New Orleans – Can we come back?

I attended a conference in New Orleans the week before the Super Bowl.

NO-sign

We had a great time though I was stuck inside most of the time.

I’ve learned in the past that I can’t concentrate on knitting on an airplane.  I managed to knit an Olive Oil Drip Catcher at the airport but that’s all the knitting I did.

And I don’t even have a photo of it!

Our hotel was on the corner of Canal and Bourbon streets.

Canal-Bourbon-signs

We were a block away from the 49er’s hotel.

49er-marriot

49er-banner

49er-mural

We saw the Mighty Mississippi.

mississippi

Walked down Bourbon Street.  Some buildings were all decked out in Mardi Gras colors.

Mardi-Gras-building

Visited the French Market in the French Quarter.

french-quarter

Saw lots of the Super Bowl hype but no players.

CBS-Jackson-Square

Super-Dome

Mr. Aitch sampled local beers.

Beer

Beads?  Yes, we got beads.  I won’t tell you how we got them.  I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone.  =)

Beads

We ate jambalaya, crawdads, Po Boys, shrimp roumalade, hush puppies…

Bubba-Gump

Shrimp-roumaladejpg

…and of course beignets at Cafe Du Monde.

cafe-du-monde

beignets

Tank McNamara says it all:

tankm130211Beignets.  It’s worth the trip.

In between

Now that the Christmas rush is over and the gifts are finished, I find myself between projects.

I finally made a pair of fingerless mitts for me using Shirl’s Mittlets pattern and Cascade 220 Paints in Cherry Berry.

Chreey-Berry-mitts-001

The colors match my winter coat and felted purse.

The only thing left in my UFO (unfinished objects) pile is a scarf that I’ve been working on for over a year.

unfinished-2011-scarf

I’m really not in a big hurry to finish it at all.

I have the yarn to make another one of these hats.

1st-CCM-hat-front

I love this hat and it is the warmest hat I’ve ever had.  It even keeps my ears warm and that’s a big plus for me.  And even though the colors are perfect, the hat does not “go” with my everyday winter coat.  The colors do coordinate with my “dress” coat.  The yarn I have is red and grey.  Do you detect a theme here???

There are some sewing projects I would like to tackle, some organizing and reorganizing projects, some decorating projects, some painting projects, and some knitting projects.

Our daughter is expecting next month so the twins will be getting a baby brother.  I’ve helped our daughter get the nursery ready over several weekends in November.  But I don’t have any baby knitting done.  That might be the next project.

Finally

We got to our daughter’s house on New Year’s Day for our Christmas.  Weather was the big issue preventing up from going earlier.

These buttons:

babyville-buttons

Using this pattern:

sawtelle_lg

Ended up like this:

E&Z-Christmas-2012-001

This is Z sporting her new sweater.

E&Z-Christmas-2012-004

Z is on the left and E is on the right.  Getting one person to stand still is hard.  Two is harder.

E&Z-Christmas-2012-007

E is on the left and Z is on the right.  Z was finished modeling.  She wanted to play a game.

The sweaters are size 6 and they are a bit large for them but that just means they can wear them longer.

Key the music

…to the Twilight Zone.

First of all a belated Very Merry Christmas to you!

Now let’s back track to Saturday when my dryer stopped working.  The repairman came on Monday and it was going to cost $$$ to repair it.  The dryer was 19 years old so I think it served us well.

I had too many things to do on Monday to shop for a new dryer like bake 2 cheese cakes, finish the sweater for the twins, wrap the rest of the presents, and prepare our Christmas Eve dinner.

The cheese cakes got done as well as the present wrapping and our delicious dinner.  The sweater, not so much.  But I had all Christmas day to finish it.  And I did.  At 10:30 pm.  It was wrapped and ready to go to its new owner this morning.snowy-road

Mr. Aitch and I drove 15 miles of the 117 miles to our daughters house when we decided it was too treacherous to continue. We had several inches of snow and the roads were too bad even with 4-wheel drive.  We turned around and headed home.

That photo is I-68 and we just got on.  We had mountains to cross and it was only going to get worse.  We never saw a plow truck nor evidence that they were out and about.

We decided to make a detour and shop for a new dryer.  Found one, made the purchase, set up the delivery date and went home.

Later this afternoon the delivery company called to check on the delivery date for a washing machine.  What?  I didn’t buy a washer.  But there it was in black and white on the receipt: a washing machine.

The delivery company called the store to see what happened and called me back to verify that a dryer would be delivered.  I called the store to see what happened and the salesman didn’t remember the transaction at all.  Really?  He sold that much today that he didn’t remember our dryer?  Maybe he just had too much Christmas celebrating going on.  When I gave him my address, he remembered.

It’s all straightened out but man, was it a weird day.  Mr. Aitch said it felt like we were in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Too bad I don’t know how to embed the theme song.