RM and I got away this weekend for a one night trip to one of our favorite places, Sonoma. The Grandparents set up to spoil the Craftylilly kidlets rotten, and the two of us took the hour trip up to the wine country. It was a perfect weekend for the trip. The sun was out, and the air was cold and crisp. The wine country can get very crowded in the spring and summer months, so it was nice to go in winter, the off season.
The Sonoma and Napa wine country is one of the reasons I love living in Northern California. First, the landscape is beautiful. In the spring, summer and early fall, the vines are loaded with grapes. In the winter the grapes are gone from the vines, but the hills are green. Then of course there's the wine. RM and I have become bit of wine snobs over our years together. We don't know as much about wine as some real wine buffs, but we have developed a taste for nice wines. Over the years (less trips since the kids), we've found some favorite wineries to visit. Our absolute favorite is Imagery Estate Winery. This winery is run by the Benziger winery. We've enjoyed almost every wine we've ever tried put o
ut by Imagery. Our personal favorites have been the Malbec and the Pinot Noir that Imagery has put out over the years. The other fun part about visiting Imagery is the art gallery attached to the tasting room. Imagery wine bottles feature artwork from various artists. Each piece of art used as a wine label much include a representation of the parthenon symbol which is the winery's signature. Of course we had to stop there and try their latest offerings. The Endpaper Mitts accompanied me on the trip.
This trip we decided to also visit the main Benziger Winery which is also in the Sonoma wine country. We enjoyed ourselves there as well, and learned more about a type of organic farming called Biodynamic farming. Benziger is a certified Biodynamic grower. The particulars of Biodynamic farming can be found here , but in a nutshell, the practice involves using no chemicals of any kind, recycling all farm and wine residues back into the vineyards, using natural landscape flora and fauna to increase soil health and keep pests at bay, and aligning farming practices with the earth's natural cycles. We learned a lot, and tasted a lot of really wonderful wine.
All in all we had a wonderful time, ate good food, drank fantastic wine, visited some fun and funky shops, got a lot of reading done, and I happily knit on my Endpaper mitts completely uninterrupted. It was very nice and relaxing. I feel ready to take on the rest of the month!
In KAL news, the Yarn Focus Challenge starts today. As I can't figure out how to put a counter up on my header, I'll be keeping track of my days without buying yarn with each post. So with today, I have one day with no yarn purchase. Impressive, no? (insert good natured sarcasm here.) I'm busy trying to decide on a chemo cap pattern for the cap I'm making for the challenge. Also, I'm waiting on The Lion in Winter to arrive from Netflix so I can see it for FiberFlix. I'm trying to decide what the ramifications are going to be switching the FiberFlix blog over to the new blogger. The whole blogger upgrade is annoying. Things have been quiet over at the blog and message boards, but I'm hoping it will pick up with some new ideas I'm cooking up.
