Birthday journey
A long entry coming up:
I forgot the memory card for my digital camera this weekend. Sadly there are no pictures from the very pleasant trip to Wisconsin that Rodney gave me for my birthday.
The undisclosed location was Albany, Wisc., which is about 30 minutes south of Madison. The farmland in that part of the state is beautiful…rolling hills, cows, and totally empty and peaceful. We stayed at the Albany House bed and breakfast, in the Bird’s Eye room. It was truly the most tasteful B&B I’ve ever been to. A beautiful old home on a nice wooded piece of property, pretty gardens, attractive decor, homemade lemonade on the porch, and a nice fairly young innkeeper to boot. Sometimes you go to bed and breakfasts and there’s an abundance of stupid little rules like “don’t use the top drawer in this bureau” or “only use hot water after 7 p.m. because of our old boiler” or whatever, but this place was so nice. They treated us like the mostly trustable adult guests that we are!
After the host presented us with a range of local dinner options, we decided to head to the “Swiss Village” of New Glarus, which was having its annual Heidi Festival. There are several Swiss-style restaurants, and we picked the one that was supposed to have a polka band. Much to our dismay, the majority of the restaurant was booked out for a local wedding and the polka band had been replaced by a terrible DJ. That’s right, the chicken dance and all. We still ate there…and P.S., Swiss food sucks! Everything is veal in gravy, it seems. Also, the Heidi Festival Street Dance was not a polka band either, but some local country act. So, thumbs down on the Swiss Village. All it had going for it was more of the rolling hillside farmscapes and a few cute buildings.
This morning after an amazing B&B breakfast (best part–the fruit salad), we canoed the Sugar River. Then we drove up to Verona to visit The Sow’s Ear yarn/coffee shop. It was smallish but, like any good local yarn shop, sticks mainly to natural fibers and high-end novelty yarns. A great selection of needles too. I bought some bamboo size 9 circular needles, as well as two skeins of Manos del Uruguay yarn, one in Wildflower and one in Rhubarb (both are second from left in these pictures). It’s hard to capture the beauty of this yarn…I really love it and am already making my sister a hat for her birthday next week.
I’m probably leaving out some important details of this weekend. Above all, it was an excellent effort by my beloved boyfriend Rodney to make me feel special for my 31st birthday. It made up for anything that might have been missing when I turned 30, even though last year was nice too. Thanks sweety! I <3 you very much.
