Where the &^%$ did the last FOUR months go?

I have been up to my ears in gym, medieval Latin and medieval law.  Medieval Latin ended on Monday with a prepared text exam.  I studied for about 24 hours retranslating every text we had done in the second half of the term.  The previous Thursday it was a paper for medieval law.  All that while still dealing with the fallout of asking for a new mattress.

Yep, a new mattress which meant the 23 year old bed needed replacing, which meant all new bedroom furniture, heck, then you might as well paint, but I really like wallpaper, so let's do that, and hey we should finally do the hardwood floor that we had intended to do when 13 years ago we put in that cheap laminate.  Well then all the furniture had to go downstairs and well the girl's beds which included their desks were pretty done too and since my youngest decided that the decor needed up dating, well paint and wallpaper followed that too.  Fortunately, this part of the interior decorating cascade worked out well as the girls finally sent boxes of stuffed animals to goodwill.  Finally.

We had a few problems with the floors which meant a two day job turned into 1 month of almost no furniture upstairs.  All this while doing 20 hours or so of translating per week.  ACK!

We're still not all done.  The upstairs closet is still getting fixed up and the girl's room needs a few more things, but pretty close now.

Needless to say, there has been no crafting, no Christmas cards, very little knitting or weaving and not a scrapbook page to speak of.  And no blog posts till this one.  I have an exam in two weeks which should be O.K.  Next term will be way more sane.  One course, no Latin.  See you on the other side.

Fan Expo 2013

 Thursday, my younger daughter as Girl Han Solo.  She made the holster herself and I made the vest.  And yes Chewbacca is the backpack.  The vest was made from an old Danier leather skirt that I no longer fit into, but now has a new life.

On Friday, older daughter went as a vault dweller from the video game Fallout.  She did all the work on this herself.  The jumpsuit was a German army surplus item which she reworked completely.  I should have gotten a picture from the back as she did an awesome job appliqueing on some numbers.  I was completely impressed.

Saturday, Elesh Norn was introduced to her adoring fans, and adoring they were.  The photo requests were pretty non-stop.  She had her imperious pose down pat and tried not to smile.  We realized some pointy teeth would have been a good idea as her normal teeth had something of a doggy denture effect.  At one point Wolverine challenged her to a fight that ended in a blaze of flashbulbs.

 

And that left Sunday.  Here she is as almost the polar opposite of what she was on Saturday.  From thorny and bloody wrapped in a hard shell to soft and pink and girly to the extreme as the Lolita version of Princess Bubblegum.  This was a combined effort of both of us.

She's already talking about next year's Fan Expo and thinking about costumes.  I think I may have to do the same.

Detour

Sometimes you have to do projects that are not so much fun.

Quebec City Trip, Maybe

So for some reason I do not mix well with airplanes.  Apparently, I am unable to take a trip without there being some sort of delay.  Even our Mexico trip which for me was as smooth as they come, had a small delay on the return flight.  So, we arrive at the airport, the very civilized Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands and check in smoothly without problems.  I get myself a cappucinno and small bowl of almonds which are gratis and sit in a very comfortable chair in the lovely lounge and enjoy the two free newspapers.  Lalalala everything is wonderful on this my birthday/anniversary gift trip to Quebec, until...........

My husband looks up and heads to the departures screen.  One of the flights has had its status turn red!  It looks like the destination is Quebec.  Sure enough, our flight has been cancelled.  It appears that the flight had to stop in Montreal with mechanical difficulties and now the only option is to wait until 10 pm in the evening.  The husband says, "Let's get a refund and drive."  DRIVE??  I had about 10 minutes of sleep last night and have a headache already, I am in no shape to drive the 10 minutes it would take to get home from here, nevermind to Quebec City, which without pee stops is a good 8 hour drive.  And then we would have to drive home.

Well we tried going to New York, all full; Montreal, not a seat to spare; anywhere?  Well Quebec City at 10 pm it is then.  But first it's back home.  Well I did finish a project for a wedding we're going to next week, so it wasn't all bad.

I am typing this entry while sitting in the terminal building.  I hope I get to leave it via a gate this time.

Changing of the Guard at the Citadelle

The view from the veranda of the Governor General's residence.

 Yay! We made it!  We went to the Citadelle, toured the Governor General's residence and saw the changing of the guards.  This was the first time we visited and it was awesome.  We had been to Quebec City plenty of times before, but the Citadelle had never been included before.  I highly recommend it!

Me at the Montmorency Falls.

The Montmorency Falls was also a first time visit.  From the walkway to the top are 478 steps and me and my just shy of three months post ACL surgery knee did them all with no problems.  I did not however go back down them as my hamstring was pretty much done by the top. 

