Weekend of LUV!

I had a deliriously happy weekend, the kind that made me sing, giggle, dance, and generally radiate happiness from every pore.  Was it the lovely weather?  The fun activities?  The fact that I finally put curtains up in my bedroom?  I don’t know, some days you just feel good all over.  On Saturday the lovely raven haired Mrs. R and I traveled up to Olds for the Fibre Festival.  I think I’m a bit spoiled by the lovely setting of the Great Basin Fiber Fair, as I thought this one was a bit weird as it was in the maintenance shop of the College.  Which is strange, as Olds College had lovely grounds full of flowers, shady spots, and would have been perfect for some outdoor tents.  But the maintenance bay was full of fibery goodness, and the lovely Erynn of Twist of Fate fame:

 

After going through the booths we sat down and had a bit of a knitting/spin along in the middle of the floor, which was very nice.  We had a good time catching up (Erynn moved to Kamloops and has opened her own shop there) and giggling over dirty words in fiber related activities.  There are surprising number of them! 

Ahh, but what about the booths you ask.  Well, lets just say I fell head over heels in love!  From across the floor I saw it, and walked as if in a daze towards the display.  My hands (both of them together) went out and dove into the furry goodness that is Fleece Artists Peter Rabbit:

 

I immediately brought both skeins up to my face and buried myself in it.  Oh the softness of the angora!  The beautiful delicate yellow of the colour.  The warmth of its fuzziness.  Swoon!  You shall become a lovely big scarf and I shall call you Peter Rabbit.  Too bad its too hot to do more than constantly stick my fingers into your loveliness, but soon you shall become what you are meant to be!  And you are mine, all mine!

After much thought (cause there was lots to choose from, cashmere/silk, cotton/silk, wool/silk) I finally settled on 1500m of laceweight yak/silk in the natural colour:

That is enough yardage to make any number of shawls or stoles! There may have been another purchase, but I’m not saying!  I did a pretty good job of staying within budget, which is good as there were many temptations at this show!  (Yes that’s you I’m talking about the 600 yards of 100% natural grey wool!)

But my second love came to me on Sunday night, which meant I didn’t sleep very well last night due to the excitement.  Introducing Bella, my beootiful new bike which has arrived (almost ) direct from Italy!

Si Bella!  Welcome to Canada!  It is hard not to talk in a fake Italian accent around this bike, so I’m just going to go ahead and do it k?  After it was delivered I hopped on in my bare feet and rode around the street twice.  I could have kept going around and around!  This is a bike to cruise on, and is such a joy to ride.  Bella, tonite we are going to get you a basket and a cappuccino holder!  Then we will cruise up to the market to get some picnic foods for tomorrow’s Canada Day celebrations.  And next Sunday, we’re going to the farmer’s market!  We are going to have so much fun together you and I.  That beautiful blue colour, its called Celeste!  But pronounced kind of “cheleste” a la Italian! 

Ciao Bella!

 

 

Friday Fotos

More pics from Saskatchewan:

 

Can you see the 5 English sheep dogs?  The puppy had two light blue eyes, he was very cute.  Except when he was trying to knock me over.

Can you see 10 bugs?  Too bad the ones in the foreground were out of focus, they are beautiful iridescent green and Burgundy.  And huge! 

I’m telling you guys, next week is going to be crazy times here at Knittingwater!  A holiday, a parade, and another paid vacation to a uranium mine!  Whew!  And this weekend: a fiber fair!  Oh yes, I’m very excited about this!  In the last two months I have officially saved almost $70 by biking instead of taking the bus, can you believe it!  Let’s think about what it would cost to have driven downtown everyday, I think just mentioning the $1000 that I’d have to pay in parking is enough!  Of course, $1000 would have bought a lot of pretty, scrumptious yarn!  Now this Fiber Fair is mostly about unspun fiber, which is great, but I still haven’t caught that bug.  I’m going to be searching for lovely laceweight, and trying desperately not to buy every single skein of Fleece Artist Merino sock yarn that I can find.  Wish me luck!

This Just In…

Saskatchewan is still flat.  I know you were worried.

Bogged Down

In lace cardigan land that is.  I mean I love the pattern (even though parts of it are “fill in the blank” and I wouldn’t recommend it to new knitters) but I just want to start making so many other things!  And I want to wear my lovely cardigan.  I’m currently working on the first sleeve, and since they are full length sleeves I’m estimating they will each take a week each of fairly dedicated effort.  Ugh! 

