A Birthday and More

I know I've been tardy in posting to the blog so I'm going to give a quick update on what's been happening. A Cliff's Note version if you will. I'll try and throw in all the good bits.

Last Friday I celebrated my 26th birthday with a large group of my friends at a pub in Atlanta. I was really pleased that so many people were able to make it. There were lots of pictures by my friend Nick (who labeled himself "photographer" for the evening) but many of them were blurry and some were incriminating so I've posted a nice tame one from the beginning of the evening.
My friend Tracy, me and my friend Hannah. Overall I had about 15 people show up which was nice. We had a really fun time and it was a nice way for me to celebrate.

This week I'm in New Orleans again with my future SIL, Brandi, visiting my brother. Have I taken any pictures from earlier in the week? Of course not. The first ones I took were today in the Pontchartrain Avenue cemetery.


I have a morbid fascination with cemeteries. They are incredibly beautiful to me and I always get great pictures.

Other than traipsing around burial grounds, Brandi and I have been sleeping in, eating lunch with my brother, and seeing the town. On Wednesday I roped her into finding a yarn shop. I used Knit Map to pinpoint 4 yarn shops in New Orleans which seems like slim pickin's for such a large city. Though, I think it might be too hot to knit here. Yeah, I really just said that. The heat index has been over 100 for the whole week so I can almost see how that's possible. Anyways, I found 2 that seemed to be fairly close to where we were, Quarter Stitch and the Garden District Needleworks store. Quarter Stitch looked to be the more frequented of the 2 so I talked Brandi into riding down to the store with me. Little did I know that the Quarter Stitch was located not just in the French Quarter (I guess the name should have tipped me off) but in the heart of the French Quarter. Needless to say we got to see Bourbon, Decatur, and Dauphine Streets all in the middle of the day. And I got to pay $10 to park for 45 minutes. I did find some nice yarn though.
The packaging was too pretty to open and show you so I'll get pictures later. There's 2 skeins of Malabrigo worsted and a skein of Ella Rae sock yarn. The lady at the counter was very nice and the shop, while small, made the most of the their space. Plus they had a luscious pick of Mal that would rival a much bigger store.

Today (Thursday) I wanted to check out the other store, Garden District Needleworks. It was only about a mile from my brother's apartment so Brandi and I thought we'd walk. This proved to be a not so great decision when about half a mile later I'd sweated through all my clothes and developed a terrible headache from the heat. We pushed on though and made good time to the store. I was ready to enter into the air conditioning and spend some time looking at yarn when I noticed that the store was closed. Now, I normally do not say unkind things about yarn stores, even if they aren't really my taste, but I was pretty ticked about this particular store being closed. Why? Because they are normally closed Sun-Wed. And this week they weren't open a single day. Why? The 4th of July. Not Christmas, not New Years, not Easter. The 4th of July. I'm as patriotic as the next person but seriously?!?! I would say 90% of businesses are having a normal work week this week because the 4th falls on Saturday. I could even understand being closed on Friday. But all week?!?! How this place makes enough money to even stay open is beyond me. Especially since they are only open 4 days a week to begin with. I would think during the summer they would be open more because of people vacationing. And the worst part was that they looked like they had some nice yarns I would have happily purchased. Oh well. Their loss. Unfortunately, by this point I was really hot, really tired, and my head really hurt. And we still had a mile to walk back. About a block from the apartment I spotted a gelato place though and remedied my pains with my favorite treat.

My brother and Brandi also helped me celebrate my birthday while I've been down here. Monday (I know, I'm going backwards, so sue me) we went to Superior Grill which has excellent Mexican cuisine. They gave me a Vera Bradley bag that matches my purse they gave me for Christmas and a knitting book.
It has some really cute stuff in it! There's some socks that I can't wait to try for charity as well as an afghan and some baby stuff and a scarf...ok, so there's a lot I want to knit from this book.

Right now I'm going to work on the test knit sweater (see previous blog posts) and watch some T.V. After having to reknit parts of the first sleeve several times I'm breezing through the second sleeve and I'm hoping to have the sweater finished and photographed by this weekend.