More deliveries....
I just can't stop touching this yarn, it's like a soft cloud. Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud, 100% Baby Alpaca, Colourway: Iris #C872, 50grams/440 yards, Gauge: Lace Weight


With the Canadian dollar doing so well the world is my knitting/fibre supply oyster. I've said before that the choices of fibre in the U.S. far out number what's available in Canada, and it's great being able to order online fibre that I've never known about. I have to mention Ravelry does have something to do with it as well.

My order from Knit Picks came in about 14 days. It sounds like it took a long time, but it's understandable as on the news this morning they said Canada Post can't keep up with the cross border shopping. Hell yeah!




This yarn from KnitPicks is designated for a shrug out of the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2007.

Since starting on the Sugarplum Shrug I've decided that I would like some mohair in this to give it some extra bulk. Two strands of the alpaca lace is not enough. So I'm looking at ordering some Rowan kidsilk haze, Majestic colourway..........




I've been checking out Rowan yarn on The Loopy Ewe website, and Sheri has a lot to choose from. Sheri's blog is also full of great information on new and upcoming yarn.

WhooHooo.....I got a package in the mail I've been eagerly waiting for. It's from a contest Maia had on her blog.

This is the package all the way from San Francisco, CA to Edmonton, AB Canada.



Here's some pictures of the fabulousness of it.............


This comes from Tactile (www.tactilefiberarts.com) Hand crafted with natural dyes. Fingering wt. Superwash Merino Sock Yarn, 437 yds, 7-8 sts/in on US 1-2 needles. There was no mention of a colour name, but it has wonderful varigated blues and purples.
This special stash will be a pair of socks for myself....I'm still browsing patterns...any suggestions?

Yes I'm a delinquent blogger....it seemed after Thanksgiving and then my DH's 50th birthday there was no time for knitting or blogging over the past two weeks....so warning....this a heavy laden picture post........

It started with trying to keep party plans a secret from DH, but alas it was not to be.....he found out, but I had a few things up my sleeve that I could keep secret. For instance......His reaction was, Oh my god', when getting the newspaper first thing in the morning. The other was an advertisement in our cities newspaper.

It was an especially busy day this past Saturday, we were running all over getting balloons, food, etc., and without DH's help I don't think I could've have gotten it all done. Thank you D!! We invited approx. 36 people, and had a combination party for my Mom's 70th b-day.






A good time was had by all. It was great catching up with people we haven't seen for years, and of course ended with the blowing out of a lot of candles.....I was very pleased by the cake we ordered from the new Walmart supercentre. It was deeeelicious. The decorating on it was great (autumn flowers) the only problem was that I ordered a white cake, and to our surprise when cutting it open it was chocolate.

I wanted to pass on the recipe that Sheri from Loopy Ewe posted on September 14.....everyone really enjoyed it, and I made it ahead of time which really helped.Italian Shredded Beef

3 lb. rump roast
2 pcks. Good Seasons Italian dressing mix
1 pck. brown gravy mix
1 cup water
BBQ sauce (optional)

Put 1 package Good Seasons mix, gravy mix, and water in crockpot. Add roast.

Cook on low for 8 hours or longer.

Remove meat from cooker and shred (I use 2 forks to pull the meat apart.) Return meat to cooker and add second package of Good Seasons, plus barbeque sauce, if desired. Cook another 1/2 hour. Serves 8-10. Great with Frito-Pea Salad!

With halloween coming up my nephew was enjoying wearing a mask at the party, as well as
DH wolfing down his cake, literally.




















So in the meantime I've managed to tackle some long delayed projects. One was our front door which was needing a makeover, unfortunately I don't have a before picture. It is a six panelled solid cedar door that had a tikki type design on the front which DH routered out and glued in flat panels. I stained the door with four coats of Minwax waterbased stain, colour Spice. Next came four coats of Minwax wipe-on satin polyurethane.....







Noodles is loving the new screen door. Favourite past time is lying in the sun and smelling the fall leaves.










Second thing on the to do list is a vest that I was hoping to finish for DH's birthday, but instead he's going to get it a bit late.....that's okay he got something else to tie him over.

So far this is the right side, and back of the vest. I loved working on this pattern from Elsebeth Lavold. All that's left is to start on the neck and arm edging, and sew together......more pictures and blogging to follow as soon as I have my cup of coffee ......Have a great weekend!!

I joined another KAL..... Selbuvotter Knitalong
It's a wonderful book, and Terri has a great website. I've got two mittens on the needles already I just have to finish the mates to them.

