We've had a fairly quiet week this week, as the rain has returned to Seattle leaving us somewhat housebound. We did manage to get out and about earlier in the week before the weather set in, taking Isobel out for an afternoon of caching with Mum & Dad. We were able to finally drop off a few travel bugs that we brought back from Australia on our last trip, and found our 600th cache ... more than five years after we started! Isobel also got a few more finds, she's almost into double figures .

I finally received my beta invitation to Ravelry this week - after reading so much about it and hearing reviews on some of the knitting podcasts I listen to, it was a bit like being admitted to a special club . I was lucky that I already had most of my knitting and crochet things from the last couple of years in Flickr, so it was just a matter of importing the photos and starting to sort out the pattern and yarn details - a lot of the hard work seems to have already been done. Even so, the crochet side of the house seems to be a little under-represented, so I'm doing my bit by volunteering as an editor - I've 'adopted' a lot of the crochet pattern books I've used for the afghans I've made in the last couple of years, and I'm slowly creating the pattern meta-data and filing it all away in the right part of the site's databases. There are so many wonderfully inspiring pieces listed already, and it's so nice to receive positive comments about my own work too!!

Isobel seems so much closer to walking this week - she's really taken to zipping around on the walker we got a few weeks ago. When she's fed up with the walker, she then crawls into the kitchen and starts pushing the kitchen chairs around on the floorboards!! She's even learned to duck her head from under the table ... so funny to watch, she has such a determined little look on her face. The little Fisher-Price dinosaur has also suddenly become interesting, after being ignored for most of the year - Isobel has finally realised her roll-a-rounds will fit in the holes and make a noise! We've also seen her stand independently for longer periods - several seconds at a time, before slowly sinking to her knees on the floor. She still seems to think she's faster crawling than walking, but she can zip from one side of the couch to the other if there's any snacks to be had . Mum and Dad are hoping they'll see a couple of steps before leaving on their first trip next week ... we'll see!!