One of Galveston’s big yearly “celebrations” is Dickens on The Strand, where you can dress up in Dickens era costumes and shop in Galveston’s old town district, The Strand.  The stores are usually open and there are also craft booths, food booths and lots of cool demonstrations and such.

Cam in his cool ear flap hat. It even has a llama on the ear flap.

Last year, we went for the first time.  I had no idea what to expect and was so excited to find many craft booths as well as an alpaca yarn seller.  Camden and Jake bought me some yarn for Christmas that year, and Cam also bought himself a really cool ear flap hat, hand knitted in pinks and blues – very bright and pretty!

Well, locals weren’t sure if The Strand would be up to visitors yet at this time;  it had been hit really hard by the hurricane.  It’s on the bay side of Galveston and has no seawall to protect it and had lots of flooding and all the really cool tourist stores were badly damaged.

We were excited to hear that the festival was going to go on, even though most of the businesses are not open yet and some will not be open for a long time.  I told my husband and kids that we were going to go down there and spend money and support the local businesses and let them know that we care about them, whether they liked it or not.  (Luckily, they all liked the idea and couldn’t wait to go check it all out.)

Jake in his fall colors ear flap hat that he purchased this year.

Anyway, back to present time …  The weather Saturday was great, we had an awesome time, and the alpaca yarn booth was there again, with their llama’s and their finished knitted products and their luscious, soft, lovely yarns.  We all (well, not Wes) rushed over and started fondling things.  Camden, immediately went for the yarn and bought me a skein.  Jake, was immediately looking for a cool, ear flap hat for himself.  And I picked up a skein for myself, too.  I was teasing them at lunch later about how it made my heart swell with pride to see them rush right in like that and buy stuff at the yarn store.

Also, during the hurricane, our neighbors, Wes and Jules, had some friends from Galveston living with them until they were allowed to go back on the island.  Turns out they own several restaurants and tourist shops on the island, so we had to stop in and say hi while there.

After The Strand, we went out to lunch on Seawall Blvd.  Wes and Cam were playing songs on the juke box.  Wes and I were saying how proud we were that Camden and Jake liked classic rock and were singing along to the songs Cam had picked.  One of the songs he picked was Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, which you probably know is 9 minutes long, and we were teasing him, “Couldn’t you have picked a longer song for us to sit here and listen to?” before we left.  But, as it turns out, we were glad he picked such a long song.

As we were driving down Seawall Blvd towards 61st Street, we saw a huge Harley Davidson trailer and lots of bikers at a bar along the way.  We were wondering what was going on.  Just then we noticed, coming the other way on a Harley, was Santa!  Following behind him were hundreds of bikers!  They were escorted by police cars with flashing lights and fire trucks.  It was awesome.   We were honking and waving.  At that point, we were glad Camden had picked such a long song, because if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been there that long and would have missed the motorcycle parade.

Thanks for reading!  In the meantime, here are some cool links about Galveston, The Strand and Dickens on the Strand, and the alpaca yarn company.

This says it’s the official site about The Strand, but it’s not as good as the one below:

http://www.thestrand.com

This is the web cam.  It’s dark there now (it’s 5:50 AM my time) but I can see street lights blinking, so later on, you can see all the people there, too!  This is too cool and now that I know about it I can look at The Strand any time I want to!

http://www.galveston.com/webcams/thestrand/frameset.html

This is the better official Dickens on the Strand website.  It’s hosted by the Galveston Historical Society.  On the left, there is a link to a photo gallery, so you can see some of the people in costume and some of the other cool stuff down there.

http://www.galvestonhistory.com/Dickens_on_The_Strand.asp

This is the company we bought the alpaca yarn from, it’s called Mountain Dream Alpaca’s.

http://www.mountaindreamalpacas.com

but on the label, there is also the web address of this company:

http://lcalpacayarn.com/index.html
Looking at Mountain Dreams website, it doesn’t appear that they make the yarn themselves, or even dye it. They get it from these people.  Can’t tell if they made all those nice hats, scarves and more that they were selling in their booth or not.  But anyway, the yarn label says it’s 100% alpaca and it’s super, super soft.  I can’t wait to knit something with it all.  On this homepage, at the top left is a picture of several skeins of yarn … the one I bought myself is the blue and green one to the right.  I sort of peeked and saw that Camden bought me the variegated pink one.