Also another highlight of my day was finding out Interweave Knits posted their preview of the Holiday Gifts 2007 Interweave has outdone themselves again....so many nice patterns. There's at least 10 patterns I want to make out of it. So it's worth a look at....pass it on...

I'll be posting more knitting after October 13/14 weekend. It's my DH 50th birthday coming up and I'm planning a party for that Saturday, and I've been racing to get his vest done in time.....I've been getting some major dental work done the last couple of weeks in between all this planning for birthdays, etc. Seven hours total so far in the dentist chair. I could have gotten a lot of knitting done whilst sitting there. Does anyone bring their knitting to the dentist?

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend everybody!!

Have you ever had one of those days where you're looking at a door, and wishing you could kick it?

Well today I think I may have finally fixed it, my painting problems that is, with my back door. It all started with us installing a new screen door, and I took a look at the other door and it needed a paint job and new window, hardware, etc. So I thought okay, I'm going to do this right. I'll get the right paint for a metal door. I chose a leading paint (which I won't mention unless somebody wants to email me and find out) and started painting. You know with the first swipe whether things are going right or wrong. Well it wasn't going right...air bubbles all over the door...so off to The Depot, and I was given some good advice to try with a new roller that works better with oil based paints.....I should've known something was up when I was de-linting the roller and it wouldn't stop shedding. I thought I was ready and started with this roller and once again.....roller lint mixed in with paint is not a good thing. So I let it dry, I then sanded the one side where all the lint bumps were, and headed back to The Depot. I bought some other paint that has never failed me and went back to using the inexpensive roller, and as of this morning the door is done and ready for all the hardware to get put back on. What a schmozzle, which explains why the knitting has been put on hold this past week.

In amongst all this door angst, I had some dental work done. I took pictures of that, but I'm not showing them....it's more for my personal before and after pic's. I'm not the greatest with dentist appointments, but I've found a great dentist that I'm so grateful for. Dr. Leah Gully is her name, and she works out of the Whitemud Dental Centre. I was getting a temporary bridge put in and that meant pulling out a nasty back molar, which included grinding down the two neighbouring teeth in preparation for crowns. It was a marathon dentist appointment, 2 1/2 hours in the chair, but with the excellent staff I was made to feel comfortable with absolutely no pain.

Also I had promised to post pictures of when we got the fish in the indoor tank....another thing checked off the 'to do' list this week....So here they are....

~The two Koi which are inseparable

3 Shubunkin, 9 Goldfish

So now add one baby to the mix. What he is we don't know yet....we were draining the outdoor pond and my dh caught a glimpse of something moving....low and behold it was this little trooper. For now he has his own tank, he's too small to put in with the others, he would just get eaten. We're still thinking up a name for him.

In regards to the knitting front I've found my first KAL I just joined....Bag Style Knitalong. It was mentioned at Knitting Daily. It started from Pam Allen and Ann Budd's book Bag Style. Premise of the KAL is to pick something from the book, or make your own pattern using some of the techniques from the book.....it looks like fun, and I can't seem to get enough knitting bags.

I promise I'll be posting more pictures of knitting, but for now all I've got is this.... I finally got my invitation to Ravelry and it spurred me on to try and get things organized to post on there. I cleaned out my craft closet which was a mix of fabric material and yarn. It's the yarn that doesn't look so pretty right now all in bags.

Have a great weekend!!

Another year bites the dust.....As I was telling all my relatives, 'I'm 30 years old with 17 years experience.' Wink wink
The day started when I went for lunch with my daughter and her workmate Serena. Good time, good company.

Went and did some shopping for a door scope. Couldn't find one, I think I'll be getting it off of ebay. It's a large peephole for our front door. I can't stand squinting through those little viewers to look if there's somebody on the otherside of the door. This ultravision door viewer/scope solves that.

The day carried on to meeting up with DD, DS, DH at a sports bar, Shanks. What can I say I'm easy to please, and I never was to the place before, it's very casual, and it has good beer, and good food. We'll probably be back again for wing night.

The night ended with getting together with relatives and instead of cake my dd picked up these delicious cupcakes for everyone from the The Cupcake ...yummy!!

Happy Birthday to all the September people!! I'll close with a quote I thought funny.....
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, and professionals built the Titanic.

Welcome to my new back screendoor. How bad is it when I can get excited about something like that? We've lived in this house for 25 years, and it always feels great to replace something like an old aluminium screendoor that had to be the original going back 40 years.

My DH worked for approx. three days with this door as the exterior brickmould had to be taken out and sided with some metal to match the screendoor. Then came fitting all the deadbolts, and the new door handle on the inside metal door. So we were home, but felt like we didn't see each other......because.....

