Nephew Visit...

My 11 year old nephew has been visiting for the past couple of weeks. We've stayed pretty busy, although the first week was taken up with Eli's Robot Camp (he made a solar powered dragonfly... so cool!). We've also had quite a lot of rain, which meant that several planned activities, including a trip into the Rockies had to be cancelled.

We did manage several days at the beach...



A day at the Zoo.....



Calaway Park.....







Shakers Fun Centre....



We also managed a day out to the Kananaskis, where we walked, threw rocks in the river, tried to find a picnic site so that we could have a wiener roast and failed (it IS busy on the long weekend)..... so we walked some more.....






In the end, we had a wiener roast at home, followed by a water fight!


We've had a great visit and will be very sad to see Alex go......  I'm driving him to his Mommy on Monday after I take Eli to the airport for his first ever solo flight to see his grandparents... in Juneau Alaska, where he will travel on their boat to Bella Bella, BC and then fly home.... 2.5 weeks later.... that should be a great photo journey......

Full Circle.....

Once, long ago.... in late October to be exact.... there was a humble, but lovely, ball of silk, lace-weight yarn. This yarn was destined to be something grand (it had been purchased on a trip to Vancouver Island), something wonderful, something knit while on a journey to the exotic country of Egypt. A pattern was chosen. It was perfect. A beautiful shawl called Nefertiti. Very apropos, given the location where the yarn would, inevitability transform.

It was not long into the journey, however, that the creator of this fabulous knitted masterpiece, determined that perhaps.... just perhaps, knitting a lace shawl with 18 different charts is, NOT a great travel project and the yarn was put aside for a less exciting, less complex, less.... Egyptian , but infinitely simpler knitted project.

The yarn was picked up occasionally, once the travel adventure was over, but the original lustre and excitement of the feeling of destiny that yarn and project had, was lost. Finally, in mid July, the knitter stalled on her endless queue of projects... nothing on her list really called to her... and so... the yarn,  once again, found itself the centre of the knitter's attention. The knitter quickly worked through charts 5, 6, 7 and 8.... the end of chart 8 was the half way mark of the shawl. It was lovely and flowing beautifully off the needles and the knitter started to feel very excited about the finished project.

She began chart 9 and in the third row of that chart... she discovered a problem... a really big problem... there seemed to be 10 stitches missing...... She somehow missed a whole chart.... way back at chart number 3.......  and now the yarn is......

back where it started.... a lovely ball of silk, lace-weight yarn... yearning to be something beautiful.....

knitting update

It's been a while since I last posted about knitting (and even longer since a post about spinning!) so I thought I'd show you a few things that I've finished since then. My last knitting post was about a design/knitting failure. I did finish the revised top and like it much better. It is comfy, but not super flattering for my shape.... definitely needs a more bodacious bust than I was granted in the genetics lottery.....

The next top I finished, also didn't quite attain the look of my final vision. It's a bit too long in the armscye... I  do think that it's pretty, but not perfect.....

Both of the above pictures are of tops I designed myself.... I haven't fully decided if I am going to publish them as patterns or not....

The next pattern that I knit was someone else's. It is called the Alice Top, but Katya Wilsher. It's a lovely design, but I think the recommended ease doesn't really work (at least not for my style)... I think it should have more like 2-4 inches of negative ease, rather than the 0-1 inch the pattern recommends... I also found the armscye to be too large for me and had to take out the trim to try to reduce the circumference... it worked, but it could still be smaller. I also added a crochet chain across the top of the back to help prevent the arm from falling.... and did a crochet band across the back to make it a bit smaller (not in the picture)

Something that I found funny (and I noticed in on my Ravelry page a long time ago) is that I always stand the same way for pictures... I purposefully stood the opposite way for the last top, but my "normal" stance is a much flattering pose and I returned to it.... 

Garden Update....

I haven't been in much of a blogging mood lately. Sometimes, I think of something that I think is witty and write it down, sometimes I have a finished project to write about and sometimes..... even if I have one or both of the above, I just don't feel like it.... the past few weeks have been the latter. I have finished a few knitting projects, including a couple of original designs, but I haven't felt like posting about them.

This morning I woke up and looked out into my backyard and decided that I needed to share what I saw...... It is just so pretty right now! Perhaps a bit too bright for really good pictures with my camera, but you get the general drift.....

Here are two pictures of my main garden area with a close up of the bottom corner of the garden.  The bottom section is mainly roses, irises and daylilies. The top section has a blueberry bush (not doing well), a currant bush, strawberries, artichokes, some kind of thistle that I can't remember at the moment and various other flowering perennials, including,  coral bells, lady's mantle and echinacea.

This is my patio area.... I wish it was a better picture because those hanging baskets are a thing of beauty.  They are, absolutely, enormous! My herb planters are in the foreground... (and a couple of plants that I snagged from my MILs garden that need to go in the ground today)

This is the area around the trellis. It is planted with a combination of catmint and Russian Sage with several vines growing on the trellis, including a honeysuckle, two clematis and a kiwi. The second picture is a close up of the kiwi vine.... I transplanted it this year and it must like it's new location much better because this is the first year that it flowered and is fruiting.... see that little kiwi??? 

and here is my garden box... it's not doing that well, unfortunately.... My radishes and broccoli have both bolted (gone straight to flowering/seed) due to the cold May/June and sudden HOT in July. The pea plants aren't very big either and I'm not sure if it's the type of pea that I planted or some other factor.... they are loaded with blooms, so I should get a few peas anyway...... I neglected to take pictures of my tomatoes and peppers, but rest assured... they're doing quite well......

And so... that is my garden at the beginning of July.... It always looks it's best at this time of year...