Teamwork

My MIL (Mother-in-Law) recently downsized her home to a beautiful new townhouse.  Dale and I went (along with my Mom and her husband) to help her move. Of course, in the time honoured tradition of moving.... we managed to collect a few of her possessions... a garden fountain, some plants, a set of china, a secretary desk that Dale made in High School and a chair that had seen more fashionable days....

Over the past few weeks, Dale has been working hard at refinishing the wood and I have been working on the upholstery. Today it is finished..... and it looks awesome....

Before: (although it actually doesn't look bad in the before... you'll have to trust that the stain was looking rather under the weather and although the fabric was kind of cool... it was very orange and rather crusty).....

After: (stained red with a black stain rubbed over it to add some depth)

BTSS 2011 (Eli Version).....

This years BTSS (Back to School Sweater) for Eli was a challenge. Not because it was difficult to knit, but because I didn't know WHAT to knit. Eli's goal in life, when it comes to his clothing, is to disappear. He wears, what I like to call his "uniform." This involves jeans, a t-shirt (long or short sleeved) and a hoodie (preferably a dark colour... blue, black or grey).  He wears the same thing .... every.... single .... day...... and rarely wears the BTSSs I've knit him in previous years, unless I've had a lazy laundry week or he's been specifically instructed to wear the darn things that I've spent so much time on.  I did consider  NOT knitting him a sweater this year, but he was on his big trip with Opa and Cary when I started and I couldn't ask...... so I thought... better safe than "don't you love me as much as Chey?"........

So back to my dilemma..... what to knit for the boy who won't wear it????

1) He needs at least one decent sweater to wear for "nice" days.....

2) He likes video games and would be more likely to wear a sweater with a connection to a video game, but is at that stage of childhood where "normal" and "average" and "plain" is best.... so that means intarsia (knitted colour-work) video game motifs are probably out...... although, perhaps when he comes home one day with his hair dyed blue and his eyebrow pierced he'll make a request for something that makes him stand out and I can pull out the intarsia motifs again......

3) He won't wear anything with even the tiniest amount of wool and I prefer to knit with natural fibres.... so that means cotton

4) I'm tired of blue, grey and black boy sweaters....

This is what I came up with.... a raisin coloured (colour is truest in the bottom two pictures, but even they are lighter than the reality), cotton, guernsey-ish sweater with a Zelda inspired logo pattern (it's called a Tri-Force) in reverse stockinette on the front...... He was luke-warm about the colour, but immediately recognized the Tri-Force symbol and gave it the immediate Eli stamp of approval......

I made Eli put this on over his PJs... hence, his rather unkempt appearance......	and unenthusiastic posing......

Both kids' sweaters are done and school doesn't even start for another six days... do I RAWK or what!? Now on to my next project.... getting one of my patterns written out, knit and published (on Ravelry)..... stay tuned.

Blast off!

Success! Our goal was to camp at least once this summer and after our last attempt failed, we were more determined than ever. To improve our chances, we decided to camp mid-week (I know, I know.... we could book a campsite and be guaranteed a site, but many of the campsites that we want to visit are first come, first served. Also, Dale's schedule is erratic at best... so we have to do all of our trips as last minute and pray). We hoped that there would be enough people NOT on holidays that we would find a campsite, and to that end, we headed out on Tuesday afternoon after taking my sister, Tonya (who had visited with her delicious baby boy for the previous few days) to the airport. Our original intention was to drive up to the Columbia Icefields, but after driving as far as Lake Louise (a 2.5 hr drive from our house) and realizing that the ice fields are another 2 hrs further, we decided to camp at Lake Louise instead..... This action precipitated a serious case of Deja Vu......


 the campsite was full.......


With dread in our hearts, we quickly went over our options and resolved to check every campsite between Lake Louise and home until we found a campsite.... even if it took all bloody night! Fortunately, the next two campsites we checked were both almost empty and we chose to stay at a lovely site called Johnston Canyon Campground. The grounds were beautiful, the facilities clean (and I was happy to have flush toilets, although that was not a requirement) and the walking trails were wonderful...... the only downside was that the train tracks were not far off  (I'm guessing a kilometre?) and I was roused at 3:40 am by the ever growing volume of a train passing near  through our tent, punctuated by two rather loud blasts from the horn........

Knitting around the campfire... ahhhhhh.... That's Eli's BTSS, I'm hoping my next blog post will be about it's completion.....	making sure the marshmallow is perfection
this is the life...

The next morning we got up, had a leisurely breakfast and walk by the river and then broke camp. We then hiked up the Canyon to the lower waterfalls. What a Gorgeous! hike!

We followed this up with a drive to Lake Minnewanka and a picnic at the old Bankhead Ghost Town, although we somehow completely missed the "town"..... Eli and I hiked up a nice trail through the trees, apparently missing the "easy" 1.1 km loop through the actual ghost town...... and choosing the trail that lead somewhere up, up and UP...... Now that I know there is a ghost town there, I want to go back! Next time...... we found an awesome camp site close by that is situated on a lovely little lake.... we hope to get there for one night before school starts next week, although it might have to wait until next summer......


Even though it's a lot of work for one night.... I think it's totally worth it!.........

