This seems like a perfectly ironic time to talk about the wonderful time we had in New Orleans over Christmas! Not only was it amazing to tour the city but we also had to opportunity to find some very cool caches. Two of particular note were GCGFHX – Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen and GCE02C – View Carre’. The first is a virtual in St. Louis Cemetery #1 – not only did we find the needed information for the cache but we also spent a good while exploring and photographing this wonderful, historic cemetery. The other is the one cache in New Orleans that I’d say is an absolute ‘must do.’ Not to give too much away, I’ll just say that it will give you a unique ‘vertical’ experience.
Before we left home I did check if there were any knitting or needlework shops in the area. I discovered the Garden District Needlework Shop wasn’t all that far from where we were staying!
The day we visited, there was a fair amount of traffic in the shop, which was quite large. Housed in an old building in a quaint shopping and dining area, Garden District Needlework consists of one large room with areas for sitting and shopping. There is also a smaller room up front dedicated to sale merchandise.
The shop is a combination of knitting and embroidery (focusing on painted canvas) so I set right to browsing through everything! As painted canvas has never been a particular preference of mine, I went through the embroidery section fairly quickly but did pick up some Caron Watercolors in a fun Tahiti colorway (on sale, too!) that I think I’ll use for the Hardanger amulet bag from the EGA State Day and two skeins of Pure Palette silks in shades of green.
On the knitting side, they did have a wide variety including many of the ‘staples.’ I focused on the sock yarns as I believe they’re easiest to buy while traveling. Oops, I may have gone a teensy bit overboard here! I got JitterBug in a beautiful pink that will most likely end up as a scarf and also in more ‘manly’ colors for socks for Bruce. They also had TOFUtsies in a black, tan and cream combo that had Bruce’s name written all over it.
Finally, I found some Muench Cleo in the sale room. This metallic & viscose yarn should make a fun scarf for the office – it’s a silver around a core of Mardi Gras colors – a terrific souvenir of this trip!
All of this new yarn is patiently waiting to be used because I’ve been focusing on the black, blue and purple projects this week. Bruce’s mittens should be done tonight so I can post photos in a day or two. My poor purple socks are sitting with one done and one left to cast on. They’ve been put aside so I could use my blue yarn to make some small items to help the monkeys get in the spirit for the big game tonight! Mongo has some socks and Cecil, despite what he says in the comic strip, is pleased with his new hat and scarf.