Fall Adventures, Part 3

The first few days of Wisconsin and St. Paul were largely monopolized by Ms. M who my sister, the grandma, was babysitting. I have somehow forgotten that stage of life either because my boys were angels, or I have successfully blocked those memories, lol. I suspect it is the latter, as I recall concluding that we should be allowed to send toddlers to boot camp and have them returned civilized and potty trained! They do say the darndest things, though. She and I went to the park together and after climbing up the ladder of the slide and looking at some of the dirt that had collected on the bottom, she said "Boys must have been here." She liked the fairy in her bag and we built Lego homes for her Woodsies and the fairy. I was able to hit The Knitting Tree before leaving for St. Paul and found some Madelinetosh Vintage, Tart color way but the visit was cut short when Ms. M started rolling balls of yarn around.

I have to mention the pie (baked by blogless sister Susan) because it was beautiful and so yummy! I rarely see pie cherries in here in Hawaii.

The road to St Paul was gorgeous-gently rolling hills with maples of many colors and birch trees. We stopped at the Norske Nook for lunch. This cute bakery cafe has wonderful food. I really wanted to have pie, but the Reuben on the very dark pumpernickel was way too filling.

My niece lives in a cute neighborhood with 100 year old homes and tall trees.There are a lot of children in the neighborhood and many homes were decorated for Halloween. We drove across the Mississippi River (I love saying that ;) to take Ms. M to music class. She got to wear her Halloween costume to both music class and her preschool open house. I'm always impressed with preschool teachers...they have to be so organized to get such great results in the art and craft department.

I did not go to Mall of America or the giant IKEA store, but I did find Borealis Yarns. The staff were so nice and friendly! I picked up some yarn to make a little hat for Ms. Ms Halloween costume, but alas, had no needles so I had to knit it up in Madison.

It is based on the Noro hat, knit top down.
















On the way back we stopped at a lovely vegetarian restaurant in the Wisconsin Dells, The Cheese Factory. Our food was very unusual, well presented and best of all very tasty!

Back in Madison, I hit a couple of favorites, Burnies Rock Shop and Lakeside Fibers. I was looking for some Petoskeys but they did not have any. Instead I found a little azurite ball. Lakeside Fibers has a new owner, and no longer carries the spinning/weaving products. In the back is a little Internet Cafe with great food and a lovely view of the lake. The very yummy Reuben sandwich had some pickled red cabbage and garlic instead of sour kraut and was served on toasted sour dough. I picked up some Louisa Harding Grace wool silk and some patterns.

My sister and I are still talking about that pickled red cabbage.

I knit one other hat on this trip, another Star Crossed Beanie, from some dyed Alpaca I got at SAFF. The alpaca is named Aramis. The hat will stay in the frigid north with my sister, who will get more use out if then I ever will. Mods: I used size 10 needles for the whole hat and added one 12 row repeat to make it slouch more.


I will add that I did my share to help the economy of Wisconsin. I found a couple shirts at the Tanger outlet Mall and some bag clips at the Corningware Store. I so miss that store at Waikele. I loaded up on Trader Joe's and Aldee's Chocolate for gifts. I found my used copy of Dune at the Frugal Muse. It's such a great book shop! Stitcher's Crossing is a wonderful quilt shop with very nice ladies working there! You can tell they enjoy what they are doing. I found my rubber whisk at the Vanilla Bean. They had everything one could want to bake or make candy!

The trip home was uneventful. Check-in at the Madison airport took 3 minutes instead of the 70 minutes it took at Honolulu Airport. The terminal at Ohare was all new and spiffy. And when I got home, there were rainbows!