Bits and Pieces

I think I've blathered about most of my experiences in Fort Collins, and there are just a few remaining bits and pieces to tell you about. I'm going to squeeze all the blog fodder possible out of this vacation!

I love visiting at this time of year because I get to see Ryan's gorgeous clematis. His looks better than any of mine, and I often wonder how someone who doesn't care one bit about gardening has such beautiful flowers. This one clearly thrives on neglect!

Ryan also had some raggedy, hail-damaged hostas that took me a little while to figure out since we don't often get hail here. He had another hail storm after I left, and said the leaves are really tattered and full of holes now.

We always enjoy great cheese and charcuterie at The Welsh Rabbit, but we did pass on the Spanish cheese rolled in ants, sub insectum, and crickets.

And lastly, there was this delightful encounter in the Denver airport. 

I don't think the woman in the pink shirt is from CO, as I haven't yet met a rude Coloradoan. I was sitting behind her at the airport, and she loudly announced that she was "hungry for something a fat girl would eat". Then she turned around and asked what I was eating. I know I'm not thin but I really don't need a rude stranger to point this out to me. I tried not to accidentally stab her with my knitting needles. :-) 

And that's it from Colorado!

My Happy Place

I mentioned before that my main reason for visiting visit Fort Collins is to spend time with Ryan, followed closely by plenty of good eating and drinking around town. There is a third reason, or maybe it's even tied for second place - visiting The Loopy Ewe in person.

I've shopped online at TLE for years, beginning when they were located in St. Louis. I continued to buy yarn from them after they moved to Fort Collins. Five years ago Ryan chose Colorado State University for grad. school, and while I was incredibly happy for him, I was a bit sad that he would be moving 1700 miles away. My sadness was assuaged somewhat after I visited The Loopy Ewe in person. It is truly a marvelous yarn store.

Ryan usually goes with me, and he has turned out to be an excellent yarn-chooser. He pushes me to try new colors and combinations that I would never choose myself. I've bought some yarn just because he picked it out, but still with a bit of doubt. Despite my skepticism, I've always come to love it. The yarn for my Match & Move is the latest example. I was sure that there was no way I would enjoy knitting with the variegated brown, black, and white Wollmeise, but now it's one of my all-time favorites. So what did he choose this time?

Lots of good stuff, and we had loads of fun picking it out!

I bought too much to fit into my suitcase, so Loopy shipped it for me. 

It arrived here at home before I did, and it was like Christmas when I opened the box.

There will be a Hitchhiker or two, possibly with two colors, and maybe the beaded cast-off that Kym used on her One Week/Close to You. There will be a couple pairs of fingerless gloves for Ryan. Some of it will marinate in my stash until it tells me what it wants to be. I might knit another Match & Move with those wild bright pink and variegated pink, green, and black Hedgehog Fibers skeins that Ryan picked out and practically dared me to buy. He even chose a new knitting bag.

It was wonderful, and even though I don't need yarn, I bought plenty that I wanted. No matter what I make with these skeins, the projects will be special because they'll remind me of the terrific time I had with Ryan, yarn-chooser extraordinaire.

Food, Glorious Food

And some glorious libations, too!

My main reason for heading to Colorado is always to visit Ryan, but another big reason is the incredible variety of food and drink that is available in Fort Collins. Our little town in NJ has a population of 4,000 while Fort Collins is a college town that is home to 144,000 people, so comparisons aren't really fair, but I make them anyway. Most of our restaurants here are boring national chains, with only three or four independent places to eat, and to be honest, they are not great. On the other hand, Fort Collins has an incredible variety and availability of food, and very few chain restaurants. I don't think that Chili's and Chipotle can compete with all the other delicious offerings!

We have a tradition of having a reuben almost as soon as Ryan picks me up from the airport shuttle; this time we chose Choice City. After many reubens over the past five years, theirs is the best, but there are also at least three other places that serve delicious sandwiches. We waited outside for our reubens, but they were so good (along with garlic mashed potatoes) that I didn't take time for any photos.

A new place that we tried was PizzaRev. I think it is a national chain but there aren't many locations so far. You choose your dough, add whatever toppings you desire, they bake it, and you have a tasty, custom pizza ready in just a few minutes. 

The pizza was good, but the real genius is the beer tap system.