My DD and I went shopping on Saturday and headed to Michael's craft store.....I don't generally do my yarn shopping there, but I came upon something that I had to have and not in just a couple of colours, but several. It's SWS from Patons. SWS stands for Soy Wool Strips. 70% wool/30% soy, approx. 110yds, 2.8 oz, I started a new hat pattern (in colours Natural Geranium and (solid) Natural Berry) that was designed by Danny Ouellette. Danny has a Diamond waffle sock pattern featured in Knitty Fall 2007.

I was up to 2:00am Saturday night figuring out the Travelling Rib hat pattern which has some knitting techniques I've never worked with before. It was not hard, but I was so intriqued with the design that I couldn't put it down. He also has several other patterns for sale on his website and I got another one called Easy Head Hugger Hat.

I've been also slogging along on the vest for my DH's birthday. It's going fast, but I'm trying to knit on it when he's not around. So it's going slow, but the back is just about done....

I've also been sidetracked by getting our indoor fishtank ready for when we bring in our koi and goldfish from the outside pond. Our old indoor tank was too small to house them all over winter so we've had to get a bigger tank. We only have 12 fish, but some of them have doubled in size. So the new tank is ready to go now. We're looking forward to bringing them in and seeing how they've grown. I'll post pictures when we eventually do that.

125 Gallon Oceanic tank,
Eheim Professional II water filter,
Eheim Classic 2213 water filter.


The cats will have some new entertainment watching the fish when they're in here..........


Which brings me to another cute toy for cats....do it yourself homemade bendy straw cat toys from Wendy Knits

Our Anna had a crazy great time with these little triangles!

You Are a Yellow Crayon

Your world is colored with happy, warm, fun colors. You have a thoughtful and wise way about you. Some people might even consider you a genius. Charming and eloquent, you are able to get people to do things your way. While you seem spontaneous and free wheeling, you are calculating to the extreme. Your color wheel opposite is purple. You both are charismatic leaders, but purple people act like you have no depth.

What Color Crayon Are You?

Here's a few pictures of my girls......

Annabelle

Noodles

Annabelle's look of bliss

My blog's namesake

I'll be posting more updates on knitting, but I'm fighting a knitting malaise right now.....After getting over my cold the last week, and now allergies are kicking in, my concentration has left the building.

Where did the weekend go? I could have used another couple of days out at the farm.

This is the farmstead which if I've got my dates right, we'll be celebrating it's 80th anniversary next year spring. In asking Uncle Otto how old the farm is he replied that he's got receipts showing the purchase of some pigs back in the spring of 1920...so we're going with that date.

.......I'm sucking at getting any knitting done lately.....I'm great at getting projects started, but I've been preoccupied lately with household stuff, and the days are disappearing. We've got to install two new screen doors, and four new basement windows. We're hoping for a warm fall in order to get it all done, yeah right ;)

It was one of the nicest September long weekends. Our brother-in-law Ray rented a cherry picker and we got some tree trimming done, as well as ran a power feed from the overhead power line to a junction box for future under ground power lines. (This technical jargon is courtesy of DH) Who is standing in the red shirt on the ground.


An aerial view from the picker. Our camp is the farthest in the picture (Our silver Mazda is parked next to the motorhome). The kids didn't come out with us this time....there was a tattoo convention in Calgary. It was nice not to have to pack so much, but I missed having them along. I'm grateful for cellphones and text messaging for communication. It gets unnerving when the whole family is on the road going in different directions on a busy long weekend.
One of my most favourite places to knit is around our camp at the farm. No housecleaning, no phone, no tv...just sitting and visiting. Yep that's me...the lonely knitter in the red chair.....Which brings me to ask...'Where is your favourite place to knit?' I'm curious :)

While on the way out for the long weekend I started this idea I had for a little hemp purse. I saw this hemp at Wool Revival, and thought it would be very sturdy for such a project, and it is. I tried pulling apart a piece of it, and I now know why they make ropes out of it. It feels a bit like a heavy cotton, but there's no elasticity what so ever to it. Hemp Yarn made in China, color Chili Red.

I'm not following a purse pattern, but rather the 2 x 2 rib smocking pattern in Nicky Epstein's book, Knitting on the Edge. As of Wednesday this is how far I've gotten. I'll have to knit one and half times more than what's in this picture so that I can wrap around and sew up the seams and install a zipper, and possibly a lining will be needed, but I'll see how it goes.

Collection of Mountain Ash Berries for the birds