Been away

My, this month has zipped by. Of course, there is a bit left, but I am preoccupied with a couple of things in April and May and feel like they are almost upon us.

I went out to BC for 10 days. I don't know why, but every leg of the journey had delayed airplanes, cancelled flights, hours spent in airports.

First we flew to Regina -- we were using points for the tickets, so we didn't have a lot of choice in our route! I don't think I've ever seen the prairies so clear and snowy before!

Then we sat in the airport for several hours. Some of this we knew about in advance, but some was a surprise. Pro-tip: if you are ever stuck in Regina, go out into the main part of the airport, because there is nothing past security.

It was quite a brown airport.

Finally, back in the air.

We were headed to Salt Spring Island. So we flew Toronto, Regina, Vancouver, Victoria.

Let's whip through some pictures of BC and move on, shall we?

A sign of spring, thank heaven

Stumbled upon in a cafe. Excellent coffee, beautiful view and knitting.

view from the deck of my brother's house

I moved from Salt Spring to Castlegar, with another wretched delay and another lengthy stay in a small airport. I had some pancakes, since it was a 5:30 am flight that was cancelled for several hours.

In Castlegar, my green hat met up with its orange twin.

We went for a few walks and did some stuff... I started and ripped out the same yarn about three times. Perhaps I'll show you that another day.

I finally flew over the country once again, after a delay which meant me staying overnight in Vancouver. Bonus this time: I got to see my aunt and cousin, and a sunset over the water.

Finally, I caught a flight early the next morning, and flew home across the county, seeing some ice on a Great Lake, and then that was that!

My new sweater

I am making a warm, warm sweater.

A cardigan, with a Noro, super-colourful yoke, and a purple, somewhat lacy body.

I am not sure of much else. I think I can do what I want with just the purple for the body, but I am taking the precaution of making a sleeve, just to see how much yarn it will take. We might get green cuffs or something like that!

I will need slightly chilly, non-rainy days for wearing this.

Something finished

This is my second attempt at a shawl with this yarn. The pattern is from 1934, and is super-simple: Cast on a bunch of stitches and knit, decreasing one stitch every other row.

The original pattern has a dark brown (I think that's what colour "mole" is) and stripes in tangerine, jade green and white. I did the mole in blue-green gradient and the others all in the green-yellow gradient. Clearly I should have started with a darker colour in the yellows because I ran out just before the end. I used all five colours of the blue-green.

It's not as asymmetric as that picture makes it look.

And it wraps nicely around my neck, with the point warming my front.

Curses!

I have a draft post about the shawl I am knitting. It translates a vintage 1916 shawl pattern into modern terms, because I am so clever that I can do that. However, guess what, I am not that clever!

We start with the edging, very nice. I started with the needles the pattern suggested and found the fabric too floppy for me, so changed to smaller ones. As it turned out, I should have kept the bigger ones.

I used a gradient of blues and greens. So pretty!

I should have been more careful with the centre decreases. There was a lot of "It won't be visible from a galloping horse" going on here.

The killer, though, came last night. I was finding the pattern on Ravelry again (I can't even remember why now) and I noticed that there was another very similar pattern. Mine is the Three-pointed Shawl, with only the 1916 magazine picture and only my project. Another is the Three-point Shawl, exactly the same shawl pattern modernized for a book called Centenary Stitches. Someone else had knit this shawl, and when I looked at their notes, they were complaining about the endless garter stitch. Well, I had endless stocking stitch. My directions say, after the pretty border, "knit plain," and clearly my interpretation of those words was... wrong. 

As we all know, garter stitch makes more rows to the inch, you can make a square/diamond by increasing and decreasing in garter, and the same stitches in stocking stitch make a much pointier shape. Well, I have got a 4-pointed shawl instead of a 3-pointed shawl.

Curses, blast and dang! I have to rip it. I must.

And the thing is, I am not sure I want to redo this particular shawl. I would have to rip out the central stocking stitch part, for sure. But then, I could redo the border as well, with all those dodgy centre decreases. Indeed, I could go right back to the beginning and do the whole thing on larger needles for more drape.

A learning experience for sure. Golly.

Edited to add:

Things being worn

I wear knitted things all the time in the winter. I have several hats in rotation as well as scarves and cowls.

But it's always a thrill when my offspring pick out a new handknit to wear. Elaine wears this hat a lot, and today when we were going out for a chilly walk she grabbed this lovely scarf. Yay...

I don't think I ever blogged the finished scarf! It looks like this when spread on a hedge instead of scrunched up around a neck:

Perhaps the last of the Christmas stuff

Arthur brought us one of his ridiculous treats when he was here over Christmas, a candy cane about a foot tall! I am pleased to report that he took it to his D&D gang over the holidays and they actually ate a large fraction of it, but even 4 or 5 hearty young lads could not eat the whole thing.

