And another dishcloth joins the dishcloth drawer...

Clemson Ballband Dishcloth - done!



Travis takes a silly picture... typical :-)


(pay no mind to the devil cat behind me)

I Love Spring Break

My hubby and I went to Myrtle Beach this week for Spring Break, which has been a much needed rest for the two of us. My brother, CP, and his wife, LP, live nearby in McClellanville, which is about an hour or so south of MB, so we were able to visit them earlier in the week. This was the first time that DH and I have visited them on their own turf, so it was quite a treat. L's parents also live here and we also took some time to see her dad's new fishing boat and truck he bought. I'm telling you, both were something else. We got to go for a ride around the block in the truck. Let me just say that every guy that we passed who was driving a big truck did a double-take. L's dad says that he gets a lot of attention when he drives it around. I'm not surprised. Both vehicles are former military - the truck from the army (there was a receipt in the glovebox from Kuwait) and the boat from the navy (I think).



He's working on fixing the boat up to take it deep sea fishing. I hope that we get to go when he's finished!

McClellanville is this cute little fishing village but the bugs will almost literally carry you away. It's located right on the marshes and shrimping is huge there. But, as we were driving around we saw this just awesome, picturesque little church and we had to stop. They keep the doors open so we got to peek in and look around.



I mean, really, with the Spanish moss and all hanging around, it looked like something out of a movie. Absolutely beautiful. I'd post more pics, but I'm afraid I don't have the bandwidth.

Anyway, we stayed on the 12th floor of this pretty nice hotel with a great view:




It's been so nice to open the door while we're eating or just resting from a day out and hear the ocean.

One thing that I wanted to do while I was here was (obviously) get some knitting in. My original plan was to work on the sleeves of my CPH. I'm not sure why, but I've gotten in a bit of a lull working on it. I'm sure that the warm weather has probably been the main cause for this. Anyway, here's where I am at the moment. Not too impressive, huh?



I did, however, still have the knitting bug, so I decided to make some type of Clemson something, since I haven't ever actually made anything strictly with Clemson colors. I needed something mindless to do in the car so, I started another Ballband dishcloth.



I'm really liking the way it's turning out. I mean, how could it not, right?? Clemson, ballband, Cotton Ease... BTW, I LOVE Cotton Ease for dishcloths. If you haven't tried it yet... well, you really should. Nice and soft and drapey. Great absorbency and it doesn't fade as much as, say PNC or SNC (although I love the stripes and varigated yarns in each of these brands... just got a box of way too much PNC last week, as an aside. Man I spend way too much on yarn. My stash is getting out of control. Maybe more on that later...)

After a while, I began to get bored of the dishcloth and, because I feel like I must bring enough yarn for 20 projects when I go on trips, I decided to cast on some socks with some awesome yarn that I brought that I had been wanting to knit up. It is Zitron Lifestyle and it is really smooshy and stretchy. And I LOVE the colors! Also, I had been wanting to try my hand at toe up socks, so here's my attempt on two circulars. I’m using the tutorial from Silver’s sock class for the “One Toe-Up Socks on Two Circular Needles” at http://www.cometosilver.com/socks/2circsocks_start.htm.





I'm really thinking that this yarn is magical because the stitches look so fabulously even and consistent. Such yummy yarn.

Of course, while we've been here, I've tricked my DH to help me find a couple of LYS while we've been here. The first one that we visited was Knitting Up A Storm up in North Myrtle Beach. Really nice store with lots of different types of yarns available. She has a section of older magazines that she sells for $2.00 off the cover price - nice considering there were a couple that I had been wanting and was able to find! I saw a couple of KnitScenes that have the CPH pattern, so if you're wanting one of these, she's got them! And, what else did I find there?? More Zitron Lifestyle *grin.* Here's a pic of my purchase...



So pretty - I'm really loving the whole brown, blue color combination these days. Yeah, I love this yarn. The only thing that stinks is that I noticed, after we got back to the hotel, that I paid $2.00 more for this new yarn than the Zitron I was currently knitting with. Grumble... Oh, well.

The other store I wanted to find was a very new store called Knit N Purl. This was in a little shopping center off of Carolina Forest Blvd. Thankfully, we have a navigation system which helped us find both. 1-800-Free-411 was also a big help.

