Petunia rambles on and on….

I was notified yesterday that I won a weekly drawing that is part of the Yarn Crab Crawl.   Each of the 7 shops currently participating in the Crawl has its “crawlers” fill out one coupon for each $25 they spend.  The more you buy, the more coupons get filled out, and the better your chances are of winning the drawing.  A lady does not discuss how many coupons she has filled out.

So I won a $25 gift certificate from Stitches with Style in Newark, DE, and it’s good for one year!!   Whooo!!  I want to hit some of the other stores on the crawl, and will get back to Stitches soon!!

I also remembered not to delete the recorded message on my answering machine, so I could play it back for Husband.   Hehehe, I’ve got proof that I won!

I’m finally getting to the pictures that we took while away.

Sometimes, little things intrigue me.  Maybe it’s the patterns of brickwork, or the angle of a roofline, or water falling over rocks, or neat things in an old shop.   I’m glad I went into the little town of Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania.

This old building was right on the main street through the town, across from the General Store.   I’m not sure what caused the appeal – was it the 15-pane windows downstairs?  Was it the 18-pane doorways?  Gabriel blowing his horn over those doors?  Maybe the bright red against so much greenery in the trees that surrounded it.  Anyway, it caught my eye, everytime we went past it.

This was taken inside the Shawnee General Store.  You can buy everything in that store, the morning paper, breakfast on the go, fishing tackle or a fishing license, basic groceries and sundries, and all manner of souvenirs, trinkets and cute things to part the tourist/visitor and their money.  Uh, it worked.  I walked around looking at everything, thought I saw everything, too, until my sister-in-law came up with a stuffed toy – a SHEEP!!!!   I don’t know how I missed seeing it, and I’m so glad that Joyce grabbed him/her up.  Gotta get a picture of my growing flock of sheep.

Anyway, this big star on the wall caught my interest.  The punched tinwork inside appealed to the “quilter” part of me.  I should have bought the damned thing, because I’ve been thinking of it almost non-stop ever since I left there.  Being unsure what I’d do with it if I had it has not diminished my wanting it one bit.

Isn’t this just a beautiful old place?  It was built about 1911 in the foothills of the Poconos, and this front lawn is right on the Delaware River.  There’s a 27-hole golf course that has attracted top golfers and top celebrities since shortly after it opened.  When you walk through the hallways you see photos of Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope.  In the ballroom, if you close your eyes, you can imagine ladies in long formal gowns dancing back in the ’30’s, and you can hear a “big band” in the background! 

Here’s the view looking south down the Delaware River from the front lawn of the Shawnee Inn.  It was a beautiful day with wisps of clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky – I could have just laid out on the grass, first looking down river, then looking up at the sky – for about a month or so!!  See the wee bit of water branching off to the right?  That wee bit of stream makes the area with the big trees an island, and the golf course is on that island.  Pop and my brother were sure it was “Heaven on Earth.”

For weeks now, the menfolk have been looking forward to eating at Sam Snead’s Tavern!  And we did!  And it was all they had hoped for.  The place was beautiful, all were very pleased with their meals, and the service was the best.   As the weather was also in great form, we decided to eat outside, and while we ladies basked in the sun, the guys were inside looking at all the pictures on display.

 

 

That’s us, lower level, eating at the Tavern.  I’m on the left, brother and wife to the right, with Pop being the cameraman. 

Tell me why I came home? 

Chez Petunia will soon start to smell like sheep.  Clean, bathed sheep, to be sure, but sheep nevertheless.  I’ve got to stop buying stuff.  I told Hubbie-Darling that I was stocking up for the winter, like a squirrel.  This concept flew like a brick, as expected.  Yarn and fiber keep following me home – that must be it.  The local Yarn Crab-Crawl is a factor, too, but the true reason is that I have no resistance.

While away last week vacationing in the Poconos, I stopped in at Mountain Knits and Pearls in East Stroudsburg, PA.   I’ve been there before, enjoyed the visit, and knew that I’d be back on this trip. 

My husband loves this particular shop.  He goes to the Poconos to relax – and to play golf.  On this trip, we were accompanied by my brother and his wife.  My brother is his favorite golfing partner.  There is a fine GOLF SHOP directly across the street!  So instead of my husband sitting in or near an LYS, bored to the point of eminent insanity where he starts to drool on himself, he and Brother were happy as clams in warm mud over there looking at, touching, turning over or swinging everything in the store.  Husband indicates that MK&P clearly located their shop with the gents in mind, as there is also a tavern right next door, should my shopping keep me occupied well into the evening!

Because the stash at home is larger than several Third World countries put together, I vowed to concentrate my efforts on books, notions, etc, rather than MORE YARN!!  I made a valiant and almost successful effort.  My focus this winter season is going to be on improving my rather poor colorwork skills.  I’m gathering patterns, and have stashed enough to become an expert – if I follow through on the plan, that is!  I found two Dale of Norway pattern books at Mountain Knits, with traditional colorwork patterns across sweaters, hats, mittens, and headbands.  Beautiful patterns in sizes from children through adult.  I’d start with hats or mittens – my skill isn’t good enough yet to warrant the expense of an adult sweater’s worth of good yarn.  As I climb up the “learning curve” I’d rather have my lowest-quality work done at hat-size!  A child’s hat.

I fell off the wagon (the one with the huge “NO MORE YARN” sign cleverly painted on the side.  I suspect my husband, who is handy with a paint brush) over a skein of Noro in shades of blues and purples and a bit of pink.  I’m hoping to make the Fake Isle Hat pattern on the Spunky Eclectic site, great use of Noro and a co-ordinating base color out of the stash to make a far-more-complicated-looking hat with just two strands – the Noro will change the colors when its ready, without any effort on my part.  This pattern/technique should give damn fine results to the less-than-expert working with stranded knitting, one who finds it difficult to work with yarn in each hand, or chew gum while breathing.  (I’ll use Maine as a stepping-stone, on my way to Norway?)

While I was at Mountain Knits, the store’s lovely and helpful owner, Joanne, told me that I had just missed Beth Brown-Reinsel.  Arrrgh!  She had been there the previous Saturday (9/13, the day we drove up to the Poconos) teaching a class!  Had I only known in advance, I’d have been on the road an hour before the crack of dawn and drove straight through – I didn’t need those cinnamon buns in Allentown and could have dumped the husband off in the tavern next door!   I missed the Gansey lady.  The author of Knitting Ganseys, an absolutely fabulous book, designed to teach a knitter to think, rather than simply follow directions.  Wonderful.  I missed her.   Damn!  AND THEN —- 3 days after I get back, still trying to catch up on all the blog posts, I read on the Knitting Curmudgeon’s blog that she had also been there that day.  Another Jersey girl that I’d have loved to meet.

Oh, well.  ‘Twas not meant to be.

Here’s a pattern that I grabbed up, though.  Uses scads of yarn, as expected with cables and such.  Probably 1700-1800 yds or so.  Maybe more.  I’ll be making it a bit bigger, so that it doesn’t fit tightly over the hips.   (wish I could switch my bust/hip measurements around in some way other than by walking on my hands for the rest of my life.  Or change my name to Bosc.)

The color in the picture just isn’t me, but in a deeper jewel tone?   More to my liking and more suited to the cold winter months coming up.  I’m thinking a deep cranberry red?   Looks like the sort of pattern that, once established, I’ll be able to do quite a bit of it just following my knitting, rather than following the written directions.  A relaxed, comfortable knit.   We’ll see.

(And today is my mother’s birthday.  She would be 93.  I still miss her, and hope that someday, I’ll be able to knit as well as she could)