I think there are at least 28 taps, each with a digital display of what it's dispensing. You give them your license and they give you a wrist band. You grab a glass, hold the wristband fob up to the PizzaRev logo and dispense whatever volume of whatever beer you want. I think it's brilliant for tasting, and after trying small samples of five or six different beers, I settled on a raspberry basil saison. It sounded a little strange, but through the magic of tasting, I found out that it is absolutely delicious.

When you're done, you return the wristband, get your license back, and pay only for the beer you dispensed. It's probably a good thing I don't live there because I would be tempted to taste and try too many beers on too many evenings.

We had breakfast at Lucile's with fresh beignets, trout, and poached eggs. (I think there is one in Boulder if you happen to visit this summer, Kym!)

There was iced dirty chai and chess at Alleycat Coffee House, 

and beer at The Mayor, a place with 100 beers on tap. Ryan doesn't go there very often because it's a bit over budget for grad student beer drinking, but not when Mom is visiting. They have almost too many choices.

We also ate at some of our all-time favorite places, Taqueria Los Camales (mmm ... tacos al pastor),

the good Thai place (Cafe de Bangkok),

and The Welsh Rabbit.

Ryan insisted that we go to a place that was new to me, and it turned out to be one of the best evenings (ever!). We headed for the gyro cart located in Old Town around 9 pm, but the gyro guy was just getting started and told us to come back in about 45 minutes. We wandered around for a bit, and ended up at Ace Gillett's, a bar with live jazz. Ryan and I both ordered caipirinhas, a Brazilian cocktail made with cachaça. I've never been able to find real cachaça, and lots of places substitute rum when making a caipirinha, but these were made with the real thing and were amazingly delicious.

After deciding that we really shouldn't each have a second caipirinha since one of us was driving home, we made our way back to the gyro cart, and I enjoyed the best gyro I've had in 30 years. We ate and talked while walking back to the car, and it was just a night of perfect enjoyment with Ryan.

Justin and I recently had a conversation about what would be the best superpower to have (so we are prepared and ready when they are handing out superpowers), and we decided it would be the ability to teleport. I wholeheartedly agree, and I would teleport back to Fort Collins for time with Ryan, a gyro, and a caipirinha (maybe even two this time)!

Sometimes Monday ...

... is a good day for a quick update. I had planned to be back to posting sooner, but things got a bit busy. In the last two weeks, I have:

• Had a wonderful time in Fort Collins with Ryan
• Enjoyed lots of interesting beer and delicious food
• Cleaned out Ryan's gutters, window wells, and weeded and repaired his patio
• Visited The Loopy Ewe!
• Played chess (very poorly)
• Wondered how someone who has absolutely no interest in gardening (I'm referring to Ryan) can grow such a lovely clematis
• Had the world's best gyro and caipirinha
• Been insulted (in an indirect and slightly amusing way) by a stranger in the Denver airport
• Visited my mother-in-law who was in the hospital with congestive heart failure, and helped set up her hospital bed, Meals on Wheels, and other arrangements when she came home
• Celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary
• Turned 61 years old
• Bought a house in Maryland
• Tried to get caught up on laundry; I'm still trying!

I'll tell you all about the details of these things over the next few posts. There will be photos of yarn!

On My Way

If everything has gone according to plan (including setting my alarm for 4:00 am and not pm, Thanks Vicki!), I'm on my way to visit Ryan in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I'm very happy about it! I've looked forward to reading and knitting time while flying, great food, excellent beer, visiting The Loopy Ewe, and of course, having fun with my older son. I'll see you in a week or so and tell you all about it!

Three on Thursday

Joining Kat and Carole for Three on Thursday.

Colorado wasn't all about yarn, so here are three more great things I experienced there.

1.  The perfect reuben and garlic mashed potatoes (along with fun company) at Choice City.

2.  Delicious amatriciana sauce prepared by Ryan. My grandmother always said that things taste better when someone makes them for you, and she was right!

3. These books were directly behind Ryan when we went to brunch at The Blind Pig. I'm blessed with two Great Sons!

Head on over here to read more Three on Thursday posts.

What Was Inside

A visit to Ryan always includes a trip to The Loopy Ewe. I don't know how I was lucky enough to have Ryan attend grad. school in the same city as this incredible yarn (and fabric) store, but I'm very grateful that he does. (Especially because TLE began in St. Louis, but moved to Fort Collins just a year and a half before Ryan did!) I've been very careful not to buy too much yarn on previous visits because the skeins needed to fit in my carry on luggage. This time was a little different. So what was in those packages?