This was a cute, little store with a pretty small selection, but you could tell that it would soon grow to become a well-loved store. The owner's husband was manning the shop at the time and we had to call him a couple of times to find the place. When we showed up, he greeted us and gave me a little Boye needle sizer as a welcome gift for coming to their new store. So sweet :-) even though I know they will give them to everyone who comes in new. We chatted while I shopped and I ended up buying, oh yeah, more yarn. Again, more sock yarn. If I spent the amount of money on just plain old Wal-mart socks that I have spent on yarn for knitted socks, we would have a house full of socks. I gotta stop. Anyway, here's my takeaway:



2 Skeins of handpainted Wildfoote by Brown Sheep (in brown, blue, and white), 2 balls of Cascade Fixation in brown, and a ball of some Berocco Comfort Sock in grays, blues, browns, greens, etc. Again, I'm seeing a color pattern here. Come to think of it, the MB T shirt I bought today is brown with mainly a blue (and some yellow) design. I go through these color spells. Wonder what it'll be next?

So, if I'm able to go to the other shop, Island Knits, which is in Pawley's Island, I'll give an update later on.

ETA: tags, link to toe-up pattern

Well, it's time for Clemson Baseball...

*Sniff* My tigers lost their first game in the NCAA tourny to Villanova. Nothing would sink for them the second half... The frustrating part was that we were up 18 points at one point.

On a totally different note, our Easter performance was really good tonight! Charles Billingsly has an awesome set of pipes! Wow. If you ever get a chance to see/hear him, take it - it's definitely worth it. What a really neat and personable guy.

I'm really sleepy, so I'm going to bed. G'night!

Am I Missing Something Here??

I play trumpet for my church orchestra and we are performing an Easter presentation tomorrow and Friday at the new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center (which is very neat, btw, in case you were wondering) called "The Story... With You in Mind." We are featuring an artist named Charles Billingsly, who previously sang with Newsong, a pretty famous Contemporary Christian artist. He's won some awards and stuff. Hey, after this is over, I'll be able to say that I've performed for something that you can purchase tickets to from Ticketmaster! Anyway (yeah, I love chasing that rabbit...), we have been practicing the past two nights and I'm tired. However, tonight, I got smart and brought the right side of my CPH with me and got to knit some in between songs. One of my (precious few) knitting buddies who plays flute came over excited to tell me that she had brought her knitting also. She is working on a cute little baby sweater for a friend. We discovered that we were both knitters on a mission trip this past summer to Lithuania and hunted down a yarn store. (Tangent(or rabbit, if you prefer)): if you're ever in Lithuania, plan on buying lots of yarn - at least until they begin using the Euro, which I think will begin in 2009 - the lita is .40 to the dollar - makes for very fun shopping!! And they love their knitting. I probably overdid it and would have done more damage if I had come prepared for buying yarn for specific projects... More on Lithuania in another post.)

Anyway, she told me that she has a knitting group that she goes to - I'm going to have to ask her more about this. I think, though, that she's said in the past that it consists of many of her fellow elementary teacher colleagues and I think it may be far away - not sure if I could join in or not. But, I think I've decided that I need to get in a knitting group at some point. I taught myself everything I know about knitting and I'm a pretty strong introvert - two pretty good reasons why I haven't felt the need to be a social knitter. BUT, now that I've gotten on Ravelry, I think that it would be a lot of fun and I can see that I'm missing out. The only problem is that I'm not sure if I'd have much time to devote to it on a consistant basis. There is a neat yarn store not far from my place of work - only about 5 minutes, in fact. They have knitting nights, so I may swing by there sometime and see what that's all about.

On another note and on a completely different subject, I have filled out my brackets for the NCAA tournament. I don't have Clemson going all the way (hey, there are prizes for the most accurate!), but I think that the'll beat at least Villanova and Vanderbilt (optimism). Not too sure about Kansas. I guess we'll have to see how it turns out!

GO TIGERS!

For anyone who knows me, I LOVE Clemson - football, basketball, baseball, track, crew, underwater basketweaving... whatever!

I just have to say - GO TIGERS!!! They just beat Duke in the ACC Tournament which puts them in the finals with UNC. It's been 22 years since we've beaten Duke and we've never won the ACC Tournament. We've played UNC two VERY good games this year so far (overtimes in both, one in which we dominated rather handedly until the end), so we've got a good chance to win. Ahhh.... this is nice.