The Scary, Zombie Laden Weekend, Plus a Black Cat

This is the second year I’ve gotten to enjoy Hallowe’en in my house and this neighbourhood that is full of kids.  Its a lot of fun to see all the kids running around in their costumes, so, so excited.  One little butterfly, it appeared to be her first Hallowe’en and didn’t have the hang of it yet, stepped right into the house when we opened the door.  Her mafioso father with his giant machine gun had to pull her back out and explain that you just stood there and got candy.  This year we bought a pumpkin to carve, and since we’re all about zombies, picked out a good gnarled out.  It looked good during the day, but better at night!

We added extra green marker for effect, and I tried to leave some stringy “brains” in behind.  I really, really, wanted to make a califlower garden out front, because they look like brains and that way we could catch some real zombies (A La Pride Predjudice and Zombies) but then Mr. J pointed out that was a waste of califlowers.

Instead we decorated the front window with our usual black cat:

And his sidekick “Chubby Tabby”.  They love looking at all the people running around, I think its Jack’s favorite day of the year.  All the little kids love it when they spot Jack. 

Well, I’ve gone and done it now, I cashed in some reward miles that I haven’t used in forever and I’m going to Stitches West in February.  This seems like an extremely good idea to me, as the best thing to do in February in Calgary is to get out of Calgary.  California seems like a great way to go.  My plan is to just go to the Marketplace on Saturday, and try and soak up some of the non -40 oC weather for a bit of a break.  As you can tell, I’m kinda of excited about the prospect as I’ve been catching up on the Stash and Burn podcasts and this event is a big thing in the lives of Jenni and Nicole.  Now I get to go and see it for my own eyes!

Cleite Goes to the French River

This weekend we attend another wedding, this time in Ontario on the lovely French River.  It was just outside Sudbury and North Bay, about in the middle, down south a bit.  The leaves were almost at their peak up here, the weather was a lovely brisk fall, with that undescriable smell of freshness, falling leaves, and a tiny bite of winter approaching.

On the morning of the wedding we all piled into a war canoe and took a turn around some islands, and then relaxing in our cabins, warmed by a fire.  No internet, tv, cell phones, just lovely company, knitting, warm drinks, and a crackling fire.  My dear, dear friend is now married to a wonderful man, and has joined a loving family. 

Home again, home again, but for how long?

Three days and some change I guess, since I’m off again next Sunday.  This leaves me just  a wee bit stressed out, especially since Jackie my little boy cat seems to be having some trouble still.  I took him to the vet a little while ago, he got antibiotics and seemed right as rain, but now his symptoms have come back again!  I guess Mr. J will have to take over once I go away again, I hate leaving my furry little boy behind when he’s sick.  Angst rant over.

The weather in this part of the country has been splendid for the last few weeks.  In fact here in Calgary yesterday they had the high temperature of the whole year!!  In September!!  My last afternoon in Winnipeg was enjoyable, even though I always find it to be such a grey city, case in point:

I did manage to wander down to their nice water front area for lunch, and a look around, and there were lovely colourful flowers there which I didn’t manage to get a photo of.  My time there was busy, I was networking away, and getting worked up about silly people not considering reusing their wastewater (irrigation on golf courses etc.) before they spent SOOOO much money putting it back into the river. 

I am also highly, highly enjoying my book which I’ll plug again, The Birth House by Ami McKay.  It is set in 1910’s Nova Scotia in a small town, and every woman is either cooking, knitting, spinning or dying yarn or looking after their children.  Knitting and fibre arts aren’t the focus of the book, they are there because they are a part of the book and life at that time, inseparable.  The book is about the clash between a mid-wife and the new male doctor that has come to town to save the day from the old ways.  The women come together in their “Occasional Knitting Society” to share wisdom, and knit thrummed socks for the boys in the war.  Now I really, really want thrummed socks to wear all winter long.  Once I’m done with my copy I intend to pass it along here in Calgary (Mrs Mello, and Miss J, you interested?).  Everyone else, I highly, highly recommend it. 

I did sneak away one evening to walk down Portage Ave (pronounced in the english manner there, rather than the French manner I’m used to) to visit Rams Wools.  It was a great LYS, with a wide variety of items including popular, work horses, fancy smancy stuff, exotic fibres, but what I loved was their Selkirk line of yarns.  I think it might be spun out at Briggs and Little (their fisherman yarn with the lanolin left in was a close second).  This is a “flour and sugar yarn” that makes wonderful fair isle, intrasaria (whatever on the spelling) (knitted pictures), and left overs turn into mitts, hats, tea cosies.  I was undone by the charcoal and heathered green:

Garter Stitch Yoke sweater with green stripes at the yoke, sleeves and hem, from Knitscene 2008 fall is what I have in mind for that!!  It should be a good everyday sweater, especially with some pretty green buttons.