We rented a car on our last day and drove up the St. Lawrence coast to Charlevoix and in particular the Fairmont La Manoir in Malbaie.  The smoke from the forest fires, hundreds of miles away, was so thick it was like fog and you could smell the wood burning.  Wild. 

All in all another great trip!



 

First Steps to Fan Expo Done

I love it when a project challenges a wide range of abilities and requires a Macgyver-esque ability to create something from seemingly nothing.  When my daughter came to me with her ideas for three costumes for Fan Fest in August, one in particular caught my eye and made me say, "I so want to do this."

Firstly, the one I wanted to do immediately screamed, "Corset!"  The shape and the way things were going to have to appear to float over the body needed a firm support.  Secondly, I saw a use for my new loom.  Yes, I have been able to combine corsetry and weaving.  "What am I weaving?" you may ask.  Plastic bags of course!  The Macgyver inside is so happy!  I won't share the character we are creating just yet.  I doubt anyone will guess, but you never know.

A couple of Happy Birthday Cards to make you smile.

Ahh poor Marie Antoinette, she was not abused enough in real life that I have to make her do ridiculous things on paper.

 I figure a birthday card is supposed to make you smile and well, how could you not?  Used my go to Character Constructions stamps and a variety of papers.

And King Goldfish is on a wiggle mount.  Stamp by LaBlanche.

And check out the pages list......Happy Horsey Birthday Pop-up How-to is here!

Mother's Day Cards

So while I wait for my yarn to start my next weaving project, I had time to finish a couple of Mother's Day cards well ahead of time.

On one I used papers from Webster's Pages.  This technique is great for building up an area and creating lots of dimension.  It's basically paper tole.  You take multiple copies of the same image and cut elements out and stack them up to create a 3 dimensional effect.  I've even done this with photos on a scrapbook page and the effect can be really effective.  Remember this the next time you accidentally print more than one copy of the same picture.

The thing to take advantage of with this technique is that other elements on the page can be stacked on top to create a dimensional scene.  In this case the hibiscus in the lower left hand corner is an element from the other side of the 6x6 piece of paper which other wise would have been discarded.  Use pop-dots to separate the layers. 

This card was also made with 6 x 6 papers from Webster's Pages and a stamp from Memory Box.  I used a Pergamano embossing stylus to shape the flowers after colouring them with copic markers.  I used my Spellbinders to cut the circle and the small leaves.

Weaving a Couple of Place Mats

So today I am 12 days post surgery and I saw my orthopedic surgeon.  He was smiling ear to ear when he saw me sitting with my knee bent normally.  I like making people smile.  So needless to say, it's all good.  I can walk without crutches, not far, but fairly normally.

So all this time I was spending on my butt was not wasted.  I have read a few books, namely John Scalzi's Old Man's War series.  I have tried to work on my knitting, but the socks I am knitting for my youngest are in a horrible yarn, horrible colour and are driving me nuts.  It's not that the colour is bad, I just can't see it on the needle.  The yarn itself is a 3 ply wool/nylon blend, but the twist is very loose, and being hard to see, I keep picking up just half the strand.  ARGH!

So when the loom arrived last Thursday, I immediately put it together, in short spurts, warped it, in short spurts, and began weaving.

So now I have two lovely, accidentally square place mats.  I am very happy with how these turned out.  I used some left over Bernat Handicrafters cotton and a 10 dent heddle.  My selvages were even ok.  I would call this success!

Five days post ACL Surgery

So today was a good day.  I saw my surgeon, Dr. Dwyer, and he changed my dressing, took away my big knee brace, and was quite happy with my progress.  I should say seemed, as he's not what you would call effusive.  Then it was off to my physiotherapist, Marcel, at the MacIntosh Clinic.  He was pretty happy with things too.  Very little swelling, bending to 90 degrees and straightened to zero, able to contract quads, and lift leg.  I can walk with weight bearing and bending my knee, but still with crutches.  I'll have to get rid of those.  It hasn't been a complete cake walk, but the pre operation conditioning is so far paying off.  Tomorrow will probably be an icky day, as today I have done alot, so there will be some stiffness and soreness.

Added to this is the tracking information on my loom.  It looks like it will arrive tomorrow.  I can't wait!  I tried to get my husband to stop at Lettuce Knit in Kensington Market.  We drove right past it on the way from the hospital where I saw the doctor to the Athletic Centre where I go for physio. He stared straight ahead and said I didn't have the time.  Oh well.

And on top of that my grades were posted on ROSI and I did really well in both Medieval Latin, which I expected, and in Medieval Book, which I didn't.

All of which makes for a red letter day. A!

