Last week TJ and I were lucky enough to go head down to Florida to stay with my MIL, who has rented a condo for the month of January. B lives in Ontario, and as anyone from there knows, Ontario in January is usually pretty rough. So it is not uncommon for retired folks in the area to head to Florida for the winter (they are affectionately called Snowbirds). I was very happy to become a snowbird and head down for a week of sun and time spent with T and B. While we were waiting for our flight, and during the flight itself, I got started on a new pair of socks. This is how long the flight from Roanoke to St. Pete’s is in sock knitting:

Once we arrived, we took the islands free trolley out for supper, but not before enjoying the sunset.

We tried to do as many things as possible while there, while still getting a chance to relax and soak up the sun. The second day went to a Tampa Bay Lightening Game….

…where I of course knitted while watching the warm up (I put it away once the game starts – don’t want to miss anything!). Third day was outlet shopping (c’mon, it’s Florida, you gotta outlet shop) which was fine because it rained for a good portion of the day. We checked out the Dali museum in Tampa, which I would definitely suggest seeing, even if you are not a big Dali fan. It wasn’t in our original plans, but we decided on Friday to go to Disney for the day. T and B used to go all the time when he was a kid, but I had only been once with T before, and never to the Magic Kingdom.

It was wonderful! We had the best day of weather on the whole trip, did basically every ride (that was open anyway), watched the fireworks and parades. The whole shebang. 9am-9pm+. I even have a war wound to prove I was there (a woman ran up the back of my ankle with her stroller not once, but twice, and left me bleeding and bruised. Barely said sorry as she whipped right on by. Thankfully the nurses at the first aid centre are super nice and have a good sense of humour about the “stroller tanks”). But other than that little distraction it was the perfect day. I totally recommend going in mid January if you can – there were no crowds at all!

We did have a few beach days, while being careful with the sun. The sunsets were amazing. That is one of the things I love about staying on the Gulf side.

I even started a new cross stitch while I was there (another Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery design. I changed up the colours though).

I am quite a bit further along on that now, and I am done the first sock and have started the second. It was a great week to do some crafting for me! Most of all though, I was so happy to spend some time with these crazy kids.

I just wish the rest of my family could have been there too!

Anyone else been on vacation lately? Anywhere warm and sunny? Cold and snowy?

St. Pete Beach on Dwellable

And a bit of France. TJ and I had the opportunity to go to Germany (and one night in France) for a week in October for a much appreciated vacation. I thought I would share a couple of photos of some of the places we were lucky enough to see. There are a couple of pages there, in case you want to see them all.

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We had an amazing time, and we both really want to go back some time. I think our favourite part was definitely the Alps, but we didn’t spend very much time there, so a longer trip is definitely on the wish list.

And would you believe, the entire time I was over there I only saw one craft store? And it was Sunday, so it was closed? Talk about bad luck. We went to a ton of car museums and factories and what not though (TJ is a German car fanatic) so there is definitely a wool based trip coming up at some point. I am thinking Scotland and Ireland. A girl can dream, right?

Last weekend I met TJ is Chicago for a bit of a break. TJ spends lots of time there for work, but he is not near downtown. We have both been there before, but we thought we should really check out the downtown area more. So we got a hotel right downtown and didn’t rent a car. Just our feet and the “El” for us.

We started the weekend at The Bean (properly known as “Cloud Gate”) were I snapped tons of pictures on our cloudy morning. (As always, click to embiggen)

We then spent a lot of the weekend checking out the incredible architecture in Chicago. If you are ever there, I recommend the architectural boat tour – just make sure you get the one that does the lake and the river on the same trip. It gives some great angles for seeing things you wouldn’t otherwise get.

We did a bit of walking around right in the city as well. I checked out Loop yarns, but didn’t get anything there. They had a great wall of Cascade 220 though – apparently every colour they make.

I definitely did not want to go all the way to Chicago and not go to a Cubs game, mostly to see Wrigley Field. TJ had been before and said it was quite the atmosphere, and he was right.

It is just crazy around the stadium before the game. But super friendly organized crazy. I loved it. (As an aside: I think Chicago ranks up there for the most friendly cities I have been to. I mean, people were offering us seats on the subway just because we had luggage with us. Honestly. Not a chance that would happen in Toronto. And we saw it happen again and again while we were there. Young guys, some of which looked pretty scary at first glance, offering their seat to women on the train. And not just people that obviously needed a seat (pregnant, elderly, injured, luggage etc). Just regular women, because it was the polite thing to do. Same thing with doors, walking on the packed street, everything was super polite. It was awesome to see and definitely left me with a good impression of the city).

Once inside the stadium, we had a ball (ahem).  Definitely a historic place for baseball.

Do you see those seats way up on the top left of the picture? On top of the building? Those are people’s condos. With seats on the roof. You have access to them when you live in the building.

Isn’t that wild? It’s the ultimate for a baseball fan. How much fun would that be to have people over for the games?

We certainly couldn’t go to the game without a souvenir, so hats it was. We were so lucky to be out of the sun that day, because it was blazing hot.

