Finished Object and A Change of Mind

I finally finished a second sock this week. I had so many easy things on the go that it seemed to take forever to finish anything. This was a simple pair of socks that I am sure I must have started during lacrosse season but I can't remember. I used the Supersoxx yarn I bought at the Boxing Day sale. As this yarn was self-striping I worked the leg in k3 p1 rib and the foot plain. I worked a star toe which I have not done before but I am not really sure I like that style of toe. Well you don't know until you try.



I changed my mind on the shawl I had started knitting on vacation. Although I liked the pattern, I decided I didn't want a triangular scarf, so yesterday I unpicked the thing. This is how far I had got before it became a ball of yarn again.



I like the lace pattern its the shape of the shawl that put me off. I should have unpicked it when I first had doubts. But, never despair, I cast on for a stole last night in a different lacy pattern. Let's hope I like this one.

Knitting Update

Some of you may have noticed that I was a bit vague about the knitting I took on vacation. That was because one item I was knitting was a present for my mother-in-law. Her birthday has passed and present has been received and admired so I can now post photos. They are not very good photos but I think they will show the effect.

I knitted a shawl using Misti Alpaca Laceweight.
This is the shawl off the needles.



and this is the shawl while it is being blocked.



You should get the effect of how the shawl changes once it is dampened and stretched.

Also on the knitting front I finished a jacket for my niece.



And this week I finished a sock which was leftover from lacrosse.

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.

I'm A Real Knitter

I'm always amazed when I don't have the right size needles for a project. I have been knitting for ever so you would have thought I had enough by now. Mostly it is when I want to use a circular needle and the ones I have are either too short or too long, never just right.

So I head off to the LYS as I need a super dooper length of circular needle. And what does the owner say to me? You're still knitting in this weather. You must be a real knitter. I felt like asking why she was open if she didn't think anyone was knitting.

But she was very kind and said she would put the right size needle to one side for me when it comes in.

No Sky

Last week I showed how easier it was to see the Saturday Sky. This week I will show you what I have done to make it harder to see the Saturday Sky.

One of the windows we had replaced was in our bathroom which was all well and good except that now we didn't have a blind so I had to put my body through contortions to get in and out of the shower without scaring the neighbours. I want to make a blind for the window but I can't wait for the long nights to settle in so I needed some sort of temporary solution. I decided a telescopic pole inside the window with some fabric hanging from it would work fine for a while.

First trip to Linen n Things for the pole. My window width is 18 inches. There are two poles that cover that length: one goes up to 18 inches and the other starts at 18 inches. I made an executive decision and bought the longer pole which was a good decision as it started shorter than the stated length. I remembered that I have a table runner which is the right width and I thought would hang over the pole and do the job; but when I opened the drawer, I espyed something more interesting which did not have a current home:- a crocheted lace circular table cloth.

The edging was holey enough to go through the curtain rod and the cloth was the right size and colour to fit the window and room.

What do you think?




The funny thing about this is that I have always wanted to crochet a lace curtain but haven't done so because I haven't wanted to put a lot of work into something that looks awful in use. This has changed my mind.

Before & After

Not really Saturday Sky pictures but something to help me see the sky more clearly.

I mentioned that we had had some windows replaced. Well this was our bedroom window at the beginning of the week



and this is the window now




What a difference. Just need to get the blind back up as the neighbours can see us clearly too!

Beam Me Up Scotty

This week we had some windows and the back door replaced. Somewhere along the line someone had put a screen door on the back. Except they forgot to take into account the lights on the outside which the door now banged into, so to solve that problem they just removed the light bulbs. Not that we used the lights as they were security lights - just what you wanted for an evening on the deck a sudden blast of bright light. The handle on the screen door didn't work very well so you had to bash it to get it to open and the back door could be hard to open when an air pocket formed between the two doors. So as we needed to have some windows replaced we decided to have the screen door removed and the back door replaced.

I had to get a new lock for the new door so I decided to get one of those electronic ones with a key pad. (And this is not going to be a rant about not being able to change the master number. Grrgh.)

The one I chose came with two remote controls. Which was not the reason I chose this particular lock but I am sure the marketing people thought it was a good sales feature.

Up here all packaging is in English and French; so one side of the box says "with remote control" and the other side says "avec télécommande".

Beam Me Up Scotty!

Good Morning

If the weather forecasters are correct, this week promises to be hot and dry. Warm enough to go out this morning with my coffee, although not so dry that there wasn't still dew on on the ground.

This is one of the sights that greeted me.



I wonder how long it will last.

To The Lighthouse

I finished reading this book this morning and really enjoyed it. It was beautifully written and you could imagine a person's train of thought jumping around.

Why do I mention this book and not all the others I read?

Because the first time I tried to read this book I thought it was a load of rubbish and wondered why it was so well thought of. What has changed since then?

One major difference is where I was reading it. And I don't mean a different country. When I first tried to read it was on a railway commute. I read many different things on my train journeys but maybe there was too much noise or distractions to appreciate the writing. This time round I was able to read in the peace and quiet of my home and savour the writing.

