North to Alaska

This summer, we went on a cruise to Alaska.  It was our first cruise.  And while I wouldn't rush back to take another cruise and will be very selective regarding location if we take a cruise again, it was the perfect way to see the sites on our way from Vancouver to Anchorage.  The fact that you can't get to Juneau by road is just part of the reason to travel here via cruise.

Alaska is stunningly beautiful.  The air is clear, the skies in late June only got as dark as the picture here, which I could really get used to.  Fortunately the curtains in our room were very good at blocking out the light so it didn't impact sleeping.  Since I can sleep most places, that might not have bothered me, but glad we didn't have to test it.

We had fantastic weather until the end when we were in Denali National Park and the mountain did not show its face for a second.  But that's how it goes with travel.

Our excursions off the boat included kayaking in the ocean near Ketchikan (fantastic), hiking in Juneau (also fantastic), and a jeep ride into the Yukon from Skagway (slightly less fantastic … two jeeps broke down, the off road part was not terribly exciting, but on the positive side, we saw two bears and got to go to the Yukon).  I purposefully picked excursions with a some physical activity involved.  Never being on a cruise, I wasn't sure how much activity this trip was going to provide but I was pretty sure that there would be a lot of food.  The activities were great, and with a couple of visits to the gym combined with walks around the deck, I kept active and felt a little less guilty for enjoying dessert after dinner!

The towns of Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway were nice to wander around and I had fantastic fish for lunch in Juneau and Skagway.  I had Halibut tacos in Juneau that I am still dreaming of.  The fish was so fresh and the tacos so creative and tasty, I would go back just to have them again!

Without much difficulty (thanks to the internet), I managed to find yarn stores in all of our ports.  In Juneau, I bought Alaska-themed fingering from Blue Moon Fibre Arts and some fabric with Alaskan motifs at the fabric store next door.

In Skagway, after much deliberation, I bought a skein of Qiviut fingering which was not inexpensive but the cowl that I've essentially finished is so soft that I almost can't wait for winter so that I can wear it … emphasis on the word almost.

The main benefit of going to Alaska on a cruise was the trip into Glacier Bay National Park and the College Fjords.  Breathtaking.  Our ship is one of the ones allowed to go right into both of these areas so the views were stunning.  It is so difficult to describe.  And to see these properly, you need to be on a boat.

So the trip north to Alaska was well worth the money.  I would love to go back and spend some time in one of the villages or at a camp in the bush.  I've added that to my very long places to go list.

Vancouver

A very delayed post on summer vacation which consisted of a few parts and which will hopefully get posted before our next vacation.  This year we went on an Alaska cruise.  More on that at a later time.  This post is about Vancouver.  Before and after the cruise, we spent a little bit of time in Vancouver.  Our approach to city sight seeing is to walk everywhere, which we did.  

On our first day there, before catching the ship, we spent most of the day in Stanley Park.  But on our way there, we stopped into a concourse shopping mall to pick up umbrellas and find somewhere for lunch.  And we found a fantastic place … the best Dim Sum I have ever had.  As a very in-the-moment kind of traveller, I have no idea what it was called or where it was.  This is the same for the fabulous Chinese dinner we had when we flew back into Vancouver at the end of the trip and the pub lunch by the cruise ship dock and Gastown that we had the next day.  Oh well.  Everyone needs to make their own memories, I guess but I'll try to do better in the future.

After lunch, it was on to Stanley Park, with the umbrellas we didn't need for the rest of the day and very satisfied tummies.  Stanley Park is beautiful.  There is no other way to say it.  And we only scratched the surface, walking about 6 km round trip through one section.  

After a stop back at the hotel to change we popped over to Gastown and looked around.  Very touristy but we found some great shops with Native Canadian art, spent some time talking to a man carving a totem pole and watched the clock steam away with all of the other tourists.  

On our return trip from Alaska, we spent most of our time walking again, this time in a steady downpour.  The purchase of the umbrellas was not a waste!

Our main focus this time was Granville Island.  I love it there.  Neat little shops to look around in, the food stands and the water.  I found a great quilt shop and another place with art supplies that I wish I could live close to for their classes.  I am pretty sure I could pick up some new hobbies there.  

We went on one of the cute little people ferry boats just because and ended up touring another part of Stanley Park as we made our eventual way back to our hotel.