Pirates and Elvis in Winnipeg

So here I am at the water and wastewater conference in Winnipeg, finally having a night off from the festivities.  I could have gone over to the awards ceremonies, but I’m all partied out at the moment, and instead enjoyed dinner by myself, and retired to the hotel room for a bit of needle clicking.  It’s nice to eat dinner in a restaurant with a big crowd of people, but I also enjoy finding a quiet table, ordering a glass of wine, and reading a new book (The Birthing House by Ami McKay, which is very good so far). 

The theme of this years Sunday evening festivities was “Pirates” due to Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Each conference they have a silent auction, for which I usually find something to donate.  This year I made a Pirate toque, which got bought for a bit of money, which is good.  I made it a bit big and felted it down, it will be an extremely warm hat for whomever did end up with it:

Last night the entertainment involved a rather nice pub night, and then a Vegas Casino party, including an Elvis impersonator.  I tell you, I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard at this conference as when this guy was performing.  Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in Winnipeg, in a room full of engineers and operators, watching a bad Elvis impersonator dance around, but I guess life is weird that way.

All I know is one of the raffle prizes is a Roomba, and I didn’t win, and went a way a bit bitter in the end.  However I also didn’t win the golf prizes, or the life jackets, so perhaps I didn’t do so badly in the end. 

Another goal of mine for this conference was to find a mentor to help me out, preferably female, older, and in upper management.  Looking around today at the other women I’ve come to realize something.  One is that we are few, which I guess I already knew, but another is that I’m one of the oldest women there doing what I do, and I’m still able to call myself mid-thirties.  All very interesting!

Home tomorrow, I can’t wait.  I hope to find some time soon to show you the wool I bought at Rams Wool!

Art in Industry

This little water treatment plant was old, old, old, but yet not old enough to be one of the lovely Art Deco facilities built in the 1910-1930.  Its being replaced, and soon.  However sometimes in decay, in age, in maintenance revealed in layers of paint peeling off the walls, there is beauty, shape and colour.

In old pipes installed long ago, even then struggling to fit into a small space, comes beautiful form and texture.

Beauty in every day working objects, mysterious patterns, and cloudy depth when looked at closely enough.

Oxidized iron and manganese utilizing potassium permanganate in the detention tank.

Why Do I Keep Going to Saskatchewan?

You may think its because of the lovely vistas, or the nice people, but really its because they have extremely poor quality drinking water supplies.  Hence there are a lot of new water treatment facilities being built in that province.  Now in British Columbia there is a lot of surface water supplies of drinking water, and they tend to be fairly high quality.  For new source of drinking water in that province (like you are builidng a new subdivision or development) two filtration barriers are required, but there are many systems in operation that just chlorinate the water. 

In Alberta it is more of a mixed bag of surface water and ground/well sources of drinking water.  Still the water is fairly high quality, especially when compared to Saskatchewan water.  Saskatchewn is on what used to be (many, many years ago) a salt water ocean or sea.  Therefore the ground water is extremely high in dissolved solids, so salt, iron, manganese, and a lot of organic material.  Organic material refers to thousands of posssible things, but picture a lot of carbon in the molecules, and that it used to be part of something living.  This water is unfortunately harder to treat, and much more expensive.  But not impossible, especially not when you sell the right equipment, which is what we do!  Now couple difficult and expensive water to treat with small towns without a large tax base, and you can imagine the challenge facing some towns today.  What we’re doing is starting a “mini-plant” or what we call a pilot plant that is going to mimic the operation of a full scale water treatment facility.  This helps us prove the technology, that it does what we say it should, and allows the operators to take many water quality samples to ensure that we are making the highest quality water.  There are two parts to a water treatment plant: making high quality water, and making as much as you say you are going to, for a long period of time before the equipment needs a cleaning.  For the membrane systems, its normally the latter that we worry about, the former is usually a given unless there is a huge problem.

Tomorrow we’re off to one of these small towns, and as normal I’ll try and get in and discover something interesting and unique about the town, its history, and see a bit of its character.  Working in water plants we get to go to some small towns, which you normally wouldn’t, and meet the operators, mayors, council people, which is always a lot of fun.  Saskatchewan, here we come!

Fernie BC: Where Summer has been Hiding

Wow, we had such a nice week, 6 days in the Mount Fernie Provincial Park, 5 days of mountain biking, all of which we did without driving as so many trails intersect with the park.  We only had one noisy night, which not surprisingly was Saturday, once the weekend crowd went home it was pretty peaceful and quiet in the campground.  We quickly established a daily routine: slowly peek out heads out of the tent around 9 am, as that is when the sun was just getting through the trees and warming things up.  One of us would crawl out, put on our warm clothes, and fire up the stove to make coffee and breakfast.  We’d enjoy the coffee, I’d knit and wait for it to warm up some more, slowly taking off the toque, baktus scarf, fleece vest, long sleeve shirt, and wool socks.  Finally around 11 am or 12 we’d get our biking clothes on and head on out for the days adventure.  After riding around for 2-4 hours we’d cool off in the nearby creek, relax, and maybe head into town for coffee and groceries.  We went out for dinner once at the Red Tree Lodge as it was Mojito night, and had breakfast twice at the Blue Toque (what a great name, I wore my blue toque both times we went!). 

