Temecula Wine Tasting and Crocodile Stitch Crochet

I hope this post find everyone doing well and enjoying beautiful spring weather. I had a little excitement this week.  A few days ago I went to the beach since it was sunny weather.  Returning home I had a "floater in my eye".  I didn't think much of it since I'm near sighted and it sometimes happens to me.  But after a few days of not going away, I called my eye doctor.  I went to see him this past Monday and it was a good thing I did since I had a retinal tear.  He immediately sent me to a retinal specialist who did laser surgery on it and I was home in like 3 hours from the first appointment!  Wow, was I ever lucky. Everything is fine (although the floater is still there).  So, I just want to let people know that if you feel something is not right (as in your vision), please go and see your doctor.  The floaters I had this time were odd shaped like cob webs and black wires.  If I hadn't of gotten this taken care of, I could have had a detached retina which does require surgery.

Anyway, enough about my adventure, it was warm here these past few days, so we took advantage of this great weather and ventured over to wine country to do some wine tasting.  Temecula is about 1 1/2 hours away from where I live.  It's even closer if we take the winding Ortega Highway. 

This is a panoramic view of the Temucula wine growing area.  Those are vineyards out there but as they were just starting to branch out, they are hard to see. 

Our first stop was Palomar Winery in Temuecula.  It was a beautiful day and this winery has a lovely garden setting.

 

My little grandson, Oliver had a wonderful time walking through the vineyards and gardens and he saw one of his favorite creatures:

Geckos!  There were lot of them running around.  I'm glad Lilly wasn't there to catch them!

 Palomar Winery has not only wine tasting but also a small restaurant that serves great food. It was a fun day and we enjoyed tasting all the different varieties of wine.

Speak of variety, here's my latest take on crochet.  It's called the crocodile stitch and it's the second bag I've made with this stitch.

I used my Planet Penny cotton yarn and it worked great for this project.  I sewed in a zipper for the top closing and also double lined this bag.

 

The first bag I made using the crocodile stitch, I made two panels and sewed them together.  This time, I did the crocodile stitch "in the round" and it was SO much easier.   Here's the link that I used to create this bag.  

After you do the foundation row, it's basically two rows that you repeat.  The tricky part of this stitch is how you place your hook to create the crocodile scales.  There's many you tube tutorials out there you can watch.  I created the flower embellishment from my mind (my husband would say, "what mind"??) but you can get the the idea.  It was a fun project and I have more yarn left to do another one.

As always, I wish you all a wonderful week ahead.  We have so much to be thankful for, especially after all the tragedies that took place this week here in America.  Thank you for stopping by and don't forget to go over to Handmade Harbour and check out lots of great ideas from other bloggers.  Take care :)