My favourite thing about the area, aside from these guys painted on storage tanks … a bakery that I read about on the internet when researching, Beaucoup Bakery.  The peanut butter cookies are apparently the best things ever.  Not that I would have any idea.  I fully intended on the peanut butter cookie as we walked in but, on the counter, shouting my name, were chocolate rosemary cookies.  I love, love love chocolate and can say the same about rosemary, although perhaps with a little less passion.  Chocolate and rosemary together?  Rosemary used in a sweet preparation?  I had to try this mysterious combination.  And it was fantastic.  Super rich, almost like a brownie,  with a hint of rosemary and salt that just make the cookie sing.  

I vowed that I would get creative, suffer failures, but work to figure out how to make them when we got home.  And I did figure it out, but without any blood, sweat or tears.  The recipe is online!  And just as delicious made by me as I remember them being in the bakery.  Thanks to the owner for sharing the recipe with Food Network Canada.  And I should add that the bakery also makes good coffee and my husband quite enjoyed his chocolate croissant, but I'm glad I had that cookie.  

Motivation

I'm still feeling that motivation from the last post and the overwhelming desire to reduce the amount of materials in my crafty space.  That one is a bit harder due to a visit to the Knitters' Fair but if I keep the output larger than the input, I consider it a win.

As I was moving stuff around in an effort to at least reduce the number of bins full of yarn, I stumbled on this partially completed Farmer's Market bag from Weekend Knits that I started eons ago.  And by eons, I mean generously 3 years ago but more realistically 6.  I started it to make a dent in the random balls of Lopi I had picked up over the years, most leftovers from sweaters.  Given my recent attraction to fair isle patterns, little convincing was required to get going on this bag again.

The bag is slightly wider at the bottom than the top do to quite a large change in my tension since I started.  Life has been a bit more stressful so not a complete surprise.  But despite the bag's slightly bottom heavy figure, it turned out pretty well.  I don't think I'm going to bother lining it so probably won't use it as a market bag but it will come in handy for other purposes, I'm sure.

And to keep things interesting, I made a pair of Camp Out fingerless mitts from one of my Kitchener purchases.  I always forget how fantastic Malabrigo Rios is to work with.  Love it.  I'm tamping down the urge to go out and buy a sweater quantity by reminding myself of all of the other sweater quantities, not to mention unfinished sweaters, that are in the aforementioned bins.

Do It Again

Although it is still quite warm outside (but not even close to how painfully hot it was this summer), it feels like Autumn to me.  The sun is in a different place, the days are getting shorter, and I am getting the urge to knit all the time.  The urge to knit never really goes away, even in the heat, but Autumn hits and I want to finish Wips, start new projects and clear out stash, all at the same time.  And production generally keeps up with motivation.  It is a great time of year.

In trying to reduce stash bit-by-bit, I generally knit hats.  Three more done.  One bound for charity, I haven't decided on the blue one and a baby gift.  Photos of all taken, unoriginally, on the same deck chair.

In order, they are ...
 - the Spin Cycle Hat, knit with some Colinette I bought many years ago at the factory in Wales - this pattern hurt my hands and turned out very large (although it still fits me so it will fit someone out there with an equally big head and possibly more hair).

 - Sitka Spruce, a gift pattern at Christmas from Tin Can Knits.  This one hurt my hands too, a theme of some of the patterns I've been knitting the last little while.  The learning from this is to pick my patterns a little more carefully.

- the Swirl Hat, a gift for a friend who is due to have her baby any day now.  I made her a blanket, also green, so this will probably go in the box with it.  I always think a baby should have a hat.  Especially if Autumn actually arrives.

So on I go with my Autumn knitting.  I'm almost finished a bag that I can't remember starting and think I might actually add a few rows to one of my sweaters in progress.  Aaaah Autumn.

Candy Candy

I am hopelessly attracted to Noro Yarn.  Especially Silk Garden.  Every time I see it, I want to buy it, like candy.  I do resist occasionally but earlier this year, I went to drop off some hats for the 25,000 toques project at Main St. Yarns in Milton and saw an afghan, with each square made up of one ball of Silk Garden.  And I immediately planned make it.  I haven't crocheted in at least 20 years but a granny square is like riding a bike.  I loved the process and I love the finished project.  I had an excuse to buy Silk Garden at yarn stores I visited over the next few months which was also a fabulous treat.

The afghan is 24 granny squares, 1 ball per square (so not inexpensive but I've seen Silk Garden on sale quite often).  I joined them together with some leftover solid Silk Garden using a technique I picked up by googling.  And crochet is so quick.  I had forgotten that.  And for a while, I was able to indulge in purchasing candy without guilt.