First day post ACL surgery

There are tons of blogs charting the post surgery progress of people who've enjoyed this particular process, so I won't add tremendously to the body of work already produced.  I will say so far so good and Percocet is not nearly as good as promised.  I took one last night before bed with an additional just Tylenol, but in all honesty was no better than just two Tylenol.  Oh well, I guess I can strike junky off my potential job list.

Good news is that I placed my order for a Kromski Harp at woolery.com.  A very nice sounding man left me a message on my answering machine to say the heddle blocks I had also ordered would not be in until early next week.  He promised they would get out my order as soon as possible.  As I chose USPS economy, I can expect to wait 6 to 10 business days for it to arrive.  In the meantime I did receive two weaving books from Indigo.  One is a bit older, Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving by Betty Lynne Davenport, but a good standard for a rigid heddle loom, the second though seems like a lot of fun.  Great photos, great patterns, and great instructions in Weaving made Easy, by Liz Gipson make me wish I had knuckled under and paid for Fedex, which incidentally was cheaper than USPS, but in my experience comes to my door with nasty extra surprises.  So for now I will read, and knit and wait for my loom.

Planning for Non-Movement

I tore my ACL in my right knee on our trip to Whistler last March.  I have since worked on rehabbing it for most of the last year and have a very good amount of strength and stability.  However, it still causes me problems occasionally.  It gets a real punishment on the bus and subway.  I often seem to catch it below the knee against a solid object, like the seat, at the moment that the transit vehicle of the moment jerks to a start, wrenching it badly.  I have fallen three times in the last month, each time when weight bearing on my right leg.  I went over on my left ankle last week, but unlike when I did it on my right, I did not hit the ground.  I have to be careful when dancing to not apply too much lateral force or the knee goes out.  Regular mopping is a problem due to the side to side force involved.  Gardening can also cause problems in trying to cope with uneven ground.  All of this has made me decide to go ahead with the ACL reconstruction.  I know it's going to be hard, but I don't always want to be thinking about where my leg is, or having to wait for the next bus so that I can sit, or trying to convince someone else to do the mopping. Someday, other than my husband, there won't be anyone else to do the mopping.  Skiing is an optional activity,  unfortunately, house cleaning is not.

So that having been said, my surgery is now a little over two weeks away.  Just enough time to finish the term and go to a few appointments and then boom, I will be immobile for a few weeks.  Well, my knee will be immobile, but my hands will have plenty of time to do whatever.  Here are my plans.

1.  Put up a how-to for the horse pop-up card.  It seems to get a lot of traffic, so that would be a nice complement.

2.  I am getting a Kromski rigid heddle loom and will be playing with that.  If it is not beyond frightening, I will share.

3.  Scrapbooking!!!  It has been forever since I have done much of this.

4.  More Zombie stuff.

5.  Read, non-class books.  Fiction and non-fiction.  Maybe start on some research about stuff I want to know about.

6.  Start helping my oldest work on cosplay outfits.  She wants to do three and one is extremely challenging, requiring a corset component and perhaps work with plastic, but if we can pull it off, it will blow people away.

I will share as much as I am able, as physiotherapy will also take up a lot of my time.  So stay tuned.

Yikes, spring is coming and What pray tell have I done?

School, gym, and life seem to have taken up way too much of my time.  My page count for scrapping is just abysmal.  I have to confess that it's two.  That's right two.

I have two classes on my plate this term and they both take more  time than I had hoped they would.  On the plus side, my Medieval Latin class is a blast.  My prof has a seriously good sense of humour and when you're translating the Vulgate Bible and contemporary commentaries on it, it helps immensely.  Translating this kind of writing is terribly interesting but at the same time difficult. Lots of new vocabulary and lots of terms with a totally different meaning than they had in Classical Latin.

All the learning aside, I have however, had time to finish up a major knitting project.  Unfortunately, I can't say that I am entirely happy with it.  At this time I have to admit that I came to the whole Ravelry thing a bit late in my knitting career and had I arrived sooner, this disappointment might have been avoided.  First off, the pattern is gorgeous being from Norah Gaughan and Vogue Knitting, and secondly I did a gauge swatch so the size should have been fine, thirdly I purposely picked a size, small, that I thought was smaller than I actually needed as in my experience knitting patterns tend to run a bit big.  I thought I had gotten off to a right proper start.  Too bad the finish did not go as well.  The sweater is still at least a size or two too big.  Why?  And if I had spent time at Ravelry I would have known this as almost no one has made this pattern work as written.  There are several modifications available and all are major deviations from the instructions given.  I have no idea how one messes up that badly on sizing up a pattern that on the model on the cover looks fantastic.  I too made a couple of modifications, but they were planned from the start.  I made my sleeves long and I added a rib section to the bottom at the back of the sweater.  As a last resort, I may try shrinking it a bit.  We'll see.  It is nice and warm though, and since that's why I made it, not a total loss.