In order to create a diversion, and an excuse to start something new, I applied to join the Tour de France Knitalong.  I asked to be in the Maillot Verte category, which means I’m going to try and finish something before the end of the Tour!  It will also go nicely with my month o bike training that I’m hoping to do when it stops raining.  Double Ugh!  I’m currently planning to use the four skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light I recently received from the lovely Mrs. Chuky (received not bought, hence pact unbroken!)

And what I learned this morning is that taking photos in my bathroom means that a beautiful teal turns into green.  So please use your imaginations to know that this is a beautiful teal heathery mix!  I promise better photos in sunlight with true colour, honest.  So the project should have something to do with France, or biking, or some kind of link.  The current plan is to make Anais (which sounds french n’est-ce pas?), and I should have enough.  It also looks flattering on 98% of people on Ravelry, which is always good.  (And its not so big, since it is sans bras (bras is arms in french, so that ain’t dirty ya’ll)). 

I’m also looking forward to creating a baby present with these two lovely skeins of candy goodness:

I do so love it when friends are obliging when they have baby girls so that I can use the cute Koigu colours and make a February jacket! 

So two sleeves to go, or July 5, whichever comes first!  And I think we know that the race will start before those sleeves are done, don’t we?

Bog-1, Anne-0

So it didn’t go so well yesterday, and I did not achieve many (any) of my goals.  I didn’t really even have any fun.  I can tell you the views were very nice from parts of the trail, but I was sucking wind so hard, and things were a bit spinny that I don’t really remember.  However I choose to turn this into positive things, and that means learning and moving on!  So needless to say there has been a plan formulated so that for the big race the end of July, hopefully there will not be so much crap riding from me.  It won’t be fast riding, but let’s hope it is riding and not walking.  And not so much bog action, that wasn’t very fun, but at least it was only my legs and not my face!

In case you were wondering, and I agree it looks a bit weird, I have two items tucked under my bike shorts.  On my right leg I’ve got a packet of Cliff Shots that I was eating during the race, and on my left leg are my car keys.  The jersey is the local team jersey I joined, which I think looks okay.  The “S” is for Spinsisters.  The colours are nice.  With the discount I get at the local bike store, and the amount of repairs my bike needed recently, I’ve already gotten back my entry fee. 

Summer Solstice

It seems to never get dark here now.  I woke up this morning around 4 am for some reason (I have no reason to believe cats were involved in this, as they were both busy staring out their new favorite window and trying to see all the birdies) and there was a definite blue tinge in the sky.  It helps I don’t have any curtains up yet…  When I go to bed after 11 pm it is still a bit light out, enough to bike by anyways.  All in all it is a pleasant switch from the dark depths of the winter (shudder). 

This weekend is the first mountain bike race (for me).  As always I’m a bit nervous about it, but I’m telling myself that its good to have a crappy first race, cause then the next race seems all that much better.  At least this year my teeth aren’t wired shut!  My goal is as always to 1) finish the race 2) not stop 3) have fun.  I try not to think about the other people in the race, or worry about placing, and concentrate on personal goals instead.  I’m just a novice and doing this for fun, so why worry about anything else? I hope they give out ribbons like they did in Salt Lake.  There everyone down to 6th place got a ribbon and got to stand at the podium.  I was working on a collection of all the different colours!

They gave away free ice cream at work today.  Further proof of me being luckiest girl around.  Have a good weekend ya’ll!

JRA – Ready to Ride Home with me?

First of all, thumb your nose at all the stinky cars waiting in line and zip on by!

Head along the Bow River and navigate between the cyclists, roller-bladers, dog walkers, runners, and what on earth are those people doing people.  Appreciate cute men in Lycra shorts.  Head over to the north side of the river over the pedestrian bridge.  Note how the river level is dropping, and the clarity is improving, which means the spring run-off is coming to an end.

  Watch out for all the geese and goslings!  The path winds along the river almost the whole way home, and has only a small portion on streets shared with cars (100 ft).  After getting the up close and personal view of the river on the right the path continues in the distance, but you can’t see it because of all the trees etc!

We are ending the level portion of the trip, and coming into Bowmont Park, where things start to look a bit up!  Over in the distance is the ski jump at the Calgary Olympic Park:

  Almost half way now, here is one happy commuter: I was never one who could manage to look uber sexy and exercise at the same time.  If anyone knows this trick, please write a book for the rest of us.

