You know that phrase, "No rest for the weary"? As I'm nearing the end of my pregnancy, I get the feeling that phrase will take on more and more meaning. I just finished my last day of work on Friday, and what do I do on my first day off? I do my taxes. Hahahahahaha....ahh....yeah. Taxes. It hasn't been a fun process, but I think I'm just about there. Just need to decide if it's better to transfer some tax credits to the hubby or if I should keep them on my return.
As a reward for all the slogging through T4's, capital losses, and other tax credits, I thought I'd post about fun things.
For those of you who have been following this blog, you'll know that I have a weakness for bags. A BIG one.
Yup, it's another Lexie Barnes bag - it's the Darling in Kiri. I got it off this amazing site called Mamabargains. It was 53% off retail, and since I needed a diaper bag anyway, I figured, "Why not?". It's got these neat clips on them that will allow me to attach it to my stroller. Came with a diaper change pad too. I think it's going to be great for toting all the baby gear that inevitably will have to be carted around.
In the very same photo of the Darling is something else that is fun. Kitties! So let's see some more of them!
Lounging in the sun is great.
"Huh? Wake up? What do you mean?"
"Meh. I don't care if I'm starting to look like a turkey."
Nothing beats a comfy chair.
Bags and cats. I feel better already.
This post is going to be a bit disjointed given the lack of photos that I have beyond Day 2 of our Olympic trip - my apologies. Jamie put all the Vancouver photos on his computer, and then deleted them from the camera before I could get a chance to copy them on to my computer.
In any case, Day 2 of our trip took us to our first event: Women's Curling - Round Robin matches.
Jamie's so cute when he's super excited! This was the Vancouver Olympic Centre, where the curling events were held. Once the Olympics and Paralympics are done, they're going to take away the ice and turn the building into a community rec centre.
The mascots, Quachi and Miga, were on their way outside to greet people, but we managed to snap a quick shot of them before they left the building.
Some hard-core Japanese curling fans were sitting a few rows in front of us. Some of them had curling stones for hats, others had brooms for hats which ended up looking like mops, but give them an A for effort.
And some of them just had loud hats.
Here we go! Warm-up time begins now! I thought that it was funny that the first thing they do as part of the warm-up is to cool their sliders. Should they call the warm-up "cool-up" instead?
There are 4 games going on at the same time during round robin play, and the Canadians were on Sheet D playing Great Britain.
And here's Cheryl Bernard in action! Canada won their game that day, so the hubby was happy.
After the curling match, we did some shopping for Olympic gear before meeting up with my cousins for dinner. We went to Tojo's, which is an amazing Japanese restaurant with arguably the best sushi you will ever have outside Japan (and maybe even better than some places in Japan). According to their menu, we learned that Hidekazu Tojo, the restaurant's owner and head chef, is one of the inventors of the California Roll, which is named after the locale of its unique ingredient (avocado), and not where it was created. I looked on Wikipedia about this, and he's not mentioned, so who knows.Whether he did help invent it or not, there was no denying that Tojo's has amazingly delicious food.
We then convinced my cousin to drive us past Cole Harbour to look at the Olympic Rings there. Ashley McIvor had just won gold in ski cross earlier that day, so the rings were coloured a beautiful gold.
The rest of the trip went by pretty quickly. In the days following, we spent one day doing nothing because I needed some time to rest, then another day downtown to see if we could get some more tickets to other events (no luck there), were late for family dinner with my aunts, uncles, and cousins because we wanted to watch the end of the gold medal women's hockey game at a bar downtown, saw Great Big Sea in concert (and they are SO amazing live), and watched the Canadian men's curling team take the gold. That was an incredible experience, and being in the building with everyone singing Oh Canada was something else. We saw Stephen Harper, Donald Sutherland, Mike Babcock, Tracy Wilson, and a few well known Canadian curlers in the audience, which was pretty neat. Guess Canadians really do love their curling.
And then it was back on the plane to head home just in time to watch the men's gold medal hockey game and then the closing ceremonies. This is definitely one Olympic games that I'm going to remember. Thanks Vancouver for all the great memories!!
