A state of being

This picture was taken in the spring of this year during a walk along the dike near Colony Farms.  It was a cool and foggy morning, with the light just perfect for photos.  I edited the hell out of this in Sketch Club.  Hahahaha!  Who needs Instagram?!

Friday Was A Super Exceptional Tremendous Great Day!

A good day is a sunny Friday before a long weekend. A great day is that Friday is also the day before a week long vacation. A super day is when your boss says “it’s a long weekend…let’s shut down at noon today.” A super exceptional day is when you just found out that the Monday boots you bought on sale two days ago are now reduced by another $50.00! A super exceptional tremendous great day is when you go back to the store, they give you a store credit for the difference and you see the wizard shoes you also wanted are now marked down even more! And they have the colour you wanted in the size you needed!!
It was a super exceptional tremendous great day! :)

Summer Shower

Thankful for:
1.  We had a very much needed quick summer rain shower.It has cool down the air quite a bit.
2.  A week off!
3.  Washed puppy.

Sanity Check

Today was potentially a tough day at work but for some reason, all the stars and planets aligned and everything worked out.  It makes me nervous when things goes well.

 

I have next week off work and I am so looking forward to doing nothing.We have so many major projects on the go at work...this week will be hell week just to get everything organized for next week.

Things that I'm thankful for:
1.  Being able to catch the first train home - again.  I'm hoping that this is a sign of better times. *cross fingers*
2.  Sunny day!  It was nice and sunny and warm without being overly hot.  Perfect day!
3.  Fluevog shoe sale!  

Abstract

I've been using Sketch Club as if I would Photoshop.  While Sketch Club is NOT Photoshop and is very limited in comparison, it's kinda fun to challenge myself to see how I can overcome the limitations.  I've been playing around with doing a "mobile" series...photos taken on my my cell phone, moved into my ipod Touch to manipulate.  I think this might make an interesting ATC series.

Things that makes me happy:
1.  Sunny Sunday!
2.  Finally found sunglasses that I like AND they fit!
3.  Got a confirmation email that my new spindle is in the queue to be made!  Yes, thanks to Helen at Black Sheep Yarns, I ordered a Jenkins Lark.  Drat her!  :)

Gone Sketch Clubbing

It started as an alternative to knitting on the train.  Now it's become an obession.  Playing with the smudge tool and layers for the background effect.

Gone Fish'n

The possibilities are endless on this app!  I've been also playing with the transform tool to resize and move existing work to do a collage effect with photos uploaded from my cellphone.  Each segment was made and saved as separate pieces of work and then merged together.

Night Flowers

Things that I'm thankful for:
1.  I had a day off today...even if it was to go to the dentist.  A day off is a day off, right?
2.  Thankful that I have a dental plan.
3.  It didn't rain when I was walking to the dentist.  

Owl and Pussy Cat

Wow!  I'm on a roll here!  Two posts in two days!

This is my first attempt in trying out the cut-out technique on Sketch Club.  Someone posted the tutorial for this on the Sketch Club forum and I had to try it out.  The shadowing is not quite right but I didn't want to go back and fix that...just wanted to see what the finished product would look like.  Patience is not one of my strong points.  This project gave me a good sense of how the layers work together in Sketch Club and the best way to manage layers.  I'm amazed at the quality of work that people are doing not just on their iPad but on an ipod Touch!  It's a tiny screen.  Go check out some of their work - SketchClub.com.

Owl and Pussy Cat is a poem by Edward Lear. I remember having to memorize this as a kid.  Funny how some things will stick with you.

Things that makes me happy:

1.  Getting off work on time today.
2.  Greeter Dog - Cas does a very good job at being the Greeter Dog.  There's nothing like a happy puppy greeting you at the door when you walk in. 
3.  Coconut jello - just like it was from a dim sum cart.

Water puppy!

In a few short months, Puppy Cas is looking so grown up!  She's lost her soft puppy down and her fur is getting curlier and curlier.  She's now keeping up with the Big Dogs and decided that she loves swimming.  Sometimes I still really miss our old dog but it was time for him to go.  I like to think that Jawge would have approved of Cas.

On a different note, I'm still knitting and spinning as much as possible.  I really do miss hanging out with my fibre friends Wednesday nights.  Work really gets in the way of fun.  Whitecaps play a lot of Wednesday games...I wonder if they would switch it to another day if I ask them nicely?  lol!

I've been practicing on my spindles and have come to the conclusion that I really suck at spindle spinning.  When I've gotten to the point of no return on my Frustation Meter, I pull out one of my wheels to convince myself that Yes, I do spin.


Things I'm thankful for:

1.  My niece turned 19 yesterday.  She has grown up to be a beautiful, intelligent, and creative young woman.  I hope she will never grow out of her sense of goofiness.
2.  The new TCA at work...this might mean that I can work less and get home at a decent time everyday.  *keeping my fingers crossed*
3.  A week of sunshine.  Most likely, in Vancouver, this WAS our summer. 

Sketch Club

I've been playing around with a new app on my Ipod - Sketch Club.  I admit to having a fondness for drawing/painting apps - I have three - but this one seems to be my favourite.  I'm really not sure why...all these apps seems to do more or less the same thing.

Diablo III came out last week.  I'm playing a Witch Doctor.  I like the character but the running annimation is strange.  She reminds me of a spider when she runs.  Ick!

The first casualty of Puppy Cas

It's a good thing she's so cute...look at what she did to my alpaca mitten!!

Stuff

It took a while but I think I've figured out how to add my blog to Google+. We went to see Joel Plaskett on Saturday night at the Vogue Theatre. I love seeing concerts there. The nice surprise of the evening was the opening act - David Vertiesi. Normally, opening acts don't thrill me but this guy was really good. Good enough to buy his CD. On the knitting front - not a lot of knitting being done. Still working on the sleeve of the cotton cardigan. It's now taken two weeks to knit one sleeve. Puppy snuggling seems to be the priority in this house now.