The last super fun thing we did was go on a segway tour. We have seen these in lots of the cities that we have been to, but have always passed on it for some reason. We definitely won’t be passing on these again, it was amazing! Such a great way to see the city. I seriously want my own segway.

Picture from our segways after having a Chicago style hotdog

It was a great trip, and I certainly am looking forward to going back someday. Definitely would recommend Chicago to anyone (maybe just not through O’Hell O’Hare if you can avoid it).

Last Tuesday was, quite unbelievably, our 5 year anniversary. In some ways it seems as though I have known and loved TJ my entire life, and in other ways I can’t believe that we have been married for 5 years (together for almost 9, holy cow). We decided to celebrate we would rent a log cabin in the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. A little tour, shall we? (as always, click on any picture to see it larger)

The front door of “Copper Ridge” in Cobbly Knob, TN.

Awesome full kitchen

Living room where we spent lots of lazy mornings relaxing.

Nook with water feature (and an antique yarn winder. That gave me a chuckle)

Pool table. It was sooo great to play pool again. It has been much too long. I love pool, and I am not too bad at it. TJ fondly reminded me of the time we went to the pool hall right after we started dating and I smoked him. He was duly impressed. Someday I will have a pool table of my own, someday.

Awesome bedroom with huge windows and giant beams. Seriously, look at the size of these things! They run the full height and length of the house. (also notice the tile on the right? That was the huge jacuzzi tub. In the bedroom).

Everything in the place was logs. It was quite the thing to see. I would definitely go again, maybe in the fall so I could see the colours. We also spent lots of time in the hot tub out on the big wrap around deck, and in the little screened in enclosure.

We did some touristy things, like shopping the outlets and driving the strip. And mini golf – what US destination vacation spot is complete without mini golf?

Adventure themed mini golf at that. I had my first hole in one, so I was in a good mood. We checked out the upside down building thingy too, cause, well, it was pretty neat.

We did a lovely drive on the Arts and Crafts trail, where I got some Alewine pottery and also my first cola in 8 years. And not just any cola, a Vanilla Coke Float, made with real fountain coke and amazing ice cream.

If you are going to do it, do it right!

After the touristy stuff, we really wanted to explore the national park.

We drove some really amazing mountain roads:

saw some incredible views:

and wished that the camera would do them justice.

TJ mentioned before we left for the trip that he remembered swimming in the mountain streams along the roadside of the park . Once that was in my head I was determined to go swimming, no matter how cold that water was. The first day we swam near a pretty waterfall in a well known swimmin’ hole.

The second day we decided to try out this place we had been told about, that was much more remote and farther into the park.

It was absolutely gorgeous. There were literally hundreds of butterflies all over the place. Flying, landing on you, in big clumps on the ground

We did have a very very scary moment though. TJ slipped on a rock and put his hands out to stop himself, and has he did his wedding ring went flying off his hand into the fast moving, very rocky river. We FREAKED out. TJ was shaking, I just kept saying ‘oh my god, oh my god’ over and over again. I managed to sort of block the flow of the river and flatten out the water so we could see, and after too long searching TJ’s eagle eyes spotted it between two rocks. I dove down and got it – I swear I have never gripped something so tight in my hand in my life. The weirdest part? When I went back up to the car to put in, I looked at the time and realized that it was almost 5 years TO THE MINUTE from when we had said our vows. Isn’t that insane? Good omen that we found it I think.

After that we did take some time to relax and calm ourselves down while snapping some more pictures and having a dip.

The next day we went horseback riding, which was my new years resolution for the year – to ride a horse. Horses sort of make me nervous, so I was glad when they put me on Moseby, this completely relaxed former dinner theatre performer. He was great. We rode all around the trail in the national park and had a great time. There also might have been copious amounts of eating on this trip, including a brownie the size of my head. (Thanks Robin for the recommendation to the Park Grill!)

While all of that was amazing, it was truly made perfect by the fact that I shared it all with my hubby. I love you so much! Let’s do it all again next week, k?

Cobbly Nob on Dwellable

Just wanted to send a big “hi!” out to all the people that stopped by to visit the site through the Stitch Diva Studio’s facebook page. Thanks for visiting, I hope you can stick around. There sure were a lot of you! My site stats went nuts can I couldn’t figure out why until I logged onto facebook and saw that SDS had linked my last post. I really appreciate the shout out!

I have uploaded a whole whack (and I really do mean a whack) of photos from my trip to Sint Maarten/Saint Martin on the “Photos” page above. You can click on any of the photos to get a bigger version that includes a caption, and then you can click the little arrows to move through all the the shots. For my family and friends, make sure you check out all 5 pages! (there are little numbers on the bottom of the page below the small photos that will allows you to change pages).

A friend suggested that I take my wedding shawl with me for the trip. For those of you who haven’t been reading for 5 years – I married my husband in Barbados and knit myself a shawl to wear. So I took it out of it’s carefully stored spot, packed it up, and wore it for a fancy dinner we had at the resort.

I am happy to say it looks just like new still. I think I need more trips to the islands so I can wear it more.

I also bought a really cool little sewing doll while I was down there. One of very few souvenirs I purchased.

She will take up a special spot in the studio when it is all finished.

Hope you enjoy all the pics.