Shiny Trinket

(left hand nudge nudge wink wink...)

Finito

So slightly tardy (even tardier now that i realise that despite writing this on the 22nd of Aug I apparently never published-oops) with the posting but nevermind! Olypmic shawl is done!! I finished the actual knitting on Tuesday, blocked on Wednesday and it was Dry and photoed on Thursday, so I'm not sure which day counts as it being finished but its well before the deadline anyway

Portland! and days 3 thru 6

Yesterday we went to Portland to hook up with Adam we had lots of fun! We went to the farmers market, various yarn stores (things were purchased). We had nyummy lunch and we knitted, alas i spazed a bit on taking pictures I did however take one while we went for tea:


I look a bit goofy and somewhat vampire escque but no matter. I also managed to find something very exciting at the tea zone
A scone! with jam and cream, it was particlarly nyummy, hot and light with a good crispy outer.

Like i said there was shopping, we went to knitpurl I got
Soak for the blocking of the shawl etc and



Pencil roving so i can try out the spindle thats kicking about.

We also went to Powels and Anthony got some books that i have been wanting to read
because well there is nothing i love more than a good bandwagon to jump on.

He was clearly feeling generous as when we went to Twisted he bought me this
isnt it pretty and cute! I have to say i approve of the Portland yarn shops, lots of monies could be spent.

Adam brought me a present!
I;m pretty sure its silk, tho i am not entirely sure if its roving, or a hat, either way its pretties!

Not only did i get to meet Adam i also got to speak to Miss Zanne on the phone and also miss Amber which was quite exciting!


Now the progress ont olympics


day 3
day 6not really much difference, 3 or 4 repeats i think but i actually left the house and i am developing shawl induced narcolepsy the rows are sooo long! At this point i have 3 repeats to go so hopefully a few more days should get it done.

Day 2!

so far, so good, another 2 and a bit repeats yesterday, at this rate i reakon its gonna take me less than a week so I can try and knit my cardi too as part of the olympics.

I also just realised that this is my 200th post and that i totally forgot/missed my 2 year knitting/blogging aniversary! I feel like something should be done to mark such and event but well i havent anything planned, oh well...

Ravelympics: Day 1

I decided not to get up at 5am to cast on, I didnt actually cast on til about noon, then some David Attenborough and some Buffy later we have the above (orange for scale) 5 pattern repeats done, 10 to go, of course it gets more ardous with every row!!

Shiny things and Lacey things

Sick boyfriends = not doing much = lots of DVD watching= lots of knitting time, thus things have actually been finished/progressed!

First the finished:

The necklace from the kit i got when i was here at Easter except that i made it wider and shorter (and ran outta thread in the process) was quite fun using the teeny tiny needles!

I have also finished the first half of the Scotch Thistle Stole:

bubbly unblocky goodness, the 2nd half shall be postponed til i get the Wedding knitting done.

All this finishing means i am all ready to start my olympic project 2moro, shall we get up at 5am to cast on, we shall see!

I am also working on something else as a kinda side project, we got given a bunch of red heart so i decided it would be a way to sate my crochet urges so i am making it into a puppyghan:

I shall granny square it up til i run out of yarn, it is of course for this cutie:

Who is either a pirate or has been hitting the sauce while we aint looking.

Anyway stay tuned for olympic progress for now its back to the strange musical...

3 weeks, in 1000 words or less...

Hmm so I've kinda forgot to blog again whoops. Since I cant be bothereed uploading tonnes and tonnes of photos I shall just send you here...

