A Weekend to Remember

I kinda wish this past weekend would have never ended. I loved every minute of it. I spent Thursday and Friday at The Hotel Monaco with my husband extraordinaire. Such a great guy and a great gift giver! It's a charming and eclectic hotel just outside D.C. We had lunch here at The Charthouse overlooking the Potomac.

After lunch, we had a little artist's date at The Torpedo Factory . It was so inspiring to watch the artists in their studios. I'm intrigued by all of the different mediums. The gallery had an exhibit called Baa-merica which was right up my alley. All the sheep were crocheted using mixed media and modeled after pop icons. No photography was allowed. It was quirky and fun.

We strolled the streets of Old Town Alexandria in the way that parents of 7 without any of them present would do. It's a beautiful city, very similar to my native Annapolis.

Seriously old fashioned, this place.

Wouldn't you love to have drinks on this charming rooftop deck?

I had drinks on this one instead.

We took a water taxi on the Potomac over to the National Harbor.

That's the Woodrow Wilson Bridge joining Maryland to Virginia. You can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol building from this bridge.

Check out this sculpture in the sand. Do you see the little girl for scale? Very cool.

I returned home to all my little loves and found they had made this sweet birthday cake for me.

How cute is that? Foil knitting needles.....

Here's some happy faces with candy and the biggest gumball I have ever seen.

Someone lost another tooth!

Good thing it fell out before he rotted them with all of this candy!!!

I have been waiting for a big chunk of time to learn to weave. I've had a lot of starts and stops since getting my loom, so I am still amazed that I got this thing warped. I did it!

Tying onto the back beam

Direct Warping

Pulling warp through the slots

Tying warp threads onto the cloth beam

Woohooo!!!

Last, but not least

Winding the weft yarn onto the stick shuttle

I found the best tutorial for warping a rigid heddle loom by jenonthefarm on ebay.

Just for fun,and just in case this post is not quite long enough, here are a few yarns I finished this weekend and last.





What a great birthday week. My Irish twin would agree. "It's a wonderful life" indeed.