Elaine took the remnants, about 3 or 4 inches of 1-inch-thick candy, to school, but, funnily enough, her friends seem to be more sensible and no-one touched it.

Today we smashed it to bits and put it in some chocolate cookies!

Very good, I must say.

And:

I am very close to finishing October's mystery shawl! I have the fourth clue on one side to do, a million ends to sew in, and then we are done. I hope in the next few days, but who can say? 

Pink things

Our last look at the glories of the Allan Gardens conservatory today, and we get the pink things.

The place was sort of Christmassy, with lots of poinsettias and stuff, and these seasonal ornamental cabbages were pretty amazing too!

Super frilly! So pink! 

I believe these are cyclamens.

And spectacular orchids! They are so crazy! I have occasionally been given orchids as gifts, but can never keep them flowering very long. 

Today I went to another great Toronto site that I rarely go to: a friend and I walked along the Humber River. We have to go back when the ducks all have little ducklings. There were tons of ducks, who apparently hadn't wanted to fly south for the winter.

The mighty Humber and the mighty bridge over it. It would be lovely when things are green! People do canoe along this river, which would be fun. 

The whole path is quite long; we took the bus from the subway station and walked back, probably about 5 km along the river. Of course, next time we can take the bus even farther. 

The one terrible thing about this walking route is that when we came out at the subway line, there were no nearby coffee shops; we had to walk another 10 minutes! 

More from the greenhouses

We have some rays or spokes or some such things. 

And let's have some dots as well!

The dots on this cactus look fuzzy but are in fact very spiky.

Dots made by old leaves or branches. Of course I don't know what the rest of the plant looked like!

Red leaves with green dots? I think so. Or green leaves with red splotches? 

Now it is a beautiful sunny day and I am off for an invigorating walk!

A new year and all that

Here we are, the third of January.

I know people make plans and resolutions and all that... I have a new notebook, so that's nice. My big plan for this year will be accomplished by May, and then I will have to think of another big plan.

May is when I am going to England to walk across Hadrian's Wall with six other friends and relations. So working up to that I will be walking and swimming and doing all sorts of exercise... at least that is the goal!

My brother was visiting on his way through town today and we took him to the warm and ever so slightly exotic Allen Gardens conservatory. I'll show you a picture or two a day for a while, I think. I showed you some pictures from here once before but I hope you can handle it again.

So, today, a couple of stripes.

Look, a pillar box!

My friend Katie is back in Kent, though only for the holidays and she's not blogging. Tsk.

But she did send me this lovely Edward VIII pillar box, from the Marine Esplanade in Ramsgate, I believe.

It occurred to me recently that the next monarch will likely not even make pillar boxes. Who needs 'em? And that will be sad for some of us! 

A day trip

The other day we went to Hamilton. It's about an hour down the highway, and there is a GO bus every half hour, so, easy-peasy. But we rarely do it!

We were first on the double-decker bus, so sat up top at the front! I wish we'd been in those seats on the way home, because something happened on the highway that slowed our progress a great deal, and we couldn't see anything. Of course, only an accident with fire trucks and tow trucks could liven up that very boring stretch of suburban road.

Our main target was the Art Gallery of Hamilton, where they are showing photographs by Vivian Maier. We first met up with a friend for lunch, walking up James Street, which is apparently "the art street." The thing we hear, here in Toronto, is that all the starving artists have been priced out of their big-city haunts and moved down the lake to Hamilton. We were told "art is the new steel." Huge steel plants sit empty, great spaces for ... whatever! And indeed, our friend is on the board of a little gallery on James Street.

I took a picture of myself in a mottled mirrored window, before going into the Vivian Maier show.

It was quite big, about four galleries worth of photos. Great portraits of people seen on the street, self-portraits of all sorts, some colour pictures and some 8-mm movies. Hers is such a weird story and we haven't seen many, many of her photos.

There was also a show of Norval Morrisseau's work and a show called Hamilton Now: Object. This is part of that show, a piece of fabric made of twists and turns of the same photograph.

More fabric, with the pictures on all sorts of scales.

This was also in that Hamilton Now: Object show, but what's important here is Elaine wearing a hat I made in 2014. I think here she was looking through some VR glasses to see wild sparkles and flowers above the blue vessel!

There was Speaking for Herself, women's art from their permanent collection.

This was part of a series, where the artist had taken quotes from ordinary women and illustrated them with Barbie clothes.

We couldn't pass up the VW bus, or in this case the Bruegel-Bosch bus.

This great piece was in the stairwell, by Tim Zuck. Nice.

Then we were tuckered out and headed back to the bus station to go home. It was an old art deco train station, repurposed after that train line shut down. Very stylish.

And then, after some sort of jam on the highway, we got home safe and sound.