MIA: Misc. & Traveling

Not much to post herein, other than more sweaters and such have been hooked (unsurprising), and I've done more traveling.

While January saw fit to provide me another opportunity to visit India, the end of April I was in Amsterdam, and the beginning of May I was in Belgium.

Oh, and I am registered to take a class at NYS&W in October, so there's THAT for me to anticipate:)

This tight crop of a larger Dutch Masters painting pretty much summed up my experience in Amsterdam. (Subtext: I found the city unenjoyable, mostly due to the chaotic crowds & outright lack of a decent food scene.)

While my overall experience in the city was unenjoyable (check out this video, as every item he lists that he hated about Amsterdam, I hated as well--I only wish we saw this video BEFORE our trip!), the hospitality at our hotel was above and beyond pleasant. 

No trip of mine is complete without finding a painting or sculpture of a pig, and this painting was hanging in the lobby of Hotel Fita. And, for me the saving grace was (after enduring yet another MEH! meal), a trip to a nearby yarn shop.

Here is the haul from Penelope Craft. Some locally sourced yarn, and a crochet book (yes, in Dutch!).  It's a good thing I planned on going to the yarn store for a visit. The Maharajah under-estimated how chilly it would be on this trip, and en route to the shop, we discovered a second hand store, Episode, where he scored two Izod sweaters for a total of $50 USD.

We did manage to take a day trip to Keukenof Gardens, and while I did not take many photos, this photo of a parrot tulip photographed much more remarkable than it was in person. No filter. Nothing special done to it. Snapped it with my cell phone camera. The color saturation was just lovely.

Things improved for me after we took the train to Belgium, where we ate a bucket of mussels at Chez-Leon, had some incredibly good pilsner (Maes), and ate our weight in chocolates (which we got at Galler in Brussels, and Chocolate Line in Bruges).

Here I am outside of one of the many lace shops that adorn the city. Perhaps on my next trip to Paris, we will couple up another visit to either Brussels or Bruges, so I can visit the lace museum, and then fill my belly with Waterzooi, and do some more things we managed NOT to do on this trip.

Here's another photo snapped just with the cell phone camera. No filter. No adjustments. Just snapped "as is." This pile of macarons were in the store front of one of the many sweets shops in the area. This one in particular was located in a shopping gallery near our hotel.

The above photo and photo below is the project I am currently working on. 
I am hooking up a shawl, that, IF I FINISH IT IN TIME, will be given to a friend, who I believe, is getting married at the end of the summer. She had ogled the yarn in my stash, so even if she doesn't wear it to her wedding, I know she'll enjoy it on other occasions.  I normally bristle at other people's patterns, especially ones that are not FULLY charted, given I'm a visual crocheter and much prefer charts to text--as indicated by my love of Japanese crochet books. The pattern is Piquant, and the yarn is Holiday Yarns Flocksock, which I'm hooking up with a D hook--so even though I am hooking up the smaller size of the shawl, it should be sufficient size once it's all blocked out. The picture beneath this one is a close up of the body of the shawl.

This last photo is a shrug of my own design, though I used the body portion of the Bella Shrug for the body of this one, and decided to do my own thing to finish it off for the shawl collar etc part of it. The yarn was Vermont Shetland wool I purchased at Northeast Fiber Arts Center, located in Williston, VT, which was bought during a vacation around Labor Day, 2014. It's a good thing and a bad thing I live so far from this shop! It truly is a remarkably well-stocked and unique shop!

I am now laughing at myself, as I look back at the beginning of this blog post. I thought I didn't have much to say or share, and thought I'd just do a photo dump of five photos, and before I realized it, this very nice blog post evolved. It's kind of like life, sometimes it surprises me. (Sometimes!)