Yarn Along - Hitchhiker

I finished my Hitchhiker a few days ago and am rather pleased with the way it turned out.  I'm sure it's going to get lots of use this winter.

I knit it on 4 mm needles with thicker yarn than the pattern suggested and ended up with only 37 'teeth' due to running out of yarn, but it's still plenty big enough.  Great thing about a scarf is that it doesn't really have to fit, as such.  Which is more than can be said for sweaters.

I cast on Tino's  Fire Truck Sweater according to the pattern for age 6 but it came out very very wide.  So I downsized by .5 mm but it still looked too big.  So now I'm making an age 4 (he'll be 5 in October) and still using .5 mm smaller needles.  I think it will fit him just right now.  If it comes out too big he won't wear it and I figured there's no point it sitting in a draw waiting for him to grow into it, chances are his fire truck obsession will have worn off by then!

On my Kindle I'm reading Last Child In The Woods.  I'm only on chapter 1 and what an eye opener it is.  As expected  computers, television, mobile phones etc are given as  reasons why children are spending less and less time outside, but another reason, that fortunately we don't experience here, is  that children are not being 'permitted' to play out side.  It's not so much the parents who sanction kids play but it's groups such as 'home owners associations' who are increasingly regulating outside play to the extent that it no longer resembles play.  Climbing trees, spontanious ball games and other such classic forms of 'unstructued' entertainment are NO NO in a growing number of places!!  Well I didn't see that one coming.  I'm eager to find out what the rest of the reasons are.
My wee lads have also been getting creative these past few days.  My mother-in-law turned 70 on saturday and with a little help from us big people, they made her this little keep sake

Here they are hard at work.  I'm so proud of them, not only for making this but for keeping 'mum' about the surprise party we organized for her with all her brothers and sister, children and grand children.

Linking up with Ginny today for Yarn Along