Cleite goes to Lake Louise

This weekend we attended a beautiful wedding in Lake Louise, what a great excuse to wear a lovely shawl!

Cleite met a feather and fan shawl, bought by its owners mother, it was a sea foam green Kid silk haze(ish).  We enjoyed the lovely scenery, even the bit of snow that fell.  There were four weddings that day, one of which was outside!!  I hope they brought their own shawls, it was a bit nippy.  But with the beautiful cyan lake, the yellow aspens in the distance, and the moody sky, it was a day to remember for the four happy couples! 

Next weekend, Cleite attends a wedding in Ontario!!

Because we are EXTREMELY Charitable People

Most nice sunny summer days, like today, Mr. J and I head outside and wander down Stephen Avenue in Calgary.  Its closed to traffic, and is a bustling place in the summer, deserted in the winter (picture icicles, howling winds, people running to get inside, so bundled up you can barely see a face, a city of bank robbers).  On Thursdays there is a farmers market set up, in Olympic Plaza there is currently an art installation (a sculptor is chiseling out a lady in stone over the week), a few ambulances, construction workers, bankers, homeless people, such a melange.

Today, as we are extremely charitable people, we decided to support the Make a Wish foundation and buy some things from their bakesale, because that is the type of good, selfless, giving, generous people we are:

That was one frigging awesome chocolate cupcake, and yes, I now have a tummy ache.

A Weekend Knitting in the Sun with Friends

What could be nicer?  The weather turned out lovely, Riley Park is in full bloom and full of happy families, beautiful weddings, boisterous cricket matches, and babies.  We spread our blankets, pulled out the sock yarn, food, and just enjoyed.  Erynn from Twist of Fate is either evil, extremely crafty, or a mobile LYS all wrapped into one.  She brought along a basket of her originally dyed yarn, everything from BFL, angora mix lace, camel silk lace, cashmere lace, merino bamboo sock yarn, you get the idea, it was wonderful!

Jenn digs through the treasure!  After a few sets of fisticuffs, I managed to wrestle a lovely purple/black/grey BFL skein from the other ladies and have already cast on for a Baktus scarf.  Its not stash if it doesn’t see the inside of a bin!!  She dropped off another basket at Make One if anyone is interested. 

I also successfully babysat my nieces for the first extended afternoon to evening session.  There was no blood, tears, major fights, and everyone got to bed at the decreed time (those under the age of 7 that is).  Yeah!!

Adventure Week: Day 2

This past weekend we had an adventure in biking up the Jumping Pound Ridge Cox Hill Trail.  The trail description could go as thus:

Head straight up to Jumping Pound Ridge, around a few switchbacks thrown in to fool you that you aren’t going straight up.  After 1 minute of this, watch your heartrate race past “high” to “way too high” and finally accept that it may explode at any time, and its time to get off your bike and push.  The only other alternative is to collapse at the side of the trail in a heap, and that ain’t getting you up to the top any faster even if it does sound rather nice.  Once on Jumping Pound Ridge, head along semi-flat trail for a little bit, think you are doing well.  Then notice the huge  climb up to Cox Hill, and realize you had better grow new heart, legs, and and lungs fast.  The once source of pride from the day is that I did smoke that group of hikers, approximate ages 70-90.  Left them in the dust baby!!

Once at the top, if you survive, the view is rather nice if you can remember to pick yourself up from your face plant and look around:

Jumping Pound Ridge can be seen over our shoulders.  And in a scene repeated on many trails across many countries, it takes this many people to fix a bike:

Adventure Week:Day 1

Building up to the ultimate adventure this weekend: 24 Hours of Adrenaline Mountain Bike Race in Canmore.  I’m very excited about this race, at most I’ll do two laps, and since I did it last year I know I can do it this year!  I really hope it doesn’t rain again, even though taking photos of racers covered head to toe in mud was fun.  The rest of the time I get to hangout with 1400 other racers, my 9 teammates and have a blast.   As we are on a “corporate” team of ten, this means that at minimun there is ten hours of rest between laps, plenty of time to nap and enjoy.  Other teams are 5 people, two people, and soloists who ride for 24 crazy hours straight, noon to noon. 

Catching everyone up on past adventures: the last weekend of Stampede we got invited to a party at a really fancy house opposite the Stampede Chuckwagon Grandstand:

What a great view, we even got to see the chuckwagons race around the backstretch.  But the best part was the fireworks show: we were practically in it!  They set the fireworks off all around the grandstand and track, some of the big ones went up in front of us.  I will always, until I die, love fireworks, even the smell of them. 

During Stampede they have a huge show every single night, we could hear them from my house way over on the West side of town.  I miss my pigtails, and seeing all the wannabee cowboys, but things are settling back down to normal in Calgary now.  We even had a summer this weekend, with the weather finally turning hot!  I loved it.  More adventures all week!

Knitting along with the TDF

Althougth I realize I don’t need to start a new project at the moment, I’ve starting doing a Tour de France knit along.  I’m making a pink flower shawl from last summers Knit 1. magazine, in Misti Alpaca.  It has really pretty flower petal border that you knit on later, and a very simple lace pattern.

My adventures at the Stampede continue, I had a great visit the other day.  I fell madly in love with an artists paintings;  you can see them at www.yessy.com, do a search for Jean Taylor.  Then under her locked area, use the password “imagination”.  I’d really love to get a print of the paintings of feet and snowshoes, I think they are so beautiful and unique. 

I also fell madly in love with some of the dancers at the Indian Village (a politically incorrect name now perhaps, but what it is still called).  I have put some more photos, and movies up on Flickr, but here are my three faves.