I wind all my skeins by hand so I'm almost always knitting from a ball. I've debated a yarn bowl for several years, but when I found this beautifully glazed one from Pawley Studios, I had to get it.

My hands were also full of several skeins of Tumbleweed Yarn Aurora in Lariat. The striping sequence is lovely, and it includes the best bright blue I've ever knit with.

Then there was the Wollmeise. The Loopy Ewe used to arrange their yarn in cubbies, but they've recently switched over many of them to wall display hooks. There is simply no resisting when you see the multitude of colorful skeins as soon as you walk in the door.

Part of the reason I love having Ryan shop for yarn with me is that he almost always spots something I might never have considered otherwise. That was the case with these skeins of Wollmeise Pure in Spice Schwammerl. These are not my usual colors, but I was drawn to them as soon as he pointed them out.

I kept a skein of the Tumbleweed Yarns and the Wollmeise to knit with on the way home, and with Loopy Elf Anne B's careful packing (and several skeins for further cushioning), my yarn bowl arrived safely in NJ before I did.

But wait, there's more! Overcome by yarn fumes, I hadn't thought much about what I was actually going to knit with this yarn. Ryan had requested fingerless mitts with the Aurora, but that Wollmeise deserved to be more than another Hitchhiker. Clearly my only choice was to go back and look for yarn that would work with the Wollmeise. I found the perfect match with Leading Men Fiber Arts Show Stopper in Copper Cloud. I think these will be a Match and Move, but for now I'm happy to just admire them together while I finish a few other projects.

Ryan also requested a hat in this gorgeous Wollmeise Pure in Single Malt, and this one last skein of Berry Colorful Yarnings in Happy Life was a must to add to the second yarn shipment. It will probably become fingerless mitts to remind us of hope and happier times with Obama. So there you have it. Loads of yarn, (some might even say too much), but it all makes me incredible happy and I'm looking forward to the knitting.

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Tomorrow is November 1st, and that means NaBloPoMo. Do you ever wake up on Saturday or Sunday, grateful for the weekend, but still wishing that the blogs you read would provide you with posts every single day, even weekends?  Well, it's going to happen, starting tomorrow! I can't promise mine will be good posts, but for November it may be quantity over quality!

En(joy)

I'll share my Loopy treasures as soon as I catch up on laundry, grocery shopping, bill-paying, and work, but for today I want to share some joy from Fort Collins. Ryan and I have lots of favorite places to eat in Fort Collins, and The Welsh Rabbit is among the top ones on our list. They have a cheese shop on one side, and next door is a cheese bistro where you order, taste, and enjoy a variety of cheeses, meats, small bites, beer, and wine. As a meat and potatoes kind of guy, John finds it a little pretentious and unsatisfying, but Ryan and I love it and always make sure we go when I'm visiting by myself.

My photos can't convey how delicious our choices were or what a wonderful time we had, and I so wish I could share these incredible flavors with you. Their Honey Chèvre is the best I've ever had, Powerful Welsh is an amazing cheddar, and Sottocenere (truffle-infused and aged in a coat of nutmeg, coriander, cinnamon, licorice, cloves, and fennel) and Moliterno al Vino (an Italian sheep's milk cheese aged in wine) have the most delicious rinds.

Ryan and I both had cherry cider and it was the perfect accompaniment, complete with beautiful reflections from the sun streaming through the window.

We don't have anything like this nearby in NJ, but I am so grateful that such a place exists in Fort Collins and I was able to enjoy a long afternoon there, full of new and delicious cheese and the stellar company of my oldest son.

Do you believe ... ?

I visited The Loopy Ewe in person and all I got was a circular needle?! It's true ... sort of. I had 20 minutes to spare on Saturday during our Fort Collins visit, so I ran in and bought some size 3 needles because I brought 4s but didn't like the Hitchhiker I had started with them.

While it was a bit sad to leave without yarn, I meant to go back on Monday or Tuesday to browse and pet yarn, but there were just too many other things to do during our short visit.

Once I was home, I found that I really like the sharpness of the HiyaHiya circular I bought, and thought it would be a good idea if I ordered a couple more sizes and cable lengths. I had a little trouble with the online cart, so I called The Loopy Ewe to place my order. Lynn was so helpful and pleasant to talk to (just like all of the Loopy Elves) that when she asked if that was it for my order, several skeins of Julie Spins MCN also fell into my cart. I'm so happy to be a Wayfarer and have No Regrets.

I'm also quite pleased to have purchased new yarn while still spending maximum time with my family. Win - Win!