Flowers, flowers, flowers

I visited the hubby in DC recently, which is a good thing for the blog because I have some pictures of stuff that doesn't just involve yarn.

We definitely packed activities into the trip; we got to see a few sights in DC that I have never seen, like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, as well as the Hillwood Estate, which is a mansion filled with ornate Russian Imperial items collected by a very wealthy lady.

We also visited some breweries, including Right Proper and Blue Jacket, both of which were rather good. I've been to Right Proper before, and I don't think I was that impressed at the time because they have a lot of Belgian-style beers (which are not my thing). But this time they must have had more stuff up Val's alley.

They also have some fun artwork...

The other thing that was going on at the time is that the cherry blossom trees in the Tidal Basin were about to bloom. This is how they look when they're really full and pretty, but this is how they looked while I was there:

Of course, I did get some crochet done. (You know I did.) I started on a project for which I bought the yarn THREE YEARS AGO. Sigh. 

The project is Kathy Merrick's beautiful Motif Wrap. I saw this in a Vogue Knitting crochet issue a few years ago, and I bought the entire magazine for this pattern alone. (I ended up also making a sweater, as well.) 

But after I bought the yarn, I had some hesitation about making the pattern. I thought it would take forever, I thought you had to sew all the motifs together at the end, I thought the colors wouldn't be as vivid as I'd hoped...

Whatever my hesitation was, I got over it recently and decided to finally make this wrap. It has been more fun than I expected, and it's going more quickly than I expected, as well. I'll post a photo when it's done (which might be this weekend).

AND, as if there haven't been enough flowers in this post yet, I wanted to show a photo of my lovely unreliable orchid. I bought him from the Daley Center farmers market in 2010 or 2011, and he has not bloomed since that time. I got back from DC and saw that the spike had finally opened up into two beautiful blooms: 

My other two orchids didn't sprout a thing this winter, so I guess we'll see what happens next year.

One other thing - this is my 900th blog post. Wow. I have been doing this for 10 years. Thanks to all who have read my ramblings, or more likely who have come here for crochet and knitting patterns. It has been a useful outlet for me over the years and I plan to continue to post.