-real-but-takes-up-a-lot-less-room-than-a-real tree this Christmas. That means two years in a row we will all miss doing this: