The Big Easy

So yesterday was my fifth wedding anniversary and to celebrate a bit early we took advantage of the long Easter weekend last week and headed to New Orleans!  We ate a lot and drank a lot and just had an all-around fabulous time!  I hit two yarn shops and couldn’t walk out of either one without purchasing something!

The first shop was Quarter Stitch in the French Quarter.  It was a very cute shop with some very nice women and the cutest shop dog ever!  I wish I had gotten a picture of her!  I bought two skeins of Malabrigo Aquarella in the colorway Palmar.  They had a beautiful scarf in the shop that was knit with it and I fell in love with its softness and the unique coloring!

The next day we spent in the Garden District and I headed to Garden District Needlework Shop.  The ladies there were SO NICE and I can’t wait to go back.  They even entertained Geoff while I was looking around.  I came out of there with five skeins of Lamb’s Pride Worsted in the colorway M-240 Prairie Goldenrod.  It is destined to be a cardigan for me.  I love the bright happy color!  I think it will be perfect during the milder winters here in south Mississippi and the color will be nice during the blah, colorless winter.

I can’t wait to get back to New Orleans!  I’m so glad it’s only a 90 minute drive away!  I want to get back to the yarn shops and stuff my face with more beignets.

In more knitting news, I finished knitting the Ribbed Lace Bolero!  Seriously – I’ve finished knitting it but I am still binding off.  The pattern recommends a sewn bind-off and with 100+ stitches, it takes forever.  After the bind-off it’s just a couple of short seams, tacking down the collar and praying for a good fit!

As for blog news, I have finally finished updating all of the archives.  Apologies if you were overwhelmed by copious “updates” in your RSS feeds.  I uploaded all of the photos to Flickr and updated/removed outdated links.  I went through every post and it was both fun and weird reading all of it.  I came across so many projects that I loved at the time and, well, don’t anymore.  It was also funny to see what patterns I wanted to knit back in the day.  I look at some of them now and think “why did I ever want to knit that?”  I guess tastes change over the years!  And oh the projects that I abandoned!  I couldn’t believe it!  But I know I’m not the only knitter who loses interest in projects as they progress.  I’m learning it’s better to use the yarn for something else rather than finish something I know I’ll hate.  Of course, it’s always painful for me to rip out abandoned projects!  The more I do it, the easier it will get!  Right?!