Vacation and Veggies

David and I got back from vacation on Sunday and I’ve just today felt a little caught up. I always need a vacation after a vacation! I’m typing on my shiny new macbook (yeah!). My baby was waiting for me at The Point when I got home. She’s preeettty.

David was the hero going with me to nine yarn stores in ten days. We went to four in Portland, one in Bar Harbor (this one was called Bees and was 1/2 yarn store 1/2 chocolate shop . . . double yum) one in Newburyport (1/2 yarns store, 1/2 weaving – HUGE room full of looms, cool) one in Lenox, one in Pittsfield, one in Great Barrington. The interesting thing about visiting all those shops was the prices. People talk about “New York prices” or “big city prices”. I’ve never understood that, since I know our prices are in line with the rest of the country . . . at least until I saw “Berkshire prices”. WOW! The stores in Portland and Bar Harbor were pretty much in line with NY prices, but holy moly, the Berkshires. The first place I went in Pittsfield was nice and the prices were consistently about $.25 above NY prices, next stop Lenox. It was very large, great selection, and about $.50 above NY shops. Then the craziest place I’d ever been. From the outside it looked like a tiny weird gift shop in a broken down house, then inside you find five rooms crammed from floor to ceiling with yarn. Sounds cool right . . . until you notice that yarn was anywhere from $1.00 to a whopping $3.00 more a skein than NY. Crazy world. If you’re ever in Western Mass, check them out, just be sure to check the price tag.

When we weren’t visiting yarn stores we were enjoying the incredible beauty of Maine and Western Mass. Here are just a few of the hundreds of picks we took

Adorable Bar Harbor:

Idyllic Acadia:

My knitting comes to Sand Beach:

We also decided to relive our Memorial Day weekend, and get a 1000 piece puzzle. I LOVED IT. Here’s what we tackled (note all the white sky)

end of day 1:

end of day 2:

Success:

The Western Mass part of the trip (Lenox, etc.) was to break up the long drive home from Maine. We spent the day at Jacob’s Pillow, one of my favorite places on earth. For those of you who haven’t been. . . it’s a dance theatre camps on the top of a hill in the middle of the woods in the Berkshires. They have things going all the time. We went to watch a presentation on old film footage of the Pillow, then a free outdoor dance presentation by the students danced in this idyllic setting:

Then we saw the awesome Hofesh Schecter. They were rockin!

The other thing that grew (besides my bamboo t-shirt) in ten days was our garden. Holy @#%@#!!! First of all, when we left there were no Canna flowers, Dahlia, Lillies, and when we returned . . .

Here’s what can happen in one month:

(June)

And then there’s the food. We came home to find ripe tomatoes, peppers, green beans, zucchini

And then there’s the veggies right out of the movie Sleeper . . .