I'm baaaaack!

Did you miss me? No? I'll pretend you did.

Life has been a little crazy with work, rugby, rugby tournaments, rugby boys, more work, various knitting groups, a particularly stressful cross stitch project and a few attempts at gardening. Eventually my body decided I needed to sit down and rest for a bit, so it struck me down with a sinus infection. Naturally this occurred 2 days before my first rugby tournament as a Hoyden. I went anyway (wishing the whole time I hadn't) and was taking shots of DayQuil between the games. Because I like to party.

And after that I headed down to Sarasota to hang out with my parents for a week and just chill. AND IT WAS AWESOME! I got sorta caught up on sleep, I got a few work-outs in, I saw a man-lizard try to seduce a lady-lizard with some very erotic throat-puffing, I went to my favorite yarn shop ever- twice! I cooked a tart for a gourmet dinner, I dyed Easter eggs, I went to the beach, I attempted paddleboarding, and there were some margaritas involved too. Not that many- I'm still trying to get over that darn sinus infection from 2 weeks ago.

So here's a few of my favorite pictures (I think I took a whopping 15 from the whole trip- 8 of them about yarn).

This is Mike. He lives in the mailbox.

One of my treasures from A Good Yarn. They have a bunch of colorways from Lorna's Laces and 3 Irish Girls that are exclusive to the shop. The owner and her hubby (who are super nice people) are big scuba divers and they take these amazing pictures of fish and coral and things underwater and then they have colorways dyed to look like the fish. I get the newest one whenever I'm down there. This one is called Gill's Night Out. I love it.

A caramelized onion, cheese, tomato and Kalmata olive tart I made while down there. It's much tastier than it sounds.

I totally splurged on some new sunglasses. Here I model them in my only pose, the "bitch, I'm fabulous" pose.

Seagulls. I just love them.

Gardenias. I don't think they're the prettiest flower under the sun, but they are the best-smelling.

Sea urchins on the seawall. Those suckers hurt.

Paddleboarding princess! It's like a giant surfboard and you paddle. Okay, it's like kayaking standing up. My very first time a manatee swam right under me and I was pretty sure I was a goner because I was having balancing issues anyway. It was close, but I hung on.

The start of my new lace project! Ooooh- let's see who is reading. The first person to guess what the pattern is gets a prize. Leave your guess in the comments below! I'll post my progress each blog post, which should make it easier as we go. Here's your first hint though: 180 rows. (there's only about 12 rows here)

I cross-stitched this for my Mom before I went down there as a house warming gift. I framed it for her while I was down there and we knew what colors we wanted in the matting and frame. I'm pretty pleased with my amateur frame-job.

And that's it! I'm 8 rows away from having a second sock done which I will post next blog, as well as the next progress/clue picture to the mysterious red lace project! But now, I zumba.