Walk On

For a long time, I have resisted the lure of the wrist-worn fitness tracker.  I have wanted one but told myself that Map My Ride and the My Health app on my phone were enough.  But yesterday, I finally caved and bought a FitBit.  And am quite enamoured.  The arguments in my head that kept me from buying one in the first place still are sounding .... Will it make a difference in my activity level? In the short term, I can confidently say yes.  Beyond the short term, we'll see.  Will the wristband tell me anything more about my sleep that I don't already know?  I could tell without the wristband that last night's sleep was lousy but we'll see what happens on a regular night.  Do I really want another device to know where I am 24/7?  Not really but I still couldn't resist..

A couple of early benefits ... I have entered into challenges with some of my team at work who have recently bought FitBits.  And I've connected with a sister-in-law who I never see to challenge each other.  And so we walk.  Hopefully farther than my desk job regularly takes me during a day.  We'll see!

Washington

I've been telling myself for a while that I'll get back into posting to this blog.  So here I go, trying again.  This year, to date, has been a mix of big challenges with some very nice things in between.  I guess that is the experience of life compressed into the last 10 months.  After a really rough period at the end of last year and beginning of this year, I've had some travels that have really given me that mental rest that I so desperately needed.  While I'm not out of my mourning phase, I feel like things are starting to right themselves again.  Things will never be the same, as they never will be with big loss, but a new normal is on the horizon.

In addition to a lot of upheaval, I had one of those milestone birthdays that is an upheaval in itself!  I still feel like I'm 30ish, not my real age which I'm not even admitting to myself, let alone my blog!  So in between bad things, we went for a very nice trip to Washington DC.  It is a long drive from Toronto but not unreasonable so we set out.  I loved Washington.  As a Canadian, we can't help but be exposed to US history, politics, pop culture and so on.  So most of the sites in the city were "familiar".  We spent our 3 days there walking, walking and walking.  All along the mall (my favourite spot was the arboretum but I also recommend the Museum of the American Indian and its cafe for lunch), to dinner at Restaurant Nora (a delicious restaurant, conveniently located near Looped Yarn Works, a very nice yarn store where I managed to spend a bit of money, quelle surprise).  All of the war memorials were moving and my favourite presidential monument was the FDR Memorial.  Beautiful and not seemly well known based on the limited number of people there.

At one point on day 2, we rented bikes from the bike share (manly because my feet were killing me and I whined until we rented bikes).  And wouldn't you know it, my bike was a lemon.  I ride my bike all the time and this piece of less-than-stellar engineering made me look like a rookie.  The gears wouldn't change without a good amount of persuasion and the steering was suspect.  I'm not sure how much of the issue was the need for bike repair and how much was the part where I'm used to a very nice road bike … I'm blaming the bike but I guess you also get what you pay for.  We rode from just outside the Capitol,  through the parts of Arlington Cemetery that you were allowed to ride bikes (which was not very much) to Georgetown where, after a couple of tries to find an empty rack, I said good riddance and got back on foot.  I really liked Georgetown but, on a Saturday, so does everyone.  There was a bakery I was hoping to try but the line up out the door dissuaded me.  I considered that to be a positive thing in the end.  Given the other gastronomical delights we experienced while we were there, baked goods, no matter how good, were not really necessary.

On another portion of our DC hike, walking back to our hotel from the mall, we happened upon the Canadian embassy.  No matter where I roam, it is always nice to see a bit of Canada.

The Fair Isle Period

I am really attracted to knitting fair isle lately.  Specifically fair isle hats.  I think part of the attraction is that my focus on stash busting and a fair isle hat are a match made in heaven.  This one is called SchKnit Happens.  It is really just a hat recipe that requires some imagination (or a good fair isle chart book) to come up with the patterns.  I am not completely happy with my colour combos but like it overall anyway.  It was also good practice at learning colour selection and will hopefully set me up for choosing better on the next project ... the Crofthoose Hat from the Shetland Wool Week website.  Off I go to dive into my sock yarn leftover bits ...

Ten Thousand? Unlikely!

I discovered She Makes Hats when I knit one of her patterns using bulky yarn a few months ago.  Then the other day, I read about her goal to knit 10,000 hats in her lifetime.  Knowing that was a big number but looking for context, I compared it with my 52 hats since joining Ravelry and am impressed.  Inspired?  No.  I love knitting hats but am distracted too easily by other projects.  I will continue at my more moderate pace and watch Robin from the sidelines, cheering her on as she moves towards that goal.

In the meantime, I was able to contribute a stash of hats to the 25000 tuques project.  Thanks to Main Street Yarns for collecting them.  And there is Robin's hat in pink, top right ...