I’ve been finishing things up and preparing for our trip (and these random pictures reflect bits of that.) Bracken and I are going to Florida to visit my mom, (and my grandma will be there too- Yay!) This will be our third winter visiting Grandma Julie in Florida, it’s become a February tradition. The family time is precious to me and I must say, getting a dose of some Florida sunshine in the middle of winter when the Pacific Northwest is overcast and rainy, is quite a treat! Jeff is staying home to hold down the fort. (He’s not a fan of flying and is happy to be home. Though he will be working on taxes while we’re playing at the beach, so I want to do something extra nice for him when we get back. Maybe someday we’ll have a motor home and he’ll join us, wouldn’t that be fun?)

With the new year, I really wanted to finish up a bunch of knitting projects I had in the works. (It’s nice to have a lot of projects to choose from, but the downside is that I start running out of project bags because they are all full of something-in-the-works and sometimes I need the same knitting needles for multiple projects. Plus, it’s just so nice to finish something!) Getting some hats completed helped fuel that finish-up-projects energy. I have some balls of yarn leftover from other projects and asked Bracken to go through them and pick his favorite colors. I started knitting him a hat in colorful stripes (I showed a peek of the beginnings of it in the pictures above.)

I finished knitting a sweater for a sweet little girl’s second birthday. I originally intended the sweater to be for her newborn sister, but though I am finally blocking my knitting, I can’t say that I’m one to knit gauge swatches. Maybe I’ll come around with that, maybe not. The sweater ended up not being a baby sweater, but fitting a two year old, which was actually perfect because I was going to knit one for each of them anyway.

I originally planned to knit the Plain Vest, but the pattern was no longer available on Ravelry. I ended up knitting the pattern In Threes. What a lovely pattern! Jeff made hemlock buttons with wood from our yard (that thread came from my grandma and I adore the wooden spools) and I loved the way the warm hue looked with that purple yarn. Oh, and speaking of that beautiful purple yarn, it’s handspun wool from Hungry Hill Farm. I went through two skeins (my two matching ones) and then luckily found another skein in my stash that matched well enough that you couldn’t hardly tell.

I got some sauerkraut made. I wrote ‘Make Sauerkraut!’ on a piece of paper and left it on the kitchen table to be sure I got that done. It was one of the many things on my to-do list before I left. I soaked some hazelnuts and made some nut butter to bring for a snack during our travels. It’s a simple recipe I’ve been wanting to share here for years, and have finally found the amounts I’m really happy with. Just the perfect amount of sweetness. I’ll share it here soon. (And I know I said I would share the paleo cupcakes/muffin recipe with you from Bracken’s birthday, but I’m still tweaking the recipe, even though I’ve made them so many times, and don’t like to share recipes until I’m completely happy with them.)

Our chives are up in the garden! Jeff transplanted a bunch for me in a new spot, not that we didn’t already have plenty of chives growing, but he knows how much I love to add chives to meals and I didn’t want to harvest it from the backyard where the chickens had been free-ranging around. We also planted some in the fish tank Bracken got for Christmas. He has a fish named Moss living in there. (He’s blue and he’s a betta, in case you were wondering.) We’ve grown some different things in the top of the fishtank, but now we’re sticking with chives because we’ve had so much success with it. (They had just been transplanted when I took the picture, but they looked much better after a few days.) Bracken really enjoys taking his scissors and cutting up chives for our meals. He is very proud of his homegrown chives and tells us he grew them all by himself.

You probably already know that I love synchronicities. I was happy about the synchronicity that happened the other day after we were at the beach, so that we were able to make a bad situation just a little bit better. Another synchronicity happened this week. I saw a friend and she had a gift for me. When I opened it up I was nearly speechless. Hard to imagine (I talk a lot), but I hardly knew what to say because I was so blown away. I was afraid I couldn’t begin to express just how much it meant to me and how perfect it was. I stood there with my jaw open, covered in goosebumps, saying “How did you know?!”

Remember those little statues I loved from the Art of Life Gallery is Coos Bay? After we left that day, I had been thinking about the family statue. I couldn’t get it out of my head or stop thinking about it, actually. Our family was going through what felt like one rough patch after another and I wanted peace and healing for us all. I felt like that little statue would surround our family in some magic and prayers, would be a reminder to me of that somehow. And for some reason, I felt like I didn’t just want it, I needed it. I don’t know how to explain it really, I gravitated towards it so strongly. We almost drove back to buy it, but then I talked myself out of it. Later I e-mailed the artist to tell her how much I loved her work and how much it spoke to my soul, and we were conversing back and forth. I had plans to get the family statue, but before I did, my friend handed it to me and gave it to me as a gift. She had seen that I liked those statues and happened to know the artist, but the fact that she handed me the exact statue I had wanted so badly amazed me. I’m still in awe about it, I was so touched. Before I start tearing up again, though, one more thing to share that I finished up.

What project is really important to finish right before a trip to Florida? A wool vest, right?

I am so happy with the vest I finished for Bracken! In fact, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever knit. I’m calling it his Sunshine-In-February vest. It took much longer for me to finish than I expected, but it was a happy accident that I ran out of the yellow yarn because I LOVE the brown color and part around the arms. Then I finished it with some WoolyMossRoots black walnut buttons that Jeff made for me and I’m in love. (It may not be ideal to put a collar shirt underneath the vest with a collar, but I loved the bright blue plaid with it.) I took a picture of the back because I love the knitted design. The pattern is Little Billy Goat and the yarn is from Wolf Ridge Icelandics (the yellow colorway is goldenrod.)

{Time to head out. I’m actually hitting the publish button on this post from the airport. I’ll be back in this space when I’m able to. Florida, here we come!}