Failure to Launch

Last weekend Dale, Chey and I (Eli has been spending the past three weeks with Opa and Cary on Seawind V, cruising from Juneau, Alaska to Bella Bella, BC) decided to go on our first camping trip in two years. We had originally planned to leave on Saturday for one night at the upper campground at Kananaskis Lakes, but Dale arrived home early on Friday and we decided to pack up and go.......

We drove out to our intended campsite which took a little longer than I remembered and certainly MUCH longer than the website that I read stating "Kananaskis is only a 50 minute drive from Calgary".... Yeah.... 50 minutes from the very North West Edge of Calgary to the absolute edge of Kananaskis Park, maybe...... it was a 2.5 hour drive from our house to the campground.... We arrived at our campground at around 7pm.... and it was full.... we checked the next one... full.... the next.... same and the one after that.... ditto..... We checked EVERY campground from the Highway to the upper Kananaskis lake campground and every.single.campsite. was full....... that's a total of 10 campgrounds. Our camping trip was a total bust.......

All was not lost, however. We did have a LOVELY picnic at one of the day-use areas out there and we re-discovered how wonderful it is to picnic in the Rockies. Something we haven't done very much over the past couple of years with Dale working out of town so much........

Loaded up and Ready to go.... Kikx has the high ground	A girl and her doggie
teaching Chey how to roast the perfect Marshmallow	YUM

The absolutely gorgeous picnic site......

Eli arrives home tomorrow and I can't wait to try camping again with my whole family.......


On the crafting front, I recently finished a large spinning project. I had purchased 567g of Targhee dyed by Juliespins in one of her "unclubs" (I think I might have a Juliespins addiction) last December. I started spinning shortly after Christmas and finally finished the yarn yesterday. I think this is some of my best spinning yet. It is around 1,600m of 3ply, sport weight yarn (I'm guessing, I haven't done a wraps-per-inch or gauge swatch, but it looks sport weight.... I thought it was closer to fingering, but once it was finished with a hot soak and a light thwacking, it puffed right up), quite even for handspun (at least MY handspun). Each skein is almost the same length and weight (110g +/- 5g; 330m +/- 20m). I had thought about knitting Dale a sweater, but on reflection (and after a conversation about how often and where such a sweater would be worn) decided that I'm going to use it to knit myself a sweater..... coming soon.....

Nice eh?........

BTSS 2011 (Chey Version)

It's that time of year again... time for me to set aside my selfish inclinations for hand knit items and knit for someone else.....


........my children.



I started the tradition in 2008 (Eli's Grade 2 year) with This sweater for Eli,  followed by sweaters in  2009 and 2010. I also started Chey's BTSS tradition last year. This year the whole BTSS (That's BACK TO SCHOOL SWEATER) kind of snuck up on me. I hadn't really planned anything for either child and was sort of thinking maybe I'd skip it.... traditions be damned.....  but when I saw a skein of Madelinetosh DK yarn in Mansfield Garden Party.... I knew it would become something for Chey....... the only problem was that there were only two skeins left. OK... it wasn't really a problem, since I decided to buy them anyway and try to figure out what to do with them later....... in the end,  I decided to knit a short sleeve cardigan and finally cast on three days ago....

My plan was to knit a top-down, steeked (steeked means cut... sort of) cardigan and planned my knitting accordingly with a four stitch panel of stockinette between the button bands. Adding these stitches works perfectly for the crochet steeks I like to use. I found some remnants of fingering weight yarn in a complimentary palette and choose a crochet needle that was several sizes smaller than my knitting needles (I probably could have gone down at least one or two more sizes). Using a lighter weight yarn and small crochet hook helps to prevent the crochet steeks from stretching and pulling the line of knitted stitches, causing bunching and curling in the finished garment. I then started crocheting up one of the two centre lines of stockinette.

Once that was completed, I started crocheting a second line of crochet down second of the two centre lines of stockinette

This leaves a nice little set of ladders to cut.......

and cut.... I did.....

I prefer the crochet method of steeking because it seems to leave a nicer edge with very few stray bits of cut yarn

Finished sweater........ still needs to be blocked (the sweater is a bit stiff and curls a tad, but I know a good soak with fix it up real nice..... )

BTSS 2011, part I of II is complete.....

Another small step towards world domination.......

My evil plans have ensnared a new victim.... a sweet and innocent young thing who has no idea what she's in store for......





Of course, my last such victim has only ever knit himself a hat and no more, but I have great hopes for this one....... She refused to learn until she was 6 (or almost.. she turns 6 in a month) because that's when Eli learned, so that must be the correct age... but once she decided she was old enough to learn she was relentless in her reminders..... I finally let her choose some yarn and bought a pair of 8inch straights (I taught Eli on circs., but found that he would often choose the wrong end of the knitting to start, leaving long floats across the back)..... She's picked it up fairly quickly, but only knits about 5 stitches at a time and then she's done... it might take her a bit longer to knit her finished project..... Some kind of toy sewn from a square or rectangle... she can't decide if she wants a bird or a caterpillar.....

Changing topics...... We just got back from the Okanagan where I helped my MIL finish (well, sort of finish.. there is lots more work to be done) cleaning out her old house after she moved to a townhome.... but first we stopped in Kelowna and visited my Mom, Sister and Cousin (no pics... don't know what is wrong with me) and Grandma Susan and Grandpa Syd... where we watched the Snowbirds at suppertime......

and Susan gave me the pastel painting I commissioned from her.... it is amazing and I love it to pieces....... Thank you Susan!!