Puppy pics and a couple of knitted bunnies

There's not a lot of time to write up anything. Right now, Cas is distracted by her squeeky ball. Thank goodness for squeeky balls! She has a new sleeping area...the shoe crate by the back door. She will crawl into the back, push all the shoes out and make herself a little puppy nest.














Knitted a couple of little bunnies for Easter. Made these before we got the dog. I may not be able to knit for a long time. Cas seems to be fascinated by the knitting needles.

*sigh*

Life has a way of happening on Wednesdays

It seems that life happens on Wednesdays around here. There's some kind of cosmic force that's keeping me from going to meet up with the Twisted group.

This week's distraction is...THE PUPPY!!

Meet Cas, short for Castiel. She's nine weeks old. We weren't expecting her until Saturday but was able to bring her home today.



Once she warmed up to us, we discovered Cas has two modes: sound asleep or running around like a little black ball of mercury.






Yes, Tammy, those puppy ears are very snorgle-able. :)

Puppies

Tonight we went to look at some puppies. Needless to say, one cannot just go "look at puppies" without wanting at least one or two of the cute furry fuzzballs. I remember saying to my hubby that unless these pupplies looked like half-eaten zombie puppies, it's pretty much a given that we're getting one. It was really tough picking out one that all three of us were happy with.

Sorry, no cute puppy pictures. They have to be checked out by the vet, go through all their shots, etc before we can bring one home.

I'm quite excited.

Natural Selection at work here...

We got a new bird feeder. It's one of those squirrel-proof ones...if a squirrel does manage to jump on the ring, the weight of the squirrel pull the ring down and close the feeder. We've been getting flocks of Pine Siskins living in our backyard for the last month or so. They're very aggressive with the other birds and will clean out the whole feeder in about a day or less.

Squirrels love them as these birds will knock the seeds out of the feeder onto the ground. Seconds before I took this picture, there were close to 50 birds covering the trellis and feeder. All that's left are a lot of blurrs and the squirrel on the ground. The squirrel took off a second later.

It seems that we now have a couple of residence falcons using this place as their version of Watership Down.



Whenever the whole flock is spooked and takes off, we know one of the falcons are near. Sometimes there would be the one bird left, pecking away at the seeds on the ground. That one usually ends up being falcon food.

Bunny Chunks

My latest obession may seem a bit odd. I've been drawing little tiny bunnies on a sketch app in my ipod Touch. Instead of knitting on the morning trains, I've been doodling.



Don't ask why that middle bunny is tilted.

Not so instant Instagram

I love the idea of Instagrams and how cool the pictures look. Unfortunately, there is no Instagram for my phone and I do not like the iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod Touch but just can't see me switching for an iPhone anytime soon. There is a workaround solution. Download Instagram to my Touch, take the picture on my camera phone and email it to myself. Pick it up on the Touch, play around with the Instagram stuff, and email it back to myself. Yeah, I thought it was too much work too.



Apparently, Instagram does not like the higher resolutions. It took me a couple of tries in finding which resolution worked the best.

Despite the bit of rain we've been having, the weather has been gorgeous for the most part. My favourite fall days are the cold, crisp sunny days. Just bundle up in your cozy handknitted woollies and it's all good.

Yesterday we got a really nice treat at work - a tour up on the catwalk. I've been up on the ring beam of the old roof and been up on the old roof before but this was much scarier. Not a place you want to be if you don't like heights.



The stairs and the catwalk are the grated metal kind...the kind where you can see ALL the way down. Ick! I'm usually okay when it comes to heights but this was making me go weak in the knees by the time we got up to the actual catwalk.



Things that makes me happy:
1. I have the next ten days off!
2. My fibre friends welcoming me back into the fold after my long absence.
3. It's December and Christmas shows are back on TV!

It's a perfect day!!

To make up for working last Sunday, I took a couple of hours off today to get my haircut. It's one of those haircut where you trust the stylist and tell her to surprise you...which she did, in a good way. Really happy with the cut. On the way back to work, I stopped off at Sweet Georgia Yarns to pick up my fibre club stuff for October & November. October's fibre is a blend of superwash Merino, bamboo, and nylon. November's fibre is Polworth and silk.

A great hair cut and fibre. You would think that all this would be enough for a perfect day but no, it got better. Got back to the office and there was a message from home that my Hansen minispinner had arrived.




Perfect day!!!!

King of Coffeemakers

My Hansen mini spinner is not here yet but the new coffee maker arrived on Friday. It's a very unusual looking machine this Technivorn Mochamaster. It's handmade...yes, handmade coffee maker. While not quite as awwsome as a mini spinner, it's a pretty amazing coffee maker. What makes it so special is that it actually brews coffee at the right temperature!


On the knitting front, I finished the Stockholm shawl in record time. My motivation was the very cold mornings waiting for the train. Long enough to wrap around twice and wide enough to pull over my head as a hood.


Pithy details: Berroco Ultra Alpaca in dark brown, roughly 3-ish skeins (yarn reclaimed from a project that was destined to be unfinished). 7 mm needles, cast on 252 sts and knitted in the round. Knitted to 16" wide and blocked to 13". Silly me washed it in warm water.

Made it through the dark tunnel...

...and there was light at the other end. I promised myself that I was going to meet up with the Twisted last Wednesday. It was time to get my life back in order, get back the stuff that's important to me.

Sometimes plans change. When I got home from work that Wednesday, fate decided I was going to stay home...and ordered this.

Very much a SQUEEE worthy moment.