What took you?!

So I know that all 6 of my followers are just dying to know why the heck it took me so long to detail our lovely fall break on the blog and here's the answer: Extreme fear of being unprepared for winter.

I lightly touched on just how freezing we were during most of the trip which made me realize that winter could be around the corner at any turn and I decided I wanted to be prepared. The first action this instigated (although not much of an excuse for not updating) was to go shopping, which, to say the least, is not my favorite thing in the world to do. Thankfully our endeavor was successful. I managed to find 2 sweaters, socks, and leather boots while Michael found a really nice black wool coat that looks pretty awesome on him. Maybe I'll manage to get a nice picture of him in it soon however, to spite our purchases, the weather has suddenly turned beautiful. We also took our usual in-town side trip to the covered market fore some delicious fruits and vegetables for dinner.

So with those successes under our metaphorical belts, I set out to replace Michael's winter had which had been eaten last year by moths. I had brought some nice blended wool and mohair yarn from home to make it with but after many many hours and roughly 2/3 of the way thorough the project, we decided that it was too loose. Alas, finding circular knitting needles in France is as easy as finding a needle in an extra large haystack but eventually after fumbling my way through the french language in multiple Phildar stores (wool stores), I finally found someone that carried them. After much discussion, they convinced me that the 80cm (almost 1 yard long) circular needles were
the right ones to faire le bonnet (make a hat)...which sounded odd to me, but I wasn't about to argue with them in my very limited french (sorry to those of you who don't have the slightest clue about circular knitting needle lengths). After getting home, realizing the needles were far too long, trying to convince Michael to find a way to cut and splice them, and moping around for awhile, I got on the computer and realized that the "magic loop" technique just might work; knitters, if you haven't seen it, check it out. After much fenangling, I was finally able to make it work. So the past couple of weeks have been spent knitting away every extra minute (and since I can't just knit, watching 2 seasons of Scrubs). I finally finished the hat yesterday and thankfully Michael seems to be very happy with it, which is great because I ran out of yarn to do anything else to it with.

Tomorrow morning we will be heading to Reims to check out their Christmas market. Bon week-end to everyone back home. We miss you all, especially with the Holiday season upon us.