 

It’s Stampede Time Again!!!

Yahoo!!!  It started a few weeks ago, with the buildings getting painted up to greet Stampeders:

We could almost taste the pancakes, smell the horses, we dug up our cowboy hats, bought some new western wear, and prepared to burst out our alias cowboy and cowgirl sides.  I discovered that I look really cute in braided pigtails, as we headed on down to walk through the parade on our way to a Stampede breakfast.  We all got Friday morning off, then reported in at 1 pm (ummmm, 1:30ish in my case). 

That photo is for my Mum, as I knew she’d be asking for one!  And why was I late, well because it was Pudding Yarn’s annual Stampede Sale of course, everything 20% off.  I picked up some Hempathy to make Flower Child with!!  I really wish this photo turned out, as Mr. J look so cute in his hat, and he was being so patient in the yarn store as I efficiently and quickly selected yarn (strongly ignoring everything but my mission of Flower Child).  Honestly, I was really good!

There are more photos on Flickr, as well as a movie of a group of riders preparing to head out for the parade.  Even a giant sheep, yes, the parade really DOES have everything!!  More fun to come this week with a visit to Stampede grounds, a lunch/booze up, and a breakfast.  I’m really, really, excited about this breakfast, as the one last year was pretty much hands down the best breakfast food I’d ever had.  Even the coffee was incredible, and that was before we added the Bailey’s!

Snow, Hail, Rain and Sleet…

Cancelled our yard sale this weekend.  We woke up to snow falling gently down onto a city really pissed off at having to cancel their entire weekend, softly blanketing our houses, flowers, and other things we didn’t want to freeze.  Fireplaces were switched on, marathon mini-series were watched inside as outside it proceeded to either hail, rain, snow or sleet all day long.  All day.  Sunday was cold and windy, therefore all hopes of having a charity yard sale were abandoned to next Saturday which so far looks like it will be warmer.  I’m really disappointed, but I hope we do well next weekend.  We have until the end of the month to get the funds into the MS Association, and therefore plenty of time to raise as much as we can.  We have tons and tons of donations which is wonderful, my whole garage is full of really cool items to sell. 

With all our plans out the window we put in some good couch time, and I even got busy organizing the next few knitting projects.  I’m going to be traveling the next week and a half, so I need stuff ready to go.  We got a good photo of my wonderful ball winding technique, helped along by Piper who insisted on being attached to me in some way all weekend long.  I think all the boxes of donated items have been weirding her out.  If I wasn’t providing her a lap to sit on, she was demanding that my lap become horizontal for her, rather loudly.  She did a lot of glaring and dirty looks this weekend, poor kitty.  Don’t anyone tell her the lap is actually going away for 1.5 weeks, she could lose it completely.

As for my extremely fashionable get-up there, give me a break, its the weekend and it was snowing!  I’m winding some pretty pink alpaca lace for a new shawl!

Water under the Bridge

The fun of riding my bike home from work on a beautiful sunny day is that I can take side streets, and find new ways home.  My new favorite way takes me through a pretty section of Bowness by the river, and over the pedestrian Bowmont bridge.  In many cultures, crossing over running water is a way to shake off evil spirits, even in the Lord of the Rings the bad guys can’t follow the good guys into running water.  Standing over  the Bow River, which is still running glacier clear, but getting more full each day, as the spring run off approaches, for me is almost therapeutic.  The sound of the river, the smell of it, all that water rushing by washing all the evil spirits away.

Taken on this bridge, last night, as I leisurely pedalled my way home.

MSRide Calgary- Hats and Bags

On June 14th I’m going to be participating in the MSRide just north of Calgary for one day, 78 km.  I am then hopping on a plane to San Diego that night (for THE Water Conference), obviously because I believe in self torture, but that is another story.  Ride 78 km, drive to airport, get on plane, fall asleep, great plan!  But I digress.  In order to raise some money for the Calgary MS Association, I hit upon the plan to hold a yard sale, and give all the proceeds to the charity.  Mr. J. and I don’t particularly like asking people for money, and this way people could donate items that they would normally just be taking to Goodwill, or the Salvation Army anyways, except we would get rid of it for them and save them a trip.  I’ve gone through my house to look for items, and I’m happy to say friends have been coming through and already dropped some items off!  I’ve been knitting hats on the weekends, I’m trying to make two a week:

The yellow fuzzy one still needs some ears I think.  I’ve been using up odds and ends I’ve found in my rubbermaid tub, the fuzzy yarn was purchased years ago to make some fuzzy stuffed animals that were adorable, and long ago gifted to babies.  With two more weeks until the sale on June 5th, I  hope to crank out another 4-5 hats.  I sure hope people buy them now.  My Mum was also busy making some extremely useful shopping bags of cotton:

She has made more that are currently on the way as well!!  If anyone in Calgary is interested in attending the sale on June 6th (the saturday!!  Why do I keep putting in 5th?),  leave a comment and I’ll let you know my address, I’m in the NW.  Or if anyone has anything that we may be able to sell, leave a comment (my neighbourhood is full of kids, I think that stuff will sell well).  Anything we don’t sell we may try and sell at my brothers house on Signal Hill at a later date, or we will take to Goodwill, nothing will be wasted.  Absolutely everythingwe make will go to the MSRide fund. 

If anyone is feeling extremely generous on this sunny Friday, donations can also be made at:

https://msofs.mssociety.ca/2009Bike/Sponsor.aspx?&PID=1131068&L=2

Have a great weekend everyone, and for those of you in the Land of the Free, hope it doesn’t snow and have freezing rain on your holiday Monday like it did on ours!!!!