So what have i been doing. The 2nd week in Canada my uncle and his family were there too which was kinda nice. Sunday we went into Banff and had a wander there went to the Hoodoos (big rock things). Monday we went up the Icefield parkway to the Alabathca glacier and got the big ice buses up onto the glacier and wandered about which was pretty, then on the way back down we saw a bear! wandering about at the side of the road, it wandered off before we could really get any decent photos, dad asked if there were any spare childrens to lure it back. Then what did we do? I cant really remember when we did things but we went to the hot springs which were nice til the thunder started, went out for a Chinese meal in Banff which was nice, went to the driving range and dad tried to teach me to golf, i sucked. Mother had a shot at driving the jeep and nearly fired us all through the front window trying to slow down to photo a deer (left foot breaking bad), we wandered around Canmore did some shopping. Thursday night (i think) there was super thunderstorm, i got woken at 4.45am by the house being shaken by thunder, the storm lasted pretty much all Friday so we drove about in the rain and I spotted more bear! Saturday we left early and went to the zoo in Calgary, it was ace! I like zoos and it was a particularly big one, we were there prolly 4 hours and we still didnt see everything before we had to leave for the airport.

The airport was a bit different, instead of the usual check in then bugger about for a few hours it was a case of check in right go through there and do immigration etc (so mych better doing it before i left when i was the only one there than standing in line for 3 days) so it was kinda like oh i am leaving right bye parents! Flight to Seattle was uneventful save the small child a few rows back who everytime the plane turned was convinced we were going down!
Got to Seattle and it was straight out the airport just like a domestic flight in the UK, found Anthony and my bags and headed off.

SEattle was fun, I met Anthony's mummy she is very nice we went to her store which was awesome. On the Sunday i met up with the fabulosoisis KnittingKitty and we ate far to much Greek food (well i did, damn those portion sizes) and fondled novelty yarn. Then Anthony and i headed off the see Dark Knight at Imax, it was pretty good, go see it if you havent allready. Monday Anthony and I did touristy things, we went to the zoo and the aquarium (Anthony got a sticker) and on a cruise of the harbour which was very pretty. Then Tuesday it was up super early to get to the station for the train to Eugene, we got the tourist train so we sat upstairs which i have always wanted to do. Saw a fair bit of Washington and Oregon whih was nice.

Now i am in Eugene (yay) and havent really done a whole much of merit, went swimming, had picnic, watched a lot of dvds, played a lot of rock band/Wii fit, played board games, cooked etc etc if anything more exciting happens then i shall post about it!

Now i suppose some pictures would be nice? I finished the entrelac sockies when in Canada:




Entrelac sockies, from Spring 07 IK in 4 different colours of opal uni. I was originally gonna do 2 pairs but after the first i thot sod it i never wear matching socks anyway i shall just make odd ones! As i said before i had to do a few 8 stitch tiers to get round my fat legs. I also taught myself to knit backwards which reallly speeded up proceedings.

Other things have been cast on which i dont have photos of just now but i do have yarn porn!!


Knit picks Andean silk in Pitch and Pallette in Purple, the black stuff is to make a cardi to wear over my bridesmaid dress and the purple to make a shawl for the bride (and is also my ravelympics project!)

I also decided to do something i had been considering for a while:

New Hair!! and i think it was the cheapest hair cut i have had in my life! hurrah!

Anyway i dont think there is any more to report, I shall go do fun things like laundry...

Thursday, Friday, Saturday...

Thursday the weather was set to be a bit mince so we drove into Calgary to go to the mall. It was fairly exciting as malls go usual kinda shops, there was also like a British grocery shop, i think i managd to convince the woman at the till i was an ex pat hehe.
Like i say weather was not well forcasted however we didnt entirely expect this when we came out the mall?

The carpark was white! big fat hail stones! There was a lot of snow too on the mountains and it was generally wet and horrid. However things were purchased, namely shoes:
Sketchers sandally things cos i dont really have any sorta dressyish summery shoes and i do like me some sketchers (especially ones that are in the sale)
And some Keds cos a) they are super cute and b) it was 25% more off the 2nd item so more shoes had to be purchased!