The other difference is that since the first attempt, I have read another book by Virginia Woolf and a biography before embarking on To the Lighthouse.

I read Mrs. Dalloway because I wanted to read The Hours and thought it would be useful to read Mrs. Dalloway first; and I wanted to read The Hours as I thought it would be a good idea to read it before seeing the film.

By the way, I still haven't seen the film.

More Mots on Montana

I thought I would stay with the alliteration theme.

Somebody commented (privately) about the restaurants where we stayed, so let me clarify what I meant. The east side of Glacier National Park is bordered by The Blackfoot Reservation and the towns are really just hamlets. There are places to stay and in the park they have very nice views, but there are no restaurants. That's why we were glad to stay in East Glacier because it was a bigger "village" with a few restaurants to choose from.

In fact I want to mention where we ate on Saturday night, not because it was outstanding, although it was good, but because of its ethnicity. We went to a Mexican restaurant. What's so exciting about that you ask? Well, there is a dearth of Mexican restaurants in Calgary - good or bad - so this was a treat for us.

We went on a couple of hikes and there were warnings about bears. At one point I asked why I was leading and the boy child very kindly said that I would see the bear first and scream which would warn him and his Dad to run. Nice child! Sunday morning we saw a bear. We must have disturbed it as it ran across the path in front of us and, thankfully, away from us and into the woods. I didn't scream (and enough of the funny comments from Jill, yes, I scream for mice but not bears) but I did stop and then I did my own mother bear thing and gathered up the clan.

So we lived to tell the tale and gave boy child an (exaggerated) tale to tell at school the next day.

My Monday

The day started with my flip flop breaking. No big deal as they were pretty old and now I have to use my old designer ones.

I needed to prepare the batting for tonight's quilting class. I was fortunate to get some help. Just not the sort of help I wanted.



Later in the morning there was a storm. Look at my beds.



Yes that is hail. I managed to move the tomato plant as the hail started but I haven't been outside yet to see if there is any damage to other plants.

On the positive side at least with all the rain we have been having I haven't had to water very much and everything is growing.

Big Sky Saturday

As you can probably guess from the title we were in Montana at the weekend. It was about 3 1/2 hour drive to East Glacier Park. Which wasn't a bad place to stay as it had a few restaurants.

So here is a picture of the big sky



At one of the water falls we saw a bird that flew in and out of the water. It floated under the water and jumped out at just the right time onto a rock. Considering how fast the water was flowing this was an amazing feat.



I took a lot of photos over the weekend many of them duplicates because I was trying different shutter speeds and I am not going to bore you with a load but this tree fascinated me as I could not see what the roots were growing into as I thought we were on solid rock but there must have been some goodness there somewhere.

The Yarn Harlot Stole My Idea

Actually, I don't think that's true. Although she is in the same country as me I'd be very surprised if she had ever come across my blog, but I thought that the "snappy" title would get someone's attention.

The title does have relevance and is not just a gratuitous reference to the Wise Knitter. In January I wrote about how nasty some people can get on-line. This week the Yarn Harlot has written about meanness in blogs. She doesn't mention anyone by name and doesn't say if the blog post is because she has been targeted or that she has come across nastiness in blogs that she feels is unnecessary even if she doesn't know that target.

So the Yarn Harlot did not copy me but it is nice to know that other people think that on-line nastiness is just, nasty. Although there are going to be some who will say 'get-over-it'.

Knitting and Sports

I take my knitting to the boy child's sporting events. Most of the time you are sitting down so why not knit? Now that he is playing lacrosse, I take something simple that I do not need to look at as lacrosse is a fast game.

My heart sank on Saturday when I saw the referees, I have mentioned them before as they just do not call anything. During the game one of the fathers commented on me knitting. "Normally you're laid back and knit along slowly but today because the game is so intense you are knitting really fast." It was true; when a game is poorly refereed you worry about what advantages the other team will take. Especially when early on in the game a fight breaks out because penalties haven't been called. I tell you my hands were moving so fast even I was surprised.

Unfortunately, at the game on Saturday and last night's game I experienced poor adult behaviour. Firstly, the boy child scored 3 of his team's first 4 goals. So the other team's coach said get number 12. And that means stop him anyway you can.

Secondly, one of our parents shouted really loudly "ref, you're an idiot". Which, not surprisingly, the referee took exception to. To cap it off they didn't think they had done anything wrong because they didn't swear. That gives you such a warm and fuzzy feeling to know they are part of your support.

Thirdly, yesterday the sister of one of our team got into a heated argument with one of the opposing team supporters and then her mother joined in. I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. At least the mother apologised when she saw how embarrassed I was.

Anyway that is it for another year; and we won't come across these parents next year as their son's are a year older than ours. But we will come across others like them, we will see more poor refereeing and more dirty teams. Such is the nature of sports and life.

Saturday Sky

I bet you're glad you waited for this one!



In California they call this June Gloom. Not sure what we should call it here. Anywhere else it would be April showers.

The good thing - don't have to water the garden.
The bad thing - grass is growing but it's too wet to cut
The good thing - we have a water butt (aka rain barrel)
The bad thing - it's not connected to a down spout (yet)