Knitting Wee Footwear

Mix and Match Booties form Knitted Booties for Tiny Feet by Catherine Bouquerel

 My cousin's daughter is expecting a little boy, any day now apparently, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to knit a few little things.  I knit way too slow for things like sweaters, unless I went for an adult size soccer sweater and had 17 years to finish it.  What if I got the team wrong?!  So socks and booties it is.

Adapted from: Baby Knee Socks by Blossom Knitwear

 These socks were adapted from a pattern I found online.  I didn't like the way the first one turned out.  The size seemed weird, so I shortened the foot a bit and like the resulting proportions much better.  Whether it fits a baby foot, I don't know.

Bootees from Snuggly DK  Sirdar booklet 1815

 This pair was knit back and forth, which I find annoying.  Using long circulars and the Magic loop method means that no matter how small the tube, it can be knit in a circle without using double points and you are left with no seam.

Adapted from: Baby Knee Socks by Blossom Knitwear

This is another colourway of the blue sock above.  I love how it took two of the baby socks to complete the variegation pattern in this yarn.

I sure hope my cousin's daughter likes them and they don't disappear into the wash machine the first go round.

Mayan Riviera Grandly Relaxing

This year we decided to go somewhere a little different and do something completely foreign for us.  First, we went south in the winter.  The only other time we have ever done this was pre- kids skiing when we took the girls to Disneyworld for Christmas in 2002.  Typically, our summer vacations are warm and our winter vacations are well, wintery.  Second, we did an all inclusive.  Again only once before and that was a cruise for our honeymoon.

Due to a promise made to our 15 year old regarding her getting her Bronze Medallion and Bronze Star, and our eternal hope that her desire to be a marine biologist might be rekindled, we went on a vacation to the Mexican Riviera, specifically the Grand Sirenis Mayan Riviera Hotel just north of Akumal.  Seven days and seven nights of all you can eat, all you can drink, nightly entertainment, white beach, tropical fish and gorgeous hot sunshine. 

I had no idea what to expect.  I always said I had no desire to do a beach vacation.  I don't like sand, I don't like heat and I bore horribly easily, but I decided to set all that aside and boy am I glad that I did.  I had a fantastic time.  We did lie on the beach and bask, but we were also busy.  There was great snorkelling right off of the beach.  We saw grunts, parrot fish, angel fish, needle fish, yellowtail snapper, tangs, butterfly fish and even two small sea turtles just by strapping on fins, mask and snorkel and walking into the water.  One caveat, we saw the most fish the time we went snorkelling fairly early in the morning on one of the more calm days. We found that the north swimming beach was the better place to focus our snorkelling efforts.  Watch out for the breakers and the rocks in the water.

Our room was huge and we loved all the tile which made bringing in wet equipment less stressful. The bathroom was easily manoeuvred by two people, there were plenty of fluffy towels and everything was clean.  We did run into musty pillows once or twice, but shuffled them to the bottom and slept like logs anyways.  The beds were very firm, but again, that didn't slow us down.

Umbrellas on north end of the beach.  The water is just over the hill, we were in the last row of lounges.

The people at both the resort and those we met on our trip to Playa del Carmen on the Collectivo, and during our excursion to Ek Balam were wonderful and friendly.  I never felt uncomfortable or out of place and this in combination with the fantastic environment has me convinced that I will visit this wonderful place again.

As far as the food went, it was what one might expect from a location trying to feed the vast number of people it was.  The best local flavour was to be had at the Taco Bar by the beach, but every buffet had the local salsas and quacemoles that could be used to pump up whatever you were having.  I took to using the fresh salsa as a salad dressing. Don't get me wrong the food was good and I was disappointed with nothing.  Breakfast featured a made to order omelette, dinner steaks.  Lots of fresh fruit was also available.  The pineapple must have been in season, because it was amazing.  The Japanese restaurant, as per many reviews, was very good.

The all you can drink feature was interesting with two teenagers, one being the Mexican legal age of 18.  Turned out not to be a problem at all.  The 15 year old had no bracelet and so no alcoholic drinks.  But that didn't mean a week of pop.  A lot of the traditional mixed tropical drinks could be had alcohol free and so she had daiquiris and pina coladas all week long.  I think she enjoyed the idea of going to a bar and ordering drinks and the bartenders were always really nice.

The tip of the bay on the north end of the beach looking toward the resort buildings.  The spa would be behind us in this view.

I'll finish up here and for now and continue with the excursions next week.  That just leaves our scuba diving trip, for which we unfortunately have no pictures.  It's really too bad, cause I look awesome in neoprene.