I’m currently in Pearl Beach, Michigan, with Hawkeye and Dub, visiting Grandma and Grandpa.  The view out my window is of a beautiful wild river with a marshland and forest on the other side.  The river is always changing - sometimes iced over, sometimes running free.

The birding has been fantastic - we saw a merlin right ouside our windows!  That is a new bird for me.  It looked much bigger than I would have imagined.  We’ve seen lots of ducks too - canvasbacks, common goldeneyes, common mergansers, mallards, I think a bufflehead or two.  Also mute swans.  All this from the comfort of our living room!

 Of course I’m knitting a lot too.  Working on a wonderful four-color stash sweater, though it looks like I’ll have to buy a skein or two to finish it.  Also a very delicate scarf in pink lace-weight yarn - the Trellis-Bordered Openwork Diamonds pattern. 

We went to Mary Maxim’s retail store in Port Huron and I got more of the beige Invicta for the strange-gauge socks.  For now, I’m having fun working on the sweater and scarf - the socks can wait a bit longer.

The kids are great - field trips with Hawkeye for train watching and sledding, learning to build fires in the fireplace, Dub providing play-by-play commentary for the Superbowl.  We’re all getting lots of quality time with Grandma and Grandpa.  Life is good.