What I Did on Summer Vacation...

Every summer we drive halfway around the world to South Carolina to visit my mom.  It's really only three states away, but oh my goodness...Alabama.  Is.  So.  Huge.  And while this means we get the "Are we there yet?" question a billion times, it also means plenty of time for knitting!

But more about that in a moment.

One of the first things we do when we get to South Carolina is make The List of all the things we want to do while we're there.  Certain things always make The List.

Flat Rocks, also called Glendale Shoals, is just a couple of miles from mom's house.  Water from Lawson's Fork Creek (I preached about it once) falls over an old dam that once helped power a textile mill, and then rushes over exposed bedrock and smaller falls before becoming a humble creek again.  Every summer, depending on how much rain has fallen, the falls look different.  And we always meet new friends there, like blue herons, or crawfish, or tadpoles, or butterflies.

This year we met turtles.  Lots of them.

We always find Treasures.  Beautiful black and white granite pebbles, generous wisps of mica, feathers, twigs, memories...

Another outing that always makes The List is a trip to a local yarn store.  Or two.  This year we visited Robin's Bead Nest, a local bead store that also carries beautiful, beautiful, beautiful yarn.

They have every imaginable kind and color of both Cascade and Spud and Chloe.

They also have a cat, named Purl.  Genius way to distract entertain ten-year-old boys while their moms and grandmothers shop for yarn.  I bought two sky blue skeins of Cascade Pacific (40% superwash merino wool, 60% acrylic, 100% soft and squishy).

Also on The List is the Spartanburg County Public Library, where my mom works.  We check out a few books to have on hand for rainy afternoons and late bedtimes.

Or whenever.

We also make plenty of times for games.  Grandmother's houses have great old games around, like Battleship, and decks of playing cards, and Chinese Checkers.

I won the first game.  The ten-year-old won all the rest.

Never on The List because it is simply A Given is knitting.  I finished a simple chevron scarf I had been knitting out of some scrumptious Malabrigo Sock.  There are no words to express how deeply I loved knitting with this yarn.  The scarf is intended as a gift for a colleague who's moving to Virginia.

But first it needs to be blocked.

That will have to wait for Day Two of summer vacation.