Bring on the Wool

Brrrr! Winter was waiting for us when we got home on Saturday. It was a long day of travel, made longer by delays before we took off (we were sitting in line to take off when the pilot informed us that there was a 45-60 minute delay up north) and when we landed (we had to wait for an open gate once we arrived). But we picked up some Chinese food on the way home and walked in the door at about 7:40 Saturday night after leaving my parents' place in Florida at 11:15 a.m. It was a full flight and fairly bumpy, but we did get a pretty spectacular view of the sunset out the window:

I also took advantage of a wheelchair at the airport again, so I was able to board first and thus we got to sit in the second row of the plane. Not bad! I was grateful that we learned our lesson from several years back and took our winter coats with us so that we were warm enough when we landed and the feels-like temperature was something like 8ºF. And a snowstorm is blowing through today, so we definitely timed our return well! My parents were actually supposed to come back today but changed their flight to yesterday so they could get in before the storm.

As much as I always enjoy our end-of-year vacation, I am happy to be back home. We may have everything we need at my parents' place -- laundry, plenty of food, entertainment, comfortable beds -- but home it's not. I didn't bring any extra yarn this vacation, for starters, which meant I wrapped up the vacation with only one WIP -- one that was a bit too big to bring on the plane (yes, I somehow survived that long day of travel with no knitting!). So I wasted no time in digging out yarn for new projects when we got back.

Here you see the start of a kid-sized hat I'm test knitting using a skein of Knit Picks Chroma Twist that I bought in a sale last year, a skein of Urban Girl Yarns fingering that I bought at SSK in 2023 that I'll be making into another charity hat, and some leftover Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce that I'm using for a yarn cake cozy. All of these are because I need some less mentally demanding knitting to do to complement my main WIP, my Polwarth sweater:

I am having a heck of a time getting the colors to photograph accurately; in real life, they're darker and not quite as green. I didn't finish the entirety of the yoke while we were away, but I did get through all of the detail at the front, which is actually done in brioche. So now I'm in the least taxing part of the yoke, and I hope that by later this week I'll have moved on to the first sleeve.

While vacation was low key, for the most part, there was a little bit of excitement: Look who started knitting again!

She's working on a Tin Can Knits Flax DK pullover (sans garter stitch sleeve details). She started it last year when we went away and hadn't touched it since, so I ripped it back to the start of the raglan increases so she could (mostly) start over. Even though it'd been a year, she picked it up again easily and has only needed my help a couple of times, mostly just to verify that she's doing what she's supposed to. I just hope she keeps it up!

I hope that those of you who are in the path of this big winter storm stay safe and warm! We're getting snow, enough that Molly has a snow day, and the Mister has decided to work from home, so we'll all be staying inside today.