Yes, this past weekend was my wonderful husband's official birthday. I originally posted this on Ravelry, but thought I would add it here as well.
So, here is my report on Mark’s big Birthday Surprise Roadtrip yesterday. For HIS birthday, he took ME on the Hill Country Yarn Crawl! I couldn’t believe it until we hit the second yarn shop. He said he knew how much I had wanted to go last year and had already made plans to take me this year without knowing it would fall on his birthday. He is just so sweet and good to me, sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe I got so lucky for us to be together. Enough of the mushy stuff, now about the important things.
We went to six different shops across the top of the Hill Country, 280 miles, and we have five more to go about the same distance, which we will do this Thursday across the bottom edge of the Hill Country, making eleven in all. We had so much fun! Mark made a picture of each shop while I got my card stamped and looked around and talked with owners and fellow crawlers. I sooo much beautiful yarn, and some really interesting yarn. At one shop I saw yarn spun out of nettles. For those of you who have never experienced a nettle plant, most of them have little stinging hairs and grew in bunches and if you accidentally walk through a patch (because you would never do it on purpose) you never do it again. The yarn looked like plain old twine, and I found it in the sale bin, and it was still there when I left. Each shop gave out two patterns, and the yarn for each pattern was 25% off. Very tempting, but I only fell for one, a lace cowl with an unusual looking yarn by Plymouth called Kudo made of cotton, rayon and silk. Actually, I didn’t fall for it as much as Mark did; he wants it made for Lisa as his Christmas present to her. At one shop I found Spud and Chloe Outer, so naturally I had to have that to make the Shroom hat for Lisa, my Christmas present to Lisa. Next I found the two colors I needed in Cascade 220 for my TKGA project mittens, ugly in my opinion but on sale luckily, so into the car they went. And at one of the last shops, I looked up at a display of socks on a clothesline and there was one in a yarn like Eggroll’s! I didn’t know it was yarn like that, I just told the owner I wanted a yarn that made up like that because I didn’t know how to knit color patterns yet, and Bob’s your Uncle, she took me right to some. It’s not the brand mentioned on Ravelry, but it is supposed to work up the same. This one is Schachenmayr Regia in Adventure Color and will be for our Pug, Louie. The pattern is Elizabeth Watkin's Pug Sweater . The Adventure Color is important because the other names of colors only stripe. And so ended my yarn purchases, as well as the yarn budget that I didn’t have in the first place. Since it came from Mark’s birthday money, I felt compelled to show restraint. On the non-financial side, I met wonderful people, including the owner of VeryPink Knits, who is one of my favorite YouTube instructors. I hope to return to that shop some day for one of her classes.
Well, that is it so far. Thursday includes five more stores. One will be to a llama ranch, and I think that one will really be enjoyable for Mark. I know he enjoyed the llamas, sheep, and alpacas last year when he took me to the llama yarn show near Austin. I love to make him happy. There is a another yarn show next month closer to our house on another llama ranch. Oh boy, another opportunity to make Mark smile! ;-)
My only other news is that I have started Lesson 1 of the TKGA Masters Course. Let's see how long this one takes. I think I will do okay on the swatches, especially since many are duplicates from the Basics Course, and I have already done quite a bit of the research for the papers to be written, the mitten project may be another issue. It has a color change and that thumb challenge, and for me personally (warm weather gal from Texas and California) I have no use for mittens. Add to that, I am developing such a wonderful group of friends on Ravelry and would love to knit projects with them as well, it brings me a true understanding of "so much yarn and so little time".
So, here is my report on Mark’s big Birthday Surprise Roadtrip yesterday. For HIS birthday, he took ME on the Hill Country Yarn Crawl! I couldn’t believe it until we hit the second yarn shop. He said he knew how much I had wanted to go last year and had already made plans to take me this year without knowing it would fall on his birthday. He is just so sweet and good to me, sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe I got so lucky for us to be together. Enough of the mushy stuff, now about the important things.
We went to six different shops across the top of the Hill Country, 280 miles, and we have five more to go about the same distance, which we will do this Thursday across the bottom edge of the Hill Country, making eleven in all. We had so much fun! Mark made a picture of each shop while I got my card stamped and looked around and talked with owners and fellow crawlers. I sooo much beautiful yarn, and some really interesting yarn. At one shop I saw yarn spun out of nettles. For those of you who have never experienced a nettle plant, most of them have little stinging hairs and grew in bunches and if you accidentally walk through a patch (because you would never do it on purpose) you never do it again. The yarn looked like plain old twine, and I found it in the sale bin, and it was still there when I left. Each shop gave out two patterns, and the yarn for each pattern was 25% off. Very tempting, but I only fell for one, a lace cowl with an unusual looking yarn by Plymouth called Kudo made of cotton, rayon and silk. Actually, I didn’t fall for it as much as Mark did; he wants it made for Lisa as his Christmas present to her. At one shop I found Spud and Chloe Outer, so naturally I had to have that to make the Shroom hat for Lisa, my Christmas present to Lisa. Next I found the two colors I needed in Cascade 220 for my TKGA project mittens, ugly in my opinion but on sale luckily, so into the car they went. And at one of the last shops, I looked up at a display of socks on a clothesline and there was one in a yarn like Eggroll’s! I didn’t know it was yarn like that, I just told the owner I wanted a yarn that made up like that because I didn’t know how to knit color patterns yet, and Bob’s your Uncle, she took me right to some. It’s not the brand mentioned on Ravelry, but it is supposed to work up the same. This one is Schachenmayr Regia in Adventure Color and will be for our Pug, Louie. The pattern is Elizabeth Watkin's Pug Sweater . The Adventure Color is important because the other names of colors only stripe. And so ended my yarn purchases, as well as the yarn budget that I didn’t have in the first place. Since it came from Mark’s birthday money, I felt compelled to show restraint. On the non-financial side, I met wonderful people, including the owner of VeryPink Knits, who is one of my favorite YouTube instructors. I hope to return to that shop some day for one of her classes.
Well, that is it so far. Thursday includes five more stores. One will be to a llama ranch, and I think that one will really be enjoyable for Mark. I know he enjoyed the llamas, sheep, and alpacas last year when he took me to the llama yarn show near Austin. I love to make him happy. There is a another yarn show next month closer to our house on another llama ranch. Oh boy, another opportunity to make Mark smile! ;-)
My only other news is that I have started Lesson 1 of the TKGA Masters Course. Let's see how long this one takes. I think I will do okay on the swatches, especially since many are duplicates from the Basics Course, and I have already done quite a bit of the research for the papers to be written, the mitten project may be another issue. It has a color change and that thumb challenge, and for me personally (warm weather gal from Texas and California) I have no use for mittens. Add to that, I am developing such a wonderful group of friends on Ravelry and would love to knit projects with them as well, it brings me a true understanding of "so much yarn and so little time".