Friday we went adriving again down to Radium (ie land of the motels) and Invermere where we had a wander down to the lakeside:

Suitably scenic and what not, then we wandered round the shops. We went for a nebby in an antique/junk store type place. I got:Vintagey style costume jewellry, I do like me some vintage costume jewellry and I got all of it for the princely sum of $3! While we are on the subject of shopping I got this stuff earlier in the week, pretty no?
Today we went for a walk into town, I wore my new shoes which was of course a bad idea and i now have a hole in my foot. We had a wee look in the old RCMP barracks museumy place which was kinda neat and then specially for April:
A Mountie! (is it y or ie? ie looks better...)


The cos Canmore the town we are staying was built up around mining, it is miners heritage weekend this weekend and today there was a parade which we watched:
There were more mounties(ys)
A pipe band complete with Scottish flag!
Miner! and then all the mining familys came along with like labels as to who they were and such like, then there was an unvaling of a statue and some free food, which dad partook of mother and I missed out cos we were in the quilting shop oh well.

On the way back we noticed that even the clouds are supporting the Vancouver Olympics
(if you use a little imagination)


And of course there has been knitting too:
Entrelac sock nummer2, which was going along great guns but now i am getting bored of, I do wanna get it finished before i go to America but I mayhave to force myself, altho i dont think i have anything else i can knit before i get to Oregon so its the sock or nothing!!

OMG!! PUPPIES!!!

Today we went to Snowy Owl Dog Tours and went on their kennel tour and a sled ride through the forrest, it was awesome!

Dad and I made friends:
I got hugs and kisses...





We saw beeg fluffy doggies


and wee fluffy doggies

We saw their wolf hybrid, he's 96% wolf as much as you can get before he's fully wolf
Isnt he gorgeous!

We got to go in and pet and hug all the dogs which meant by the end of it:


Puppy prints! If you wanna see more puppy pics the flickr set is here.


After that we went out towards Lake Louise, stopped at Johnston Canyon and had a walk up to the falls which was pretty:
Then on the Lake Louise, which was smaller than I thot:
And lastly Lake Moraine which was an even better shade in reality
We stopped for a cuppa by Lake Moraine and there was a ground squirell that was evidently used to people, at one point he was sat on a guys knee stealing his chocolate bar.
Cute no?

There are more photos which i will upload to flickr once i get somewhere with a decent connection!

Day 5 in the Big Brother House

Dad's big brother that is. Today we ventured further afield to see stuffs, I got the map and planned us a trip.

First stop Takakkaw Fall (its magnificent in Cree) one of the largest waterfalls in Canada:


Now with added parents:We bimbled about here after the drive up steep windy road, some wee critter darted infront of us but as yet it is unidentified. At the falls the only wildlife we saw was this:


The lesser spotted Allisterius cameraticus which you can just see in the middle of the picture thru the trees.


Then back down the windy road and on to Emerald Lake:Lots of rock flour in this lake. We then took a random notion and decided to go native:



Yep we went g'nuing! I say we, father and I g'nued while Squaw Crapsitatwobbles sat in the middle and chastised father when he tried to go faster.
When we got back to the hut thingy mother escaped quickly


Then after some amounts of abortive navigation (the map wasnt entirely clear) we went to Kicking Horse Ski Resort and went up the gondola:

Its the top of the World! We were above the snow line so it was rather chilly.


I did spot a sledge:
however there wasnt quite enough snow to make use of it, there were however lots of clearly mentally insane mountian bikers careering down the mountain side, rather them than me.

Then we took the chair ride up to see this fellow:

Boo the Grisly! isnt he cute
We were about 6 feet or so from him, which frankly is as close as I;d like to get and there was of course a bloody great electric fence betwen him and us. We had a little tour and a talk by the woman at the refuge which was interesting and Boo bimble about and did bear things.

After that we headed back and went to a pub in town for tea and were waitressed by Yorkie's Canadian doppelganger it was quite alarming the similarity!


So that was that, next some photos i took out the window on Sunday but forgot to post yesterday:
A rainbowSunny mountains!

Now i must away and wash and see what adventures are in store for us today!
(I shall endeavour in the name of not being uberly picture heavy posts to do more or less daily updates assuming we do things with photographing/chronicaling)