Recap: Pittsburgh to Syracuse

It’s amazing to me how much stuff my father manages to cram into a week.  His father (my grandfather) was a time study man (just typing that phrase got the song from the Pajama Game stuck in my head) and Wheezy always has a schedule to be followed.  On Thursday, my mom and I rushed home from our last day of work and we began our journey.  We drove (well, the parents drove and I knit on Katja until it got too dark) to outside of Cincinnati and stayed at the Doubletree. When we checked in at midnight it seemed like a regular hotel, but when we woke up the next morning and went to check out, we were greeted by this:

They have a parrot that lives near the desk. A misanthropic parrot that lives near the desk.  That didn’t stop Wheezy from going over to greet her though.

Wheezy and the Parrot

From there, we got some Starbucks for breakfast and I continued to knit on Katja.

We continued on our way through West Virginia and I finished Katja.

I really enjoyed knitting this.  The 2nd Time Cotton doesn’t hurt my hands as much as some other cotton blends and even knitting the larger size took less than 5-6 total hours.  More notes on the project can be found on ravelry here.

In West Virginia, we stopped at Sheetz for lunch (what I believe to be the best gas stations) and went shopping at Cabela’s.

I’ve never been in an outdoor hunting/fishing store like Cabela’s before.  They have the fish tanks and everything else that I’ve seen before, but they also have this:

There’s this whole mountain of stuffed animals and it’s around 3 stories tall.  Each side has a different biome theme (you can walk the whole diameter of it).  They even have musk ox on the Arctic side:

I’m not going to lie, for a second, I thought “free fiber”.

After exploring the store, I went outside to sit in the sun until mom and Wheezy finished purchasing bags for their motorcycle trip later in the summer.

We continued on to Pittsburgh, where I visited and recorded at Bloomin Yarns.  And then I went to hang out with the birthday girl, Julia.

Julia has turned one and enjoys knocking stuff down (we played that game a lot).

She also has wonderful taste in socks and we both tried on my Nashua socks that I had just finished.

The next day, we got ready for Julia’s first birthday party.  I won’t subject you to the 133 pictures I took of the event, but here’s Julia and I opening one of my sister’s gifts to her:

And her is the birthday girl with my brother (this is my favorite picture of the week):

After the party, we hung out some more and I knit on my Hedge Maze socks.  I got through the first one and the toe of the second:

The next day, my parents helped Matt and Emily get the house ready to sell (they are moving to Philadelphia soon) and Julia went swimming in her baby pool for the first time.

On Monday, I went shopping and hung out with a high school friend.  I also finished the Hedge Maze Socks:

Tuesday, we went up to Syracuse and I stopped by the Yarn Cupboard:

I would have taken more interior shots, but Wheezy put me on a 20 minute deadline and I wanted to look at all the goodies inside.  Great shop for indie sock yarn and lots of variety.  I was impressed.

After the Yarn Cupboard, we walked down the street to the best Greek food, I’ve had in a long time.  We then went to the hospital to spend the two following days visiting with one of my favorite people in the world, my Uncle Paul (Wheezy’s younger brother).

While visiting in the hospital, I got a ton of knitting done on the Noro Shawl and the Lemonade Socks.  Unfortunately, I hit a little road bump in the socks on the way home:

I spent 3 hours of knitting time getting that fixed.  But eventually, the yarn became tame again and we arrived back in Mississippi safe and sound (to the joy of a freshly groomed Maggie).

So there’s my week in a nutshell. Hope y’all had a great week as well!