Finally, I caved to the pressure

This is the start of the baby blanket for Jim's newest grandchild. This is actually the back side, but I felt like it showed the pattern better than the front (pre-blocking). This is the Faux Russian Stole by Meg Swanson and I've been wanting to knit this for a few years. I've decided to omit the lace border in favor of a plain garter stitch edge and I think that this change, along with the color, will keep it boyish enough. It's a really fun knit, made much easier by my breaking the pattern up into three sections and using post-it's and stitch markers to keep track of what's going on in them. If you have never knit lace before, let me tell you something that a wise woman once told me...use stitch markers to keep track of the pattern repeats. I know!...it's simple. Why didn't I think of that?...I'm not really sure, but I do know that if you do that, and count the stitches between those markers on every row, you can't screw it up too badly. And then if you're still not sure, you can use a "life line" which is when you thread a scrap piece of yarn through the last row that you knit (and are certain that it's correct), which allows you to rip back to a section that you know is free from error if you mess it up too badly. Thus endeth Cambria's Words-O-Wisdom on lace knitting.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be taking Dante up for his first trip to the Temple. I'm excited for this and I think he is too (but you never can tell with Dante). Hopefully I won't embarrass him with my excitedness. Then Saturday I have a lunch date with my friend from my last job, then the boys have a Halloween party at the Nielson's (while Aaron will be taking the Providence ghost tour with his mom and friends), and then it's back home for Dante to go out. If Alex does well at the party, we'll take him out too but if he's too tired it will just be The Boy. I'd like to bake something tomorrow for Halloween, but I've already baked an apple pie (yesterday) and a huge batch of molasses spice cookies (today) from a recipe I found on a great blog I just discovered the other day. The pie came out alright...I guess not all apples work out in pies. I bought a bag-o-apples at the market and didn't realize that I should have got a specific variety (according to the Big Book of Food (my name for it) from America's Test Kitchens, or that crusts could vary so much. Dante peeled, and cored/sliced the apples with a combo slicer-corer. Then he mixed everything up and I put the crust on, then into the oven it went. It looked pretty till I cut into it and found out that the mound of apples collapsed onto itself and the crust was hollow when I cut into it. It just sunk right down, and the apples were pretty mushy, but over all it tasted good. We're going to try it again, only this time I'll make the crust ahead of time and we'll get the right apples. As far as the cookies go...(again, learning from mistakes) they were too puffy and needed more sugar for my taste. It's nothing against the recipe, I just happened to have bread flour in the pantry and never realized that my flour combined with the leveners in the dough would make big, puffy cookies instead of the normal flat, cracked, sugar crusted ones from the photo. And I like a sweeter cookie so I'll make this again with all purpose flour and some white sugar. The boys like them so I guess that's what counts. Now I want to try the recipe for chocolate chip pumpkin cookies I found here, and see how that works out.