Miserable Monday

Did you know that Miserable Monday follows Sodden Sunday in the summer calendar? The good thing is that I have not watered my lawn since returning from vacation. I knew it would rain sometime. But it is too wet to pick produce so that will have to wait until later in the week. Just hope that the zucchini are not turning into marrows as I write.

I was trying to take a photo to show how rainy it is but I couldn't get the effect I wanted and I didn't want to get wet doing it. So I am leaving you with a summer picture instead.




The seeds came from a friend who had saved them from her flowers last year. There was a little soil left after filling the raised flower beds so boy child placed it where I'd like to have a flower bed next year and threw the seeds down and now we have sunny flowers.

Critter Contact - Again

We left Nelson early in the morning, stopped at Safeways for muffins and Starbucks and continued to our next destination - which shall remain nameless for the time being. But I do rate businesses on how well they handle problems so this particular hotel may not stay nameless for long.

It was a very nice hotel with good facilities that, I expect, is relying on its location to attract business and is not concerned about the unfortunate experience of one visitor.

It was a dark and stormy night. Isn't that how all tales start? It was night and it was dark outside. It was about 10 o'clock and we were all sitting on the beds reading. When I saw this thing and I made I've seen a thing noise. I saw a bat - in our bedroom. My happiness meter dropped. Before any of you say what's the fuss it was only a bat; you need to know that the bats in Alberta carry rabies hence my concern and this bat was flying around our bedroom.

So I did what all people in the right mind would do - hid in the bathroom. And the spousal unit did what all calm, collected people do - caught the thing.

His first thought was shoo it out the window but the window had a screen on it - it obviously hadn't come in that way. His second thought was to shoo it into the corridor but that would have moved (literally) the problem onto other people. So he picked up the recycling bin, waited for the bat to tire and rest and then he trapped it against the ceiling. I had offered advice on my way to hiding - don't let it bite you!

So there's my husband standing with his arm in the air holding a bin against the ceiling with a bat inside and I was on the phone summoning help (not a time to take a picture) except no help on the other end just the infernal 'please hold'. I ran down to reception, explained the situation and that we needed someone to our room pretty quickly. Actually someone did arrive quite fast. Two women from housekeeping. One older who knew what to do. She sent the young one to get some cardboard which the spousal unit slid between the recycling bin and the ceiling and then handed the precariously sealed unit to the older woman.

Now I don't blame the hotel for there being a bat in the room. Although I do wonder how it got in there. We were in the middle of the third floor and the window had a screen and there wasn't a fireplace. But, I would have thought they might have checked on us to see if everything was OK. Not a word. When I checked out a couple of days later, I expressed surprise that nobody had checked that everything was now OK.

So when I got home and saw a couple of e-mails from the hotel I felt a little glow of happiness, but they were just requests to complete a survey. I sent a wonderful missive to the name on the survey but no response as yet. I'll give it another week as Canada Post is not the most reliable but then this hotel will be outed.

Saturday Sky

This is a photo taken on 28 July, the first day of our holiday. We were in Nelson, B.C.

It is the smoke from a forest fire. A helicopter had been flying regularly but not constantly with something in its bucket to put on the fire. It must have been some sort of fire retardant, maybe water but they were not dragging the lake as the helicopter was flying the length of the lake to land after each trip.

The smoke was a lot more red when we first went so I don't know if the change meant that the fire had been reduced but it would have made a better photo.

The next morning when we checked out of our hotel, there was a group of fire fighters leaving. They must have been working on that fire.

Not Very Helpful!

One thing that really brings you back to reality after a vacation is the laundry. So I got a BBC series on DVD from the library and worked through the ironing until it was done.

Well, someone obviously decided I was working too hard and needed a break.

We Interrupt This Broadcast.....

I know I said I would write about my vacation but I just had to show you what I picked this week



I was given some seed potatoes by a friend who had some left over and as they were late crop I had been very self-controlled and not looked at them until another friend asked if I'd been potato diving yet. What? She said to dig just under the surface of the dirt and see what potatoes I could find.

Did you know potatoes can melt in your mouth?

Home Again

I haven't posted for a while as I have been on vacation. I didn't know what, if any, Internet access I would have so I decided not to write at all while I was away. Turns out that apart from one place everywhere we stayed had free WiFi.

Before I start writing about the highs (and one little low) of the trip, I'd better mention knitting. I usually take easy projects on vacation, then I can do other things and still knit and I have learned to take more knitting than I think I'll need. One of the projects to vacation with me this year was a simple shawl. The yarn was Goldilocks by Fleece Artist which I had bought at a sale specifically for this trip. The label even includes a pattern although you don't really need a printed pattern for a simple triangular shawl.

This is what the yarn looked like after I had wound it.



I didn't wind it until the morning before we left and after winding I started to wonder what it would look like on the size needle suggested. This colourway and yarn begged for something light not dense. So a googling I went. The first shawl to come up had a lace pattern which I liked but vacation knitting is supposed to be simple, right, no referring to patterns or charts. The other pictures that came up just seemed too dense for me. But I managed to find a pattern for a triangular shawl in a lace book I had out from the library. 6 rows of knitting and 4 rows of an easy remembered pattern.

I started the shawl about halfway through the vacation but after a couple of days I started having doubts. Would I like this shawl, would I be able to give it away, should it be square, circular. I obviously wasn't happy with it and I ended up not knitting for a few days. Then on a hike I came up with a solution; turn it into a stole. I could leave the end pointed so I wouldn't have to unpick too much and I could continue the pattern and hope I guessed correctly when to start the other point so I didn't run out of yarn.

But when I returned to my project and looked at the shawl to work out how wide I would want the stole, I realised I liked the shawl as it was and carried on knitting.

Of course vacation is over and back to reality so the shawl will have to wait until the next break.