Eye Candy Friday

Phew! I'm glad that it's the weekend! I have a busy schedule during the week teaching high school all day and a college class two nights a week. It's not terribly hectic because both schools are about five minutes from my home, but it doesn't leave me with much free time. Luckily I have a husband who does his share of keeping our household running smoothly. He doesn't do so well with folding socks or ironing, and he did shrink one of my brand new linen shirts, BUT he's still about as good as they get in my book.

In keeping with my knitting theme, I have posted a picture of Rowdy, our yarn loving beagle. He used to be terrible about getting skeins out of my knitting basket and basically slobbering them beyond use. He has been "on the wagon" lately, but we all keep an eye on him.





My next two pictures were taken on the Mist Trail in Yosemite this summer. We went with a group of friends and acquaintances and had the best time. Yosemite is just about my favorite place in the world. I don't actually like the Mist Trail though. It makes me nervous, just one slip, and...... The first time we went on it, my daughter was a toddler and Russ carried her in our baby carrier. I can't believe I let him do that. I think it was peer pressure, which neither one of us usually give in to, but my brother and a friend of ours were carrying their toddlers on their backs, and we just kind of followed them further and further up the trail. My kids are now twelve and fifteen, so they won't let me hold their hands going up it, but they do have to listen to me say, "Stay away from the edge," over and over again.

I liked the "Booking Through Thursday" questions too, so I think I'll go ahead and answer them a day late. Booking Through Thursday

1. Have you ever wanted to travel to a place described in a book? Endless times. Many of the places that I've wanted to travel to after reading a book have been unexotic locations that just sounded appealing. I do want to visit Provence after reading A Year in Provence and all of the other Peter Mayle books, and I've wanted to visit New Zealand and Australia since reading The Thorn Birds when I was in college. Prince Edward Island is probably the top location I'd like to visit after reading the "Anne of Green Gables" series. It seems like the perfect place to go on a "knitting vacation."


2. Have you ever ACTUALLY travelled to a place because of the way it was described in a book? I've visited several places only because I read about them in books.


3. And if so, did it live up to the expectations, feelings, emotions you expected from the book? Did you feel like Anne was going to come romping around the corner of Green Gables? Was it as if Jo was upstairs at Orchard House, scribbling on a story? Or was it just a museum, or just a city street? Like Abbey Road without the Beatles? My most vivid memory of visiting a place from a book was a visit to one of those "unexotic" places. My family and I were on a vacation to the Midwest over eight years ago and were visiting a friend in Oklahoma. My friend's mother had grown up in Coffey, Kansas, and I think that she told us that Independence, Kansas was near where Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Little House on the Prairie was set. We drove several hours out of our way to get to the homestead location There wasn't much there, and there was only a replica of the Ingall's cabin, BUT I remember my eyes beginning to sting, walking inside that cabin. It was practically a spiritual experience. I so loved those books as a child and was in the process of re-reading them with my daughter at the time. I don't think I'd visit there again, but it was well worth the trip crossing the Verdigris River, albeit in a car and not in a covered wagon, and seeing basically the same landscape that Laura had seen.