Hi everyone! Jamie and I are in Vancouver, enjoying ourselves at the Olympics. Today, we're taking a little break from traipsing around the city to chill out and relax at my cousin's place in Surrey. They've been kind enough to let us stay with them for the entire time that we're here for the games, and honestly we couldn't have made this trip without them. Thank you, Joe and Patty!
So, since I'm chilling out and doing a little bit of knitting, I thought I'd update a little bit and tell you guys how this trip has been going so far. I'll update about my knitting in another post.
DAY 1 - Monday Feb 22, 2010
The vibe in downtown Vancouver is awesome - I really don't know how to describe it. So many happy people from all over the world, lots to see, and lots of great energy. The city itself has decked itself out with so much Canadiana, it's hard not to share in the national pride.
We first hit Robson Square to pick up some event tickets, and just looked around at all the stuff they had there. Everything is so lively with all the stages, music, pavillions, and I love it!
Watching some newscasts from home, we heard about what is apparently an institution here in Vancouver: the Japadog. What is a Japadog? It's a hot dog with a Japanese twist. Our cousins told us that they're really famous around Vancouver, so Jamie and I decided we needed to try one. They've got two stands, and our cousins tipped us off that one of them was less busy than the other, so that's where we went.
Even still, we waited in line for a half an hour; we were told that the line really wasn't bad at all.
Can you spot me, the pregnant lady in a red coat?
Here's the dog that Jamie got; I got the same one, just with some extra seaweed on top.
It's their okonomi dog - kurobuta (apparently this is a very high quality type of Japanese pork) dog, cabbage, okonomi sauce, mayo, and bonito flakes (fish flakes). Very, very yummy. In fact, these hot dogs are so unique that some news people decided to come and check things out.
This is the lady who interviewed me and Jamie after we sat down to eat our hot dogs. They even asked to film close-ups of us eating. How embarrassing! No idea if any news agencies decided to use that clip at all, but it was a pretty hilarious experience.
After our hot dog, it was off to the Olympic Cauldron!
The organizers still have a fence around the cauldron, but they've cut a swath out of it and put plexiglass in so that people can take photos.
After that, we just walked around downtown to do a little shopping, and just soak everything in. We spotted this car during our walk.
They were getting people to sign their car, which I thought was pretty amusing. But yikes; to drive from Halifax to Vancouver? Oh man. For anyone who doesn't know, that means these guys drove from one end of the country to the other; East Coast to West Coast. I wonder if their car is on its last legs, and if it'll make it from Vancouver back to Halifax.
And those were more or less our highlights from Day 1. We passed Lloyd Robertson on the street, which was kinda cool (he's a news anchor for one of Canada's news stations). We stuck around the CTV news tent on the street to see if we could get on the evening news as part of the cheering crowd. I think my jacket made it in a shot that the cameramen took of a baby that was next to me.
Coming soon: Day 2 - Our first live Olympic event!! And knitting. Yes, I haven't forgotten that this is supposed to be knit-blog.
A while back, I knitted up a little something for Anand and Andrea's baby boy, Ethan. To tell you the truth, I was taking my time on it until I heard from my friend Will that they would be moving to New York in January. Well, I knitted like the wind, and finished it before the end of December. Wrote to Andrea to find out when I could stop by their place to drop it off, only to find that they had moved to Waterloo to stay with Andrea's parents earlier in December. Whoops! Well, that at least gave me the time to take some pictures for the blog, and now I'm going to mail it off to them in New York.
Meet yet another Baby Bobbi Bear, done in a dark brown instead of the usual light. I used Blue Sky Alpaca cotton for the bear, and some gray superwash worsted for the features. I feel that after the experience I've gained making other toys, the face on this one wound up better than the first Baby Bobbi Bear I ever made.
Coming soon: updates on more baby knitting. Just not necessarily for my own baby.
