Meeting Finn

whew... what a trip.

There will be pictures of family time and pictures of New Years Eve but first, the biggest part of my journey back home for Christmas...

Meeting Finn!

If you're new to the blog, Finn is the son of one of my oldest and best friends, Karen. He was born prematurely and it was kind of touch and go there for a bit so the fact that he's not only home and doing well but doing great and getting more than a little huge, is just amazing. I've knit a couple of gift projects for him but this was the first time we got to meet.

Karen was so cool and when they picked me up, he was dressed in the hoodie I made for him this Fall. It's still hugely big on him but that just means he gets to wear it for longer.

(Karen didn't do the Godmother thing for him but if she did, I would have SO been in the running. Seriously. Top three at least. Or... I like to tell myself that... Karen, please don't kill the dream.)

Over the course of the last few months, I've been knitting on and off on his latest present which then turned into his Christmas present as December rolled around and all of my attention had to switch to scarves and socks for a bit. It's the Embroidered Kimono from Special Knits by Debbie Bliss. I'd seen Franklin Habit's gorgeous version and fallen so in love that I hunted down the book to be able to make it. (Got the hoodie from there, too!) Where's the embroidery on the Embroidered Kimono? Shhhhhhhhh... it's really cute anyway, isn't it?

Ohyeah... Pretty daaaaaaamn cute

I got to spend two days with them and knew that one of the only things we just HAD to do was to go to Karen's favorite knitting stores. She's a mighty fine knitter and we're always talking about our favorite stores and yarns.

Her top fave is Borealis, which is such a beautiful, big, airy shop and the owner is all funky so the shop reflects that. We both got some good yarn there. And then, as she's also a Malabrigo junkie like me, we had to check out The Yarnery, which has a really great selection of almost all their weights. (Except Aquarella! Really people, it's the best yarn. Why don't you carry it? And dearlord... Gruesa... some of those colors make me weep.) Anyway, what they did have was a LOT of Lace, Worsted and the new Sock. It took me forever to decide what colors to get. I wish I could have gotten it all.

And ohyeah, that little date thing I mentioned... Good job all you good luck wishers. Had a great time and turns out he gets to LA quite often for someone who doesn't live here so we'll see if you hear mention of him again. Either way, it was a very cool night with someone I hadn't seen in (we tried to figure out exactly how long but couldn't) around 15 years and gave me a bit of hope again.

And that's it for our Meeting Finn entry. One more soon with all the other stuff and then it's back to real life. And as much as I'm looking forward to that, I'm also enjoying being in my brand new flannel pj's all day and having a Lord of the Rings (Extended Edition) marathon while blogging and doing laundry. Ahwell, not being able to do it every day will keep it special.

Night!