Vacation Souvenirs

How I (over)spent (on) my summer vacation

*drool*

The first time I went into the yarn store (next to the jewelry store where Peter had all my charms--plus two purchased there--added to the bracelet he gave me for Christmas), I bought six skeins of Ellyn Cooper's Yarn Sonnets in Primrose (hand-dyed mohair/wool blend) for the reading shawl I've been dreaming about for years. The shop owner offered to wind it into balls for me if I wanted to pick it up the next day.

Big mistake.

When Emily heard I was going back to pick up my wool (the store had just opened when we found it last year and she didn't have much stock), she insisted on coming "just to look."

The pastel blue/lavender ball is Em's Cherry Hill Supersock. The brighter greens/dk reds Cherry Hill Supersock is for the socks I promised my son's girlfriend. Kristen doesn't knit/crochet but got excited when she saw the colors (yay!).

Em also got 3 skeins of wool ("But the bag pattern is FREE if we buy the yarn to make it, Mom!") and some #11 Addi Turbos (since I didn't have the right needle size with me and she wanted to work on the bag on the drive home).

I ended up with two more skeins of the original purchase "just to make sure I don't run out." And I have no idea what I'm going to do with that drool-worthy, blues/purples Manos del Uraguay...besides cuddle it lovingly. It was calling me--I just couldn't walk away and leave it there!

One of my anniversary (8 years on 8/10/05) gifts from Peter

That was taken just moments after it was finished. The tattoo guy wouldn't let Peter stay in the room so he could take pics in progress but did offer to leave the door open. Oh, yay, I really wanted all of those people waiting for their ink and holes to watch me cringing in my crappy bra (Seriously, if you're going to get a tattoo on a body part that requires exposing your bra--wear a decent bra! Which I would have, had I known when we left the beach house for our anniversary outing that I would be sitting in a tattoo and piercing parlor a few hours later). Fortunately, Peter is quite a large man and blocked most of the door.

Of course, it's been through all the bleeding/ink oozing (yes, the tattoo on my 820 tc sheets DID come out, thank you)/scabbing over/itching like hell healing phases by now. It's on my left shoulder blade (I wanted somewhere it wouldn't been easily seen by others but then I was bummed because noone could see it, including me *sob*) and is supposed to be Kanji for "eternity" but I think it's actually "eternal" (needing the symbol for "far" to make it what it was supposed to be). I need to do some more research to know for sure and decide whether I want the other symbol too.

Peter wants a matching tattoo but we had to wait more than 3 hours (Tattoo and piercing parlors are fun places to hang out in--great for people watchers!) for mine so no time. I think he was kind of scared too. Watching me (I only cringed a teeny bit) and seeing my surprise that it really didn't hurt--really--eased his fears. He'll get his whenever I finally decide on the one to camouflage the scar around my navel (remind to show you that, if you haven't seen it).