Home Again! Trip and Other Updates

A good friend who is also a Bruins fan saw this sticker and, knowing Bergeron is my favorite player*, sent it to me. How awesome is that?
 *I was going to link to a past post to "prove" it, but when I searched my blog posts for "Bergeron" there were no less than forty posts, so perhaps I have made that point clearly, eh?

Now I really feel the need to get a Keep Calm and Carry Yarn sticker and put both on the car. A quick search didn't find one formatted the same way, but I'll look more deeply sometime. (Lots of shirts, bags, pins, even posters, not many bumper stickers.) And this one is pretty, but doesn't make the matched pair, you know?

So, the Bruins! Game 7! My plans for Wednesday night changed on Sunday evening, when the Bruins managed to hold off the Caps in overtime and bring it back to Boston. They also apparently made it "the most-watched NHL Playoff game (excluding Stanley Cup Final games) in 15 years," which is nice if not terribly meaningful to me. I'm somewhere between nervous and hopeful about this game. There have been some pretty big upsets so far in the first round, and I would rather that the defending Stanley Cup champions not be added to that list (which already has the other finalist from last year, Vancouver, as well as the much-vaunted Pittsburgh and original-six teams Chicago and Detroit)(raise your hand if you predicted a Phoenix/Nashville match-up in the second round; yeah, I thought not). Plus, Bergeron played injured in game 6, which worries me. Will he be able to gut it out? What's the injury, and will playing make it worse?

Basically, can they do it? I sure hope so. The team needed time off before game 7, particularly after playing 3 PM games Saturday and Sunday in different cities, but the wait is a painful one for fans.

*****
My mother went home yesterday, doubtless with some weather-related relief given the chill and rain of Saturday and Sunday, followed by the snow Monday. We did have a nice visit, though. She came in Thursday, so we had a little time to hang out together. In fact, we went to Costco that afternoon, and guess what we found?

Oh, Coke, you say, big deal? Well, look closer. Does your Coke bottle call itself "refresco"?

This is Mexican Coke, and thus made with sugar, not HFCS. Delicious! Plus drinking out of the glass bottles is fun.

Anyway, we had a nice time Thursday (other than watching the Bruins lose, ahem), and on Friday morning we set off over the river and through the woods. As I mentioned yesterday, we had a nice drive, and no trouble on the way. Spent the evening at Grandma's, and in a nice bit of foreshadowing, when we awoke on Saturday my mother mentioned that since we were just there for Christmas, she expected to look out the window and see snow. Nicely played, Fates.

Saturday was Grandma's actual birthday, so she was officially 98. She liked the tulips I made her, of course, and received many other presents and cards and calls that pleased her as well. It was a good day in many senses (except that the Bruins lost AGAIN, ahem), though unfortunately one of my bad headaches swept through and made it not my best day. But these things happen, and hey, she's 98 and we went out to dinner, not bad!

I got some knitting done over the weekend, too. I was working on the mitts I started last week, and I got one done and the next started.

It doesn't look like it would fit me, does it?

 Yet it does!

 I like the way the thumb is designed. Nice simple pattern to make, too.

We all watched the Bruins game on Saturday; on Sunday, I kept an eye on the action via my netbook while we played cards. In the third period, my aunt turned the TV on, which was amusing as it turned out to be far ahead of the time as it was shown online. It was 2-2 on my screen, and she reported that it was 3-2! Then 3-3! Going to overtime! While I was still at 2-2. I did watch the few minutes of OT live on TV, and was able to see the Bruins win, thankfully.

*****
This visit, my grandmother passed down to me a knitting book that she had bought shortly after its publication in 1947. Here it is:

It's full of her notes from over the years, which makes it an absolute treasure to me, if I never use a pattern or technique in it (and after all I may):

I mentioned before that I was making a baby blanket with bunnies inspired by the fact that my grandmother made a bunny baby blanket before I was born. And here's the pattern! Look how cute:

No wonder my mother remembers it, right? And perhaps fortunately, my grandmother did not try to turn me into this baby, on a nearby page:

The poor thing! That's a lot of woolly love on one child.

My aunt and grandmother also sent me home with a rocking chair, which actually belonged to my mother previously. I put it here for now, until I can decide where it belongs.

 And it passed its preliminary inspection:

Let the lessons on tails and rockers commence!