Back in 2008, I decided to be a part of Team Canada for the Summer Olympics. It was great fun, and I managed to knock off 2 WIPs that had been lurking in my stash. Well, before I knew it, Vancouver 2010 is just around the corner, and I haven't decided if I want to be part of it again. Normally, I would dive right in without any hesitation, but there are a couple things that are complicating my decision this year.
The first complicating issue is the fact that the hubby and I are actually, physically GOING to the Olympics for one week. While I can take knitting with me, we all know that it's just that much harder now to bring all the little things that you never know if you'll need when you're finishing a project. That said, I suppose I could always just be less ambitious with my project, and aim to finish it during the first week of the Olympics.
The other thing is that, and I suppose this is the big news that I haven't really talked about here yet, is the fact that we're expecting our first baby in the spring! Remember that Classy that I mentioned before? Well, that's being slated for a baby sweater for the little one on the way. I know many of you are probably saying that this may be perfect for the Ravelympics -- something to spur me on to finish some goodies for the forthcoming baby. I considered that too, and it's not without its merits. However, I have to admit that this pregnancy is taking its toll on my knitting time. It takes me just a little longer to do just about everything now, and after work I have a hard time staying awake past 9 or 10pm.
I honestly keep waffling back and forth between whether I join or not. Sometimes having a deadline, even if it's a friendly one, is nice to keep me on track. Sometimes, it stresses me out. Then again, maybe the fact that the baby is going to enter this world whether the sweater is ready or not should be deadline enough? I still can't seem to decide.
How about all of you? Any of you planning to join the Ravelympics?
And since there haven't been any photos in this post, here's a random one of some cute kitties.
Sorry for the lack of posting! Things have been pretty busy, and I have to admit that knitting has kinda fallen to the wayside. I'm still working on a baby blanket for a friend, but I really don't think it'll be ready by the time she has her baby. Oh well. We'll keep plugging away at it. Might take pictures of it someday.
However, this post is about something else completely. As a reward to myself for finishing up a pretty major (non-knitting) project, I went to Lettuce Knit for some goodies.
First up, some lovely sock yarn.
Koigu is always a crowd-pleaser.
I really liked the sparkly bits in this Dream in Color Starry.
And lastly, some lovely Dream in Color Classy.
The sock yarn is actually going to be for socks. The Classy is going to be for something else, which I'll likely write about soon.
Remember way back when I ranted about losing some socks and patterns? Well, almost 2 years after losing it, guess what I found?
Tah dah! The pattern that I couldn't find no matter where I looked! Haha! Funny how things pop out of the wood work!
Lastly, and this will probably only interest Adrienne, but I'm gonna write about it anyway. Did any of you happen to notice the unfamiliar piece of furniture that I've been photographing all my new stash on? It's something that arrived at our house just last month after a lot of heel dragging on my part.
Yup, the Chang family piano has now arrived at the Chang-Wells home. I was really excited about it, and have actually played it a few times since it's gotten here. Jamie tells me that it's possible to hear it a bit on the outside, so I'm a little self conscious about playing now. I'm so out of practice that I actually want to start out by playing scales and exercises again, and that'll probably be really boring for other people to listen to. Oh well.
Last Sunday, I headed over to Lettuce Knit for my first class of Learn to Drop Spindle, taught by the ever funny and charming Denny McMillan. I had a great time playing with the lovely fiber that came in our little kit - so soft and cozy! Granted, it was probably one of the hottest days we've had here in Toronto for a long time, but it was still grand.
This is the lovely Ashford top-whorl spindle that came in our kit. Denny showed us how to use it as a bottom-whorl one, just so we'd have played with it both ways. As you can probably tell from this photo, the thickness of my yarn isn't exactly consistent yet. But you know what they say - practice makes perfect!
Here's a better look at how uneven my yarn is:
I haven't quite got the hang of drafting and spinning at the same time just yet; it really is kinda like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. I'm quite proficient at doing the head/tummy thing, but somehow I can't quite get the hang of draft/spin just yet. I'm wondering just how much of a crime would it be to pre-draft everything that I want to spin with!