And if you go here:

http://lcalpacayarn.com/products/index.html

you can see all their yarns.

Later,
Sherri

That's my Sock Monkey TapeSter there in the bottom left hand corner!

My Sock Monkey TapeSter (#13, there) was featured in a national, highly recognized, highly respected, highly recognizable magazine!  Yes, I was in Vogue Knitting magazine!!!!!  Woo hoo.  And THEY called ME.  Yes, they contacted me to ask if they could feature one of my products in their magazine.  I was (still am) so excited.  Click the link above to see the item in person!

Love,
Sherri

Yes, we’ve moved again. But I’m pretty sure this will be the last time. I’ve got this website paid for like 2 years, and am not using it for anything else, so it may as well be my family website. I’m going to be working on getting a photo gallery, a forum and other stuff set up here. Just bear with me. I’ll figure it out eventually.

So, you ask, what are we up to?

Well, not much. Why else would I not have written in so long???

Camden is doing great in school now. He is in the Symphonic Band and they just had regional contests (UIL) and they did great! My favorite part was the sight reading competition. Each band has to play a piece of music they have never played before. The instructor, Mr Hutchins, had been practicing with them at school. At the competition, they had several minutes for Mr H to go over it with the band. They went measure by measure with him pointing out each change and who did what. Then in the second section, he sort of sang it to them so they had an idea what it sounded like. Then, they had to play the piece. Let me tell you, I was amazed!!!!! I expected missed notes, people playing off tune, and general mayhem. But OMG! They nailed it. It sounded like they had played the piece 100 times. They got the highest scores from each judge. It was great.

Camden is also “in” to the Rubic’s Cube. Remember those things? Well, he not only has one, but he can solve it. He has it down to around 2 minutes right now. I’m intending to take a video of it and post it somewhere on the web. Maybe YouTube. Just so everyone can see him do it.

Jake’s doing great! He’s letting his hair grow out. I need to get a picture of him. We are planning our next year’s curriculum and I was surprised to find out that the math he is doing for 5th grade is going to lead to him doing a new math program next year at the 7th grade level! Woo-hoo! We are going to study the Far East next year and learn about China, India and more. Looks really interesting and we are already looking forward to doing it.

Wes had been interviewing for a job in PA. We were hoping to get closer to Dave, Jen and the baby. But that didn’t work out for us… Lots of stuff going on here at Silestone, though. He’s gone from from being plant manager of US Stone to being a sales marketing manager for Cosentino USA to being plant manager of Silestone all in a few months. All without leaving the company. Anyway, he’s up to the challenge and is happy about everything as he can be.

My business is doing great. I am making money now and am very excited about it. If you haven’t looked at my website lately, please check it out. I’m doing some secret shopper stuff on the side, too. That’s not as fun as it sounds. Lots of reports go into each “shop” and if I really think about what I”m being paid to drive all over town and then fill out the reports, it’s really not worth it…

I’m also really “in” to budgeting right now. Believe it or not… budgeting can be fun. At least now I know where we have money and I spend SO much less of it now. Instead of borrowing from savings each month to avoid bouncing checks, we have extra in our account and are going to be able to pay cash for Christmas this year. Woo-hoo! I’ve read tons of budgeting books and online resources and have learned a lot. I can’t believe I fought learnign to budget for so long.

Anyway, what else? Dave and Jen are doing great. The baby is due around May 21st and they have decided to name him Max! We are all flying back there in June to visit and I get to babysit while we are there. Can’t wait!

I guess that’s about all. I’ll post again when I get the photo gallery set up and figured out. We do have a forum, if you like that kind of stuff. I don’t expect it to get a lot of use, but you never know.

Til later,

Sherri