Sorry for the blog silence. I know; I’m horrible. I am on the move, though, and wanted to share my awesome trip with you!

Andrew and I are visiting Austin, TX for the first ever QuiltCon! OK, Andrew is mostly here for Quiltcon, as he is the quilter. I’m here for the vacation! And, of course, the shopping…

We got an early start on Sunday; I got up at 3:45 a.m.! It was worth it, though, as we arrived in Austin in the late morning. Because of the timing of our arrival, the apartment we are renting wasn’t quite ready; so, we headed out into the wilds of the city. Our first priority was food! Knowing that I also wanted to do a bit of yarn shopping, we headed towards Hill Country Weavers, figuring we could find some food around the store.

Find food we did. The first thing we came across was this site:

A great little collection of food stands on South Congress, right next to Hill Country Weavers. The line of food stands kicks off with that lovely, shiny cupcake truck there on the right in the photo. This is what originally drew me in, but it turns out lunch was waiting for us at the opposite end of the line, at Wurst Tex.

This fun little food stand serves unique, gourmet sausages in sandwich form. I wanted every one of the sausages, including the veggies ones! What I ended up with, though, was the Buckwurst - a sausage that combines smoked venison and pork with peppers and cheddar. I added some honey mustard and paired my meal with a creme soda. It was, I must say, quite delicious. My apologies; there’s no photo…

Having stuffed my face, it was time to move on to yarn shopping! Onward to Hill Country Weavers…

Ok, that’s just the sign. This is the storefront:

Hill Country Weavers occupies a converted home (or perhaps a couple homes, I’m not quite sure) and is quite large and maze-like. It’s chock full of beautiful yarn. I wanted so, so, so many of the things. After some internal turmoil over yarn selection, I ended up walking away with these beauties:

Habu, Habu and more Habu! I was inspired to combine the three cones of very fine merino (natural, purple and blue) and a single cone of bamboo and copper into something to envelope my neck in, which really seems to be the theme for my year. Stay tuned for more on that, though.

Next up, we walked to a nearby fabric store:

Again, the store occupies a converted home. I’m beginning to sense a theme here; are you?

Stitch Lab carries a nice selection of cottons, with fun and modern prints, as well as some other fabrics- like felt and dupioni silk - and other tools of the sewing trade. I happened to walk away with some printed cottons:

These are destined for a knitting project bag, of course. Once we were done shopping, we got the word that our home for the week was ready for us to move into. After dropping off our luggage and doing some research, we headed out for a bit more shopping, this time for some video games. We hit up the local Half Price Books and Game Over Videogames. I walked away with two Sega Gensis titles - Disney’s Aladdin and The Lion King - both from Half Price Books. I rented and played these games all the time as a kid and am glad that I am now able to own them.

We followed up this short shopping excursion with dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and capped off the meal with a visit to a local ice cream shop - lick. I have one word to describe this destination: heaven! Seriously, the ice cream was absolutely, fabulously delicious. Just look at what I got…

Texas au lait, Orange Chocolate and Carmel Salt Lick. There wasn’t so much licking going on as there was shoveling. If you are ever in Austin, you must go! It’s as simple as that.

Finally, after a stop off for some groceries at the local Target, we headed home for some much needed rest. After all, day 2 had a lot in store for us…

Not in a bad way.  It was busy but full of good times with friends and family, for which I’m very appreciative.  It’s now time for me to get back to the internets…  where all life resides…

Happy New Year!!  Well, almost…

I’m going to continue a personal tradition of setting goals for the upcoming year and posting them on my blog. Hopefully, unlike in past years, I’ll actually accomplish these goals. I’m going to try to keep myself honest this year by tracking progress on a page here on notes from the margin: Goals for 2013

So, without further ado, here are the goals I have set:

1. Complete 10 video games
2. Read 30 books of greater than 7,500 words. These must include at minimum of 12 books from the ALA Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009
3. Complete 10 knitting projects using stash yarn
4. Get to a weight where I can comfortably wear men’s 36-inch waist pants and maintain it
5. Learn how to effectively use a calendar and a to-do list
6. Send birthday cards on time
7. Organize and record my yarn stash
8. Produce one batch of bar soap
9. Learn about herbal headache remedies
10. Establish and maintain a daily devotional practice
11. Become proficient enough in the use of the Tarot to feel comfortable performing readings for others
12. Send at least 2 postcards per month using Postcrossing
13. Establish and stick to a monthly budget

Although numbered, these goals are not listed in order of importance; I just wrote them out as they came to me.

Do you have any goals for 2013? If so, I’d like to hear about them.