My neighbourhood is up on the hill way over there:

  Just go through these trees:

Ting, ting, ting, coming through!  And my favorite part, the hill home:

Now this is the part where you call me crazy, blame it on living in Salt Lake for too long.  Hills like this are great because you can whiz up them in a mid level gear, it gets a bit steeper when you get around the corner there.  Its great for getting your heart rate going, but not exploding it out of your chest.  Whew, am I tired, dinner and couch time for me!

Wednesday Working Away!

The problem with working on a sweater is that they take a long time, and it isn’t very exciting to show to blog land.  Let’s just say that my Vintage Lace Cardigan is coming along on its 3 1/4 mm needles!  I’ve finished the back and one front.  I think by the end of the weekend I can be done another front and start in on a sleeve.  I’ve decided the colour is “lilac”, and I still love the bamboo wool blend.

I furiously worked away on my Potamus Sock in the Calgary, Chicago, and Atlanta airports and the air space in between, during the flight cancellation in Chicago and the overnight stay there.  Also during the fire alarm in Atlanta where we were encouraged to “Stay calm and await further instructions”.  Good thing we didn’t get further instructions to run for it, cause that would have been a downer.  I can’t wait to try this baby on, cause, sigh, I love it.

I am also glad I’m not allowed to buy yarn until Oct 1 as I am so enamoured of the Fleece Artist Merino sock yarn I feel like buying all I can find.  Good thing huh? 

In other news: Daddio had is first art show the weekend!  How exciting is that?  I’ve unpacked 1 million boxes, and only have 1 trillion left to go!  So far I have only given an arm to Home Depot, instead of the mandatory arm and leg.  I also finally fixed the new toilet seat I bought with the use of glue.  The screws were pulling out of the fancy smancy particle board.  (The new toilet seat was  bought as a result of the previous owner of my house peeing on the old seat so often as to have disintegrated the plastic.  Ew!)  So go me, slowly but surely the house is coming together.  In other exciting news:  about 20 minutes into my ride home I pass by an ice cream stand.  Again proof that I’m the luckiest girl in the world!

Calgary Knit in Public Day

We do believe it was the first one ever for Calgary, but it was the third for this knitter.  I have fond memories of the Farmer’s Market in Salt Lake, and last year at the Festival with David, the first and last time I had a long enjoyable conversation with him one on one.  He was such a nice sweet man.  But I digress; this year we went downtown, and sat along the bike/walking path that lines the south side of the Bow River.  I had forgotten that there were benches all along this area of the trail, and had strapped my camping chair to my bike and took off.  I’m glad I had brought it in the end as it allowed me to be strategically placed in the sun.  It was a day where you were warm in the sun, but a bit chilled in the shade.  To our great delight, we met some new friends, all joined by Ravelry.  For me it was an interesting experience to be introduced first as a name, then as a user name.  Hi I’m Anne, I’m Knittingunderwater.  Any day where we meet new knitting friends is a good day in my books!

We were entertained by the local scenery; a couple who have been married 54 years celebrating their anniversary by giving out cookies, a local music duo, and what appeared to be a pedophile making ballons animals that was checked out by three policemen (cute!) who must have been okay cause they didn’t arrest him.  Plus assorted bikers, scooters, rollerblades, runners, walkers, dog walkers.  And, to me the most special of all, people who stopped to ask what we were doing, and to admire the various knitting and spinning going on.  That, at the essence, is the purpose of Knit In Public Day!  To bring those closet knitters, spinners, and crochers out into the open air!  Unite!

Southern Cookin’

Hello!  Miss Anne reportin’!

Although I spent too much time in the southern United States, and most of my favorite stories begin with “One time in Alabama”, and end with “And that was the most chauvinistic comment I’ve ever heard”, the south has a charm that is undeniable.  I get called Miss Anne, and was also encouraged (by someone from Alabama) to talk slower.  To which I replied “I live in Canada now, and we pronounce all the letters”.  It took me until the day I left to find some good southern cookin’, but find it I did at the Atlanta airport, at Pashchel’s.  If you ever go through Atlanta, look it up in Terminal A. 

I had a four sides veg; macaroni and cheese, candied yams, corn, black eyed peas, and corn muffins.  And later that night around 8 pm I really regretted turning down the peach cobbler.  This truly was food heaven, topped off with a Dr. Pepper.  Black eyed peas are considered good luck food to eat on New Year’s day, which is why every year I try and make a New Year’s brunch that consists of Hoppin John, which is rice and black eyed peas.  I think next year I’m going to attempted the candied yams.  The macaroni and cheese is a bit harder as good southern stuff is cheesy and sweet.  Yummy!