A Very Full Day

Yesterday T-Man and I decided to go on one of our “walks”. These are actually marathons of our own making and this one was even longer than usual. But with some relaxing breaks which made it quite fun. We walked downtown, checked the book store (no new magazines), had lunch at the restaurant with the floating sushi boats, continued on down to English Bay, sat in the shade and watched the people, touched the water (because it was there), walked back up to the downtown centre, got tickets for the new Harry Potter movie, crossed the street and sat out on the sidewalk patio and had a drink (me: English-style cider, him: cream ale), people-watched some more, then went back into the movie complex, bought popcorn, saw the movie (excellent!), and ultimately walked all the way home. Are you tired yet? I’m tired just typing it! No idea how far we actually walked because T forgot the pedometer. More than 10 k though, I’m pretty sure. Of course we could have taken the bus home but we both found a second wind, enough to get us over the bridge and up the hill anyway. By the time we got that far it wasn’t worth the bus fare to go the rest of the way. Felt pretty good to get my boots off and put my feet up in the shade on our deck while we celebrated with a glass of wine.

“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” was great but it was definitely the middle of the story. You needed to remember a lot of what came before and it helped to have read the book because details were either left out or shown but not explained. We both felt the editing was a bit too choppy in some places too. The feeling of the book was retained though and it had great special effects. It’s amazing how the Grimauld Place house looks exactly as I pictured it and I’m glad JK Rowling insisted on including Kreacher the house elf even though he doesn’t further the story. Yet. Ok, yes, I’m a geek. Not quite as geeky as some, but pretty bad. Remember I’ve always been a fantasy reader and would have been a huge fan of this series if it had come out when I was a child. So what if I’m somewhat older than that now? Heh!

So what else crafty have I done recently? Well, I wound all the blanket yarn into cakes:


I used to call them “balls” but “cakes” is definitely more descriptive. Unfortunately I had to finish winding the cakes indoors which was a definitely fuzz hazard, see?


That’s the area near my ball winder (cake winder?) when I was done and I had to get out the vacuum for the lint on the floor and all over the place. Now I need to start winding the warp from these. I’ll probably start that tomorrow. 11 yards and 324 ends should keep me busy for awhile. What else? I got this far on the Hepburn sleeves:


About up to my elbow maybe. It’s a fun challenge to knit, especially while increasing in the right places at the same time, but aren’t the cables and lace purty? It was definitely a good idea to work both sleeves at once or they would never have matched at all. Slow going though. I need to concentrate a lot on what I’m doing and there is much manipulation of stitches in every row. NO “resting” rows. I found out that I do “cabling without a cable needle” very differently than what has been written about in other blogs. I’ll have to do a photo tutorial on my methods in case somebody likes them better. They’re not particularly easy to manipulate but they work for me on these simple 2/2 front or back crossed cables. I helps that I have sharp points on my Addi Lace needles and I knit somewhat loosely.

I’m also well down the feet and heading for the toes on both of T’s latest pair of socks. Soon I need to go hunting in the stash for the fibres to spin for the Icelandic Shawl KAL. And I need to come up with a suitable present for my granddaughter’s third birthday. Her party is next Sunday. Never a dull moment around Damselfly’s pond, eh?