The trails were sublime, over the 5 days, and only biking in one of 3 areas around Fernie, we hardly repeated a trail except that I could spend days going up and down Old Goat, up to the top of Snake Bite, over and over and over.  It was that much fun.  Many of the curvy single track trails are through old growths of cedars, which make for quiet riding, a bit mysterious.  There were many tricks that even I could handle, although we stayed away from the “big stunts”.

Riding down Snake Bite is my idea of the best mountain biking; rhythmically flowing turns and curves, up and downs that rock you gently more than jar, fun obstacles to maneuver over, skills used but not taxed, a dreamy song playing in your head the whole way down.  So much fun.

We did not miss the phones, tv, computers, radios etc.  While the light was good I knit away on the back of my snowflake sweater while we made a fire, cooked dinner, or chatted.

We listened to the birds, we watched the chipmunks, we watched the bikers cruise by, or other campers, saying hello.  There was a black bear that was supposed to be coming often through the campground, but we didn’t see it, which is good as we spend the first day eating blueberry pie and I wasn’t about to share.  Like most vacations it took me a number of days to relax and decompress from the rigors of everyday life.  By the end however the fog had cleared, and I felt normal again, and very happy.  I read a few books as well, including “Pride Prejudice and Zombies” which was a lot of fun. 

I think we planned well, coming home on Saturday after another huge breakfast at Blue Toque, to hang out with the kitties.  They had really missed their patting, and scritching, so we worked hard to make up for it.  Jackie woke me up from a nap on both days for extra patting, and Piper insisted on sleeping on my hands during my nap instead of just behind my knee.  They missed us for sure!  Getting up for work this morning was hard, but we rode our bikes into downtown which made it seem easier.  And until we get a money tree, here we are!

Where Life Makes Sense

The motto of Swift Current is “Where Life Makes Sense”.  Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful place to live?  All of your problems, dilemmas, worries, anxieties, everything melts away, and finally makes sense.  Your path is clear, your future is certain, and everything is simple. 

Of course, there is another side of Swift Current, which belies the motto.  Perhaps for the magic to work you need to stay, rather than just passing through.  Today I just stopped for gas, then went inside the Husky Store to use their washroom.  As I opened the door to the LADIES Washroom (clearly marked with one of those outline drawings of a stick figure wearing a skirt) I saw to my absolute HORROR, an older gentleman on the can with his shorts around his ankles, a look of intense concentration on his face that quickly turned towards me in surprise.  I recoiled quickly, most likely exclaiming “Eeewwwh”.  At first I was still considering using the LADIES washroom when HE was done (I really had to go) but remembering his look of concentration I picked up a really yummy rice crispy square with fruit loops in it (cause that makes sense to me) some decaf coffee, and headed to the check out.  Then, I swear I’m not making this up, the guys WIFE came out of the MENS bathroom, also clearly marked with a outline of a stick figure not wearing a skirt.  We all made our purchases (me staring at the floor), headed out to our respective cars, they got into their giant white pick-up.  They then drove to the access road, put on their left turn signal, and turned right. 

I hope your lives make sense, and you didn’t see anything today that will remain burned on your retina for far too long.

California Souvenirs

I left California on Saturday, made it to Denver, and got stuck overnight.  Oh well, I did make it home on Sunday, changed out the suitcase, and left again Monday morning.  At least Mr. J is at home spoiling the kitties with lots of lap sitting and scritches under the chin.  However the weather here in Saskatchewan is lovely with a big open blue sky overhead, and a beautiful breeze.  I keep wandering away from the water plant to go and visit the local lilac tree, just to smell the wonderful scent.  I went on a bit of a bike ride down the road yesterday evening the highlights of which are: slight turns left and right, and a 0,0001 degree hill, hardly noticeable until I turned around and went down it.  I rode a half hour, then turned around, and was able to see the goal, the steeples of the church in the distance.  Sure is flat out here!

I was able to find a cute little beading/yarn store in Old Town San Diego, and treated myself to the perfect California Souvenir: Golden Sock yarn specially dyed for the Sheperdess yarn store.  Isn’t it lovely and sunny?

I’m going to save it for winter, so that the cheery sunny colours cheer me up.  I also enjoyed all the flowers in California, there were purple flowered trees everywhere, and we were walking on a carpet of purple:

Its always important to stop and smell the flowers.

SK Rivers, Lakes And….

The Saskatchewan River (from my travels last week, still getting ya’ll caught up on my whirlwind adventures)

Fishing Lake:

And…..

Sandy Claus!!!!  ‘Cause no trip to Saskatchewan is complete without a visit to Santa Claus.  I asked for baby alpaca with silk on top!