Dainty Kitty

Beep's First Trip to a Yarn Shop

Meet Beep.  He's an UglyDoll.   

While in Destin, Beep and I took a stroll down Miracle Strip Parkway and came across the cutest little yarn shop called Unwind.

Beep's first trip to a yarn shop couldn't have been a better experience.  It was a beautiful place and the owner, Ellen, was absolutely wonderful.  I wish I could move her and her shop here (because I really don't like going to my LYS all that much - it's never a very warm experience).

I fell in love with the felted Noro bag with the big red dot.  And keep an eye on the scarf next to the pretty blue sweater. 

Her window displays were adorable, too. 

I also fell quite in love with these seventy-five dollar namaste leather bags.

If you look closely, you'll see the reflection of a striped bag in the window.  I managed to walk out with only three skeins of yarn.  Remember that scarf I said you should keep your eye on?  My mom admired it so I (pretty blatantly) bought a skein of the Misti Alpaca 100% baby alpaca it was made from (the pattern was conveniently free with purchase) to make her one for Christmas.  I admired the other colors but the color they had chosen to knit it in was really the prettiest.  Maybe by the time December 25th rolls around, she'll have forgotten....I love this yarn and I love this rib pattern.  It's so soft (I gave a piece to Jake while we were watching BSG the other night and he rubbed it between his fingers for several episodes) and the pattern is so easy but makes such a pretty scarf.  I'm definitely going to make one of these for myself as well. 

I also bought two skeins of Jojoland Melody sock yarn for my second pair of socks.  :-)

And that was our trip to Unwind, the sweet little yarn shop!  Later on you'll get to meet Beep's friend, Bop.  But that's for another day.

Besides finishing my sock, I managed to (finally) unpack and get things ready for the living room rearrangement tomorrow so right now I think I deserve some curled up in bed book time....

Home Again

I have lots of pictures to post and things to say but every time I start, even though I think about it bit by bit, I get overwhelmed. 

It was certainly the vacation I needed.  By Friday night I was ready to be home...but not ready to leave.   I don't think I found all of the answers I was looking for but I do think I found a few and came across other things I hadn't thought of at all.  Anyway, tomorrow - views, books, seafood and yarn stores.

For now - my feet.   Just because I liked the way the waves rushed over and around them. 

I Heart Nashville

I could have ended my vacation after our night in Nashville - I had that much fun!  After walking up and down Broadway, devouring a pulled pork sandwich topped with slaw and a slurping a locally brewed beer called Yazoo Pale Ale, we stopped in a little honky tonk called Robert's Western World.  We were trying to pick a place and the band was playing one of my favorite songs, "Kawliga" (click to hear about that poor old wooden head [sidenote:  my granny had a Boxcar Willie album and I asked her to play this song so many times you could probably tell exactly where the song was located on the album]) so we went inside.  What a great little bar!  I mean, really, how can you go wrong with a bar that sells fried bologna sandwiches and a bag of chips for three-fifty?  Add a Miller High Life (two bucks before six and only a two-fifty after six) and you've got a first class meal (I used to love my granny's fried bologna sandwiches, too)!

Anyway, the music was great, we drank MHL all night (which cracks me up), my mom got a little drunk (that's rare) and I danced all night with a sweet redneck from West Virginia named Ray.  He made my one night in Nashville so much fun (and the guy sitting next to us had a boy crush on him [and even bought him a shot at one point] because he looked like the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now I know how to two step...I think.  Anyway, a night in Nashville is not the time to break in a new pair of shoes...and if I could dance like that every night I'd be stick skinny.

Here are some photos I swiped from their website (believe it or not I didn't carry my camera downtown - I could have kicked myself) - Riley was our super cute waitress and The Don Kelley Band was playing that night.  Oh, and we sat right in front of those boots. 

Home Again, Home Again

I really didn't take many pictures this weekend at all.  I regret that I didn't get a photo of the three of us at Paddy's Pub on Saturday night: Jake and I in our QC shirts and Raja in a Pintsize shirt (Pintsize being Marten's AnthroPC in the comic).  Or even one photo of Jake and I since it was our first road trip.  Oh well.

While we were standing on the edge of the river, a older man with a thick accent and a droopy mustache came up, pointed to the ship and said something about the tide.  It makes absolutely no sense to me (if someone understands, please explain) but the tide receded at least ten feet as the ship passed us.  It seems to me that it should have risen due to water it was displacing but...did it recede due to the water it was pushing in front of it?  I have no idea.  Just an example of why I was a liberal arts major, I guess. 

Anyway, that gentleman gave me my very first genuine Canadian, "Eh?"  I'll never forget him.  :-)

It was also nice - yet terribly frustrating at the same time - to find that Jake and I travel well together.  Just like everything else.  There were Moments, of course, but that's natural.  I've started to type two of them out several times but deleted them instead. There's no reason to catalog that kind of thing here, I guess.   

Ah, I wish I had a day off tomorrow...it really feels funny to think that I've nearly traveled six hundred miles in the past two and a half days...if I weren't exhausted, I wouldn't believe it.      

Taking Sarnia by Surprise

So up until about nine o'clock yesterday morning, I wasn't going to Sarnia, Ontario with Jake but when he mentioned in his first email of the day that he really didn't relish the idea of driving his car up there with his unreliable brakes, I gave in and sent him an email asking, "What if I went and we took my car?"

I had originally decided not to go due to my current financial situation but had been toying with going anyway- especially he had said he was going to pay for the gas.  I mean, how much could I really spend in two days?

So I'm in Canada. 

Nothing exciting really - lots of watching Jake and his friend play video games.  I really came for the company - I've been napping, reading and crocheting dish clothes for a lack of any other last minute project to pull together.  But I did just play Guitar Hero for the first time...ahem, I suck, by the way.   

It's been fun although the Baby Subject came up inadvertently during dinner and drinks (when I found that you really can spend quite a bit of money in two days in Canada)tonight and it took me a long time to get back on my feet again - to stop pulling away and join the conversation.  Not to be all melodramatic or anything but I'm beginning to prepare myself for the end.  He won't budge and neither will I.  Very sad. 

What a lovely note to end on.  In other news, though, Jake's friend, Raja, burned me a CD of music I've never heard before and I'm really looking forward to listening to it on the five hour drive home tomorrow....